First bird of the year

I would be interested to know what the first bird is that you see in 2010. In 2009, my first bird was a pine siskin.

Noisy Miner. Our garden is riddled with them at present :)

A beautiful, but noisy, Rainbow Lorikeet.

I wonder if some of the birds I think are Gold Finches are Pine Siskins. I'm not sure how to tell the difference. It's still too dark & cold out for any of the birds to be up yet here.

The Pine Siskin is a cute little fellow. I had no idea what one was so looked it up. There is a good picture of the siskin and the goldfinch side by side for comparison here

>2 digifish_books: Even though the Noisy Miner is native, I would happily eradicate them from my garden; aggressive little bastards they are, even harrassing birds 4 to 5 times their size.

Thank you, Bernsad. Against a male Gold Finch, even in their winter colors, it's pretty easy to see the difference. I have more trouble with the females, though. I showed the page to my wife & we'll try looking closer. We have a thistle sock on the back porch, so we should get a good look.

It didn't get light until about 7:45 - we live on the western edge of the Eastern time zone. I looked out then & counted 14 Mourning Doves, over a dozen sparrows (house?) & one Downy Woodpecker. No finches of any sort were up yet.

Blue Jay for me - common enough around here, but always cocky and handsomely dressed. I particularly appreciate the initiative of the ones that cry like Cooper's and Red-tailed Hawks to shoo the other birds away from the feeders.

Happy New Year!

It was either a tufted titmouse or a white breasted nuthatch- saw them about the same time and wasn't paying attention to which was first.

Black-capped chickadee!

I'm a bit concerned for the large number of robins we saw bathing in a puddle this morning. While the ground is mushy here in NJ, it will be frozen again next week.

They are usually gone by this time.

The first bird I actually saw was a northern flicker (red-shafted), but before that I heard a house finch then a red-breasted nuthatch.

I watched a flock of robins devouring crabapples this afternoon - and we're in New Hampshire. I expect they'll move on in time.

Pine grosbeaks at a friend's feeder in the mountains, joined by chickadees, whiskey jacks, redpolls and some white-tailed deer.

I was curious about NorthernStar's use of the name "whiskey jack." I had never heard that bird name before, so I did some research. Apparently it is altered from Whiskey John, which is derived from the Algonquin name for the bird, "Whiskatjan." All refer to the gray jay. I've also heard these birds refered to as "ghost of the woods."

Perhaps I should start another string on colloquial bird names. Could be interesting.

Well, I'd heard the name before but didn't know its origin - thanks for looking it up and thanks for sharing!

The other common name for the whiskey jack is the Canada jay. I notice all my recent bird books have only gray jay listed, but no-one I know actually calls them that.

My first bird of 2010 was a Ring-billed Gull -- not very exciting, but at dawn I was standing out to watch the Rose Parade, so I was just glad it wasn't Rock Pigeon.

>14 NorthernStar: Well somebody pulled the wool over my eyes...
In 1997 we moved from Ontario to Alberta, and in Calgary, what we were told to call a whisky jack turns out to be a type of magpie. For 8yrs we (myself and my 4 kids) referred to a black and white bird as a magpie, and the similar bird with a sheen to the wings like a grackle's head, as a whisky jack.

I had never even heard of a gray jay, or a Canada jay, until they voted it the national bird and I saw a picture of it thanks to Canada Geographic online. Now I find out the gray jay is actually a whisky jack. Good grief Charlie Brown, my kids will never forgive me! We are too far south to ever see a gray jay, since the territory doesn't seem to include Lake Ontario or Lake Erie.

Sorry to keep bumping up these old threads to the top, sifting them out of order, but enquiring minds want to know... have you ever intentionally duped someone about a bird name or description or call? Treason!

So the closest I can find is a Pica, is that what we might have seen?

>19 frahealee: - I think it must have been a magpie - they can be very iridescent in the right light, with beautiful blue and green colours. There is nothing similar that is mainly black and white that I know of. There are also Stellar's jays, which are mostly seen on the west side of the mountains. They have mostly black heads, blue bodies, and a crest. Other birds similar to jays are the Clark's nutcracker, and the northern shrike. Both of these are mostly grey, with some black and white.

And since my original post, the grey jay's name has officially been changed back to Canada jay.

Edited to add - I think pica is the scientific name for the magpie.