End of year birding

I see it has been quite a while since I blogged. A new job with more travel, a new hobby, and a couple of vacations ate into my time. I guess I also wasn't doing as much photography and somehow it seemed like blogging without pictures was a bit of a waste. But that shouldn't be the case. So here I am with the start of hopefully a few catch-up entries.
While I try not to be too competitive birding, I can't always suppress my competitive side. Especially when eBird provides you with data that is so easy to compare. As it got close to the end of the year and I had 199 species for Virginia in 2018, the 200-mark was calling. I thought maybe we would make a stop along the Eastern Shore during holiday travels to Pennsylvania, but the weather didn't cooperate. On the way up we were aiming to reach family before dark and rain arrived and the trip back was entirely in a heavy downpour. That left the last day, New Year's Eve to add that last new species. My BirdsEye app showed 8 species within 25 miles that I could add to my Virginia year list. Five had been seen at or near Fort Monroe. My wife and I bird there frequently and I consider it kind of like my local patch. We had done the Christmas Bird Count at Fort Monroe a couple of weeks earlier and had missed most of those (One showed up after that). Two hundred for the year and missed birds at "my" patch: the sirens were calling.
That afternoon we headed down with the hope of being able to see one or two of the new species along with enjoying the area. First stop was the new waterfront park in Phoebus just across Mill Creek from Ft. Monroe. A white-winged scoter had been reported a few days earlier. At the park, they recently added a parking lot and a floating boat launch. The later is now fully populated with gulls. As I scanned for the common eider that had been in the area for a few weeks, my wife set up the spotting scope. And bang, there along the far side of water was the white-winged scoter. In the scope, the while comma behind the eye was very clear. We often see the other two scoter species, black and surf, around Ft Monroe but this was the first we had seen the white-winged in the area. That was 200. But we were out to enjoy the birds so we moved on to Fort Monroe proper.
Next stop was the Chamberlain hotel where there is often a lot of ducks along the rocky seawall as well as good views of anything out by the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel island. Here we found some brant swimming next to the island. (I had actually seen a few while scouting for the CBC but always a pleasure to watch them.) While my wife was scanning the waters with the spotting scope, I walked to the end near the marina to see around the corner. Just over the wall was the common eider. Not 30 ft away. It was very nice looking male. While watching it we saw a Bonaparte's gull fly by. I was now at 202 for the year. Then, back around the other side of the Chamberlain we saw a female long-tailed duck swimming by. Now I was up to 203.
I was hoping to see one new species for the year to get to that round, but otherwise arbitrary, count for the year. And ended up seeing several new species and some nice views of other winter time visitors. In the end, I was a great way to end the year.