Slow Birding

Rock Sandpiper Yes! Al the Laysan Albatross No!

2012-02-03T09:22:00.011-05:00

We were back out before 8 AM at MacKerricher SP, but at a different location to look again for a rock sandpiper. As we looked down from the bluff we could see lots of shorebirds bouncing around on the rocks looking for breakfast as the waves rolled in. I walked down onto the beach to get closer to one rock that seemed very active. To everyone's delight there was a rock sandpiper (photo above--click on any photo to enlarge) feeding along with surf birds, sanderlings, black turnstones and black oystercatchers. On a nearby rock we found a glaucous winged gull trying to swallow a starfish (photo just below).

Having found the rock sandpiper which was a life bird for 2 of the group, we decided to start driving to see if Al, the laysan albatross that has wintered for 19 years at Pt. Arenas, was in the harbor. Enroute we stopped at Van Damme SP for about 20 minutes to see what was around. As soon as we got out of the truck we heard several pacific wrens singing, and Laura got a photo of one (just below).

We also found several varied thrushes mixed in with the robins. One male was particularly striking (photo just below).

Our next stop was at the Pt. Arenas harbor to check on Al. The harbor master told us that he had not come in yet that day, and had not been seen for a few days. As we waited to see if he might make an appearance, we enjoyed seeing other birds including a fly over of a ferruginous hawk (photo just below).

At one point a boat came in loaded with sea urchins. We watched the harbor master unload over a 1000 pounds of them into large plastic lugs. Laura captured a 1st year western gull checking out the mound of sea urchins in the photo above. We took a lunch break, and checked out another location to see if maybe Al was over by the lighthouse. When we returned to the harbor the sea urchins had been taken off to Ft. Bragg to be processed for use by sushi restaurants.

About 3 PM we concluded that Al was not in the area, and knowing we still had a 3-4 hour ride back into San Francisco, we decided to call it a day. Laura and I were dropped off at our motel near the airport at 7 PM, and Dan, Doreene and Joe headed over to Oakland to spend the night close to Merritt Lake to be in position early on Tuesday to try for a tufted duck. As Laura and I were heading to the airport Tuesday morning she received a cell phone picture taken by Doreene of the tufted duck.

After 3 days of birding we had seen about 125 species. The Nutting's (ABA code 5) was a life bird for all of us but Joe who had already seen it a few weeks ago, and the falcated duck (code 4) was a life bird for all of us but Dan. Laura told me that she ended up with a total of 8 life birds on the trip, and Joe may have had almost that many. I do not know when I will be birding again, but you never know, so stay tuned!

Talking Falcated Duck and More

2012-02-02T13:05:00.007-05:00

After a good night's rest, we were up early, and made the short drive over to the Colusa NWR near the town of Willams. CA. It was chilly but sunny as we walked up to the viewing platform. Several other birders already were scoping the impoundment which was covered with 1000's of birds. Fortunately the falcated duck (photo above, center bird facing left with the "shiny, rusty face" and white throat) was sitting not too far out on the water. We were able to enjoy good views of it over the next 45 minutes.

While scanning the water, Joe also quickly located 3 European wigeons which are relatively rare in the U.S. Even more rare than the wigeons was the Eurasian teal, which is a sub-species of the green-winged teal, that Joe located at the far back of the impoundment. While not countable as a species, this was the first Eurasian teal that he or I had ever seen in the U.S. Many ducks were feeding quite close to the platform including the cinnamon teal (just above) and the northern pintail (just below--click on any photo to enlarge).

After thoroughly soaking up the multitude of birds on the impoundment, and the amazement of seeing 3 very rare ducks at one spot, we felt blessed to be birding that morning. On our way back to the truck we found a western scrub jay (just below) and some white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows feeding in a grassy area.

We decided to do the short auto tour thru the refuge, and then drove around the outside of the refuge as well where we watched a huge group of mostly snow geese lift off out of a field (just below).

By late morning we headed back to check out of our motel, and to grab a bite of lunch at Roberta's--a taqueria that I remembered eating at in 2010 during my big year. We then pointed the truck west towards the coast. Our destination was Ft. Bragg for the night where we wanted to look for some more target birds. We arrived in time to go to MacKerricher SP--a most scenic spot with lots of rocks for shorebirds to feed on and seals to sleep on. After 90 minutes, we had seen many birds, including a small raft of ancient murrelets which was one of the target birds of our group. The other target bird, a rock sandpiper, was not to be found that afternoon.

We checked into a motel for the night, and then went down to the wharf for dinner. We had dungeness crab cakes, steamed manila clams, and clam chowder, and toasted the overall success so far of the trip with a bottle of Roederer Estate champagne--produced very close by in Anderson Valley. On Monday Laura and I needed to be back in San Francisco by the evening to be in position to catch our flights home on Tuesday morning, but we still had all day Monday to do some more birding. Stay tuned!

Talking Nutting's Flycatcher

2012-02-01T09:23:00.007-05:00

I caught a 6:15 AM flight last Friday out of Raleigh/Durham to a connecting flight in Dallas that got me to Phoenix about 11 AM. My friends from Ohio, Dan and Doreene, and Laura, and Joe, a birding friend of theirs who lives in Rio Rico, AZ were already there waiting for me. We loaded up Joe's Toyota Forerunner, and headed towards the Bill Williams NWR with the goal of arriving in time to look for the Nutting's flycatcher before dark. We arrived about 3:45 on a windy afternoon and spread out along the road listening for the Nutting's. There were very few birds about, but we did see a couple of verdins chasing each other around, one of which Laura got a photo of just above (click on any photo to enlarge; all photos in this post and the next 2 to follow were taken by Laura Keene).

Joe finally heard the Nutting's distinctive call 1 time around 4:45, but we could not find the bird, and it did not call for us again. With the sun setting, the wind rising and no bird life to speak of, we headed up to Lake Havasu City to spend the night, stopping at the lake to scope what was around--common goldeneyes, clark's grebes and greater scaup being the main birds on the water.

We woke up to find it still windy in Lake Havasu City which worried us a bit. We arrived back to the Nutting's spot at 7:45, and once again spread out to listen for its call. Fortunately it was not windy, and about 7:55 I located the bird quietly feeding just off the road. We had great looks at it for the next 10 minutes. The photo above shows clearly the tail which has only dark on the outside edges, but not across the very bottom--a key marker to separate the Nutting's from the very similar ash-throated flycatcher. While it never called, I did get to see the orange color inside its mouth--another distinguishing marker for the Nutting's. In the photo below, there is a faint yellow tint to the secondaries, a third marker for this bird.

We continued to bird the area for another hour in hopes that the Nutting's would return or call again, but it did not. We did hear and see at least 2 canyon wrens, and Laura got the photo below of one of them.

We had a long drive ahead of us so we left about 9 AM, stopping again at the lake to check out the bird life there. We found a pair of Barrow's goldeneyes mixed in with lots of other ducks, but soon jumped back into the truck to make the 10+ hour drive up to Williams, CA which is an hour north of Sacramento. Our goal for Sunday morning was to see the falcated duck. Stay tuned!

Woodcocks at Mason Farm

2012-01-26T12:51:00.005-05:00

At dusk last night my sister and I went down to Mason Farm to see if the woodcocks (photos above and below taken last spring at Magee Marsh, Ohio) were out. We arrived about 6 PM, and as we walked down the grassy roadway to get to the open fields we heard several birds still calling, including woodcocks. We had a few fly bys as we made our way down to the open area. By the time we reached the intended spot it was quite dark with only a new moon to light up the evening. Sure enough a woodcock landed about 50 feet away and began to call. I had charged my spotlight before coming out, but quickly discovered that since it had not been charged in a very long time that the charge was short lived. Opposite us an equal distance from the bird were 2 other birders with a flashlight which they would occasionally shine on the woodcock. Since our light was kaput, after squinting thru our binos for about 10 minutes, we headed on back home.

I am off tomorrow at the crack of dawn to fly to Arizona to meet up with 4 other birding friends. Our first stop tomorrow afternoon will be near Lake Havasu City to look for the Nutting's flycatcher that has been up visiting for a few weeks from Mexico. From there we will all drive into California to look for a falcated duck that has been hanging out for several weeks at Colusa NWR. Stay tuned!

A Great January for a Birder Doing a 2012 Big Year

2012-01-11T09:42:00.007-05:00

In reviewing the NARBA postings for the first 10 days of 2012, if I were doing a big year in 2012 my head would be spinning with the possibilities. And following Sandy Komito's big year dictum to chase immediately all ABA code 4 and 5 birds, I would have already criss-crossed the country in just 10 days, and would still be rushing about trying not to miss the amazing number of rarities currently being seen.

In 2010 when I did my lower 48 big year, I was blessed in January with several code 3-5 birds, beginning with the first North American record for bare-throated tiger-heron at Bentsen RGV State Park. But 2012 is off the charts with opportunities, particularly if one is doing a lower 48 big year. In south TX in the Valley the rarities include black-vented oriole (code 5), golden-crowned warbler (4), crimson-collared grosbeak (4), blue bunting (4), and rose-throated becard (3).

In Arizona you can find Nutting's flycatcher (5), rufous-backed thrush (3), rufous-capped warbler (3), and black-capped gnatcatcher (3). Florida is hosting La Sagra's flycatcher (3) and American flamingo (3). In 2010 I was able to see in Florida a La Sagra's as well as the red-footed booby (3) in the photo just below.

California has a wintering over falcated duck (4), and Oregon has a brambling (3) and emperor goose (2). Washington also has emperor goose and yellow-billed loon (2). Ohio has had for several weeks a black-tailed gull (4) while the northeast is sporting pink-footed and barnacle geese (3's), and a slaty-backed gull (3). New Jersey has a common chaffinch (4), and Tennessee still has the hooded crane--possible first NA record. Anchorage, AK has a dusky thrush (4) being seen, and Newfoundland this winter once again has a yellow-legged gull (4). Finally, it has been a very good irruption year for snowy owls.

Most of these birds showed up in December, so working out a travel schedule prior to starting a big year in 2012 would have been a top priority. And those that appeared only recently are in places that the other birds were already being seen. 8 of this January's lower 48 states rarities I did not see during my 2010 big year. I have not heard of anyone doing an all-out full ABA area or lower 48 big year in 2012, but there are several birders doing their version of a big year (photographic, low budget, father/son). Here's wishing you all the very best of birding this year.

Turning to my chase for the Nutting's flycatcher and the falcated duck that I referenced in my last post, a stomach virus laid me low last week so that did not happen. I still have my fingers crossed that both birds will continue to winter over at their current locations. In 2010 a brown shrike was found in northern California in November, and stayed into early April of 2011. Stay tuned!

John Vanderpoel and the Myth of El Nino and Attu

2012-01-04T07:51:00.007-05:00

John Vanderpoel's monumental effort to surpass Sandy Komito's full ABA area big year record of 748 in the end fell short by just 6 birds. John is undoubtedly still feeling worn out from the effort expended, and maybe a bit frustrated for having just missed setting a new record. But mostly I am sure he is elated from all the incredible memories that he has from his big year. Major congrats to you John!

Having done my own lower 48 big year in 2010, and being a student of other big years, I can say today that Sandy Komito's record set back in 1998 should no longer be seen as unbeatable. The book, The big Year, helped to create a belief that somehow the combination of an El nino year and being able to bird at Attu created a unique set of birding opportunities that no longer could be matched. Bob Ake's effort last year when he saw 731 birds in the full ABA area began to raise questions about the myth of Attu and El nino. John's total of 743 (plus 1 provisional--the hooded crane) in my opinion demonstrates that it is just a matter of time before Sandy's seemingly insurmountable record is surpassed.

In fact, if John had begun his big year with the same single-mindedness that Sandy had in 1998, and discusses in his book (I Came, I Saw, I Counted), then John could have set a new record in 2011. I have spent some time studying John's schedule, and some key birds that he definitely could have seen but missed last year. For starters, a tufted flycatcher (code 5) was seen all of December in 2010 at Big Bend NP. If john had started his big year on Jan 1 at Big Bend he would have seen the tufted.

He could have gone to Quebec, and either Newfoundland or Nova Scotia in January or February to see a fieldfare (code 4) and a northern lapwing (code 4). His schedule would have allowed him to be on a pelagic trip out of Santa Barbara on 4/30 which would have given him a Murphy's petrel (code 3). If he had been patient and stayed literally a few minutes longer at a feeder in TX, he would have seen a white-eared hummer (code 3) in August that he specifically had gone to see. Similarly, after his extended stay at Adak in December, he chose to go home rather than remain one more day in AK which would have given him a dusky thrush (code 4) in Anchorage.

While John generally had very good timing throughout the year (fork-tailed flycatcher in FL; little egret in ME; curlew sandpiper and little stint in southern CA on the same day; violet-green hummer in TX; and gray-hooded gull in NY), the need to be home for Thanksgiving meant he missed a redwing (code 4) in Seward, AK by 1 day. Hindsight shows if he had first gone for the smew (code 3) in Ontario rather than the hooded crane in late December he would have gotten the smew and still been able to see the crane.

Finally, in late August instead of birding in Colorado for some code 1 birds that he could have picked up at other times of the year, he could have been in the Pribiloffs for a few days before going to Gambell. If he had he could have seen taiga and dark-sided flycatchers (code 4's), a jack snipe (code 4) and a long-toed stint (code 3). All of these birds could have been seen without missing out on other birds that John saw during the same time periods. If he had seen all these additional birds his 2011 total would have been 755.

When I exchanged emails a few weeks ago with Sandy Komito, he wrote that he hopes to live long enough to be able to congratulate a new full ABA area big year record holder. John's big year clearly shows that Sandy just might be doing that in the near future.

I have an airplane ticket on hold to fly out to Arizona and California this coming weekend to try for the Nutting's flycatcher and the falcated duck. Stay tuned!

My Birding Highlights from 2011

2012-01-01T11:24:00.010-05:00

It is New Year's day--warm and sunny here in NC. While the extent of my birding in 2011 was nothing like my big year in 2010, I still had some memorable birding trips. 2011 began in early January with my birding buddy Pam when we spent 5 days in the Rio Grande Valley of TX. I had chosen not to chase a black-vented oriole (photo above--click on it to enlarge) that showed up at Bentsen RGV State Park at the end of December, but since it was still being seen and it would be an ABA lifer for me, we decided to try for it while doing some extensive birding. We had a very enjoyable time with Pam picking up 25+ life birds.

I was going to chase with my friends Dan and Doreene a fieldfare that spent 3+ weeks in late Jan. and early Feb. at the tip of the Gaspe peninsula, Quebec, Canada. Unfortunately I had a last minute conflict develop here in NC, and could not make the trip. Dan and Doreene did go and got to see the fieldfare. I did get to see a yellow-faced grassquit in Texas in late Feb. when I went to Austin to visit friends.

In early May I made what is becoming an annual spring trip to Magee marsh near Toledo, OH. Just prior to my departure a garganey was found outside of Cincinnati. I routed myself thru there and was able to see another lifer (photo above--far right bird). My time at Magee may have been the best so far. The weather was almost perfect--sunny and 60's. The birding was outstanding most days, and for the first time when birding at Magee I saw a Connecticut warbler.

In late May a fan-tailed warbler (photo below by Martin Meyers) was found in Madera Canyon, AZ. This is the only new world warbler that I had not yet seen, so I jumped on a plane to AZ. I was able to see it on 2 consecutive days before it disappeared.

In June I went with 3 friends--Craig, Marty and Richard--on a raft trip with 4 other birders and 2 guides in the Arctic NWR to find the gray-headed chickadee (photo below by Bob Dittrick). This is probably the hardest breeding bird to see in North America. We were fortunate to get great views at the nest tree shown in the photo, and we saw another pair further down the river. All in all, the raft trip was outstanding--a most memorable birding adventure.

After we completed the raft trip, my wife joined me for 10 days of touring around Alaska. At Denali NP we were able to see lots of wildlife including a first ever lynx. We also saw a pair of gyrfalcons. While in Homer we took a morning pelagic trip to look for 2 more life birds-- red-faced cormorant (photo below), and Kittlitz's murrelet, both of which we found.

My 2011 life bird success rate dropped dramatically in the 2nd half of the year when I missed by 2 days seeing the gray-hooded gull that spent a week at Coney Island, NY. Then just before Thanksgiving I joined John Vanderpoel, Doug Koch, Ken Petersen and Liz Southworth to chase a graylag goose near Montreal, Canada. We missed it by a day, but fortunately it was refound 2 weeks later so that John, Doug and Liz were able to see it afterall.

My final chase of the year was over to TN to see the hooded crane which was also a success. So I finished the year with 7 new lifers, and 1 provisional pending the acceptance of the crane as a wild bird.

Turning to some of the 2011 big year birders, Gabriel Mapel, a 12 year old from VA, finished his junior big year at 436 birds, seeing a Bell's vireo as his last year bird at Cape May, NJ. Matt Stenger from OH completed his big year at 681, seeing a black-headed gull on Dec. 31st in Rhode Island. Finally, John Vanderpoel missed the smew in Ontario, Canada, but did see a Nutting's flycatcher in AZ on Dec. 31st bringing his YTD total up to 743 plus a provisional for the hooded crane. Major congrats to all 3 big year birders! In the next few days I will be doing a post on John's monumental effort that just missed breaking Sandy Komito's record for the full ABA area. Stay tuned!

Anna's Hummer in New Bern, NC

2011-12-30T08:16:00.009-05:00

The day after Xmas I did my usual bird walk on my property with Pam and Perry as part of their Christmas Bird Count. It was a chilly but sunny morning. We saw the usual suspects with some highlights being a golden-crowned kinglet, a winter wren and a hairy woodpecker. It is always nice to be part of their annual CBC effort.

Yesterday morning my sister and I made the drive down to New Bern, NC to look for another very rare hummer for North Carolina--an Anna's. We had success seeing the Allen's 3 weeks ago before it left the area, so we decided we should try for only the 2nd or 3rd Anna's to visit NC. We headed out at 6:30 AM to make the 150 mile drive to New Bern. We found the home of Art and Joanne Behrer where the hummer has been regularly seen. They graciously allowed us to park in their driveway so we could stake out the feeders right in front of the house. Joanne told us she had seen the Anna's at 7:20 that morning.

We patiently looked and listened for the male Anna's to make an appearance. About 11 AM when it had not come in to feed, we decided to drive on down to the Morehead City area to do some other birding, expecting to stop back for the Anna's on our way home to Chapel Hill. We turned the car key to find we had a dead battery. AAA came to our rescue about 2 hours later, jumpstarting our car. In the mean time we kept looking for the Anna's, but it just was not around. At least we had a fly over bald eagle to brighten our day.

After stopping to buy a new battery we drove down to Fort Macon so my sis could at least get some time walking on the beach. While there we were able to see 3 purple sandpipers, one of which is in the photo above. There was also a sanderling hanging out on the small jetty end where the purple sandpipers were busily feeding. Not much else was happening at Fort Macon birdwise. We saw one common loon, a couple of double crested corms, and a few pelicans.

We made the 50 minute drive back to New Bern, arriving just about 4:30 to try again for the Anna's. The sun was setting and the feeders were totally in the shade. My sister has a very good ear, and she said she thought she heard the bird calling. We walked toward a row of bushes and sure enough we found it perched in a bush. Unfortunately, while the hummer was very cooperative in letting me take its picture, the light was not great so the photos just above and below are not much more than record shots (click on photo to enlarge). You can see a bit of red behind the eye in the bottom photo. Having seen the bird, our ride home was much more enjoyable.

Turning to the whirlwind end to John Vanderpoel's big year, he is on a plane as I type to Toronto, Canada. On Tuesday on their way to TN to try for the hooded crane, John and Doug Koch stopped long enough to have a fried chicken lunch with me at Mama Dip's in Chapel Hill. That evening they were planning on picking up Liz Southworth who was flying into Chattanooga from Boston. On Wednesday they did get good looks at the hooded crane which now has been seen at Hiwassee wildlife refuge in TN by hundreds of birders from around the US. They all made the 12 hour drive back to Hatteras on Wednesday. Yesterday about 1:30 they had a great skua fly over their boat--the target bird for the last minute pelagic trip run by Brian Patteson to help John in his quest for the full ABA area record.

John is on his way to Whitby Harbour which is about an hour east of Toronto in hopes of seeing a smew that was found there on Tuesday. Unfortunately it was not reported yesterday, but he is going to make the effort to find it before flying to Arizona this evening. He and his brother will be looking for the Nutting's flycatcher tomorrow--New Year's Eve day-- at Lake Havasu City to finish out his monumental big year. His YTD total stands as of yesterday at 743 including the hooded crane as a provisional awaiting TN bird records committee review as to its acceptability as a wild bird. Stay tuned!

Christmas Eve Day

2011-12-24T08:32:00.005-05:00

John Vanderpoel is back in Colorado. He posted yesterday that his last 3 days on Adak unfortunately did not bring him any more new year birds. Even worse, someone reported seeing a dozen whooper swans fly over the airport on Thursday a few hours before he was due to fly back to Anchorage. He had been looking for whooper swans for 3 days without success.

Having missed the whoopers, instead of staying overnight Thursday in Anchorage, and trying one more time for the erratic and elusive dusky thrush that was seen again on Thursday afternoon, he made the gut wrenching decision to go home on the redeye Thursday night. I just saw on NARBA that the thrush was seen again Friday afternoon. John had returned to Alaska in hopes that his success there in September and October--19 new year birds--would continue, and put him in a position to eclipse Sandy's record. Instead he came away with just 1 new bird for the year, and his YTD total is still at 741.

With 8 days left in his big year he still plans to fly to NC on Monday to be able to go out with Brian Patteson on Tuesday on the Stormy Petrel II in search of a great skua. From there he will probably head over to TN to see the hooded crane, and then onto AZ to try for the Nutting's flycatcher. It would be somewhat ironic if the flycatcher ends up being his last new bird for the year since that was Sandy Komito's first bird of the year back in 1998.

If he gets those 3 birds he will have done very well for the last few days of December. Bob Ake, Lynn Barber and Sandy each only saw 1 more new bird after this date during their big years, and I did not see any. Stay tuned!

John Vanderpoel vs Sandy Komito

2011-12-22T07:18:00.008-05:00

With John Vanderpoel's full ABA area big year effort breaking thru the 740 level, I have noticed on the ABA blog a debate between Greg Neise and Ted Floyd as to what is the big year number to beat. More specifically, is it 745 as originally reported back in 1998, or is it 748 as Sandy Komito has claimed in interviews this year as a result of the movie The Big Year?

In my post back on 12/10, I said I thought it was 747 actually because in studying his printed big year list in his book (I Came, I Saw, I Counted), he still had gray vireo on it which in his book he said he had taken off the list because Jon Dunn had convinced him his photo of a gray vireo was in fact a plumbeous vireo. Since then I have gone thru his list carefully, and discovered that his printed list does not include eastern phoebe or willow flycatcher even though he discusses the phoebe sighting in the text and references the willow in the index. So in his book the printed list has only 744 birds on it, including the gray vireo, but when you add the phoebe and the flycatcher, and subtract the vireo, you are back at the 745 different bird species reported.

To clear matters up, I emailed Sandy to ask him about what I had discovered. He responded that I was the first person who had ever noticed the printing error. He also restated the reason for the gray vireo delete. Finally, he wrote about the great gray owl (my photo above) he thought he saw flying at some distance in Minnesota in 1998, but did not add to the list. He has since been convinced from seeing more great grays flying that he did see a great gray in 1998 but still does not count it on his list.

Each birder doing a big year has to set his/her own level of confidence of an identification of a bird (Lynn Barber who did her full ABA big year in 2008 makes mention of this in her recent blog post on the ABA blog site). I was in Minnesota in January of my big year when I flushed a large flock of small birds. I was pretty sure they were common redpolls, but they did not return to the roadway so that I could get the visual confirmation I wanted. As a result, I went to North Dakota in mid December where I was able to see a common redpoll (photo just below--click on it to enlarge) as well as a hoary redpoll.

After exchanging emails with Sandy, and not getting into the discussions about the validity of any of the birds on his list, I would conclude that the number of birds he saw in 1998 is the 748 he has been claiming. He reported 745 at the end of 1998, and clearly says in his book that he thought there would be up to 4 new North American records from his big year (Belcher's gull, Bulwer's petrel, yellow-throated bunting, and elegant quail) that would be finally accepted. Over the next few years all but the quail were added to the ABA official list.

What is primarily generating the current debate is whether those last 3 birds should be counted after the fact. With respect to this issue, back in 1987 when he set the record that year, he initially submitted 721 as his record number, and has said after 5 NA first records were added that his final number in 1987 was 726. He has been consistent for well over 20 years in how he has played the game and reported his results, and being the record holder, I would suggest that it is a bit absurd after holding the record for so long to now be questioning his final numbers. But it is happening because this year there is a possible new record holder in John Vanderpoel.

The debate on the ABA blog has generated 62 replies so far including one of my own. It has also led to some comments as to whether Sandy should have counted in 1998 the aplomado falcon (reestablishment program in south TX), or the white-cheeked pintail (unknown provenance) he saw. Again, this is all because after so many years the full ABA area record is being finally challenged by John V. With all this discussion, it would appear to be time for the ABA to clarify the exact rules of the big year game so that at least going forward there will be less confusion than appears to be the case today.

Turning to John Vanderpoel's final days in his 2011 big year, he was delayed in leaving Adak because of a problem with the weather monitor used by the airlines to land on Adak. He also has not posted for 2 days when he did report that he was able to see a whiskered auklet, which brings his YTD to 741. His expectation was that he would finally leave Adak today. Let's hope that he found 1 or 2 more new year birds prior to leaving. His next target bird would probably be the Nutting's flycatcher that was found 4 days ago near Lake Havasu City, AZ. Stay tuned!

Hooded Crane!

2011-12-18T10:50:00.005-05:00

On December 13th a hooded crane was found at the Hiwassee wildlife refuge northwest of Chattanooga, TN. Because of where hooded cranes breed (southern siberia) and winter (Japan and Korea), no previously reported hooded cranes have ever been accepted as wild birds in the ABA area, but one was seen in 2010 in Idaho, and another in Nebraska this past spring. Cranes are such magnificent birds, and this bird was only 430 driving miles from my house, so I had been monitoring reports on it all week.

Yesterday morning when I read that it had been seen again around 8 AM, I jumped in my truck and made the drive over to the refuge. I arrived about 3:30 PM, and soon after the hooded crane walked out into a large grassy area. In the photo just above you can see the hooded crane standing all by itself in the center of the picture (click on photo to enlarge). The photo below was taken by David Kirsche on 12/15. Over the next hour the bird was visible for probably 30-45 minutes. Unfortunately it was about 400 yards away from the viewing location, but even with binocs you could see its distinct markings, and with a scope you had very good views of it. There was one 10 year old boy who kept asking for looks thru my scope.

In addition to the hooded crane, there was an immature (first year) whooping crane mixed in with the 1000-2000 sandhill cranes. The big question is whether the hooded crane will continue to stay at Hiwassee with all the sandhills, or will the flock move further south for the winter. Even though there is no certainty that this bird will be accepted as a wild crane, John Vanderpoel, who is birding at Adak thru today, is hoping to get to TN by mid week to see it. John has not posted on his blog yet as to how he did yesterday at Adak. Hopefully he has picked up at least whiskered auklet and whooper swan. Stay tuned!

Rusty Blackbirds

2011-12-14T07:27:00.010-05:00

Last year in November and December I spent some time visiting several places here in the Chapel Hill area looking for flocks of rusty blackbirds that would be migrating thru our area. Unfortunately I only found a single bird in mid November, and then on New Year's Eve day I found a group of 7 females. So last Sunday when I read on the Carolinas listserve that a flock of 150 rusties had been seen at Mason Farm, I jumped in my car, and drove over to check if they were still there.

I figured that they would be in a damp, oak wooded area that I had been visiting over the past couple of weeks, so I walked straight to that location. As I was scanning the trail one rusty flew up into a tree. When I began to study the oak motte sure enough I found the flock feeding in the leaf litter. For the next 30 minutes I tried to get close enough to get some good photos, but the flock was very skittish and kept flying further into the oaks. The photos just above and below were the best I could get (click on any photo to enlarge). I was elated to see so many rusties together because the rusty blackbird population has crashed over the past 40-50 years.

Turning again to how John Vanderpoel is doing in his quest to top Sandy Komito's full ABA area big year total of 747 (see last post), he did not see any new year birds on his pelagic trip this past Sunday; but yesterday John and his brother saw a rufous-capped warbler in Florida Canyon, AZ. This brings his YTD total to 740. He is flying up to Alaska today in a effort to push that total higher. Alaska is critical to all full area ABA big year efforts, and generally birders visit the state 2-4 times from May to October. His going in mid December may be a first for a big year, and his flying out to Adak in the Aleutian Islands is definitely unheard of for this time of year. This will be his 6th trip to AK in 2011.

He will be in Anchorage overnight, and will have a chance to see a dusky thrush that has been hanging out with a large group of robins. On Adak he hopes to see at least 3 rare new birds for the year. He will return to Colorado on the 19th which will leave him about 2 weeks to find any more late in the year rarities. Even with the trip to AK, getting past 747 is not a sure thing. After this date Bob Ake only saw 2 more new birds in 2010; I only saw 2 more in 2010; Lynn Barber only saw 4 more in 2008; and Sandy only saw 1 more in 1998. Out of this group of 9 different species, only the white-cheeked pintail seen by Sandy is a species that John has not already recorded this year. The statistical probabilities are not in his favor, but you just never know what might still show up. Stay tuned!

Allen's Hummer in NC

2011-12-10T15:03:00.008-05:00

This morning my sister and I decided to make the 140 mile drive one way to see only the 2nd Allen's hummingbird ever recorded here in North Carolina. We left at 7 AM and arrived at River Bend Park about 9:30. The hummer has been hanging around a feeder right at the park office. We walked into the office to find 5 other birders plus a very friendly female park ranger gazing out the windows at the feeder. The hummer mostly sat in a tangle of blackberry bushes, but would make occasional forays to the feeder for sugar water. The photo just above was taken thru the window from about 40 feet so it is not much more than a record shot but it does show the Allen's. Click on the photo to enlarge. So far 165 birders who saw the hummer over the past 3 weeks have signed the register at the park.

We spent about 30 minutes watching the hummer on its blackberry perch and at the feeder before deciding to walk the park to see what other birds might be about. We did not find all that much bird activity. Some highlights were golden-crowned kinglet, yellow-bellied sapsucker, pileated woodpecker and belted kingfisher. We did see some nice grasses like those in the photo just below. We finally started back towards Chapel Hill about 11:30, stopping at Lexington BBQ to have lunch.

I want to follow up on my post of 11/23 concerning Sandy Komito's full ABA area big year record total. I have since spoken with a birder I met last year, John Puschock, about his understanding of the counting rules for big days or years. I then reread the ABA rules myself. The starting point for whether to count a bird is whether the species is already on the ABA list of accepted birds. If it is on the list, then from there it is up to the birder to make the judgment call as to whether the bird they saw is countable. If a bird is not yet on the ABA list, then the birder needs to wait to see what the state and then ABA bird record committees decide about adding a new species to the ABA list.

For my big year I also added the criteria that any bird that might be deemed questionable such as a bird that might have been an escapee, or part of a release program, also needed to be reviewed by the state bird record committee. This is why last year I did not count the white-cheeked pintail duck that I saw in NC because our state record committee voted 9-0 not to accept that bird as a wild bird. Based on my personal criteria, I suggested in my post of 11/23 that Sandy's big year total was in the end 745.

I do not personally know Sandy, and I do not know the specific criteria that he used in 1998 for counting a bird. In the book, The Big Year, his 1998 total is reported as being 745, but based on what I read in his book (I Came, I Saw, I Counted), which included birds he he may have seen but not well enough in the end for him to put on his list, it would appear that his 1998 big year total is 747 different species. I say this because he was able to add 3 birds (Bulwer's petrel, Belcher's gull and yellow-throated bunting) after the year was over that were accepted later by the state and ABA review committees, but he also said in his book that he was not counting in the end a gray vireo on his list.

One of the most common questions asked of big day or year birders is what kind of verification is needed to confirm your list. The answer is that it is an honor system. In this age of digital photography and lots of birders out in the field, it is not that hard to get a picture or to have witnesses when a rarer bird is seen, but in the end it is still an honor system. Therefore, understanding what criteria a birder used can help to clarify any questions concerning the birds on a list whether the list is a life, a big day or a big year list. And the only time it ever seems to become an "issue" is when setting a new "record" is a possibility.

Turning to John Vanderpoel's big year effort, I spoke with him yesterday after he had seen a falcated duck that was found 3 days ago near Sacramento, CA. He flew there Friday morning from San Antonio, TX after seeing a juvenile brown jay at Salineno, TX. These 2 birds have raised his YTD total to 739. Tomorrow he will be on a pelagic trip out of Bodega Bay to try for another mega rarity. While I do not expect to be seeing any mega rarities in the next few days, I will be in touch with John as he seeks to break Sandy's record. Stay tuned!

Mason Farm

2011-12-07T14:12:00.011-05:00

The last few days it has been in the 60's here so on Monday and again this morning I went birding at Mason Farm which is part of the NC Botanical Garden here in Chapel Hill. Both days proved to be pretty good days for birding. Monday I was walking about from 1-2 PM, and today I was out there from 10-11:30. Both days proved to be very good woodpecker days. I saw lots of downy (photo above--click on it to enlarge), red-headed and red-bellied woodpeckers. I also saw a few flickers, 1 pileated woodpecker, and heard a yellow-bellied sapsucker. The only local woodpecker that I missed was a hairy.

The other main bird group over the 2 days were sparrows including white-throated, chipping, fox, field, and song plus lots of juncos. Other birds noted include red-tailed hawk, common grackle (unfortunately no rusty blackbirds were in the flock), blue jay, cardinal, northern mockingbird, brown thrasher, hermit thrush, carolina and winter wren, brown creeper, american crow, eastern bluebird, white breasted nuthatch, carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, yellow-rumped warbler, turkey vulture, great blue heron, canada goose, and the barred owl in the photo just below.

After I finished my walk this AM I gave John Vanderpoel a call to check on how his second graylag goose chase was going. He had missed it on Monday, and again early yesterday morning, but finally had a brief view late yesterday. This morning he, Doug and Liz had better views before John headed south to Albany, NY to catch a flight to TX where 2 brown jays have been visiting the feeders at Salineno for a few days. After seeing a golden-crowned warbler and 2 aplomado falcons in south TX last week, he is now at 737 birds for the year. After his return to TX he plans to go to CA for a pelagic trip, and then next week to Adak, AK to seek out more rarities. With the brown jay plus some good fortune at Adak the ABA area big year record of 745 birds would be in striking distance. We are rooting for you John. Stay tuned!

An Amazing Albino Ruby-Throated Hummer

2011-12-01T11:14:00.006-05:00

My birding friend, Doug Koch, forwarded me yesterday several photos taken by Marlin Shank, who is only 15 years old, of an albino ruby-throated hummingbird. I have seen so few albino or leucistic birds during my many years of birding, and these 2 photos were just so amazing.

Today is December 1st which I remember well from last year during my big year. I posted an entry talking about having dinner in San Francisco with Bob Ake and Wes Fritz to celebrate mine (12/1) and Bob's (11/30) birthdays. We had just been in northern CA trying to see the brown shrike but had fallen short. Fortunately, we all were able to see the shrike 2 weeks later. Sometimes a birder has to make more than 1 trip to find a special bird since you are not always lucky on your first try.

John Vanderpoel knows this all too well as he enters the last month of his big year. In my last post I described our unsuccessful efforts to see a graylag goose near Montreal. Right after Thanksgiving, John flew up to AK to try for the redwing that was found in Seward on Nov. 17th. It was seen everyday thru 11/26. John arrived in Seward on the 27th but the bird was not seen that day, or any day since. After 2 days of looking he got back on a plane to fly to south TX in hopes of seeing the golden-crowned warbler that was found there last week.

Updating my discussion on his chances of passing Sandy Komito's 1998 record of 745, John is still at 734 species of birds seen so far in 2011. During the last month of their respective big years, Sandy saw only 4 new birds for the year, and Bob Ake and Lynn Barber 8 each. All but 5 of these birds John has already seen this year. Those 5 birds are baikal teal, northern lapwing, rufous-capped warbler, aplomado falcon and white-cheeked pintail.

The warbler is a code 3, and the teal and lapwing are code 4 birds. The aplomado falcon was extirpated in the US in the 1930's, and like the condor is now in a multi-year program begun over 20 years ago to reestablish the species in TX and NM. As a result, most birders do not count the aplomado falcon today because the ABA has not yet concluded that the south TX population has been successfully reestablished as a breeding bird. And as I wrote last year after seeing a white-cheeked pintail in NC, because they are raised as exotic ducks, very few white-cheeked pintails seen in the wild are ever accepted by state bird committees as being wild birds.

The point I am trying to make is that John's window/chance of successfully passing Sandy is definitely narrowing. But as he said in his last post, "this dog still hunts". We are rooting for you John. Stay tuned!

A Wild Goose Chase!

2011-11-23T15:29:00.008-05:00

It is Wednesday afternoon and I have just returned from a "Wild Goose Chase". I decided late Sunday afternoon to fly up to Burlington, VT so that I could be picked up by John, Doug, Ken and Liz on their way to chase the graylag goose that has been visiting Chambly Basin just outside of Montreal. Having birded with all of them earlier this year as part of John Vanderpoel's big year I thought it would be fun to chase the graylag since it would be only the 3rd wild graylag recorded in the ABA area, and a life bird for me.

I arrived at midnite, and immediately hit the rack at the rendezvous motel to be able to get some sleep before getting up to leave at 5 AM Monday. We left as planned, made it across the border about 6 AM after raising the eyebrows of the French Canadian custom officer who just could not understand why people from CO, CA, NY, NC and MA would meet up to come into Quebec to find a graylag goose. We were at Chambly Basin by 7:30 AM having already seen several thousand snow geese on the river nearby. It was sunny but only about 30 degrees and windy. I really had not brought the right cold weather layering, so I was pretty chilly, retreating to the warmth of the car regularly.

We met Raymond, the local birder who had found the goose, about 9:30 at a different location on the basin than we started. We went there because we saw some Canada geese fly in across from our position. He told us that there were not nearly as many geese on the Basin as there had been earlier. This was not an encouraging discovery, but we kept our hopes up nevertheless.

Once we found the new spot, many birders kept stopping in to check on whether the goose was there. By mid day we had carefully scoped all the Canada geese we could see but had not found the target bird mixed in with them. We decided to have some lunch and warm up. We then returned to the prime viewing spot about 1:30, and began our vigil again. More birders continued to cycle thru, but no one had seen the goose. As the sun got lower in the sky we hoped more geese would fly into to roost for the night. In fact the opposite seemed to happen as many of the geese that were already on the water flew off to feed very late in the day.

As the sun went down we found ourselves at 5 PM checking into a local motel, and then walking quickly down the road to eat dinner at Tre Colori, a recommended Italian restaurant. We ended up having a very good meal, including talking with the chef owner who told us his parents had moved from Calabria, Italy and started the restaurant 45 years earlier, and now he and his brother were running it.

After a much longer night's rest, we were back at the prime roost location at 6:30 AM to find at least 1000 Canada geese just waking up for the day. This was still well below the 2-3000 geese that had been on the Basin last week. While the wind was not blowing like the day before, the temperature was 17 degrees. One of the local birders from the day before joined us soon after our arrival, and then a few more. Alas, by 9:30 not only had we not seen the graylag goose, but most of the Canada geese had flown off to feed in the farmlands nearby.

Because John needed to be back in Boston by 7:40 PM to catch his flight home to Colorado, we reluctantly packed up and began our drive back to Boston--a drive that was much less exuberant than it would have been if we had found the graylag goose. John not only did not get the graylag, but he also did not see a great skua on his pelagic trip last Saturday which leaves him holding at 734 birds for the year. Even though Thanksgiving holiday traffic slowed us down as we approached the airport, we did get John to his plane on time so he would get home to spend Thanksgiving with his family.

Before closing out this posting, I want to respond to the comment on my last entry. A reader referred me to a short interview with Sandy Komito in which Sandy explains that he believes his final record number of different species seen in 1998 is actually 748. After reading his book recently, I understand the point he was making in the interview. Specifically, there were 3 birds he saw in 1998 that were accepted by state bird record review committees after 1998--Belcher's gull (CA), yellow-throated bunting (AK), and Bulwer's petrel (NC).

But in reviewing his book, and applying the same rules by which birds seen during a big year typically are counted based on state bird record committee reviews, he counted 2 species (Xantu's hummingbird in British Columbia, and a white-cheeked pintail in Florida) that were not accepted after the fact as wild birds by the state/province committees. Also, Sandy says in his book that after discussions with Jon Dunn, he decided he was not certain that he had seen a gray vireo in 1998, and therefore was not counting it in his total. As a result, I would suggest that Sandy's record total is still 745.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving--my favorite holiday of the year. I hope everyone has a great day tomorrow. When I will be birding next is not clear, but you never know, so stay tuned!

Is Sandy Komito's ABA Big Year Record of 745 Beatable?

2011-11-18T11:02:00.007-05:00

Those of you who have been checking in on this blog over the past few months know that I have been talking about how John Vanderpoel has been doing in his full ABA area big year quest. I first met John this past summer on pelagic trips out of Hatteras, NC. I also saw him in September on pelagic trips out of Bodega Bay and Half Moon Bay, CA. The photo just above (fork-tailed storm petrel) and below (marbled murrelets) were taken by Doug Koch on 2 of those west coast trips.

This past Wednesday John saw a female rose-throated becard in south Texas to raise his year to date total of different bird species to 734. This puts him in second place all time, 11 species short of Sandy Komito's record of 745 set back in 1998. My last posting is about the movie the Big Year which is based on the 1998 big year birding experiences of Sandy, Greg Miller and Al Levantin.

When I was doing my lower 48 big year in 2010, I met a birder from Washington state while I was watching a pair of montezuma quail in Texas. I mentioned I was doing a big year, and his comment was, "after Sandy Komito found such a high total number of species, I did not think anyone was even doing big years now." The book the Big Year also makes the point that because of the unique el nino component in 1998 plus the loss of the availability of birding at Attu in the Aleutian Islands after 2000 that Sandy's total of 745 might never be beaten.

In summarizing my 2010 big year, I speculated that Bob Ake, who saw 731 different species doing a full ABA big year in 2010, could have gotten very close to matching Sandy's 1998 total (see my posting on 1/4/2011). After following John's effort this year, and having recently read Sandy's book about his 1998 big year--I Came, I Saw, I Counted--I am convinced that Sandy's 745 total is not out of reach. The following further explains my thinking on this.

First, Sandy points out in his book that between 1987 when he did his first full ABA area big year (then record of 721), and 1998 that 19 relatively easy to see new birds were added to the ABA list due to splits and newly recognized established exotics. There were another 20 rarities also added. He further points out that there were 27 species he saw in 1987 which he did not see again in 1998. And since 1998 another 48 birds have been added to the ABA list as a result of splits and rarities, 7 of which are easy to see birds. Finally, at the end of his book published in 1999, Sandy also suggests that his number can be beaten.

Another way to measure the possibility of passing Sandy's 745 record is to compare the birds that I saw last year in the lower 48 with Sandy's list of birds from 1998. He saw 52 birds outside the lower 48 states that I did not see. Adding those 52 to the 704 I saw, plus 6 others I could have seen but did not because I chose not to "chase" them, then the hypothetical full ABA area total could have been 762.

Turning to John Vanderpoel's big year, the key to his having reached 734 as of this week was the success he had this fall in his trips to the Pribilofs, Gambell, Barrow and Nome, AK. So, is it possible for him to pass Sandy's record with just 6 weeks left in the year? Since one never knows when and where a rarity may show up, it is not possible to say for sure if he can catch Sandy. Looking at other big year records may give some additional insight.

Specifically, in analyzing Sandy's last 6 weeks in 1998, plus Bob Ake's, my own and Lynn Barber's, I would say the probability is not high for the following reasons. First, Sandy only saw 5 more new species in his last 6 weeks, and John has already seen 2 of those birds. Secondly, while Bob saw 12 more new species in his last 6 weeks, there are only 4 birds on his list that John has not yet seen. Similarly, I saw 12 more birds in my last 6 weeks, but John has already seen 9 of those. Finally, in 2008 Lynn did a big year. She saw 13 more new species during her last 6 weeks, but again John has already seen 11 of those birds.

John's possible ace in the hole is to make one more visit to Alaska in December to go to Adak Island in the Aleutians in hopes of picking up 3-5 rarities. He also could still get some rarities out of Newfoundland, south Florida, south Texas, and southeast Arizona. This weekend he is planning to go out on 2 pelagic trips from RI and MA in search of a great skua (photo just below taken by Doug Koch). There is also a graylag goose in Montreal this week. I am considering joining John along with 3 other birders to make a run for the goose after the pelagic trips are over. Stay tuned!

The Movie The Big Year is a Big Dud!

2011-10-26T18:30:00.006-04:00

The movie The Big Year was released 2 weeks ago, but since I was in Italy, I was not able to see it until this afternoon. I have been looking forward to seeing it for several months because I had read the book, I know one of the birders on which the book is based, and naturally because I have done a big year. What a huge let down this movie proved to be!

My wife watched it with me and generally liked it. She asked me if I had not read the book would I feel the same way, and my answer was yes. So why am I so disappointed?

First, Mark Obmascik who wrote the book did a very good job in delivering the story of the 1998 big year experience of Sandy Komito, Al Levantin, and Greg Miller (who I know). He did such a good job that Ben Stiller bought the movie rights, and decided to make it into a comedy hiring Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black to deliver the script written by Howard Franklin. The fact that it was to be a comedy had many birders concerned about how we would be perceived, but my opinion after seeing it is that we have nothing to be worried about.

Second, the movie right from the start says that it is based on a true story but some of the facts have been altered--boy were they! If you had not read the book maybe you might have liked the story line better than I did, but the changes did not improve the story as far as I was concerned. For example, the Greg Miller character was the birder he was partly because his father was a birder. But for the movie they decided that he and his father needed to not see eye to eye on his birding passion. This is just one of several script changes that seemed unwarranted.

Third, the story is about 3 men's passion for birding, but the birding part of the movie was so inaccurate that it was laughable. The director clearly had no sense about birding--what it feels like, how birders actually act in the field. The descriptions of the birds were often poor. The locations of some birds like the pink-footed goose and great gray owl were absurd. And for anyone who has not read the book, the Owen Wilson character who was Sandy Komito in the book, never found his big year nemesis bird--a great gray owl. The movie decided that it would be a snowy owl, and suggested that he finally saw one on Dec. 31st. By the way, as I sit typing this blog entry I am listening to a great horned owl hooting outside my window.

Fourth, I don't think I laughed more than a couple of times during the movie. The book had its funny moments, but the movie and these 3 successful comedian actors just were not funny.

Finally, having done my big year last year, I feel very qualified in saying that this movie did a very poor job of capturing what it really feels like to do a big year. It certainly tried with all the dates and place captions printed on the screen, but in the end it was only a shadow of the real thing.

An indication of the overall failure of/lack of interest in the movie is that after its first 10 days it had only sold $6 million in tickets. It was shown on 2100 movie screens around the US which means that it was averaging about $300/day/screen which equals only about 40 viewers per screen. This afternoon there were only 7 customers at my showing. I just checked and saw that it is not in any of our local theaters after tomorrow--a measly 2 week run!

On a better note, John Vanderpoel continues to rack up birds. After his 4th trip to AK this year where he saw oriental turtle dove and McKay's bunting, he is now at 729 birds for the year with 2 months left to find more rarities. With 2 easy birds still to get, he should move into 2nd place all time for the full ABA area before the year is over, and just might even get close to Sandy Komito's record of 745. Stay tuned!

Pelagic Photos from Doug Koch

2011-10-11T09:04:00.006-04:00

As promised in my last post, I have received a few photos taken by Doug Koch last month on several pelagic trips off the coast of northern CA. The photo just above shows Doug sitting in the middle with the black knit hat with his camera in a white plastic bag trying to stay warm. Sitting to his left is John Vanderpoel, and standing up facing towards John is Steve Howell one of the premier pelagic birders in the world.

We saw lots of shearwaters on our trips including the sooty above (click on any photo to enlarge), and the pink-footed just below.

We also had good looks at buller's shearwater shown above. The gull highlight on these trips was the sabine's gull in the photo below.

Since mid September when these photos were taken I have not been able to bird because of a bicycle accident that left me with a broken left collarbone. I have learned that this is the most often broken bone, and 90% heal without any surgical intervention. You keep your arm in a sling for several weeks and the broken bone "finds" a way to mend itself even when the broken ends are not real close together. This has slowed me down a bit in general, but I am still heading off to Italy today for a 2 week vacation to celebrate a good friend's 60th birthday.

While I am off partying, John Vanderpoel will be continuing his full ABA area big year hunt for more birds. He is now at 726 and has 2 easy birds still to see. With reasonably good luck this fall he could reach the mid 730's--an extremely successful big year effort that would move him into 2nd place all time.

Finally, the movie the Big Year is opening this Friday. It is based on the book the Big Year about the adventures of 3 birders who did full ABA area big years in 1998. It stars Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin, and is being billed as the best adult comedy of the year. I will be seeing it as soon as I return from Italy. My review of it will be my next blog entry. Stay tuned!

3rd Day out on Half Moon Bay

2011-09-22T14:27:00.003-04:00

I am back home from my trip to northern California after completing one more all day trip out of Half Moon Bay with Shearwater Journeys this past Sunday. John Vanderpoel was able to be on board, but only because Doug Koch gave him his spot since the boat was totally sold out. On the way out of the harbor we saw a few surf birds (photo above--click on it to enlarge). Under sunny skies we proceeded to head northwest and eventually went 30 miles which took us out to and a bit past the Farallon islands (photo below).

These small islands are where tufted puffins and ashy storm petrels breed. We were hoping to find some large groups of ashy storm petrels, but did not. This was a portent for the day as we saw very few seabirds as we kept motoring over some very good sea topography without any success. The day wound up at 7:15 PM after traveling almost 90 miles. While the seas were not too rough, and the sunshine was nice, the trip proved to be one of the worst days for seabirds that I can remember with only one laysan albatross, and a couple of south polar skuas to raise people's spirits.

Last year Debi said this same route was covered with seabirds plus 75 humpbacked whales feeding on krill, but this year there seems to be very few food patches for the birds. This is one of the challenges of seabirding since day to day, and year to year you are never sure what you might find in any given area. Only Monterey Bay consistently has large numbers and variety of birds.

The next day I visited friends in the north bay area before heading home, and heard from John that Monday's trip had even fewer birds than on Sunday. He has now returned home, and will be heading up to Alaska this weekend to continue his big year effort. Doug will still be going out on Monterey Bay for a few trips. Once he returns home to New York he has promised me several photos of many of the good birds we saw on the Bodega, and earlier Half Moon Bay trips. Stay tuned!

The Great Winged Petrel Miss

2011-09-17T23:50:00.010-04:00

The past 2 days I have been on pelagic trips out of Half Moon Bay. On Friday John Vanderpoel and Doug Koch were also on the boat. We left the dock about 7:30 AM, and headed into some rough seas that were almost as bad as the ones we had most of the day at Bodega Bay on Wednesday. On the way out of the harbor we saw surfbirds; black turnstones; brandt's, double crested and pelagic cormorants plus a single surf scoter, and a lone wandering tattler on the breakwaters. We then powered thru a large group of mostly sooty shearwaters on our way out to deeper water. The day overall was pretty birdy, but not as good as on Wednesday at Bodega Bay. We did have south polar skuas which had not made a showing at Bodega. We ended the day with good views of winter plumage marbled murrelets, but arrived back at the dock almost 2 hours past the normal 5 PM return time.

This morning I was out on the boat again, but John V. was down in Monterey doing a pelagic trip there instead. Doug was on the boat, and my friend Rob Lowry also was on board (photo just above). We cruised out initially thinking that we would need to stay close to shore because the forecast was for winds up to 30 knots, but after about 90 minutes we got an updated forecast that said the winds were much lower than predicted. So we again headed out to deeper water, and the sun came out. The photo just below is of Debi Shearwater pointing out a pomarine jaeger flying by the boat.

Soon after making the decision to head out to deeper water, a birder from Australia called out "great winged petrel". At first Debi did not hear him, and then said, "wait did you say great winged petrel?" He said yes, it just flew by the front of the boat. Debi had the captain stop the boat, and then immediately told him to try to chase in the direction that the bird flew, but within a minute she realized that it was not possible to catch the bird. So instead we put out a small oil slick and waited for about 20 minutes hoping the smell of the oil might bring it back. The oil slick did not do the trick which meant there were many very depressed birders on the boat today since only 4 people actually saw the great winged petrel in the 10-15 seconds it took for it to pass by our boat. Having not seen the petrel go by, I was among the bummed since this was only the 5th record of this bird being seen off the coast of CA.

The rest of day was sunny with fairly calm seas, but birdwise it was even slower than yesterday with almost no storm petrels, and no laysan albatross to cheer people up. We did have very good views of a single cassin's auklet on the way out of the harbor, and then a very cooperative tufted puffin later in the morning. One of the birds we saw closer into shore, but also throughout the day, is the common murre shown in the photo above--click on any photo to enlarge. We also found a large group of sea lions feeding.

We returned to the dock about 4 PM, still under sunny skies. As we came into the dock area we had very good looks at a clark's grebe. It had been a nice day to be out at sea, but the missed petrel is still weighing on me some since I may not get another chance to see this bird given how rarely it has been found. Ever optimistic that something else good will show up, I will be on the boat again tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Bodega Bay Pelagic

2011-09-15T11:55:00.008-04:00

Yesterday I went out of Bodega Bay on a Shearwater Journey's pelagic birding trip. The boat was jam packed, and included some birding friends. The 2 guys mugging for the camera just above are John Vanderpoel (left) and Matt Stenger who are both doing full ABA area big years in 2011, and finally met face to face after several near misses earlier in the year.

The boat left the dock finally about 7 AM under overcast skies. We made our way out in some heavy seas with winds up to 15 knots. It was one of those awkward days to be on a boat--not so rough that the boat could not go out, but rough enough that several people were adding chum to that provided by Wes Fritz, Debi's main chummer on these trips. Unfortunately one guy was sick much of the day which meant he will not have fond memories of seeing his first laysan albatross (photo just below--click on any photo to enlarge).

John and Matt however had very good days for their big year count. They both added flesh-footed shearwater to their totals--a difficult bird to pick up in the fall on the west coast. Matt also added fork-tailed storm petrel and buller's shearwater to his list. John's total is now at 712, and Matt is up to 655--both excellent numbers with 3+ months left in 2011. The main difference in their totals is that John has made more trips to Alaska, and had a well thought out year plan whereas Matt has pretty much been just out there birding around the country going where the "wind" and some planning has taken him.

After a bit of a slow birding start, the trip got much birdier. Besides the laysan, we also had several black-footed albatross; lots of fulmars; sabine's, western and california gulls; elegant and arctic terns; wilson's, ashy, black and fork-tailed storm petrels; pink-footed, buller's, sooty and flesh-footed shearwaters; pomarine, long-tailed and parasitic jaegers; cassin's auklets; red and red-necked phalaropes; and 1 distant tufted puffin fly by.

We stopped twice to put out a fish oil slick which kept lots of birds coming in to check us out, but also meant for a rocking boat making it hard to take photos as well as raising the seasickness level. It was good to get back to land about 5 PM where the sun was shining. Right after we docked I was able to get the photo just above of a black oystercatcher. I am on land today, but tomorrow will be going out of Half Moon Bay on another pelagic trip. Stay tuned!

Checking In

2011-08-28T10:53:00.004-04:00

I have not been out birding since the gray hooded gull chase. I did go up to Brooklyn, NY and Boston a week ago, but ended up not looking for the hooded crow in New Jersey because it had disappeared again. I also chose not to go to the NC coast yesterday in hopes of seeing lost seabirds as a result of hurricane Irene.

My main reason for doing a post today is to congratulate John Vanderpoel who yesterday saw his 700th and 701st bird for the year. The photo above is of a dusky grouse that my wife and I saw last year in June in Colorado. Yesterday John found a few female Gunnison sage grouse also in Colorado for his 701st bird, and earlier in the day he saw a group of pinyon jays for #700--you can read all about it on his blog (see link on mine).

John is out today looking for the greater sage grouse, and then is off to AK for a couple of weeks before returning to California to do some pelagic trips. I will see him then when we go out of Half Moon Bay together in mid Sept. Stay tuned!

The Tale of 2 Hoodeds

2011-08-06T12:57:00.004-04:00

I wish that the 2 photos above were taken by me yesterday, but alas that is not what happened. So I asked Doug Koch to send me the above pics (click on photo to enlarge) that he took on Tuesday morning when I was originally supposed to be at Coney Island with him, Ken and John. But I am ahead of myself.

Having missed out on Tuesday to see the gray hooded gull, I kept checking to see if it was still showing up. I knew that some birding buddies of mine from Ohio--Dan, Doreene and Bill--were planning to try to see the gull yesterday before flying off Friday evening to Brazil for 3 weeks of birding there. As a result, when the gull was seen again on Wednesday, we hatched a plan to try to see it together on Friday.

Also on Wednesday, reports came in that the hooded crow, which had been found on Staten Island in late June, but then had disappeared, was relocated on the New Jersey shore. This bird, which lives in Europe and is largely non-migratory, created a big stir when discovered because it would be a first North American record of the hooded crow. But because its origin/provenance was unknown, there was much doubt whether it would eventually be accepted by the ABA as a wild bird that had arrived in the US unassisted.

As a result, my Ohio friends had chosen not to chase it back in June when it was first found. However, since my friends were driving from Ohio to NYC, we decided if the crow was seen again on Thursday to meet in Philadelphia on Thurs. nite. I checked the listservs all Thursday morning waiting to see if the gull and/or crow were being reported. My friends began driving at 3 PM towards NYC.

A very tardy report finally came in about 5 PM that the gull was seen briefly from 7:30-8 AM on Thursday, but not for the rest of the day. At that point no one had reported seeing the crow. Since there is still uncertainty that the hooded crow will be accepted by the ABA, my friends decided not to go to Philly, but instead took a more northerly route towards NYC. When the crow was finally reported about 9 PM as having been seen Thursday afternoon, it was too late for them to change their routing, and it was definitely too late for me to get to Philly on a plane Thurs. nite.

I had a ticket on hold to fly to NYC at 6 AM Friday, but was not all that confident that the gull was still at Coney Island since Thursday was the first day of 8 days in a row that it had not been seen during the afternoon. Also, there was a big Aretha Franklin concert happening Thursday nite at Coney Island which might or might not affect the bird. But since I had the reservation, and because my friends were going to try for it, I finally decided to cross my fingers and hope that it would show up on Friday.

Unlike last Monday evening, my plane took off on time and even arrived at JFK airport early. I rushed out to catch a cab to take me to Coney Island. Fortunately there was not much traffic, and I was on the beach at 8 AM greeting my friends plus a birder from Texas that I had met last year. The weather was not bad--sunny, low 80's and a nice breeze. We proceeded to work up and down the beach, stopping to talk with other birders as we patrolled. We met birders from Colorado, Maryland, and upstate NY as well as locals. The first birders on Friday had been there at first light--6 AM--but as the day wore on the gull still did not come in.

About 1:30 a young woman excitedly informed us that she had just seen the gull on the pier. About 20 birders made a mad dash toward the pier. She said she saw the bird 1/2 way out flying around. We did not find the gray hooded gull, but did find a common tern which like the gull has a red bill and red legs. We figured that she had seen the tern, and thought it was the "bird with a red bill and red legs" that all the birders were seeking. When we relocated her she showed us the picture she had taken on her cell phone of "the bird" to find that it was a common tern.

At 2:15 we had to call it a day so that Dan, Doreene and Bill could return their rental car at JFK, and be ready to catch their flight to Brazil. I decided to join them since I had a return ticket on hold for 7 PM. When I got home last nite I found that the gull never was seen yesterday, and so far not today either, but the crow was seen several times yesterday and again this morning. I did enjoy seeing my friends, but came home with sunburned lower legs and no gray hooded gull or hooded crow for my effort.

While I got used to chasing during my big year in 2010, I much prefer to go birding. I don't really like beaches, but it is pretty funny that the one time I have been to the world famous Coney Island beach was to chase a gull. I am returning to NYC in a couple of weeks to see my son who lives in Brooklyn. Maybe I will get another chance at both the gull and the crow. Stay tuned!

Of Mice and Men

2011-08-02T17:38:00.011-04:00

The best laid plans of mice and men was the theme of yesterday. I was all set to catch a mid day flight up to New York City in order to have a chance to see the gray headed gull, which is also called a gray hooded gull. But the first sighting of the day did not occur until about 1 PM. As a result, I booked my flight to leave Chapel Hill at 5:20 to fly to LaGuardia. I arrived at the airport at 4:20, and settled in to wait to board the flight when I noticed that the flight to JFK was on a ground delay. I asked the agent about my flight and was told we were still going to leave on time.

So I am thinking if JFK is closed how is LaGuardia still open. Sure enough 10 minutes later my flight is put on ground delay. At 6 PM they load us on the plane, taxi out and shut down the engines because now there has been another ground delay. At 8 PM we taxi back to the gate, but are told we still will be flying to NY that evening.

I am at this point highly skeptical, so I decide to see what the prospects are for getting on the flight to Washington, DC. John Vanderpoel and 2 other birders were driving from Hatteras north, and I checked to see if they might pick me up there around midnite when they passed thru the city. They said no problem. The gate agent said that both DC flights were also grounded, and I should wait for the NY flight. At 9:45 PM they announced my flight was going nowhere, and the earliest flight out today would be at 11 in the morning.

About 10:20 we were informed that the DC flights were also going nowhere. All of this was very perplexing since my son, who I had planned to stay with, kept telling me that the skies were clear or partly cloudy in Brooklyn. As it turned out, there were massive, 40,000 feet high thunder storms in the DC/Philly area that had messed up the entire flight corridor. That said, somehow the JFK flight that I first noticed was grounded did get off while we were sitting in our plane from 6-8 PM.

I called John, Doug and Ken to tell them I could not get to NY or DC that night. Given that they were going to be at the gull site at first light, and the earliest I could get into NY was around 1 PM today, I told them as much as I would have liked to see the gray hooded gull with John during his big year, I was not going to fly up this morning.

It proved to be the right decision when I received a call from them at 8:30 AM telling me that they were standing looking at the gull, and were ready to head off to catch flights home, or to drive home. Doug said he would send me photos of the gull as my consolation prize.

The gray hooded gull raised John's year to date bird total to 691. In the ABA coding system, this gull is an accidental, code 5 bird which is the 2nd code 5 bird for John's big year list. As a reference, last year I had four code 5 birds. John is in excellent shape to pass the 700 level by the end of August. He will be going to Alaska again in September and October, so with some good luck he could end up with a very good total for the year.

For those who have followed this blog, I have discussed the significance of passing the milestone of 700 birds in a calendar year in the full ABA area. Last year I did some research, and based on American Birding Association data, the book, "The Big Year" (pg 188), and Wikipedia, as best I could determine, only the following 13 people have seen at least 700 birds in a calendar year:

1) Benton Basham in 1983, 710 birds
2) Sandy Komito in 1987, 721 birds
3) Steve Perry in 1987, 711 birds
4) Bill Rydell in 1992, 714 birds
5) B. Shiftlett in 1993, 712 birds
Sandy Komito in 1998, 745 birds (full ABA area record)
6) Greg Miller in 1998, 715 birds
7) Al Levantin in 1998, 711 birds
8) Dan Sanders in 2005, 715 birds
9) John O'Neill in 2007, 701 birds
10) Lynn Barber in 2008, 723 birds
11) Bob Ake in 2010, 731 birds
12) John Spahr in 2010, 704 birds
13) Chris Hitt in 2010, 704 birds in just the lower 48 states (record)

So John should soon be joining a quite small group of birders in the "700 club". I have also mentioned that Matt Stenger is doing a full ABA big year, and provided a link to his blog (716birds). Matt recently passed the 600 bird level. Finally, Gabriel Mapel, an 11 year old from Virginia, is doing what he calls a junior big year (see his blog link). He is currently in Alaska, and has reached this week 334 birds for the year.

Back to the gray hooded gull, I will keep checking to see if it is still at Coney Island over the next few days. I might make a quick trip up soon, or since I am going to Brooklyn on August 17th, I might wait to see if I am lucky enough for it to hang around until then. Stay tuned!

2 Days of Pelagic Birding Out of Hatteras, NC

2011-08-01T11:27:00.013-04:00

This year has been a phenomenal spring and summer for white-tailed tropicbirds off of the outer banks of NC. As a result, I decided to do 2 pelagic trips this past weekend on a boat captained by Brian Patteson that is based at Hatteras, NC. Like Debi Shearwater on the west coast, Brian is the predominant pelagic bird trip provider on the east coast. I have been out with him over 20 times in the past 10 years, including 9 days as part of my big year in 2010.

Even though I really do not like summer pelagic trips because of the intense heat and humidity I wanted to go out in hopes of finding a mega-rarity like black-bellied storm petrel. I also knew that John Vanderpoel who is doing a full ABA big year in 2011 would be on the boat. I have been following his blog and progress during his big year, and wanted the opportunity to be able to talk with him about it.

We left the dock at 5:30 Saturday morning with high expectations. John had his fingers crossed that he would get 5 or 6 new birds for his big year. The photo above is of a group of Cory's shearwaters with one smaller audubon's shearwater floating with them--click on any photo to enlarge.

During the day we would occasionally have bottlenose dolphins swim by the boat. Once the fish oil slick is started, which is usually about 8-9 AM, we begin to get a good group of wilson's storm petrels following behind the boat over the slick (photo just below). Your hope is that a rarer storm petrel will also show up. Over the 2 days we only had fleeting glimpses of a couple of band-rumped storm petrels.

We did get a fair number of great shearwaters (photo just above), and black-capped petrels. We had one fly by parasitic jaeger on Sunday. But the highlight of the 2 days was yesterday morning about 10 AM when a white-tailed tropicbird came into the boat, circled us a couple of times, flew off but quickly returned for one more loop before flying on its way. Unfortunately I was not able to get a photo of it, but if you use the link in the right column of my blog to go to John's blog (big year 2011) you can see the photo he took of the tropicbird.

John was quite pumped since this is the kind of very rare bird he needs to build up a big total number of birds seen during his big year. The tropicbird plus Cory's and greater shearwater, and black-capped petrel raised his year total to 690. Over the 2 days we had a chance to compare notes on our respective big years sharing some of our more memorable birding days.

John is out on the boat again today trying for more rarities. Then tonite he will be driving from Hatteras all the way to New York with 2 other birders in hopes of seeing a gray-headed gull that was found at Coney Island a few days ago--this gull is a South American bird, and is only the 2nd one confirmed to have visited the US. If the gull is reported again today I will be flying up to NY to join them. Stay tuned!

Home Again

2011-07-01T10:36:00.009-04:00

We are back in Chapel Hill. Our flights home were pretty uneventful, but the overniter from Anchorage to Chicago was bumpy and too short to get enough sleep. After 3 weeks in Alaska it was good to sleep in my own bed again.

On Tuesday morning we headed to Seward from Homer which is about a 3 hour drive barring road work/traffic. We did stop along the way to check a couple of birding sites one of which was a beach that had over 30 bald eagles feeding along the shoreline. I also picked up an aleutian tern feeding out over the water. At another stop I finally found a varied thrush for the trip.

We arrived in Seward mid afternoon and went into town for an early dinner. Since we had not had any fresh salmon yet we ordered the sockeye special along with some local sea scallops. Our starter course was steamed clams that were delicious but did not look like the typical manila clams from the pacific northwest. When we asked about them we found out that they had come from Thailand instead of AK.

The next morning we took a hike up to see Exit Glacier which is part of the Harding Ice Field. The photo just above is of the glacier. To give visitors a sense of how much the glacier has contracted, as you are driving along the road to the parking area they have posted signs with dates on them. The first is like 1815 and just a 100 yards further along the next date is 1900. But then the signs get further and further apart. As you approach the foot of the glacier there is a sign indicating where the foot had been in 1998. In just 13 years the foot had moved about 100 yards further up the mountain. Roughly speaking, the glacier has contracted about 10 times faster over the past decade than it did from 1800 to 1900. One of the birds that we saw often during our time in AK is the sooty form of the fox sparrow in the photo just below--click on any photo to enlarge.

We made the steep climb on a trail that paralleled the glacier getting about 1/2 way up to the top of the glacier where it attaches to the Harding Ice Field before we needed to turn around to have time to make the drive back to Anchorage. The 125 mile drive between Seward and Anchorage is one of the prettiest scenic drives anywhere--snow patches and snow covered peaks abound with beautiful lakes and streams everywhere.

We stopped briefly at Potter Marsh just south of Anchorage to check the bird scene. The photo just above is of a lincoln's sparrow. Below is a sandhill crane.

At one of the pullouts a pair of arctic terns (just above) were squawking at the world. We ended our trip with a picnic in the park where we saw hudsonian godwits and short billed dowitchers, cackling geese, red necked grebes, greater scaup and mallards, a surf scoter, violet-green swallows, mew gulls, arctic terns, and our first starlings of the trip. The total bird count while up in AK was a bit above 100 species seen.

While I love being in Alaska, I have to say other than its unique glaciers and ice fields, you can see equally dramatic scenery in the western US and Canada, and it is easier to get there and less expensive. As a result, any future trips to AK will be to do birding in out of the way places like Adak and Gambell. For now I am home for a bit and may not post again for awhile, but you never know when a rare bird might take me birding, so stay tuned!

Homer Alaska

2011-06-27T18:18:00.013-04:00

Two days ago we made the 460 mile drive from Denali NP to Homer. With a short lunch stop it took about 9 hours. Our "home away from home" while in Homer is the Two Sisters bakery and B&B. The bakery is open during the day beginning at 7 AM except Sundays when it opens at 9. It is a hot spot in town based on how busy it has been throughout our stay. On the drive down we saw quite a few bald eagles including the one in the photo just below. I also have posted below the eagle a shot of one of the willow ptarmigan chicks we saw at Denali--remember to click on any photo to enlarge.

The sun was shining as we pulled into Homer but most of the time since we arrived it has been cloudy which makes the mountains and glaciers surrounding Kachemak Bay all the more breathtaking. I am not sure that I have been anywhere that has as dramatic a setting as Homer based on the proximity of the mountains to the town and the bay, and the clarity of the air.

The main purpose for visiting Homer was for us to take a morning boat ride out onto the bay to look for seabirds. Our trip was not scheduled until this morning, so yesterday after sleeping in and eating breakfast at the Two Sisters, we drove down the Homer spit which is 4+ miles surrounded by water. There were not all that many birds about but we did see pacific and common loons, black-legged kittiwakes and white-winged scoters.

After dropping my wife back at the B&B, I drove out East End road to look for boreal species and had the good fortune to locate a northern hawk owl shown in the photo just above. This is a bird that is seen more here in the winter than in the summer, but is never common. I also found some pine siskins feeding with the male common redpoll in the photo just below.

This morning we were up before 7 to have time for a quick breakfast before heading down to the Homer Spit to meet Karl Stoltzfus, the captain of the Torego. There were 2 other couples from New York and Ohio respectively who joined our trip out onto the bay. It was windier than yesterday which made the water a bit rougher than normal, but nothing to keep us from getting across the bay to reach the better seabirding spots. The first was a group of rock islands on which mostly black-legged kittiwakes breed, but also red-faced cormorants--an Alaskan specialty bird. You can see 2 perched on the rocks in the photo just below.

We then began a slow meander up the bay in search of kittlitz's murrelets. On the way we ran into the tufted puffin in the photo just above, plus 100's of common murres some of which you can see on the water behind the puffin. For the next hour we would check out all the murrelets we came across in search of the kittlitz's. We found lots of marbled murrelets, and then finally located a single kittlitz's that flew away confirming by its outer white tail feathers that it was a Kittlitz's. Its quick departure precluded my getting a photo.

We returned to the dock just before noon wishing we had seen more than one Kittlitz's, but still pleased to have seen the one plus the red-faced cormorants. All in all I have to feel good that I was able to see both of these birds plus the gray-headed chickadee last week which are all life birds for me.

I was asked by Aaron while on the raft trip how many ABA area breeding birds I had left to see. I realized I had never thought about that question. Now that I have seen these 3 birds, and having done some research on Aaron's query, I can say that I only have 6 remaining breeding birds that you would reasonably be expected to see in the ABA area. The group includes McKay's bunting, red-legged kittiwake, spectacled eider, whooper swan, common snipe and whiskered auklet--all Alaska birds that will require some additional effort to see on some future trips to Alaska.

There is also the aplomado falcon and CA condor to see again once they are back on the ABA acceptable list. Finally, there are five code 4 (white-tailed eagle, Eurasian dotterel, white-winged tern, eared quetzal, and Eurasian jackdaw) and one code 5 (lanceolated warbler) birds that have been known to breed in the ABA area but seeing them is another matter. For now my wife and I are looking forward to visiting Seward tomorrow before heading back home. Stay tuned!

Denali National Park

2011-06-26T00:48:00.014-04:00

My wife and I drove up to Denali NP on Wed. afternoon. We had dinner at 229 Parks Restaurant and Tavern which is named for the mile marker on the Denali Hwy. My sister had eaten there last fall and highly recommended it. We started with fresh local pacific oysters and a garden salad. The buckwheat flour braided bread served with lemon/dill butter was particularly good. Next up were some outstanding duck confit tacos. We followed them with a fine halibut bouillabaisse that included paper thin fresh pasta strips, manila clams and green lipped mussels. Dessert was a chocolate trio, and a custard tart smothered in fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. We drank a bottle of Nautilus sauvignon blanc from New Zealand. It proved to be a great starter meal for our time in Denali. We were so hungry and attentive to the food that I spaced out taking pictures of the dishes.

After dinner we went into the reception area at the McKinley Chalet Resort where we were staying to use the wifi. As we were leaving we ran into our friend and neighbor Brian who works for Aramark which manages the resort. He had helped set up our reservation. It turned out that he was "in town" for a couple of days on business. We had a drink with him and his business colleagues before begging off to get to bed since we knew we had to be up at 5 AM to catch the shuttle bus into the park.

The alarm rang all to quickly, but we were excited about taking the shuttle bus into the park. Denali NP was created in 1917, and has been expanded over the years to include a total of 6 million acres with one road that crosses thru the center of the park. The road is 90 miles long ending at Kantishna where gold was found in the early 1900's. Only the first 14 miles are open to private vehicles unless you have a permit to travel into one of the campgrounds. The vast majority of the visitors ride the shuttle buses past the 14 mile point in order to see the park and the big animals--grizzily bears, moose, caribou, Dall's sheep and wolves--plus Mt. McKinley which is our highest mountain at over 20,000 feet. 1 in 4 tourists to Alaska visit the park each year.

The shuttles are school buses and do not travel very fast on the gravel road. Most people buy a ticket that takes you as far out as the Eielson visitor center at mile post 66. Whenever a big animal is seen the bus stops for everyone to get a good look, and take pictures if the animal is close enough. While not one of the big animals, the red fox just above was a nice sighting on our way out. This particular coloration is called a cross fox--click on any photo to enlarge.

Because Mt. McKinley is so huge in both heighth and width, it creates its own weather system. As a result, it is often surrounded by clouds. They say you can only see part of the mountain 1 out of 3 days, and the top is only visible about 1 in 10 days. As a result the question is often asked as to whether the mountain is "out today". The photo just below shows the double top of the mountain barely visible in the small blue horizontal opening.

It took us 4 hours to make the drive out to Eielson. We then walked another mile down the road in hopes of finding the gyrfalcons that are nesting near mile marker 67. They put up signs wherever key birds of prey, or animals may be trying to raise young. When we arrived at the signs we only found a golden eagle taking sticks to a large nest site. Soon after we were fortunate to see a pair of gyrfalcons circling nearby but very high overhead.

We walked a bit further down the road and found some more signs. As we walked up a male gyrfalcon flew down towards us, and then circled briefly before flying about 300 yards back up the mountain where it perched. We had lunch while we waited hoping it would fly down closer to another perch that was obvious because of the white bird poop splattered below it. Instead the bird just stayed where it had landed, preening and checking out the scene. Unfortunately it was too far away to get a good photo. So instead I have added the 2 pics just below of first a white-crowned sparrow and then a golden-crowned sparrow. I was particularly glad to see the golden-crowned because I had not seen one in breeding plumage.

After over an hour of waiting for the gyrfalcon to come closer, we gave up our vigil and walked back up to the visitor center to catch a bus back. While there I did the "tourist" thing by holding a pair of caribou antlers up so my wife could take a picture. On the way out we actually saw a caribou walking in the river bed (second photo just below). During our bus ride we also saw a couple of moose, a total of 6 grizzly bears, including 3 fairly close by, and lots of Dall's sheep on the mountain sides. The only big animal we missed was a wolf. When we finally returned to the Wilderness Access Center about 5:30 we were more than ready to be off the bus.

We had bought tickets to ride the bus again yesterday, but decided to go to plan B. We slept in, and then drove out to the Savage River parking area which is where private vehicles have to stop. As we were approaching the parking area we were very lucky to have a lynx walk across the road in front of us before disappearing into the brush.

We walked 2 miles further down the road to a point where a trail cut thru the dense low vegetation allowing us to climb up to Primrose ridge. I was hoping to find up on the ridge some of the alpine breeding birds such as rock and white-tailed ptarmigan, lapland longspurs and northern wheatears. After climbing about 1500 feet in elevation we reached a long plateau that we hiked across. No birds were to be found anywhere, but instead we had a lengthy observation of the Dall's sheep in the photo just below. On our way back down we did see a golden eagle and a male northern harrier.

Since we did not find any ptarmigans on the ridge we went down to the river where we saw this male willow ptarmigan in its summer attire. Nearby was the female who had 5 chicks that rushed to hide under their mother. After about 8 miles of hiking we were ready to call it a day once we saw the ptarmigans.

We ate a second meal at 229 Parks which proved to be less impressive than the first nite. The food was still quite good, particularly the halibut tacos, but overall we felt the dishes were less inspired than on the first nite. This morning (Saturday) we were on the road by 8:30 to make the 460 mile drive down to Homer which is on Cook inlet on the Kenai peninsula. Stay tuned!

Gray-headed Chickadee Raft Trip--Entry 3

2011-06-22T12:33:00.012-04:00

On day 6 we woke up to little wind, strong sun and very mild temps. After breakfast we loaded up the rafts and went over to the other side of the river to look for the arctic warbler that we heard calling all morning. We quickly located it but the bird was not really close and tended to hide some in the leaves as it sang. Eventually everyone got to see a bird that is found only in the summer in Alaska where it has traveled to from its wintering grounds in Thailand.

We started on down the river (photo above) again not knowing what kind of water conditions we might find. After some more mild rapids, it turned out to be much like day 4, mostly floating with some places where we had to pull the raft when it would bottom out. We stopped for lunch at a large spring that came right out of the side of the mountain. The photo just below shows some of the waterflow plus in the middle of the picture is a small round mound with a hole in it. It is the nest made from moss by a dipper which is one of north america's most interesting birds because it walks on the bottom of fast flowing creeks and rivers looking for food. The second photo below is of Richard, Marty, me and Craig standing in front of the spring flow.

After another roughly 10 mile float we arrived at our evening campsite which was at the base of mountain and just above the confluence of the Marsh fork and the main Canning river. By now we were feeling more competent as rafters, and confident that we would make our takeout point the next day. Dinner as always was prepared by Aaron and Bob. Many of the ingredients used for all our meals were air dried veggies and herbs that Bob and his partner Lisa had prepared the previous fall to use on the raft trips run during this summer by WBA.

We woke on Day 7 to another sunny, warm morning. By now everyone had adjusted to it never getting dark, waking at times to see either full light, or even the sun peaking over a low mountain. As we were packing up the boats the skies darkened with very ominous looking clouds. Soon after hitting the river it began to pour down rain--the heaviest of the trip. We quickly floated into the main fork of the Canning river which had much more water in it. While it was nice to have deeper water for floating, unlike the Marsh fork whose water was crystal clear and a most beautiful light hue of aquamarine, the Canning was milky. For 20-30 minutes it rained hard and then let up but stayed overcast. A second downpour came but stopped before long. During the rain a mother moose and 2 calves came walking across the river in front of us.

After the rain ceased we took a break to have a quick lunch, and then floated a short distance to our final campsite for the trip where the next day the bush plane would come pick us up. By the time we had camp set up the sun was out shining brightly. We had seen a red-throated loon while floating, and it plus the arctic warbler had raised the bird trip total to 45.

Since the afternoon had turned so pretty, Bill and I asked Aaron to hike up with us to the low plateau just above our campsite to see if some more new birds might be on the lakes we could not see. We spent the 2+ hours walking over the tundra and found 10 more new birds for the trip including a flock of hoary redpolls. The photo just above is of a pair of horned grebes in full breeding plumage--the male is on the right with bigger yellow "horns" and more black on the neck (click on it to enlarge). The photo just below is of Aaron, and the one below him is of a full breeding plumage american golden plover.

When we returned to camp we all had our last dinner of the trip. It began with margaritas using ice we had chipped off an ice mass along the river. It was Marty's birthday, so we also drank some 21 year old single malt scotch from the Isle of Jura. The dinner was capped off with a dark chocolate tort/cake that Bob had made at home and packed carefully to survive the weeklong trip.

Sunday dawned almost totally clear with light winds. We packed up in stages depending on who was flying out next. We said goodbye to Bob first who took almost all the gear and rafts on the first shuttle flight back to our put in point so that he would be there to meet his next rafting group. Among the new group would be two 80 year olds and two 70 year olds, and they would be taking a 17 day trip that floated all the way to the arctic ocean. The photo just above is of the bush plane landing on the gravel bar to pick us up.

Next out were Jim, John and Sue who made the 45 minute trip back to Arctic Village. After they were dropped off, the bush pilot delivered 3 of the group heading in to meet Bob. Next out for us was Bill, Richard and myself. The photo just above was taken flying back up the river valley which let us see from above where we had floated over the past 6 days. Finally Aaron, Craig and Marty made it back to Arctic Village where we all boarded the bigger plane to make the 90 minute flight back to Fairbanks.

We all said our goodbyes as the group split up to return to their lodging. Craig, Marty, Richard and I returned to our B&B, looking forward to having a shower. We were tired and a bit sore from all our efforts but very thankful to have been able to make a raft trip in such a wild beautiful part of the world. We walked into downtown Fairbanks for dinner, and strolled thru the summer solstice festival. Seeing the booths and people reinforced that Fairbanks is definitely a unique place. I am now in Anchorage where my wife flew into yesterday to meet me. We are about to begin our drive up to Denali NP. Stay tuned!

Gray-headed Chickadee Raft Trip--Entry 2

2011-06-22T00:15:00.013-04:00

On our way back from seeing the chickadee on day 3, we walked thru an area looking for another arctic specialty bird, the smith's longspur. I have only seen this bird in its drab winter plumage in Oklahoma so I was excited about finding it in full breeding attire. The photo above is of our group after checking out a smith's--Bob is in the red shirt next to the scope and Aaron is the very tall guy with the dark cap. We were not able to get close enough to take photos but thru the scope we all had good looks at this very colorful bird which is the size of a large sparrow and tends to stay close to the ground.

On day 4 of our trip we loaded up the rafts again (photo above) not sure what the water depth would be. The weather was pretty good, not too hot or cold or windy. We ended up being able to float most of the time with occasional raft hauling. After a long day including some rapids/boulder dodging at the end of our float, we made our preferred campsite by about 7 PM knowing that we would have a 2 nite layover. The 2 niters are great because it takes at least a hour to set up camp in the evening, and at least 2 hours in the morning to break down and reload the rafts.

At this site we also hoped to see wolves at a den that WBA had discovered last year, but the wolves had not returned to it this year. Instead we saw 2 foxes in the same area. Sue also briefly saw a wolverine when she went down to the river to brush her teeth, but when the wolverine saw her it ran off before anyone else could see it.

On day 5 we had a chance to look at a second chickadee nesting site that was located in a narrow side canyon about a quarter mile off the river. The canyon has a pretty stream flowing out of it (photo just above). We headed up there after breakfast to see if the chickadees were back this year. Sure enough they were nesting very high up on the canyon wall in a cliff swallow "house" which you can see in the photo just below--the upper hole had a cliff swallow living in it, but the hole just below to the right was the home of a pair of chickadees (click on photo to enlarge). We watched them actively flying in and out of the "nest" feeding their young.

After watching them for a time we headed further upstream to go look at a cave. As we were crossing the stream we noticed a partially eaten caribou carcass and decided to turn around in case a grizzly bear was in the area. We returned to camp and spent the rest of the day enjoying the beauty and serenity of the Brooks range which reminds me of the highlands of Scotland. During dinner we saw a red fox stalking a rock ptarmigan who of course eluded it by flying away. It landed not far away back upstream, and sat there throughout our meal, giving us good looks at it thru our scope.

While in this area we continued to see new birds for the trip including several say's phoebes which I think of as a desert bird since I usually see them in the southwest, but the arctic is in fact a cold desert. We finished the day with 43 different bird species seen so far on our trip. I have added another photo taken on day 3 of the gray-headed chickadee since on day 5 the chickadees were far too high up to get a good photo. We had been hearing an arctic warbler calling on the other side of the river all day, and planned to look for it on day 6 before heading further down river. Stay tuned!

Gray-headed Chickadee Raft Trip--Entry 1

2011-06-21T18:34:00.019-04:00

This is the first of my postings on the 8 day raft trip I completed last week with Wilderness Birding Adventures (WBA) in the Arctic NWR located in the northeast corner of Alaska. The trip is run each year between June 10th and 20th with the primary goal of seeing gray-headed chickadees--arguably the most difficult breeding bird to find in North America because of the challenge of locating it in the wilds of Alaska. Because of the vast area in which it lives, finding it while it is nesting makes it somewhat easier to see. However, since it begins nesting in late May, being able to float the rivers in the Arctic NWR in mid June can be problematic due to ice and snow. As the photo above shows, we woke up to snow on our first morning which was a harbinger of the quickly changing and erratic weather we experienced during the trip--but I am getting ahead of myself.

Eight "hearty adventurers" joined Bob Dittrick and Aaron Lang from WBA on Sat. evening June 11th in Fairbanks for a pre-trip briefing. The adventurers included 3 of my closest friends--Craig, Marty and Richard--plus 4 others--Bill, Jim, John and Sue--all birders that I had run into at least once during my big year in 2010. Info was shared, and gear was checked to be ready for our early Sunday departure.

We all arrived at the airport for the 1st of 2 plane flights to be told by Bob that floating the river might not be possible due to very low water levels. Having been on a wait list for 3 years already, and after some anxious discussion, all agreed to go ahead in hopes of being able to get down the river. We flew out to Arctic Village first, and then were shuttled on a smaller plane to a backcountry "landing strip" on the Marsh fork of the Canning river where we set up camp. Soon after arriving we found a mother grizzly with 2 cubs feeding at some distance on a mountainside on the other side of the river. We kept checking them out until we went to bed.

The next morning with snow still falling we hauled the 2 rafts, and all our equipment over a 1/4 mile of ice/snow to the main channel of the river. As we loaded up the rafts the snow finally stopped, but we still had a fairly strong wind blowing up river in our faces. We proceeded to float when possible, and walk/pull the rafts thru the shallows where necessary. While jumping in and out of the rafts, 3 of our group slipped and fell into the river, but no one was injured or exceedingly soaked. After 4 miles we reached our evening's campsite, putting up our tents in a light rain. Fortunately the rest of the evening was clear allowing us to eat comfortably, to sing happy birthday to Bob who turned 65, and then gladly to crawl into our sleeping bags.

The next morning dawned cool but mostly clear. After breakfast we began hiking up a side valley to check various trees in which WBA had found gray-headed chickadees nesting in prior years. The first 2 trees with nesting cavities proved to be empty this year, but the 3rd was the charmed as documented in the series of photos just below (click on any photo to enlarge).

When we first arrived at this tree Aaron heard a chickadee calling. It flew in near us, so we moved back and saw it disappear. When we walked around to the other side of the tree we found the nest hole about 4 feet off the ground, and then sat down in the soft moss about 30-40 feet away. Over the next hour we watched as the 2 parents came and went intermittently to feed the hatchlings, which we could only hear in the hole. In the photos above you will notice that the parent is flying out with a poop sac.

We also saw other birds including northern shrikes, gray jays, and 2 golden eagles high in the sky being harassed by 2 ravens. With the "target bird" well seen and thoroughly enjoyed, everyone was elated and felt hugely relieved because the pressure was now off to find the chickadee. Stay tuned!

Fan-tailed Warbler Redux

2011-05-28T13:07:00.012-04:00

The top photo above of the fan-tailed warbler was taken by Martin Meyers who I wrote about yesterday. The photo just above is of a sizeable group of birders scanning down to the creek area where the fan-tailed warbler would make brief appearances early on Friday morning. The guy in the blue shirt with the white hat on the right is Martin Meyers. Unlike yesterday, when I first arrived this morning the warbler was singing frequently which was critical to finding it foraging on the ground in the leaves and rocks across the creek. I was fortunate to see it up close one more time when it flew over to our side of the creek, and fed for about 5 minutes around 11:45 AM.

The photo just below is of one of 2 painted redstart parents who had a nest close to the fan-tailed viewing area. The parents would fly in regularly, sit in the tree in the photo, and then drop down to the slope where their nest was on the ground. Lots of photogs when not looking for the fan-tailed would set up their tripods to take pics of the redstarts. Click on any photo to enlarge it. We also had a male elegant trogon fly down close to where the fan-tailed was feeding.

The photo just above is one of the feeding stations at the Kubo B&B which is just across from where the fan-tailed warbler was most regularly seen. It was surprising to see a migrating swainson's thrush partaking of the cut oranges along side the black-headed grosbeak which are numerous in Madera Canyon.

After leaving Madera Canyon I headed down to the Patagonia roadside rest stop because another fan-tailed warbler was seen along the creek there early yesterday morning. It is probably the only time 2 fan-tailed warblers have been seen in AZ on the same day since there are only 8 records of the bird in AZ. Other birders were also down there looking for it, but no one else saw it after the first observer reported it.

Mid afternoon I headed over to the Paton's to check out the many feeders in the yard. The blue grosbeak shown below kept coming to that one feeder along with gila woodpeckers, brown-headed cowbirds, a single bronzed cowbird, and lesser goldfinches. Several birders were enjoying sitting in the shade of the canopy on a hundred degree day. We also saw violet crowned, black-chinned, broad-billed and broad-tailed hummers; yellow-breasted chat; inca, common ground, mourning and eurasian collared doves; curve-billed thrasher; lazuli bunting; gambel's quail; abert's towhee; song and white-crowned sparrows; bewick's wren; summer tanager; and heard a gray hawk.

I spent last nite with my long time friend who lives in Tucson. This morning I stopped in at Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson to see a few last birds before heading to the airport. I saw a migrating olive-sided flycatcher, and studied cassin's, western and tropical kingbirds as they fed and chased each other around. After only 48 hours of birding my species count hit 91 capped off by the multiple sightings of the fan-tailed warbler. I am off to Alaska on the 10th of June. Stay tuned!

Can You Say Fan-tailed Warbler?

2011-05-26T22:30:00.016-04:00

Last Monday a fan-tailed warbler was found in Madera Canyon located 4o miles south of Tucson, AZ. Usually this very rare visitor from Mexico when seen in the US never hangs around. Someone will find one, and few lucky close by birders may also get to view it over the next few hours before the bird disappears. Most recently two fan-tailed warblers were sighted last year in SE AZ but neither lasted for more than 4 hours. Of the 56 new world warblers recorded in the ABA area, the fan-tailed is the only one that I had left to see.

When I read that it was seen again throughout the day on Tuesday I decided to put a ticket on hold to fly down here early this morning if it was also seen yesterday. When for the 3rd day in row it was in exactly the same place, I called Melody Kehl, who is a friend and professional bird guide down here, to see what she thought about this bird. She had seen it on Monday, and felt that it had good water and plenty of food to stay happy for a bit longer. That sealed the deal for me.

I was up at 4 AM to catch my 6:15 flight thru Dallas, arriving in Tucson at 10. I was in Madera Canyon checking on the situation by 11:15. The good news was that the warbler had been seen and heard frequently from 6:30 to 8:30. The not so good news was that it had not been seen or heard since. So the stakeout began. Lots of birds were around including sulphur-bellied and dusky-capped flycatchers, a pair of painted redstarts, several black-headed grosbeaks and hummers. Unfortunately there was also a sharp-shinned hawk coming and going along the creek. This bird of prey loves eating other birds.

About 1:45 while I was watching 2 dusky-capped flycatchers chase each other around I noticed a bird fly toward me from across the creek. I located it in a small tree, and saw that it was the much sought after fan-tailed warbler. I immediately called out that it was back, and within 2-3 minutes upwards of 15 birders were all oohing and aahing as the bird foraged on the ground not more than 20 feet in front of us. We were able to watch it for 10-15 minutes before it moved out of sight. Given the light conditions, the 3 not so great photos above are the best my camera could do to capture this beautiful bird--click on any photo to enlarge.

One of the birders who walked up after I alerted others about the warbler was Martin Meyers who I met a few times during my big year. He had driven 800 miles from Truckee, CA because like me it was also the last new world warbler for him to see. It was very nice to share the moment with him. There were also 3 birders in from Rhode Island that I had met last year on a few pelagic trips out of Hatteras, NC. Given that the fan-tailed warbler is a code 4 bird (there are only 10 records of the bird over the past 50 years in AZ), it is not surprising that so many birders from far away have made the effort to come look for it. I will be birding here again tomorrow and will try to see the warbler one more time. Stay tuned!

Days 7 and 8 at Magee Marsh

2011-05-13T18:44:00.012-04:00

Wow!! The last 2 days have been intense birding. The local birders with the help of radar info had predicted that Thursday and Friday could be huge days for bird migration thru the Magee Marsh area, and they were dead on. Thursday we hit the boardwalk about 8 AM to find hordes of birders hoping for a fallout day, and they certainly were not disappointed. I soon saw one of the coveted warblers, a mourning, so very briefly up in a tree before it disappeared. Fortunately within an hour it was found very close by, and throughout the rest of the day it would show up off and on at the same spot allowing for good looks. I could not a get a photo of the mourning, but I did get one of the northern parula above (click on any photo to enlarge).

One of the birds that almost everyday is found on a roost at Magee is the gray phase screech owl in the photo above. Near this bird's roost is a owl nest box where at times a red phase screech will perch 1/2 way out. As you might imagine, both attract crowds. The green heron just below also was commonly seen over the past week.

After seeing the mourning well we proceeded to work the boardwalk, looking for as many other warbler species as we could find. One of my favorites is the bay breasted warbler shown just below. It is one of the later warblers to arrive at Magee. The migration here begins to pick up speed around the 1st of May, and generally by mid May it peaks in the variety of bird species, particularly warblers. By the end of the day I had seen 27 warbler species--my personal 1 day high at Magee--including the bay-breasted warbler in the photo just below.

Another indicator of the progress of the migration is the number of female warblers relative to males. The males of any warbler species usually arrive ahead of the females, so when you start seeing lots of females as well you know that the migration is reaching a peak. Yesterday I saw females from 15 warbler species whereas a week ago I saw maybe 5 or 6. 2 other peak migration arrivals were the yellow-bellied flycatcher and the gray-cheeked thrush.

As Magee's fame has grown over the past decade, more and more birders come from all over the US, and even from other countries like England and Scotland (the Brits love birding in the US). As a result it can get quite crowded at certain places along the boardwalk when a rare bird is found. This morning for example another coveted warbler, a Connecticut, appeared for the 1st time this year. This species usually does not arrive at Magee until after the 20th of May, and even then it is quite uncommon. With 2 mourning warblers also at the same location, the crush of birders at 9 AM trying to get a view of the CT and the mournings was the most intense I have ever encountered. Friday the 13th of May proved to be the opposite of what is feared on Friday the 13th's.

The only other warbler that would draw as big a crowd is the Kirtland's, which so far this year has not come to Magee, but one did spend 4 days last week singing away in Columbus, OH on its way up to its breeding grounds in MI. I am sure the birder from VA (vanity plate below) must have loved seeing the Connecticut--it was my first one at Magee, and I had as good looks at it as the ones I have seen in MN where it breeds.

Since I needed to depart for Brooklyn, NY this afternoon, I was feeling like my week's worth of birding was perfectly bookended with the garganey last Friday and then the CT warbler showing up today. I could not get a photo of it, so I have added the photo just above of a lovely chestnut-sided warbler. I ended my 9 days of birding in Ohio with an overall total of 158 species including a personal best over a week's time of 30 warbler species. While at Magee I saw at least 20 species of warblers every day as well. I also finally got to meet and chat with Matt Stenger from Harrison, OH who is doing a full ABA big year. He was awfully happy to get the mourning and Connecticut warblers. Matt--Good luck with the rest of your big year. My next major birding will be in Alaska in June. Stay tuned!

Day 6 at Magee Marsh

2011-05-11T21:58:00.000-04:00

We began birding this morning about 8:15 at the Magee boardwalk to see if the numbers and overall quality of birds had continued from yesterday's stellar late afternoon. We found the birding to be good but definitely down a notch. There were several rose-breasted grosbeaks (top photo above) and lots of baltimore orioles. The overall number of warblers was down but the variety was still enough that by the end of the day I had once again seen at least 20 warbler species.

Over the past few days I have seen several "vanity plates" indicating the car's owner was a birder. The middle photo above is an example of someone who could only fit screech instead of screech owl on the license plate. I saw a birder friend, Adrian Binns, taking a picture of one that read birdfrk. He told me that besides birds he also collects photos of birder vanity plates.

Two more birder friends, Rob and Ricki, joined us around 3 PM. They used to live in Ohio, and had flown in from Nevada to bird for the next few days. We worked the boardwalk with them briefly before getting a tweet that both blue-winged and golden-winged warblers were being seen next door at Ottawa NWR. We went over and found the golden-winged plus tufted titmouse and black-capped chickadee, neither of which is normally found on the boardwalk.

After returning to the boardwalk we continued to see several warbler species including a very hungry but cooperative canada (bottom photo above--click on any photo to enlarge). Finally about 6:30 we all piled into our cars to head back for dinner and then our respective motels. When I got back to my room I checked Gabriel's blog to discover that he had been able to see the garganey--way to go! The local bird cognoscenti are predicting another major wave of birds tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Days 4 and 5 at Magee Marsh

2011-05-10T20:40:00.008-04:00

Since I did not post yesterday, there is some catching up to do tonite. To start, yesterday found us out on the boardwalk by 8 AM to discover that the number of birds was definitely lower than the past 3 days. We did meet up with Greg Miller who we birded with throughout the day. Doreene took a picture of Greg (center), Dan Sanders (right) and myself (left) in front of the Magee Marsh sign. As I mentioned recently, Greg is one of the 3 birders featured in the upcoming movie The Big Year based on the book of the same name. I met Greg and Dan back in 2001 on a pelagic trip out of Hatteras, NC. Dan did a big year in 2005, so you have in the top photo 3 of the 14 birders who have seen 700 or more bird species in the ABA area in a calendar year.

While the birding was fairly slow compared to previous days, it began to pick up in the afternoon. One of the highlights was finding a woodcock (2nd photo from the top) resting right next to the boardwalk. Needless to say the photogs were having fun snapping multiple shots. We called it a day about 6:30 looking forward to today and possibly an influx of new birds overnite.

I checked into the Comfort Inn where I had stayed during my visit here last year. I rushed off to have dinner with Dan and Doreene, and returned to discover that somehow I had ended up with a smoking room, and could not change since the motel was full. Then the reason I did not blog last nite was that the Wifi was malfunctioning. Instead my frustration level went up more as I watched the aging Celtics lose to the Heat. Finally at midnite fire alarms went off forcing us all outside for over an hour while the fire dept. sorted out what was happening. The only good news was that I heard and saw a common nighthawk flying around the outdoor lights. We were allowed back into our rooms only to have the alarm go off again at 2 AM. I finally was able to get back to sleep about 2:30.

We were supposed to meet this morning at 7:30 to drive the 20 miles from Port Clinton over to Magee. But after the nite from hell at my motel, I did not make it over to Magee until 11 AM. Once there, I found that a new wave of birds had arrived and the place was hopping with birds and birders.

About mid day I was able to find Gabriel Mapel from Virginia who is only 11 and is doing a big junior year. I knew about him and that he was at Magee because he is doing a blog which I have provided a link to now on this blog. I wanted to find him to say hi, and also to encourage him to see the garganey while he was in Ohio. On his blog he had said he was not going to see it because he did not think it would be accepted as a wild bird, but Dan and I encouraged him to make the effort because it probably was going to be accepted as a wild bird.

The birds kept coming in throughout the day, and by late afternoon with the winds coming off Lake Erie, it seemed like all the birds had moved into the woods along the boardwalk. As a result we had one of those magical birding times. We sat on the rail of the boardwalk and everywhere we looked there were birds actively feeding.

After about an hour at just that one spot we were ready to head home for the day having seen 20 species of warblers plus 5 species of vireos. Some other species also seen included swainson's thrush, American robin, white-throated and lincoln sparrow, least and great crested flycatcher, ruby crowned kinglet, scarlet tanager, red-breasted nuthatch, tree swallow, rose-breasted grosbeak, common grackle, red-winged blackbird, and blue jay. The bottom 2 photos are of a blackpoll warbler (next to bottom) and a philadelphia vireo (click on any photo to enlarge). Tomorrow could be even better. Stay tuned!

Day 3 at Magee Marsh

2011-05-08T21:11:00.005-04:00

It was another fine day at Magee Marsh, Ottawa NWR and Metzger Marsh. I arrived at Magee about 9 under sunny skies and temps in the high 50's. There were far fewer birds today which meant that the majority had moved out and across Lake Erie overnite. Dan and Doreene arrived about 10 and we hit the boardwalk to see what we could find. Since there were far fewer birds we spent a fair amount of time catching up as well as chatting with other birders that we knew. There were still enough warblers around that I was able to get the top photo of a blackburnian. Since the photographers put out sliced oranges to attract the baltimore orioles, it was also easy to get the middle photo above.

We checked out a young male blue grosbeak that was feeding along the beach, but since things were not exactly hopping, we took a lunch break and visited with Laura Keene, who lives near Cincinnati, and her daughter. Laura had met Dan and Doreene during a winter trip to Minnesota to look for owls. I had met her last year on a pelagic trip out of Monterey, and saw her again on Thursday afternoon when I was looking for the garganey.

After eating we decided to take the car tour of Ottawa NWR which is only available 1 day a month except during the big birding week when they open the road on both Sat. and Sun. on consecutive weekends. We did not find a lot of birds but did see yellow-headed blackbirds and a horned grebe--both new birds for the trip.

We then checked out Metzger where nothing was happening when we first walked into the small wooded area, but quickly came alive as a group of warblers dropped out of the sky to eat. On the drive back out we also saw a sora (rail), and the tri-colored heron that has been there for over a week. At a wet area nearby we found a small group of dunlins, and a greater and lesser yellowlegs.

We finished the day back on the boardwalk where we found more warblers than during the morning. I was able to get the bottom photo above of a prothonotary warbler. We heard a swainson's thrush calling--my first for the week. We called it a day about 7:30. After 2 and 1/2 days of birding at Magee I have seen at least 20 warbler species each day, and a total of 27 kinds of warblers so far. There are still a few more different warblers that could show up in the next few days. Stay tuned!

Day 2 at Magee Marsh

2011-05-07T20:13:00.010-04:00

I had another good day of birding at Magee Marsh which began about 8:45 under mostly sunny skies and temps in the low 6o's. This week is now promoted as the Biggest Week in Birding up here which brings in even more birders than ever before. As a result, being here on the weekend is usually not the best choice because there are so many people walking the boardwalk looking at and photographing the birds. I was originally going to arrive here next Monday, but because of the Garganey I came up early. Fortunately, while there were many birders today it was never overwhelmingly crowded.

Yesterday was particularly impressive with the sheer number and variety of birds, and today was not far behind. One bird that was not seen today is the resting whip poor will in the top photo above (click on any photo to enlarge). The whip sitting on its day roost was a real crowd pleaser throughout yesterday. Even though the whip left, several woodcocks were still in the marsh today. The new "feature" birds of the day were the many black-billed cuckoos (middle photo above), and at least one yellow-billed cuckoo that posed for the photogs throughout the afternoon.

On a really good day here at Magee, and the neighboring birding spots like Ottawa NWR and Metzger Marsh, it is common to approach or pass 100 different species seen after a full day of birding. And one reason is the huge number of warblers that stop here before flying across Lake Erie. For example, yesterday afternoon in just 5 hours I saw 24 different kinds of warblers including the black-throated green in the bottom photo above. I also saw blue-winged and golden-winged warblers yesterday, but not today. Instead I saw cerulean, canada and blackpoll warblers for the first time on this trip.

This is the 3rd year in a row and the 5th time in the last 8 years that I have visited Magee Marsh during the 1st 2 weeks of May. As a result I am beginning to recognize other birders that also make it a point to be here at this time. Most are from Ohio but there are also many who come from around the US. My friends Dan and Doreene are coming up tomorrow from Columbus to spend the week here. For several weeks I have been looking forward to birding with them again. Stay tuned!

Can You Say Garganey?

2011-05-06T23:00:00.010-04:00

It is Friday nite and I am in Toledo, OH which is close to Magee Marsh. Followers of my big year may remember that I birded here last year at this same time because I so enjoy experiencing the spring migration here. But I am ahead of myself. First I need to explain the title of this post. Near Cincinnati a week ago a male garganey was found at Fernald Preserve. Fernald is a former uranium processing facility that was closed down in the early nineties. The 1000 acre property was "cleaned up" and turned into a wildlife preserve.

I left Chapel Hill yesterday morning at 4 AM and after 500 miles of driving I arrived at Fernald about 2 PM. I found several birders staking out the pond where the garganey has been seen the most. One of the birders I had met in 2007 down in Madera Canyon south of Tucson, AZ. He spends his winters there and his summers in Michigan. He and 2 other birders had been looking all day for the duck which normally lives in Asia and is extremely rare in the US. When it does show up it is usually on the west coast in the fall. Much less frequently it shows up in the spring in the east. This is only the second one to appear in Ohio.

The garganey had been seen Wed. morning, but not at all on Thursday. The top photo is of 2 northern rough-winged swallows (click on any photo to enlarge) which kept us company throughout the afternoon. The middle photo is of a young lady who stopped by and had the most decorative crutches I have ever seen. As the sun set the other 3 birders climbed into their cars to return to St. Louis, Florida and Michigan. A fourth birder, who I had met last spring in Arizona where we found a rufous-capped warbler together, headed off to Dayton. Since the garganey would be a life bird for me, I drove to Harrison, OH to spend the nite to be able to try again today.

I arrived at dawn, and soon after 3 other birders who had come late the day before also returned. By 9 AM we still had not seen the duck, so I went down to the visitor center to see what birds were in that area. I had the good fortune to talk with Howard who has worked for almost 20 years transforming the place. He took me back into a restricted area where we flushed the garganey and a pair of blue winged teals. They flew to the bio wetlands next to the visitor center.

I did not know this at first, so I left to have some breakfast, but was called and told that they were feeding in the bio wetlands. I came back and was able to get the bottom photo above--the garganey is the duck on the right. The birder who had gone to Dayton for the nite and lives in Millville, NJ, also returned to see and photograph the garganey. As we parted we both reckoned that our paths would cross again.

I read this evening that Matt Stenger who lives in Harrison and is doing a big year (716birds blog link on this blog) was able to see the garganey today as well. I had heard that he had been looking for it yesterday too, but he left before I arrived. I was sorry to miss him both times since it would have been nice to talk with him about his big year effort.

When I got to Magee Marsh at 3 PM today I found a major migration day was happening, plus ran into Greg Miller who I have known for several years. He along with Al Levantin and Sandy Komito will become household names this fall when the movie, The Big Year, is released. More on the spring migration up here, the movie and Greg Miller in my next few posts. Stay tuned!

May 1 2011

2011-05-01T10:26:00.005-04:00

It is a beautiful sunny May 1st here in Chapel Hill. I was up in Washington, DC for 4 days visiting with a very long time friend (35+ years). As a result, I was not able to bird our land the past few days, so it was good to get back out there this morning. The top photo is of a male common yellowthroat working hard to attract a mate, and the bottom photo is of a male white-eyed vireo also making his presence known (click on photos to enlarge).

Having heard both a summer tanager and a yellow-billed cuckoo this morning, I can report that all of our summer breeding birds have now returned. It was generally a very birdy morning. At one point I was hearing simultaneously the songs/calls of the following birds--wood thrush, acadian flycatcher, hooded and black-throated blue warbler, ovenbird, blue jay, yellow-billed cuckoo, tufted titmouse, and cardinal. I saw one of our barred owls, and flushed a pair of wood ducks off our pond. I also saw and/or heard this morning pine warbler, La waterthrush, northern parula, red-eyed vireo, scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, ruby throated hummer, red-bellied and pileated woodpeckers, mourning dove, american goldfinches, house finches, brown-headed cowbirds, Carolina wren and chickadee, eastern phoebe and hermit thrush.

What I did not have this AM was any kind of migrant fall-out such as warblers, blue-headed vireos or rose-breasted grosbeaks passing thru on their way to the mountains. There has been some big excitement here in NC this week because the state's first ever cassin's sparrow was found down near Pinehurst. The speculation is that this bird, which lives in the southwest, was blown in with all the storms that have been coming thru the south. Another western bird--a female chestnut collared longspur--also was found this past week at Fort Fisher. I am not a state lister so I have not "chased" after either of these birds.

I will be heading up to Magee Marsh in Ohio later this week to join some birding friends to take in the spring migration there. 2 days ago a very rare Asian duck--a garganey--was found near Cincinnati, OH. I am hoping that it will stay around for a few more days so that I can see it when I go to Ohio. Stay tuned!

Easter Sunday 2011

2011-04-24T10:56:00.009-04:00

It is a sunny Easter that is going to get a bit muggy and quite warm by this afternoon. The birding this past week has been steady here on our land, and by today we now have almost all of our summer breeding birds back with us. The only ones missing are yellow-billed cuckoo and summer tanager now that chimney swift, eastern wood pewee, indigo bunting, acadian flycatcher and wood thrush have made an appearance.

We also are seeing a few of the migrants that stop off to feed on the way to their breeding grounds. The top photo is of a northern waterthrush--note the streaking on the throat--that I was able to photograph yesterday at Mason Farm which is part of the NC Botanical Garden (click on any photo to enlarge). I spent a couple of hours there yesterday to see how the migration was progressing at a good nearby birding spot. I heard but did not see ovenbird, northern parula, hooded, worm-eating, blue-winged and black-throated blue warblers. I also saw summer tanagers, indigo buntings, American redstarts, palm and yellow-rumped warblers, a yellow-breasted chat, brown thrashers, red-eyed vireos, swamp and white-throated sparrows, tufted tits, Carolina chickadees and wrens, and eastern bluebirds. A barred owl called often while I was birding, and I also got the bottom photo above of a female eastern towhee.

This morning on our land I found a northern waterthrush along Morgan Creek. We now have several pairs of red-eyed vireos and ovenbirds on territory, 3 pairs of La waterthrush, 2 scarlet tanagers, and a green heron on the pond. The middle photo above is of one of our black snakes that we are now seeing regularly with the warmer weather. During the week I saw both male and female black-throated blue warblers, and a swainson's thrush for the first time this year. 2 different days I came across some lingering pine siskins. I also saw one of our barred owls which we hear often but rarely see. Over the next couple of weeks we should see a few more migrating warbler species plus rose-breasted grosbeaks. Stay tuned!

Sunday April 17th--More Spring Update

2011-04-17T11:02:00.007-04:00

It has been a very nice spring week--mostly sunny coolish days, but some rain too including a major downpour yesterday afternoon. So far the migration is still bringing us mainly our summer breeding birds. Of the 9 warblers that we normally have breeding each year on our land, 7 migrants now have arrived (common yellowthroat, n. parula, hooded, prairie, yellow-breasted chat, La waterthrush--middle photo above--and ovenbird--top photo above). We have pine warblers year round. So I am still waiting for a yellow-throated warbler. My sister said she heard one calling at her house but I have not seen or heard one yet myself. We also have yellow-rumps passing thru.

Other birds of note this week include the first of the season ruby-throated hummer, scarlet tanagers, and yellow-throated and red-eyed vireos. The sightings for the week also include swamp, white-throated and chipping sparrows; robins, hermit thrushes and blue jays; belted kingfisher; cooper's, red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks; barred owl; blue-gray gnatcatchers, brown-headed nuthatches, tufted tits, and Carolina chickadees; downy, red-bellied and pileated woodpeckers; house and gold finches; brown-headed cowbirds and American crows; black and turkey vultures; eastern towhees, phoebes and bluebirds; and mourning doves and Canada geese.

The bottom photo above is of our native azalea that blooms here in early April. You can click on any photo to enlarge it. This week depending on the weather fronts may bring us our first migratory warblers such as black-throated blues. Stay tuned!

Sunday April 10th--spring in progress

2011-04-10T12:51:00.003-04:00

Spring here in Chapel Hill continues to build with leaves beginning to be quite visible on most trees. The dogwoods and redbuds are still the dominant spring colors but they will begin to decline this week. We have had some thunderstorms the past 2 days that have provided some much needed moisture. Temps will fall into the 30's some nites, but temps are already getting as high as the mid 80's some days.

Two days ago I did another circuit walk of the property to see how the bird migration was doing. The Louisiana waterthrushes were all staking out territory. 3 ovenbirds were also busily vocalizing for the first time this spring. Blue-gray gnatcatchers, tufted tits, Carolina chickadees, robins and cardinals were all about. I found one of our breeding parulas high up in a tree. A late in the season red-breasted nuthatch came by the feeders.

The highlight of the walk was hearing "sweet, sweet, sweet" and then finding a lovely prothonotary warbler (bottom photo) working its way down Morgan creek (top photo--remember to click on any photo to enlarge). This warbler breeds in many places in the Triangle, but this is only the 3rd one that I have ever seen on our property. It is not clear why they don't breed along Morgan Creek, but for some reason they do not. This bird had probably come up the creek from University Lake where they are more easily seen.

We have 9 warbler species that usually breed on the land here--pine, La waterthrush, ovenbird, northern parula, common yellowthroat, prairie, hooded, yellow-throated, and yellow-breasted chat--so there are still some more breeders that have not yet shown up. Stay tuned!

A beautiful Spring Day at Home

2011-04-03T11:08:00.004-04:00

I have been living outside of Chapel Hill, NC on a large tract of land since June 2000. The total acreage is 230 acres, and we have 4-5 miles of walking trails. We also have a major stream--Morgan Creek--plus a secondary stream called Tilley's Branch. There are 2 ponds and some seasonal drainages. Most of the land is covered in hard woods with some pine mixed in. Except for 2004 when were living in Italy, and last year when I was doing my big year, every other spring since 2001 I have regularly birded our land beginning in late March and continuing into mid May. As a result I have a pretty good idea of how the spring migration progresses here, plus when our summer breeding birds return.

As I mentioned in my last post, we have year round resident barred owls, but rarely have I heard or seen great horned owls. But last week we heard a great horned owl calling at dusk one evening, and then the next day I saw one being mobbed by some crows. I could not get a photo, so instead I have posted above a picture of a great horned that I took last year in AZ. Three days ago from about 5-6 in the afternoon I heard 2 great horned owls behind my house conversing. I have my fingers crossed that maybe it is a pair trying to set up an breeding territory.

This morning and Friday morning I took my usual spring bird walk to see what was about. Today was sunny and in the 50's. I heard or saw the first of the year blue-gray gnatcatcher and northern parula. A pair of wood ducks flushed off of Morgan Creek. There were 2 Louisiana waterthrushes staking out their territory. I heard red-bellied, hairy and pileated woodpeckers. A lingering ruby-crowned kinglet, hermit thrush, brown creeper and winter wren all showed up. Pine warblers were singing along with loads of tufted titmice and Carolina chickadees. I flushed a red shouldered hawk (bottom photo above). Black and turkey vultures circled in the sky. Lots of robins were moving thru the woods. Eastern towhee and blue jay also made an appearance. Downy woodpeckers, mourning doves, brown-headed cowbirds, chipping sparrows, goldfinches, slate colored juncos and house finches were at the feeders. A Carolina wren called over and over from under the porch.

Changing gears, over the past 2 days 2 rare Mexican warblers have been found in the US, and reported on Narba. The first was a golden crowned warbler that was seen in a park in Corpus Christi, TX. The second was a crescent-chested warbler that was found at Arivaca Cienega south of Tucson, AZ. I have seen both of these vagrant warblers in the past but neither made an appearance in 2010 during my big year.

I will continue my routine of birding my property to track the spring migration here. Stay tuned!

Spring is on its Way Here in NC

2011-03-23T11:54:00.009-04:00

My wife and I returned a few days ago from a road trip that took us up the east coast to visit friends and family in Washington, DC, Brooklyn, NY, and Boston and Hadley, MA. Winter was still very apparent in MA with huge amounts of snow still waiting for warmer weather to melt it away. But here in NC we are definitely seeing the beginning of spring--warmer days reaching even into the 80's. The redbuds and dogwoods are beginning to blossom, the tree frogs are croaking and we are seeing some early spring migrants.

My daughter is home for spring break with her boyfriend. He and I went for my first of the year spring bird ramble on our land. I had not yet heard any Louisiana waterthrushes calling, but I knew they should be here by now. My sis told me yesterday that she had one calling below her house on the other side of the 230 acres that we live on outside of Chapel Hill. As we walked down the creek that flows below our house I heard a waterthrush call. We tracked it around the bend and found not one but 2 males competing for territory.

The top photo above is of a beaver dam on Morgan creek (click on photo to enlarge). This dam gets blown out about twice a year when we have a big rain, but the beavers quickly rebuild it. We continued to walk along Morgan creek which is shown in the middle photo above. About a quarter mile further up the creek we found a third waterthrush staking out its territory.

By the time we got up to our main pond we had a pretty good list of birds: hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers, northern flicker, tufted titmouse, Carolina chickadee, American robin, northern cardinal, hermit thrush, eastern bluebird, a probable swamp sparrow, white throated sparrow, winter wren, yellow-rumped and pine warblers, eastern towhee, and the remains of a Canada goose egg.

As we were heading for home we heard several crows mobbing something. At first sighting I thought it was one of our resident barred owls, but when the owl flushed we got a better look and realized that it was a great horned owl. Last night when we were having dinner we heard coyotes, and then heard a great horned owl calling behind our house, which was a surprise since we rarely have them on our property. So it was nice to see it this morning as well.

After seeing the great horned we happened on a pileated woodpecker making a hole in a huge dead pine tree (bottom photo). Back at the house we picked up a downy woodpecker--we had seen a yellow-bellied sapsucker yesterday. We also had American goldfinches, chipping sparrows, mourning doves and dark-eyed juncos.

I have added links to 2 new big year blog sites. A birder named John Vanderpoel from Colorado is doing a full ABA big year and is off to a good start (big year 2011). Matt Stenger is the other birder who is doing a big year in 2011 (716birds).

No rare birds showed up in New England while we were up there, so it is nice to be able to do some everyday birding locally. I will regularly walk our land over the next few weeks to see what is going on with the bird migration. Stay tuned!

Yellow-faced Grassquit

2011-03-02T15:30:00.011-05:00

It is Wednesday, and I just could not wait any longer for a photo of a yellow-faced grassquit to be emailed to me, so I am doing this blog update now. As I said in my previous post, last week I was heading down to Austin, TX to visit friends. I knew that a yellow-faced grassquit, a bird native to Mexico, had been seen almost daily throughout February at Goose Island SP, which is near Aransas NWR. I had my fingers crossed that it would still be there this past Sunday. Sure enough, it was reported on Friday and Saturday, so I made the 180 mile one-way drive down from Austin Sunday.

I arrived about 2:30 PM to find several birders patiently waiting for the bird to make a showing which had not happened yet for the day. It was pretty windy, so that might have had some affect on the bird. The field and clay-colored sparrows that it had been seen with were about, and then after about 30 minutes the call went up, "it's over here". We all scrambled to get in position to check it out. Over the next hour it made random appearances.

I tried to get a photo with my camera, but could only manage poor "record shots". But there was a birder/photographer, Victor Luna, that I had met several times last year while doing my big year. Most recently I had seen him in northern CA when I was looking for the brown shrike. I gave him my email address and asked him to send me a photo. He said he could get it to me by yesterday, but it has not arrived--bummer. The yellow-faced grassquit is one sharp looking little guy--sparrow sized, green backed with 2 striking yellow lines above its eyes and a forking yellow chin patch all radiating out from its beak. This bird at Goose Island is only the 3rd confirmed sighting of a yellow-faced grassquit in Texas.

I will still keep my fingers crossed that Victor will get me the photo so that I can add it to the blog, but for now the bottom photo above is of campsite #218 where the bird has been most frequently seen. The top photo is of a whooping crane I took last year at Aransas NWR (double click on it to enlarge). The middle photo is of sandhill cranes--several flew over me at one point as I was driving.

While looking for the grassquit, I ran into Sue Clark, a birder I had seen a few times last year also. It turns out that she is going to be on a raft trip in June with me and 6 others up in the Arctic NWR to see what arctic breeding birds we might find. I will be blogging about that trip at the end of June. In the mean time I am heading up to New England next week to visit family and friends. Maybe another rarity will be found that I can go check out. Stay tuned!

Great Backyard Bird Count

2011-02-20T12:50:00.018-05:00

This weekend is the annual Great Backyard Bird Count where innumerable birders from all over the country count birds in their "backyard" and submit their findings to the Cornell lab of Ornithology. Like the Christmas bird counts, this is a way to build a data base on the status of bird populations in the U.S. at various times of the year. My top photo is of one of my bird feeding stations, and the next one above is of one of the creeks on our land which is lower than normal for this time of year due to the drought conditions here in NC this winter.

I have been checking out our birds over the past 3 days to see what is around, including going for a walk with my sister this morning. We found nothing unusual but there were a fair number of our normal winter birds: robins, redwing blackbirds, eastern bluebirds, american crows, and blue jays in the dairy pastures; carolina chickadees and wrens, tufted titmice, american goldfinches, house finches, and juncos around the feeders; pine warblers, and brown-headed nuthatches in the pines; hermit thrushes, red-bellied, downy and pileated woodpeckers, plus northern flicker and yellow-bellied sapsuckers in the woods; winter wrens along the streams; and a pair of canada geese at our pond.

The photo above of a white-cheeked pintail (center bird; click on any photo to enlarge it) was taken last fall at Pea Island NWR. Bob Ake, his wife Joyce, and I met up to see this bird even though we had little hope that it would be accepted by the NC bird records committee as a wild bird. I spoke about this acceptance issue in my blog at the time, and did not count the pintail in my year total. Well, as predicted, the bird records committee met in January and voted 9-0 to reject the pintail because of unknown origin.

For birders, the unknown origin is like a catch 22. Because the powers that be in the birding community can not generally prove without a doubt that a bird is wild, they assume most birds that are far afield of their normal breeding or wintering areas, or migratory paths are domesticated birds that have escaped. Since the white-cheeked pintail is a bird of the Caribbean, and because it can also be a domesticated duck, unless it shows up in southern FL, it is almost never accepted as a wild bird. And even in FL many white-cheeked pintail sightings are not accepted. Now that the NC bird records committee has made its ruling, my white-cheeked pintail has been added to my list of birds seen last year but not countable.

In 1998 when Sandy Komito set the all time ABA area big year record, one of the very rare birds seen by him, and 1 of his 2 competitors (Al Levantin), was a xantu's hummingbird that "wintered over" in southern British Columbia. Since the xantu's normally winters in Baja CA, and had never been recorded in Canada, like my pintail, the xantu's was rejected by the BC records committee on the grounds of uncertain provenance. This bird is discussed in the book "The Big Year", but I do not know whether those birders dropped it off their big year lists once the BC records committee made their ruling.

This situation is one of many that birders deal with when it comes to their life lists, or big year lists. Since the various lists are all based on an honor system, each birder is left to determine how to proceed with any bird sighting. Most birders would never add a bird to a life or big year list without being confident that they saw and identified the bird.

One distinguishing feature of a birder's life list is whether all the birds were seen as opposed to a few only heard. In my case, my ABA area life list has only 1 bird on it that was only heard--the himalayan snowcock. This still counts, but most birders find it preferable to have no heard only birds on their list. For big year purposes, heard only birds are acceptable but again not preferred. In 2010 I ended up with 4 heard only bird species (boreal owl, black rail, bicknell's thrush and the snowcock).

As I have discussed in earlier postings, for the lower 48 states there are about 650 bird species that a good birder should be able to find during a big year. Any others become more iffy because of how rare they are in the lower 48 states. In this modern era of digital photography, wherever possible I would assume that a big year birder would prefer to have photographic proof of the birds seen, especially the rarer birds. If photos can not be taken, then having other quality birders on the scene when a rare bird is found is a good fall back because you have more eyes confirming your own sighting.

But even with photographs, a very rare bird may not be accepted. For example, last year Bob Ake, a Virginia birder, completed the 2nd best full ABA area big year with a total of 731 birds seen. One of his birds was photographed at Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, AK. None of the birders there were certain of the species, so the photos were sent around the world for review. The consensus was that the photo was of a Blyth's reed warbler--a North American first record. Bob just told me yesterday that the Alaska bird records committee did not accept the sighting because there was no "specimen", that is, a dead bird to examine. So even with witnesses and photos, Bob now has to decide what to do about counting this bird on his big year list.

I have a variation on this issue with my big year list that surfaced this week. When I was birding in northern CA in December with my friend Wes Fritz, we saw 4 rare birds together. One was the brown shrike that has kept birders going to northern CA for several months now to get this very rare asian species. Another was a slaty-backed gull that only Wes and I saw, but were not able to get photos of. The third was an immature gyrfalcon seen by Wes, Martin Meyers and myself. Martin got a few photos, but not very good ones. Wes and I were able to study it at close distance on a telephone wire but did not get a photo before it flew off. The 4th bird was an arctic loon that was seen at a distance in 2 scopes by Wes, Bob Ake, John Spahr and myself. Again no photos were taken.

In the case of the slaty-backed gull, I have seen this bird in Alaska. Wes and I found it mixed in with 2-300 gulls feeding in a field. We did not get a photo before it flew away, but it matched all the key field marks, so I counted it on my list.

In the case of the gyrfalcon, the bird first flew over us chasing a huge flock of blackbirds and starlings. We chased after it and were able to briefly study it on a telephone wire before it flew off across a field. We had gone looking for it that day because other birders in the area had reported seeing what appeared to them to be a gyrfalcon 2 or 3 days earlier. Also 4 or 5 days earlier a gyrfalcon had been reported from Crescent City which is about 85 miles further to the north of Eureka and Arcata. In comparing visual notes that day, Wes, Martin and I all believed that we saw an immature gyrfalcon. As a result, I also added the gyrfalcon to my list.

As for the arctic loon, one had been reported from Stone Lagoon 2-3 weeks prior to our sighting. Local birders said that an arctic loon had been seen on Stone Lagoon in recent years. I have seen arctic loons in Alaska. Bob and John had seen arctic loons in Alaska last year during their big year. All 4 of us believed that the bird we were looking at had the right field marks for an arctic loon. We drove around the lagoon to try to get a closer look, but were unable to relocate the bird. In the week after we saw the bird, 3 or 4 other birders also reported seeing an arctic loon at Stone Lagoon. As a result, I felt good about having put an arctic loon on my big year list.

But this week I heard that the birder who first reported seeing an arctic loon had submitted very distant photos of his bird to the CA bird records committee, and that its initial findings were that his bird was not an arctic loon. There is no way to know if the bird he saw and photographed is the same bird we looked at, but since his photos were not accepted it raises the question whether we made a "good call" on the loon we found at Stone Lagoon.

Wes has never been to Alaska, and was not doing a big year so pursuing a CA records committee submittal without a photograph of our sighting would not be productive. Bob and John had already seen arctic loons in AK for their big year lists so any doubt about the bird we saw together is not an issue for them. That just leaves me pondering what to do about keeping the arctic loon on my big year list. For now I am sticking with our initial "call" since it was consistent with my yearlong process of confirming sightings and adding birds to my list.

Since I am home talking about the Great Backyard Bird Count, it also means I did not end up going to Newfoundland this weekend. I could not make the travel schedule work with a trip I had already planned this coming week to go to Texas. It is too bad since not only did the birders who went see yellow-legged gull, but also a common snipe which if accepted will be the first seen on the Atlantic side of the continent. Maybe the yellow-faced grassquit that has been down near Corpus Christi, TX will hang on until next weekend when I could make the drive down from Austin to see it. Stay tuned!

Rusty Blackbird Blitz

2011-02-12T09:14:00.006-05:00

The past 2 weeks birders all over the southeast and as far west as Texas have been out looking for rusty blackbirds in an effort to collect wintering ground info on this species. According to Christmas Bird Count (CBC) data, the total number of rusties reported 40 years ago was around 1 million birds, but recent CBC's have reported only a total of roughly 20,000 rusties. So the rusty blackbird blitz is underway to try to understand why there has been such an apparent alarming collapse in the numbers of rusty blackbirds.

Last fall I began to check the areas near where I live here in Chapel Hill that historically have had rusties. My birding buddy Pam and I found 1 singing male last November, and then a group of 7 females on New Year's eve day. We went looking again over the past 2 weeks, but in a total of 3 different searches, we found only 1 rusty. We were very disappointed because last year's data indicated that 150 rusties had been seen in our search area. With no photo of a rusty I instead have posted the one above of an American robin since we are seeing lots of them at our neighboring dairy farm this week--remember you can click on photos to enlarge them.

I had been expecting to be doing a post this week about my planned trip up to the very tip of the Gaspe peninsula in Quebec to see a fieldfare that has been there for about a month. This is another of the rare European or Asian birds that have shown up in North America this past winter. I was going to fly to Manchester, NH and then drive another 15 hours with my birding friends Dan and Doreene to look for the bird. At the last minute I had to cancel my trip due to a pressing business matter here at home. The good news is that my friends did see the fieldfare, and I will get to hear about the trip when I see them in May in Ohio.

The bottom photo above is of a margherita pizza that I ate yesterday at the Bella Mia coal/wood-fired oven pizza place that opened last summer in Cary while I was out doing my big year. As those who have followed this blog all last year know, one of my goals was to try many wood-fired pizzas around the country. Until Bella Mia opened we did not have a high quality choice here in the Triangle, so I was extremely happy when my sister told me about it. We all tried it out for the 1st time about a month ago and I was delighted with how close it matched my experience of wood-fired Napoli style pizzas that I ate regularly the year I lived in Italy with my wife and daughter.

Since our first visit it was named the best restaurant in the Triangle in 2010 which of course has now made it tough to get in most nights. That is why Pam and I went at lunch yesterday as part of our rusty blackbird search. My only complaint is that it is a 30 minute drive from my house, but that is a world better than say flying to Phoenix to eat at Pizzeria Bianco, or Brooklyn to enjoy a pizza at Franny's.

I just received an email from a birding friend up in Seattle--John Puschock--letting me know that he had organized a trip next weekend to St. John's Newfoundland to look for some other rarities that have been found there this winter. I am mulling over whether I will make that trip. Stay tuned!

Rio Grande Valley, Texas

2011-01-12T12:13:00.026-05:00

I returned late last nite from a birding trip to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas--one of the country's meccas for winter and spring birding. My local birding buddy Pam went with me because she had never been to this area to bird. I went because I wanted to see the black-vented oriole that was first found before Christmas at Bentsen RGV State Park.

The bird fortunately found a better food source at the RV park next to Bentsen, and I was able to get the photo above (double click on it to enlarge). I say fortunately because it was much harder to find at Bentsen, but is easy to locate at the RV park. Airfare was too expensive and travel in general was too difficult to race down to the valley after Christmas, so instead I made the trip now. The oriole is a code 5 bird that has been found in Texas just 5 times since 1968, and is an ABA area life bird for me.

We arrived about mid day last Friday and first went to Estero Llano Grande SP to look for the also very rare (code 4) white-throated thrush. We were quite lucky to see it within 30 minutes of staking out a water feature in which it likes to take baths. Unfortunately the bath site is under a dense canopy and I was not able to get a photo of the thrush.

We also took some time to walk part of Estero, and I did get photos of a large group of mostly black-bellied whistling ducks plus a few fulvous whistling ducks (photo just above). The photo just below was of an very cooperative sora. While taking the photo we ran into a local birder that I had met in the fall on a west coast pelagic trip. He and his wife had also gone to Antarctica for 2+ weeks in November to see penguins, albatrosses, etc.

After seeing the black-vented oriole, we walked into Bentsen RGV and saw the most common oriole in the valley, the altamira oriole (photo just above).

On Saturday before sunrise we went again to Bentsen RGV in hopes of meeting up with Red and Louise Gambill. They are in their 80's and spend the winter in the valley, and the summer back in Ohio. I had met them last January when I was doing my big year, so I knew that they bird Bentsen every morning during the winter. We had a nice time catching up, and hearing all about the extensive flooding in the valley that occurred last summer, the effects of which were still very evident. The green jay (just above) is common throughout the valley in the right habitat and is certainly one of our most colorful birds.

After walking Bentsen we drove over to Laguna Atascosa NWR to look for the rufous-backed robin that has been there for awhile. This bird is also a Mexican vagrant which shows up regularly in Arizona but not in Texas. We did not end up seeing the robin because for some reason they decided to work on the water source at the refuge that it preferred to visit. This really was a stupid move since rare birds bring in needed revenue to a refuge, but if people hear the bird is no longer being seen, then of course they don't make an effort to visit.

From there we went down to Sabal Palm near Brownsville. This refuge was managed by the National Audubon Society for years, but with the hard times of the past 2 years it had been closed to the public. It just reopened last week, but is now being managed by a local non-profit. With the resaca still being refilled, plus it being late in the day, we saw very few birds, but we did have an encounter with an armadillo.

After leaving Sabal Palm, we stopped at Fort Brown in Brownsville to see if we could find any green parakeets that normally roost there. We did have 2 pairs of red-lored parrots flying around, but no parakeets. So on Sunday morning before sunrise we went up to the corner of 10th and Dove streets in McAllen where green parakeets gather on the wires with lots of grackles. It was windy as the light came up, and there were no parakeets about at first. Then we saw a very large group flying off to the west, and finally a single bird flew into the wires.

After a quick breakfast, we then headed over to Santa Ana NWR to see what might be there. We walked out to the hawk tower to look for hook-billed kites. This was one of my most difficult birds to find last year. When we arrived at the tower we found 2 other birders, one of whom--Dennis Vollmar--I had seen at least twice last year including in Arizona when I saw the baikal teal. They had spent several hours during their trip to the valley looking for the kite because it was a life bird for both of them. After about 15 minutes we had the good fortune to have a female hook-billed rise up out of the trees to our west, and fly with good views for maybe 15 seconds before it dropped back down into the trees. This prompted high fives all around.

Since there were still many valley birds for Pam to see, on Monday we drove 70 miles west before sunrise to the small town of Salineno to look for muscovy ducks. It was foggy when we arrived, but there was a good amount of bird life flying about, and up and down the river. The photo just above is of a ringed kingfisher--a valley specialty. We had not been long at the river when a van pulled up with several birders down from Ohio. The group was led by Larry Richardson, a very good birder from Ohio that I met for the first time 2 years ago during a visit to Magee Marsh during spring migration.

We did not see a muscovy duck after 2 hours of closely watching the river for one to fly by, so we walked to a bird feeding station located at an abandoned RV park just up from the river. There we were able to pick up 2 more orioles for our trip. The photo above is of an Audubon's oriole--another valley specialty. We also got a bonus oriole--a nicely marked male hooded oriole (photo just below).

Our next stop was Falcon SP to see if we could find the groove-billed ani's that have been reported there this winter. We checked with the local park hosts who told us where the ani's were being seen, but we had no luck that day. We did see lots of greater roadrunners, and was even able to get the photo above of this usually shy bird.

While at Falcon we were called by American Airlines telling us that our flight that afternoon had been canceled because of the snow/ice storm in the southeast. We got rebooked for Tuesday, and so we were able to continue birding the rest of the day. By late afternoon we were back at Salineno to try again for the muscovy duck.

We ran into 2 birders there from outside of Philadelphia who we had seen the day before at Estero when we were all looking for and found a tropical parula. One was a professional guide that I had met last fall in California on a Debi Shearwater pelagic trip, and then saw again at Yosemite looking for great gray owls. They had come to south Texas to see the tufted flycatcher at Big Bend NP, but could not find it. They had more success with the black-vented oriole and white-throated thrush. We saw both gray and zone-tailed hawks while we looked for the muscovy duck. They finally left to drive back to El Paso to fly from there over to California next to look for the brown shrike.

At dark thirty we drove east to McAllen to stay one more nite there. We were up before dawn to visit Bentsen again in search of a green kingfisher, a groove-billed ani, and a blue bunting. Unfortunately the beautiful, sunny 80+ degree day we had on Monday turned into a windy, overcast 46 degree day on Tuesday. After walking around with Red and Louise for 3 hours, we were chilled to the bone and did not see any of our target birds, or many birds at all because of the weather.

We packed it in and headed to the airport in hopes of getting on an earlier flight. We did for the leg to Dallas, but everything else was overbooked to Raleigh, so we ended up waiting for 6 hours at DFW to catch our scheduled flight home. We saw 140 species in 4 full days of birding, and Pam added 26 life birds. All and all, a very nice few days of birding.

Bird and Birding Highlights of My Big Year

2011-01-06T14:25:00.033-05:00

Now that the big year is completed, I have moved the travel map to the top of this post (click on any photo to enlarge). The next photo was taken on the inside of a bathroom door in California. The juxtaposition of a Boy Scout ad with a bail bonds ad just struck me as one of the oddest/funniest combos I have ever seen, and I have been waiting to share it. While most of my year was about birds, in traveling all those miles you run across all kinds of people and odd things people do including the 3rd photo above of the "boot/shoe shrine" I found in Nevada.

The rest of the pictures above are of various owls I saw during the year. I decided to repost these because I get asked often what was my best bird of the year. I can't possibly pick just one bird, but since I have great fondness for owls, I instead will pick owls as a group. Some of my favorite days of the year involved finding owls; and one of the very best days of the year was when Wes Fritz and I found the family of great gray owls in Yosemite NP. For the non-birders reading this, the bottom photo just above is of a great gray owl.

Like selecting 1 bird as the best of the year, picking one birding time or place as the best is also not even close to possible. For me birding all year was a chance to "live one's passion" in depth and at great length. There definitely were some higher moments than others, but no single one day or bird clearly tops the list. For those who like lists and specific highlights, I offer up the following:

The week I spent looking for grouse and prairie chickens with my sis in Colorado in late March

Finding a bar-tailed godwit in the Everglades in April with 2 other birders--Bob and Dex--who I realized while looking at the godwit that I had met in 2006 at Gambell, AK

The birding days in April in the High Island area of Texas that I spent with Dave Allan--a brit stuck in Texas because of the Iceland volcano

The 4 days I spent in south Florida and the Dry Tortugas in late April with my local birding buddy Pam

The 4 days of birding the spring migration at Magee Marsh, Ohio in early May

The 4 days of pelagic birding off of Hatteras, NC in late May

A morning in late June when my wife and I birded in Rocky Mountain NP with a mother, her 2 sons and a friend of theirs

Many of the days spent on pelagic trips off the west coast

The day I spent in the Everglades with Pete to see 3 flamingos

Hiking in southern Utah in September with my friends Marty and Craig

The intense back to back chases of the cuban pewee (FL) and the plain-capped starthroat (AZ); the black-tailed gull and taiga bean goose (CA); the fork-tailed flycatcher (CT), Ross' gull (CO), and pink-footed goose (MA); and the tufted flycatcher (TX) and streak-backed oriole (AZ).

The 3 days spent in northern California with Wes when we found the brown shrike, gyrfalcon, slaty-backed gull and arctic loon.

In general, it was so great to be able to bird at different times throughout the year with a few of my long time friends (Marty, Craig and Renee, and Dottie) and my wife and children. While there are more birders that I met this year for the first time than I can possibly list, I also have fond memories of meeting both new birders for me (Bob and John, Rob and Ricki, Doreene, Ken, Adrian, Jimmy, Diane, Red and Louise, Steve and Jane, Tim, Dave, John, Martin, Jean, Gary, and Wes), and birders who I have met and gotten to know over the years of my birding travels (Dan, Melody, Steve, Todd, Paul, Brian, Debi, Jay, and Larry).

In all my traveling around I also was able to spend some time with friends from around the country who are too numerous to name, but they certainly know who they are. Thank you so much for sharing this year with me, and often giving me a place to stay.

Finally, 2 posts ago I explained how it was possible for me to see 704 species in a calendar year. Beyond my willingness to put in the time and money, and the high number of rarities that visited the lower 48 states in 2010, I have left out until now the most important reason--the huge number of dedicated birders, and the instantaneous communication via the internet. Without the North American Rare Bird Alert (Narba), all the state bird listservs, and the legion of birdwatchers who are out birding everyday, it would not be possible to find out about enough rare birds in time to be able to chase after them successfully. So my final thanks is to the vast birding community who so love to be out of doors looking for whatever birds they can find.

I am going down to south Texas tomorrow with my local birding buddy Pam who has never been to bird in that area. The black-vented oriole is still being seen plus there are many other new birds for Pam to add to her life list. When I return I will morph this blog into just Slowbirding. Stay tuned!

The Big Night Review of My Big Year

2011-01-05T17:19:00.012-05:00

Shifting over to the Big Night part of my Big Year, as long time followers of this blog know food was an integral element of my birding adventure. I particularly was focused on a few special meals around the country and as it turns out, Italy too, plus hamburgers and wood-fired pizzas.
Except for the burger category, I think in the end I did well with this part of my year long agenda.

In the pizza category, I probably had fewer wood-fired pizzas than I had hamburgers, but I had much better luck at finding great pizza, and wished that I had found more. The photo at the top, taken at Via Tribunali in Seattle, is of one of the 5 best pizzas I ate last year. My overall ranking of pizza places would be Cafe Italiano in Florence and Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix tied for 1st, followed by Via Tribunali, Il Pizzaiolo in Oakland, and Franny's in Brooklyn. All of these have the key elements of a great wood-fired pizza--a perfectly cooked chewy but not too thick crust, a simple tomato sauce that is not over applied, fresh mozzarella cheese, and a modest use of toppings all baked quickly in a very hot oven.

On the burger front, I did try lots of hamburgers all around the US but many times I was disappointed in the quality of the burger. As a result, I winnowed down the burger joints I visited to Matt's bar in Minneapolis, home of the juicy lucy, for the best "down home burger" of the year; and Taylor's Refresher in Napa Valley for my best "gourmet burger" of the year.

As for Big Night splurges, I did get to eat many fine meals around the US this year, as well as some at my own home when I was there. I have selected 5 of them as my favorites of the year. The fifth on the list is the chinese dinner I had in December with Bob Ake and Wes Fritz at Hunan in San Francisco. I picked this because for me it was great to share a restaurant that I have eaten at for over 30 years with 2 of my birding friends. The dishes that nite were ones that I have loved for years and qualify for me as comfort food.

Fourth would be the dinner I shared with my 2 grown children, Caleb and Jess, and my wife, CKay, at 112 Eatery in downtown Minneapolis. We had never eaten there, and had one of those very special meals/family sharings. The space was very inviting, the wait staff was excellent, and the food and wine were delightful. This is a restaurant that I wish I could eat at more often.

The 3rd restaurant is Buca dell 'Orafo in Florence, Italy. When I visited Italy in late October/early November with my wife and friends Craig and Renee, we ate 2 meals at this small trattoria that has been in the same family for 50 years. We first discovered Buca in 1996, and have eaten easily over 100 meals there because we were able to live in Florence for 10 months from 2003-04. Giordano is the current generation chef/owner, and like his father and mother who we knew, he continues to please both locals and tourists with his rendition of tuscan food. I had one of the 3 best risotto--featuring finerli mushrooms--that I have ever eaten when we were there in October.

The second place spot goes to Alle Testiere in Venice, Italy. The other photos above were taken last fall when we spent 2 days in that amazing city. There really is no other place quite like Venice, so we always enjoy spending some time there, and particularly because of Alle Testiere, and a second restaurant called Vini da Gigio. We also love visiting the fish market (last 2 photos above) to see the incredible diversity of fish from the Venice lagoon, as well as other parts of the world. We ate twice at Alle which only serves seafood. The perfectly cooked flounder, and the lovely razor clams were just 2 of the many fine dishes we had this last time. One night we arrived at 8 PM and did not leave until after midnite, eating, drinking and for the last 90 minutes visiting with Luca, one of the 2 owners.

The top spot for the year is held by the Magnolia Grill which is owned by our neighbors and good friends, Ben and Karen. My wife and I feel so blessed to know Ben and Karen, and to be able to eat at the Grill as well as at their home. I can say in all honesty that I always expect the best at the Grill, and have never been disappointed eating there for over 20 years. When we went most recently in December, we had in my opinion the best overall combination of 2 appetizers and 2 entrees that I have ever had there, and Karen's 2 desserts were equally outstanding. I only wished that the wine I brought from my cellar that evening had been as good.

My final comment on food for the year is that I did eat more than my share of not great fast food when pressed for time by the birding agenda. I worked hard to keep it to a minimum. And in between the Big Night splurges and Taco Bell, I had many good "small" meals, lots of fresh oysters, steamers and lobster rolls, breakfast tacos, and the delights found at the taquerias that fortunately can be found in many places in Arizona, Texas and Florida where birders spend a lot of time. And most importantly, I was able to share food with friends from all over the US.

Next up will be a discussion of some of the bird and birding highlights of my big year. Stay tuned!

Why I Was Able to See 704 Birds in the Lower 48 States

2011-01-04T11:49:00.018-05:00

I have studied both my schedule and the number of rare birds that I saw this past year to better understand why it was possible for me to see 704 species in 2010 in the lower 48 states. The schedule I developed in the fall of 2009 was based on my years of birding experience plus using the ABA's Birdfinder: A Birder's Guide to Planning North American Trips. This book lays out 19 primary birding trips that can be done on their own, or combined together to create a big year schedule. Each trip lists the key target birds plus other probable and possible birds that you might see. I knew from using it in the past that it provided a good baseline starting point for designing a big year. After finishing up my big year I would still say it serves that purpose with a few modifications.

First, since I did only the lower 48 states, the chapter on Alaska was not needed other than to determine which birds from that trip might still be picked up in the lower 48 states. Of the 31 target birds listed for that chapter, I was able to see 20 of them. And since I did not spend a couple of weeks in Alaska in June, it gave me some flexibility in my lower 48 scheduling for that month.

Second, in order to have the greatest chance for success on the pelagic trips off the east coast I believe the ideal time is May 28th to June 2nd. This is a bit later than the Birdfinder guide suggests. But I also think it is important to visit SE Arizona in May, so I went there the week before my pelagic trips out of Hatteras, NC. This reversed the order in the Birdfinder.

Third, the Birdfinder suggests that you will find lawrence's goldfinches in September in California. My experience says that you really need to look for this bird in CA and AZ in February, or make a special trip into CA in mid to late April to improve your chances of seeing it and potentially reduce the amount time required to find this species. Also, I went to Arizona in late January which is not suggested in the Birdfinder, but I love birding there and I felt it was a good use of my time since I also wanted to spend some time in California in the winter.

Fourth, I also spent some time in New England in January and again in December to work on winter birds. The Birdfinder does not recommend visiting New England except as part of its secondary trips which it lists as a baker's dozen.

Fifth, instead of visiting Big Bend NP in July as recommended in the Birdfinder, I added that to my April swing thru Texas for the spring migration. I was able to see the colima warbler, gray vireo, and montezuma quail then.

Sixth, I went to Colorado in late March to see the grouse and prairie chickens which allowed me to get back into Texas by the beginning of April to be ready for spring migration there. Now I would go to Colorado at the end of March overlapping into the beginning of April because I think it is better for finding the grouse and chickens, and being at High Island the 1st week of April is not as important.

Seventh, it appears that the best time to try for the himalayan snowcock is in August, and I would look for the white-faced storm-petrel in late August off of Massachusetts instead of trying in late August out of North Carolina.

Turning to how it was possible to see 704 birds in the lower 48 states, the first step was that I did not miss any of the birds that a good and diligent birder should see. More specifically, I saw all the code 1 and 2 birds that you should be able to find in the lower 48 states. This includes breeding and migratory species, and totals about 650 birds.

Because the lower 48 states are in the northern hemisphere, finding as many birds in the first 6 months of the year is critical to your overall success in not missing any code 1 or 2 birds. This means being in the field almost daily from January thru July is optimal. I was able to do that so by June 1st I had seen 606 birds, and by July 1st the year to date total was up to 632. During the last 6 months of the year I only added 72 more birds for the year, and as I have said in an earlier post, many of these were seen on pelagic trips off the west coast in August and September.

Next, I had a very good pelagic birding cycle in 2010 in which I missed only a few of the rarer but possible code 3 pelagic species such as short-tailed albatross, bermuda, herald and murphy's petrels, white-faced storm petrel and craveri's murrelet. The rare pelagic birds that I did see included great skua (3), fea's (3), white-tailed (3) and red-billed (3) tropicbirds, cook's (3) and hawaiian petrel (4), streaked shearwater (4), and european storm-petrel (4).

Most critical to reaching 704 species was the combination of rarities that visited from both north and south of the border. Overall for the year I saw 41 code 3's, 16 code 4's and 4 code 5's. For starters, there are 25 rare vagrants on my big year list that came to the lower 48 states from their normal homes south of the border. Four of these (orange-billed nightingale-thrush, cuban pewee, tufted flycatcher and bare-throated tiger-heron) were code 5 birds, and 6 more were code 4 birds (red-footed booby, northern jacana, blue bunting, plain-capped starthroat, streak-backed oriole, and crimson-collared grosbeak). The rest were all code 3's including the flamingos in the photo at the top.

But what really made it possible to get to 704 was the large number of birds from the north, or eurasia that showed up in the lower 48 states in 2010, especially late in the year. The code 4 birds that I saw included baikal teal, brown shrike, black-tailed gull, common crane, and taiga bean, barnacle and pink-footed goose. Code 3's included Ross' and slaty-backed gull, red-throated pipit, curlew and sharp-tailed sandpiper, and great skua. Code 2's that you would normally see in Alaska but not necessarily in the lower 48 included gyrfalcon, arctic and yellow-billed loon, bar-tailed godwit, northern wheatear, hoary redpoll, and northern hawk-owl (bottom photo above).

My final point today is that like 1998 when Sandy Komito set the all time full ABA area record of 745, this year in its own way was another phenomenal year for rare birds. As a result I was able to set a new record for the lower 48 states. I also believe that Bob Ake, who finished his year at 731 for the full ABA area, could have beaten Sandy's record if his schedule had been slightly different, and he had decided to chase birds from the start of the year.

My specific reasons for suggesting this are that I saw 11 birds in the lower 48 states that Bob did not see (bare-throated tiger-heron, blue bunting, red-footed booby, european storm-petrel, fea's petrel, white-tailed and red-billed tropicbird, streaked shearwater, common crane, flame-colored tanager, and plain-capped starthroat). There were 3 more birds that he could have chased successfully--amazon kingfisher, roadside hawk, and bahama mockingbird. And even though he went to Alaska 3 different times, there were at least 3 more birds (mottled petrel, whiskered auklet, and McKay's bunting) he might have picked up there with a slightly different schedule of time and places to bird.

One final indicator of how good the birding opportunities were in 2010 is that when I began the year I estimated that I would pick up 20-25 life birds. By year's end I had added 38 life birds to my ABA area list plus possibly a 39th if the white-cheeked pintail I saw at Pea Island NWR is accepted by the NC bird review committee as a wild bird. If it is, then my YTD will also move up to 705. My next post will talk about some of my top food experiences during the big year. Stay tuned!

Birding versus Chasing

2011-01-03T15:05:00.009-05:00

I have talked some in earlier posts about birding versus chasing. In particular I have said that my big year was initially all about birding as opposed to chasing, or twitching as the brits call it. By this I mean that I put in hours of work in the fall of 2009 working out my travel schedule for 2010 so that I could maximize my chances of seeing lots of birds by being in the "right places at the right times". The hope is that some rarities will show up where you are already planning to be at the time you are actually there.

This happened quite a bit in the early part of the year. As a result I saw the bare-throated tiger-heron, the northern wheatear, the northern jacana, the brown jay, the crimson-collared grosbeak, and the blue bunting that came to Texas early in the year. But I did not "chase" (meaning alter my travel schedule) the amazon kingfisher or the roadside hawk, so I missed these 2 rarities in the winter in Texas.

While birding in Florida early in the year I was able to see the La Sagra's flycatcher, the red-footed booby and the masked duck that were there. But I did not rush off to see a western spindalis in April, so I missed it by 2 days; and I did not even make an attempt to see the bahama mockingbird that came to Tampa-St. Pete for a week in early May. These would also have been life birds for me, but at that point in my big year I was not committed to "chasing".

But as my YTD bird total kept growing much faster than I had anticipated, and as the number of rare birds showing up in the lower 48 states kept increasing, I began to think that I needed to chase some of the rarities. As a result, I flew to south Texas from Utah in early July to see a yellow-green vireo plus was able to see groove-billed ani and hook-billed kite on the same trip. When the orange-billed nightingale-thrush (top photo above) was found outside Spearfish, SD I made the decision to "chase" it. My posting on that chase is dated July 25th.

My next chase was down to the Everglades in late August when I heard that a flamingo had been seen. I flew in just for the day and fortunately was able to see 3 flamingos, and was back home that evening (posting dated 8/27). My 3rd chase began as I was just waking up in northern California when I got a call from my birder friend Bob in Florida that a cuban pewee (next to top photo above) had been found that morning in the Everglades. That same day a plain-capped starthroat was found in SE Arizona. The entries for these 2 chases are dated 9/6 and 9/8.

Since by the end of September I had seen almost all the birds one would expect to find in the lower 48 states, October, November and December were mostly about chasing rare birds when they were reported on Narba, or when birders who were following my big year contacted me about the possibility of seeing another rarity. The 3 bottom photos are of the tufted flycatcher, the streak-backed oriole (11/29 posts) and the baikal teal (12/3 post) that I chased this fall and saw.

As I have said in earlier posts, when I began the year I had no intention of setting a record, and did not even know what the record for the lower 48 states was until late September/early October. However, because of the phenomenal number of rare birds that visited from both south and north "of the border", I had the opportunity and good fortune to see over 700 birds in the lower 48 states even though I did not start chasing until July.

The key take-away for anyone thinking about doing a big year--whether it is a full ABA area or just your home state-- is to be clear about your intentions. If all you want to do is have a great year focused on birding, then pursue whatever schedule works for you. But, if you have in mind that you want to set a record, then you need from day 1 to be flexible and willing to "chase" a rarity when it shows up because you never know how many rarities might visit during your "big year". While I have no regrets at this point, if I had started out with that mindset, I know I would have seen at least 5 more birds in 2010 (amazon kingfisher, roadside hawk, ivory gull, bahama mockingbird, and red-necked stint).

Tomorrow I will be writing more about my big year schedule, and the amazing number of rarities that visited the lower 48 states in 2010. Stay tuned!

January 2, 2011

2011-01-02T10:51:00.006-05:00

The new year has arrived and I am adjusting to not being in a big year mode. Many people have asked me this past month what I am going to do with all my "free time" now that I won't be birdwatching non-stop. I have plenty of backlogged projects such as cutting firewood with my father-in-law for next winter's use plus I plan to begin to learn how to play the oboe in 2011. The photo above I took in North Dakota of a female downy woodpecker.

Today's entry is the beginning of my summing up process about this amazingly wonderful big birding year that I have just completed. It will take a few entries to cover the topics starting with some review of the "numbers".

One question I get often is how many days have I birded in 2010. One way to answer that is to figure out how many nites I spent at home. From January thru June, I was home only 20 nites, and from mid February until early May I did not come home once. From July thru September I was home just 21 nites, but the last 3 months of the year found me home a total of 47 nites. Another 10 nites I was in Italy which meant I was not birding those days. I did do some birding while at home, and made a 1 day trip down to the Everglades in August to see 3 flamingos. Also, some of my days not home were taken up flying places. As a result, I would say that I was out in the field birding about 250-260 days in 2010.

As the right hand side of the blog shows, I walked 332 miles which is fewer than I thought would have been the case. I drove 65,900 miles and flew 81,900 with the majority of the flying miles happening in the 2nd half of the year when I began to chase around the country looking for the many rarities that came to the lower 48 states in the fall. Also, the miles flown do not include my vacation to Italy, or my trip to Columbia, MO in late December.

My expenses for all this traveling around break down as follows:

Airfare: $6,000
Car rental: $3,500
Gas and oil changes: $9,000
New tires for my wife's truck: $700
Gear (camping, etc): $800
Pelagic trip fees, etc: $4,000
Lodging: $16,000

Total: $40,000

I did not put food costs in the total because I concluded that I spent about the same amount as I would have if I had been home eating plus my normal going out to eat budget with my wife during the year. The airfare and lodging amounts would have been higher but I was able to use some frequent flyer miles (200,000 on American built up prior to the big year), and frequent lodger points to get some free tickets and nites.

Finally, chasing around the country in November and December to see the last 16 birds on the list cost about $5,000 of the year total. I will talk about "birding vs chasing" in my next post. Stay tuned!

New Year's Eve 2010

2010-12-31T14:58:00.010-05:00

It is the afternoon of New Year's eve and almost the end of my big birding year. I have been home since Christmas eve, thoroughly enjoying spending time with my family. I did go birding this morning with my local birding buddy Pam. We hit 3 spots that we have visited of late to see what was about, always hoping to get better looks at rusty blackbirds which are around Chapel Hill in the winter, but are not found in great numbers.

At our first stop we counted probably 3-400 common grackles that flew over. There were also a few red-winged blackbirds. Moving onto our second spot, which is only about a mile away from the first site, we also saw lots of grackles but this time they were out in the marsh feeding. We kept scanning the grackles that were up in the trees and located a couple of female red-winged BB. Then we found a group of 7 female rusties which we watched for a bit until they flew high over our heads.

The rest of the morning was spent at our 3rd spot where I was able to get the photo above of a hermit thrush which winter in our area (click on it to enlarge). The morning also gave us red-bellied, downy, pileated and red-headed woodpeckers plus a yellow-bellied sapsucker. Some other birds seen included golden-crowned kinglet, carolina chickadee and wren, tufted titmouse, eastern bluebird and phoebe, brown thrasher, white-throated sparrow, american goldfinch and crow, turkey vulture, hooded merganser, mallard and canada goose--all local birds for us during the winter.

So week #52 + 1 day is nearly over with 47 birds seen or heard. My year to date total remains at 704 birds seen. Bob Ake has ended his full ABA area year at 731 birds, and his friend John Spahr saw 704 birds for his full ABA area year. This is the 2nd time 3 birders have seen 700+ birds in the same calendar year in the ABA area. At the bottom of the right hand column I have added a new section listing the birds I saw this year but were not ABA countable. I will be doing a few more blog entries over the next few days to offer some reflections and musings on this past year of birding, eating and travel. Stay tuned!

Only 3 Days Left in My Big Year

2010-12-29T08:55:00.007-05:00

It is Wednesday morning and I am still in Chapel Hill. Not only was the white-throated thrush not relocated, but Sunday morning was the last time anyone reported the black-vented oriole. The Monday post said over 30 birders searched until 5 PM but no one saw the oriole. There was no report at all about looking for or seeing the oriole on Tuesday. So I am still home, and at this point the chances of chasing another bird before the 31st look very slim.

The top photo above is of 7 beanie babies that my 20 year old daughter found in her long neglected collection. Each was gift wrapped for me for Christmas morning, and the 7 represent seeing 700 birds this year. The bottom photo is my 29 year old artist son's rendition of a slaty-backed gull that he made in honor of my 700th bird seen. If you check my list to the right side of the blog you will see that the gyrfalcon is listed as #700, but when my son checked the list the slaty-backed was recorded as the 700th bird seen. So an explanation is in order.

Since I entered the first 247 birds back in early February in the order that they appear in the ABA trip list, I continued throughout the year to follow that method for each new posting. I did the same initially when I entered gyrfalcon, slaty-backed gull and brown shrike on December 11. Also, remember that at that time I had not yet discovered that I had seen 3 more birds earlier in the year, so I thought these 3 were birds #696, #697 and #698 for the year. After I completed the review of my list they moved up 3 spots. Finally, even though I had been following the entry order as described all year long, I later decided that I would list these 3 birds in the exact order in which I saw them. As a result the order was changed because the gyrfalcon was the 700th species seen by me this year. I am hoping that my son will also make me a piece of art of a gyrfalcon.

We still have snow on the ground so our feeders have continued to host lots of birds. As a result, I found a female cooper's hawk sitting on my feeders yesterday which of course meant not another bird was in sight. I have seen 7 more birds for the week, and am planning to do some birding today since it is going to be so nice out--sunny and near 50. The travel map has been updated, and it might be the final one barring a last minute rarity. Stay tuned!

CBC in Chapel Hill

2010-12-26T22:45:00.003-05:00

It is the day known as boxing day in England. It began snowing here in Chapel Hill about 8 PM on Christmas, and this morning we awoke to a lovely winter wonderland (photo above of the front door of our house). My friends Pam and Perry who live across the creek from us have been doing the CBC for 25 years in this local area which includes the 230 acres that we live on. I joined them this morning for 2 hours.

Because of the snow most of the birds seen were at my feeders. The highlight was 4 female and 2 male purple finches. When I started this big year on January 1st, I had a single female purple finch which at that time was a new bird for our property. Having 6 in all this morning was a real treat, and seemed a fitting find near the end of my birding adventure.

We walked several of our trails, looking and listening for other birds, but with the fresh snow it seemed that most birds were probably hunkering down trying to stay warm. The snow was still falling lightly this morning as we walked, but with no wind it was a delightful and magical stroll. With the snow starting last nite, this is the first time since 1947 that snow has fallen on Christmas day here in Chapel Hill.

We saw 24 birds this morning. This evening I checked Narba to find that the black-vented oriole was seen for the 5th day in a row at Bentsen, but the white-throated thrush found 2 days ago in the valley was not relocated. As a result, I am going to stay in a holding pattern about going down to south Texas to see if the thrush is refound. If it is, then I will probably make the decision to fly down there. Stay tuned!

Christmas Eve--Back Home

2010-12-24T15:23:00.003-05:00

Today is the beginning of the 52nd week of my big year. I have just returned from a quick visit to Columbia, MO where we surprised my brother Jon for his 60th birthday. My son and daughter are home for Christmas, so I will not be traveling after any birds for the next few days. I plan on Sunday to participate in our local CBC with our friends Pam and Perry.

The black-vented oriole that was seen last week at Bentsen RGV state park showed up again on Wed. and has been seen now 3 days in a row. Bob Ake is flying down today in hopes of seeing it tomorrow. I will be waiting to see if it stays around into next week, and then will decide whether to make a try to see it. Stay tuned!

Surprise for Brother Jon's 60th Birthday

2010-12-22T07:49:00.011-05:00

It is early on Wednesday morning and I am in Columbia, MO where I spent my early years. My brother Jon who is a year younger is turning 60 tomorrow. My sister Maria and Jon's wife Candy decided back in September that we should surprise him by all showing up here this week. So my sis and her partner David, and my other brother Alex and his wife Betsy took 2 days to drive to Columbia from North Carolina. I was up at 3:45 yesterday morning to catch my 6 AM flight from Boston to St. Louis. Last nite we walked into a solstice party that he was attending, and completely surprised him. He was actually shaking when I gave him a big hug.

But I am a bit ahead of myself. Monday morning I got up hoping to find some rarity had been reported in the Boston, or New England area, but none were. The weather was overcast, and winds were out of the NW rather than the NE, so I went to look for the pink-footed goose again because I had not seen it very well a couple of weeks ago. It took me about 45 minutes of scanning 2 large groups of canada geese to find it hunkered down on the ground. It then got up and fed a bit. It was too far away to photograph, but the views were quite good.

Next up for the day was to visit a middle eastern bakery and cafe named Sofra in Cambridge. My friend Lex had told me about it, so my friend Marcy and I had lunch there. The top photo is of a flatbread sandwich filled with sausage, hot peppers, green olives and spices. It was very tasty. Marcy had the mezze plate--5 different small servings of vegetarian goodies like smoked eggplant, lentils, and brussel sprouts all seasoned in different ways.

We then caught the 1 PM showing of the Fighter which is based on a true story about a local boxer from Lowell, MA. When we came out of the movie to head home it was beginning to snow. By 6:30 it had not accumulated that much, so we drove into downtown Boston to eat at Picco. Cobb, a friend of Lex's, had told me the week before that I really needed to try the pizza at Picco. We first had a piece of balsamic glazed pork belly with arugula that was the dish of the nite (middle photo--sorry for the dark, grainy phone photo). Marcy and I shared it, but it was so good that we had to order another one.

Next on our menu was the evening pasta special--pumpkin ravioli in a sage butter sauce (bottom photo). This was oh so good. The pasta was paper thin, the pumpkin was slightly sweet which went perfectly with the sage and butter.

Last we tried 3 different pizzas (no photos because they were too dark and grainy). I had the basic margarita which is always a good test of a pizza place. Marcy had what turned out to be a fine combo of sausage with broccoli rabe. Richard, her husband, had a vegie topped pie. We all thought the crust was quite good as was the fresh mozzarella, but the pizza maker could have done a better job forming the pizza. There was too large an edge. If the pie had been pulled out a bit further, then the edge would have been right, and the ingredients on top would have been spread thinner which is also a key to a great pie.

I have been checking the web to see if any rarities are around, but the last few days has been very slow. A little stint was found at Point Reyes in CA but was seen only that day. A western spindalis was seen for all of 30 seconds down in the Miami area. I saw this morning that a thick-billed murre was seen from the Monhegan ferry in Maine on the 17th, but not reported until mid day on the 20th!

I will be hanging out with my family today to celebrate Jon's birthday. Depending on the weather, I may do some birding around Columbia tomorrow before driving back into St. Louis in the evening in order to be ready to fly home early on Friday. Stay tuned!

CBC at Cape Ann, MA

2010-12-19T17:02:00.009-05:00

I flew up to Boston yesterday morning so that I could participate in the Christmas Bird Count on Cape Ann, MA. I chose this CBC because my contacts in MA told me my best shot at finding a thick-billed murre would be to do a sea watch at Point Andrews on Cape Ann. I met the bird counting group at 7 AM at Friendly's for the organizing session, and was out at the sea watch spot by 7:45. I spent the next seven very cold hours with Brian and Tim scoping the sea.

The day began with overcast skies and the occasional snow flurry. By noon the sun finally broke thru for about an hour before the skies started to cloud up again. By the time we packed it in at 3:15 it was very cloudy and decidedly colder. The views out to the ocean were very clear, and the seas were relatively calm (top photo) which was good since most of the birds we saw were flying by rather than sitting on the water. We saw many birds with the highlights being about 40 dovekies, roughly 200 razorbills including 1 that sat on the water very near our viewing spot, a pacific loon (rare in the east), a first year king eider, and a small flock of cedar waxwings with one bohemian waxwing mixed in.

The most common close in birds of the day were the harlequin ducks (bottom photo above taken by me earlier this year of harlequins in WA--click on it to enlarge). We also saw lots of black, surf and white-winged scoters; many common eiders; and a few long-tailed ducks, common loons, red-necked grebes, great cormorants, black-legged kittiwakes, and red-breasted mergansers. After 7+ hours of active scanning, only 1 bird might have been a thick-billed murre, but I did not see it well enough to make the call.

I am now trying to warm up at my friends in Lincoln, watching football and waiting for the Patriots game to begin this evening. For this week I have seen 39 birds. I will be checking the internet to see if any of the other CBC's in this area found a rarity that I can go look for tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Feeling a Bit Sheepish But Elated

2010-12-17T09:53:00.018-05:00

When I found out yesterday that I had a double entry for scissor-tailed flycatcher, I was very concerned that there might be other entry errors. So I first checked the list on the blog and found 3 more dupes--american redstart, semipalmated plover, and california gull. Then I decided to review all my weekly checklists. I have been using the ABA trip list--a blue covered booklet that has space for 10 days of birding. I have started a new one each week so I have only used 7 of the slots. My weeks start on Friday because 2010 began on a Friday.

I also have a master list derived from the weekly trip lists. I went thru it 4 times to check for errors and found none there. But what I did find from my paper master list is that in fact I have seen 704 species this year--not the 701 that I thought was my total as of yesterday. Once I discovered that I knew I had made other entry errors on the blog. The main problem was a result of not adding the monthly chronology of birds seen until the beginning of February when I listed well over 200 birds. I found that I had not entered 4 birds from that 4+ week period--northern harrier, blue-headed vireo, forster's tern and hermit thrush.

Of these 4, only forster's tern had been logged later in February. Also, I found a dupe of california gull in February, but I had not entered summer tanager so it made up for the CA gull dupe. I found 2 entries for american redstart, but the second entry should have been northern waterthrush. Similarly, the second entry for scissor-tailed flycatcher should have been golden-cheeked warbler, and a 2nd entry for semipalmated plover should have been semipalmated sandpiper.

I have now corrected the chronology on the right side of my blog page. I also have gone back into the blog, and corrected/modified the YTD info to match what actually happened as far as the birds seen. I want to thank the 2 readers who have pointed out the errors since it caused me to thoroughly review my check lists to be able to correct the errors. There are still some days left to bird. Stay tuned!

Bird Poop on My Face!

2010-12-16T16:52:00.010-05:00

I just received an email saying that somehow I have scissor-tailed flycatcher on my list twice. There is also a comment on my last entry pointing this out (see comment #7). Therefore, my YTD may not be 701 (after review and correcting, 704), but 700 (703). I am going to go over the list very carefully, plus check my field notes, to make sure that there are no other errors. But I first have to go out to dinner. Stay tuned!

Hoary and Common Redpolls!

2010-12-14T20:40:00.012-05:00

I flew to Minneapolis yesterday and then drove part way to Valley City, ND where I was hoping to see hoary and common redpolls this morning. I was up at 5:30 AM to cover the last 115 miles. It was still dark when I arrived in Valley City so I stopped at the Broken Spoke Cafe to have your basic eggs over-easy breakfast with bacon, hash browns and an english muffin.

I then called Jean Legge, the birder and woman who has the feeders, to get directions to her house. When I arrived about 8:15 she told me that the redpolls would come in about 9. While we waited, we watched her feeders thru her kitchen window (a great benefit since it was about 10 degrees outside, and the birds could not easily see us), and enjoyed a large group of american goldfinches, quite a few black-capped chickadees, 2 white-breasted nuthatches, 2 pine siskins, a couple of house sparrows, a hairy and a downy woodpecker, and 1 troublesome blue jay. Once he had his fill and flew off, the redpolls began to come in. There were only 2 at first, but as I was leaving a total of 5 appeared.

The top 2 photos were taken by Jean who has a better camera than mine. In the 1st you have a single hoary, and the next one has 3 commons feeding. The 3rd photo down is also of a common redpoll that I took while it snapped up seeds on the snow. The hoary mostly stayed away from the feeders, but I was able to study it and saw its very white back and tail, and its mostly white breast.

A little after 10 I hit the road to make it back to Minneapolis in time to fly to Texas in case the black-vented oriole that was seen there yesterday was relocated. As I arrived into Minneapolis I saw on Narba that after several hours of searching by at least 20 birders this morning the oriole was not found. So I decided to visit Matt's Bar (bottom photo of the grill man at work) to have my 3rd juicy lucy hamburger of this big year. It was as good as the first 2.

9 more new birds were seen for the week, and the hoary and common redpolls raise the YTD to 704. When asked last month about reaching 700 birds for the year, I said that the chances were "slim and none at all, and slim had just left town." Today not only is "slim back in town" he is sitting in the mayor's office with his feet up on the desk drinking a fine single malt scotch. I have added an updated travel map. It looks like I will be heading home early tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!

Icing on the Northern CA cake--Arctic Loon

2010-12-13T01:08:00.009-05:00

Today was supposed to be much better weatherwise, but at 8 AM it was misty and overcast. Fortunately, it did begin to lighten up, and as the day went on we even saw a bit of sunshine. Wes and I had a big breakfast at Denny's, and then went back to the brown shrike spot to get better views, and maybe a photo.

When we arrived Bob and John were at the favored viewing site along with a few other birders. The bird had already been found near to where we had seen it yesterday. About 10 minutes later I said to Wes, look at that brown bush where it had been seen. Sure enough he found the shrike in his scope. For the next 15 minutes we were able to get short views of it as it would move about.

Wes then walked down to the general area in which it was feeding, but as was the case on previous days, when a person got too close, the shrike would stop moving about. After about 30 minutes of no success in getting a picture, we were going to drive down to the north jetty outside of Eureka when John Spahr called to say that he thought he had an arctic loon at Stone Lagoon. He had gone up there to look for a tufted duck that has been there, but instead saw the loon.

We all raced up the road for 20 miles to the lagoon. We got out and scoped the water, and there it was--an arctic loon in winter plumage. It was quite far out on the lagoon, so we moved around to another location, but could not relocate the bird. Wes did find the tufted duck before John had to leave to catch his plane to San Fran, and then onto Calgary where he will be looking for snowy owl, gray partridge and white-winged crossbill.

Wes and I then turned back south and stopped briefly to photograph the bull elks (top pic). From there we did go out to the north jetty to check on the seabirds. As we were walking out an ancient murrelet was feeding right next to the jetty (middle photo--click on it to enlarge). Out at the end of the jetty we saw many birds including the brown pelican, and double-crested and pelagic cormorants (bottom photo).

We pulled ourselves away to give us some time to stop one more time at the Loleta bottoms to look again for the gyrfalcon and the slaty-backed gull. We found neither, but we ran into several local birders that Wes knew who were out looking for the same 2 birds. We told them about the loon, and they told us an arctic loon had been on that lagoon the past 2 winters.

About 3:30 we started the long drive back to San Francisco. Bob Ake was ahead of us in his own car, and was already at our motel when I arrived about 9. He is flying up to Spokane, WA tomorrow to look for a gray partridge. 15 new birds were seen for the week, and the arctic loon was the 702nd new bird for the year.

I spoke with the woman in North Dakota who has the common and hoary redpolls coming to her feeder, She told me she had seen the birds again today, so tomorrow I will be catching a 6:30 AM flight to Chicago, and then onto Minneapolis. I will drive to Fargo for the nite, and will hopefully be looking at the redpolls early on Tuesday morning. Stay tuned!

A Double Red Letter Day Plus!!!

2010-12-11T20:59:00.028-05:00

What a day we had today. After spending 7 hours yesterday in which over half the time it was raining, we only had a near miss on seeing the brown shrike up here just north of Arcata, CA. I had flown into San Fran 2 days ago and Wes picked me up for our 6 hour drive up to Arcata. We were at the brown shrike site about 9 AM where we found Martin Meyers, a very good birder from Nevada that I had met earlier this year.

The rain started soon after we began our stake-out. Over the next 6 hours we saw 1 fly-by that could have been the shrike, and heard what we thought was the shrike call twice, but we could not find the bird. We did see lots of sparrows including swamp, song, lincoln's and white-crowned.

At 3 we saw 2 birders on the other side of the north pond high fiving. We made the error of moving towards their position instead of looping around the other direction in order to get across the wet area to be in the right place to try for the bird. They moved to where we should have been and found the bird again, but by the time we got there it had disappeared. Now it was 3:30 and we decided to call it a day.

This morning we were out birding first in the Loleta bottoms hoping to see a gyrfalcon that had been spotted there 3 days ago. John Spahr had joined us. He is the birder who has birded often with Bob Ake this year, and as a result he arrived in Arcata with 699 birds for his full ABA area big year. We found no gyrfalcon this morning, but saw lots of shorebirds including 20 pacific golden plovers, an equal number of black-bellied plovers, many killdeer, wilson's snipe and dunlins.

We finally made it to the shrike site about 10 under overcast but dry skies. Wes set up his scope at the spot that the birders from yesterday afternoon had 1st seen the bird. John, Martin and I fanned out looking for the bird toward the south pond. We talked to a woman birder from Phoenix, AZ that I had met on some pelagic trips back in late May out of Hatteras, NC. She had heard the shrike, and another birder had seen it briefly about 8:30. The photo above of the brown shrike was taken by Sean McAllister a couple of weeks ago.

At 11:20 Wes calls me on my cell and says to come to him that they were looking at the shrike in his scope. I was probably 300 yards away, and by the time I got to him the shrike had disappeared. Fortunately 15 minutes later it reappeared and I was able to get a brief look at it sitting about 1 foot off the ground in a bush. John, however, did not find it. Soon it began to lightly rain, so we went into town to regroup and have some lunch. After eating John decided to go back to look for the shrike.

Wes and I headed back down to the Loleta bottoms to look some more for the gyrfalcon. Martin met us there. Just as we turned onto Cannibal Island rd. we saw a huge number of blackbirds and starlings flying across the road. Right behind them we saw a gyrfalcon chasing after them. It circled back around and we proceeded to chase it down the road. We briefly lost sight of it, so we stopped to scan the area. We looked up on the wires to find it sitting only about 100 feet from us. When we got out of the car it flew off, and we lost it again as it flew towards a large red dairy barn.

We drove the length of Cannibal Island rd scanning for it, but did not relocate it. On the way back we checked out the shorebirds again. Then Wes and I saw a large group of gulls feeding in a dairy pasture. We drove down to see what all was there. We found lots of mew gulls, and glaucous-winged gulls, a few herring and thayer's gulls, 2 or 3 western gulls, a glaucous gull, and a slaty-backed gull. I had been hoping to see a slaty-backed this month because there have been a few found in recent years on the west coast. The only 1 confirmed this year in the lower 48 states was up in Wisconsin about 3 weeks ago.

When we got back to our motel we heard from John that he did get to see the shrike this afternoon, so he is now the 12th person to see at least 700 birds in the full ABA area in a calendar year. And on Thursday in Newfoundland Bob Ake saw a black-tailed gull which raised his total to 728. He is now all alone in 2nd place for a full ABA area big year. He will be here tomorrow to look again for the shrike.

For the first 2 days of week #50 we saw 51 birds. The brown shrike and gyrfalcon are both life birds (for Wes too) as well as new year birds. The slaty-backed gull is also a new year bird. So this post is justifiably titled A Double Red Letter Day Plus. The YTD is now at 701 which makes me the first birder to see 700 or more birds in a calendar year in just the lower 48 states.

Tomorrow Wes and I will bird in this area some more, including trying in the morning to get some photos of the shrike. I will be back in San Francisco tomorrow nite so that I can fly to Minneapolis on Monday. I will then drive to Valley City, ND to look for both common and hoary redpolls that have been visiting a feeder at a home there. Stay tuned!

California Bound

2010-12-08T19:02:00.005-05:00

I actually got to go birding today--not chasing but birding. I woke up to a temp of 17 degrees but had planned to bird this morning with my friend Pam. I picked her up at 8:30 and we headed over to a local spot to see what was there. As soon as we got out of the car we had lots of birds hungrily looking for food--song sparrow, brown creeper, brown-headed nuthatch, and yellow-rumped warbler. Next we found a group of eastern bluebirds (top photo). Soon after we spied 2 river otters climb out of an ice hole and then scamper down the frozen-over New Hope Creek. I don't think I had ever seen river otters out of the water for that long of a period. Usually they duck under as soon as they see you.

We walked the area and by the time we started back out we had seen several red-headed woodpeckers plus northern flicker, yellow-bellied sapsucker, downy, red-bellied, and pileated woodpeckers. At one point a group of about 20 blackbirds flew into the top of a sweetgum tree. We were hoping they were rusties, but after glassing them it was apparent that they were all female red winged. A great blue heron was perched up on a dead tree preening in the sun.

We then went to a 2nd close by spot, and also had lots of bird activity with pretty much the same birds. Our 3rd stop was not as active but we did have a hairy woodpecker raising our woodpecker, et. al. species total to 7 which is the most I have seen in 1 day. Our final stop was back at Mason Farm where we had some new birds including winter wren, pine siskin, ruby crowned kinglet, brown thrasher, eastern towhee, fox sparrow and several white-throated sparrows (middle photo--remember to click on pic to enlarge it). On our way back to the car we flushed a cooper's hawk.

When I got back home I found a possum digging around under my feeders (bottom photo). It climbed up into a tree when I approached. It was quite colorful with its pink feet, nose and ends of its ears. After today's birding the week count of birds is at 67. It is now Wednesday evening and I am getting packed for an early flight tomorrow to CA to try for the shrike again. Stay tuned!

A Snow Covered Morning in Chapel Hill

2010-12-05T09:22:00.004-05:00

It is Sunday morning and as the picture above shows we had a nice little bit of snow starting yesterday afternoon here in Chapel Hill. I have been coming to or living in Chapel Hill since the mid 70's and my experience of winter over that 35 year period is one of my personal reference points about global warming. This part of NC rarely sees significant, if any, snow now.

It has been nice to be home since Friday evening, getting some rest and quality time with my wife. This last phase of a big year is really not to my liking since I much prefer to just go birding rather than constantly being ready to "chase" the next rarity. I have rarely done "chasing or twitching" in the past. Most of my rare birds have happened because I was already birding somewhere when one showed up, or because I made a point of birding in a place like Gambell, on St Lawrence Island, AK.

I want to thank some of the followers of this blog for their suggestions/assistance lately about reaching my now final goal of seeing 700 different birds before the end of this year. I listed recently some of the more likely rarities that might be seen, and have received in the comments some ideas about finding these birds. The really rare code 4 or 5 birds I will find out about immediately on Narba. For timely info on gyrfalcons, redpolls and thick-billed murres I will need to constantly scan the internet bird sites or hear from my birding contacts, or readers of this blog.

Other than the common redpoll and the thick-billed murre, which I plan to search for the week before Xmas up in New England, most of the other rarities are much more iffy in where they could show up. For example, slaty-backed gulls could be on the west coast or the upper midwest. Gyrfalcons could appear in WA, the plains states, the upper midwest or New England. So I have to be ready to hop a plane as soon as one is found. As a result, I am currently waiting a few days before returning to the west coast to try for the brown shrike again in hopes of some other rarities also being seen out there. In the mean time maybe a western spindalis or a loggerhead kingbird will show up in FL. Stay tuned!

I Thought I Was Going to Boston, But Ended Up in AZ

2010-12-03T20:59:00.008-05:00

When I woke up yesterday morning I had decided since the sun was supposed to be shining in northern CA that I would drive back up to try for the brown shrike again today. At about 9 AM I got word that a lapwing had been seen in the past hour at Plum Island outside of Boston. I also still need to go to New England to look for the common redpoll and thick-billed murre, so I made a reservation to fly to Boston on American. Bob Ake decided to go back to VA first flying on Southwest, and then was going to come up to Boston.

When I arrived in Dallas about 7 PM I got a call that a baikal teal--a rarity from Asia--had been found that afternoon just outside of Phoenix. I did not get back on my plane to Boston. Instead I bought a new ticket for the 10 PM flight to Phoenix, and was asleep a little after 1 AM in my motel room. I was up at 6 this morning and arrived at the Gilbert Water Ranch about 7. When I walked up to the spot where the teal had been seen yesterday there were already 15 birders there enjoying good views of the teal. The top photo was taken by Brendon Grice. Gary Nunn who had found the teal was also there--a transplanted brit--who was having a bad work day yesterday so he went birding!

The challenge with a baikal teal is that sometimes they are kept as pets, so there is always some question about whether any given bird is in fact wild, or just an escapee. The good news about this particular bird is that it appears to be a 1st year male with no bands on its legs or clipping of its feet/toes based on the many photos taken. It has appeared in a place and at a time that fits previous accepted vagrant sightings. Finally, this year is generating so many "northern" and Asian birds that it is not surprising that a baikal teal would make an appearance.

That said, like the white-cheeked pintail that I saw a month ago in NC and will be reviewed by the NC bird committee, the AZ bird committee will study the"evidence" and determine if this bird is deemed to be wild. Unlike the white-cheeked, this teal has a much higher probability of being accepted as a wild bird. Therefore, while I have put the white-cheeked on a provisional status for my big year, today I am going to count the teal.

I also was able to bird around the Gilbert Water Ranch some and took a photo (bottom) of 3 peach-faced lovebirds that have been expanding there numbers in the Phoenix area for over 20 years. As a result, I was told by Gary Nunn that the AZ bird committee will be considering this year whether to add them to the state bird list as an established exotic. As I left to go back to the airport, there were still 20 birders looking at the teal as it was flushed probably by a cooper's hawk, and more birders were pouring in from the parking lot. Bob is flying as I type to AZ.

Today is the beginning of week #49 and 29 new birds were seen. The baikal teal is a life bird and raises the YTD up to 698. I am writing this blog entry at home, having arrived here this evening. While sitting in the airport in Chicago, I heard as I had suspected would happen that the brown shrike was seen again today. I may be heading back to CA very soon. Stay tuned!

Still Shrikeless

2010-12-02T00:08:00.014-05:00

Today is December 1st, my birthday, so I had my fingers crossed that we would see the brown shrike today. After 9 hours of sleep last nite, we were out in the heavy mist by 9 AM, prowling thru the sand dunes and wetlands listening and looking for the shrike. Like yesterday, there were about 10 other birders out there with us. Alas, after all the other birders had left, we called it a day about 1 PM without finding our elusive quarry. We saw 5 more new birds for the week. Because it was raining today, I again did not take any new pics, so I have put a photo of an eastern screech owl that I took down in south Texas earlier in the year (click on it to enlarge).

We grabbed a quick lunch, and checked the web to see if any new rarities had been found today. None were in the lower 48 states, so after sorting thru my options with Bob and Wes, I have decided to stay here in San Fran for now to see what develops with the shrike, or some other bird. Bob is heading home so that he can then go up to Newfoundland to try to see both black-tailed, and a yellow-legged gulls. I did get an email this evening from John Puschock telling me that 2 gyrfalcons have been seen near Moscow, ID recently. This is one of the birds that I am hoping to see before the end of the year, so I need to get some more info about this possibility.

On the way to our motel for the nite, we stopped in San Fran for a quick dinner at my favorite SF chinese restaurant--Hunan. I talked about this place earlier in the year when I ate there with my son Caleb. Since I was not home to eat a celebratory meal with my wife, it was great to share a birthday dinner with Bob and Wes at a place that I have been eating at for over 30 years. They let me pick the dishes and they seemed quite happy with the results.

There are only 30 more days in this big year. I said a few weeks ago after I had seen 688 birds that I was raising my year end target to 695 birds. With 697 now seen, and the common redpoll an all but certainty, I am now within reach of the amazing level of 700 species seen in the lower 48 states. If rarities keep showing up at the rate they have in the past 3 weeks, then getting to 700 is looking much more probable. "Slim" is now back in the "town limits", but there is still some work and luck required for me to get to 700.

Based on sightings over the past few years, some rare birds I have not yet seen that have a greater probability of making a showing before the end of 2010 include the following:

gyrfalcon, slaty-backed gull, thick-billed murre, hoary redpoll, roadside hawk, emperor goose, ivory gull, eared quetzal, loggerhead kingbird, and white wagtail.

Given the large number of northern birds that have pushed down into the lower 48 states in recent weeks, other rarities such as the brown shrike might also be found. The travel map has been updated. Stay tuned!

Brown Shrike--no; Rock Sandpiper--yes!

2010-11-30T20:09:00.009-05:00

We arrived into San Fran just before 11 PM last nite, and Wes was at the curb to pick us up. We drove a couple of hours up to Ukiah, CA where we checked into a motel to get a bit of sleep--like 4 hours. On the road again at 5:30 AM, we made it to the brown shrike site by 9. It was overcast, a bit windy, but no rain. We walked the 1/2 mile out into the dunes area along with about 10 other birders. We all fanned out, and spent the rest of the morning in vain looking for the brown shrike.

We headed back into town to get a bite to eat, and to get on line to see what travel options we might have. We also checked the bird hotlines only to find that no new or recently missing rarities had been seen. We had met a couple of local birders at the shrike stake-out who told us where to go to see a rock sandpiper. As I have said recently, this is one of the birds that I missed earlier in the year, but still expected to find.

It began to rain as we approached the north jetty in Eureka, but we jumped out to walk it anyway. Out towards the end we found quite a few shorebirds--black turnstones, surfbirds, 1 wandering tattler, and 2 rock sandpipers. In the photo above you can see a rock sandpiper in the front with 2 surfbirds and a black turnstone behind it.

The rain stopped, so we stayed out on the jetty for awhile taking in the diversity of seabirds such as 2 pomarine jaegers harassing a black-legged kittiwake; harlequin ducks; black and surf scoters; red-throated and common loons; western grebes; common murres; pelagic and brandt's cormorants; and 2 brown pelicans. We finished the day with 38 new birds for the week, and the rock sandpiper raises the YTD up to 697.

We were hoping big time for the brown shrike because it is Bob Ake's birthday. It would have brought his big year total up to 724 which would be the 3rd highest total for an ABA area big year. He is tied for 3rd with Lynn Barber from Texas, and will undoubtedly move higher before the year is over. Double congrats to Bob for his big year total and his birthday!

We have now checked into our motel for the nite to get some much needed rest/sleep after the crazy travel of the past 3 days. It is supposed to rain tonite and tomorrow, but we are hoping that the front will stay more to the north allowing us to try again in the morning for the shrike. Stay tuned!

Streak-backed Oriole

2010-11-29T22:32:00.012-05:00

Bob Ake and I were on the road at 6:30 AM to make the 160 mile drive from Phoenix to look for the streak-backed oriole near Wellton, AZ. We arrived about 9:15 to find a sunny, chilly but very windy morning. We checked in with a couple of birders who gave us the most recent info about the bird. Chris Taylor had some very good pictures that he had put on the web (bottom photo), and the consensus this morning was that this oriole was definitely a streak-backed oriole--not a hybrid as had been speculated yesterday.

We spent the morning checking all the birds, most of which were hunkered down because of the wind. The top photo is of a group of mockingbirds that kept returning to this low dead shrub. About noon we decided to take a break and get some lunch which we found at a small cafe. Breakfast was the best choice on the short menu, so we chowed down on eggs, etc.

Back at the oriole site we found 3 more birders, including a woman Bob knew, who had driven in from Sierra Vista, AZ to try to find the bird. After about an hour they left, and right after the owner of the property told us she did not mind our walking in her yard to try to locate the oriole. Within 10 minutes we heard an oriole like chatter, and realized it must be in a very dense pomegranate tree. Sure enough we soon got some brief glimpses of it, and then with some "squeaking" it came out enough that Bob got a pretty good photo (middle).

As soon as we saw the bird we called the cell of the 3 birders who had just left, and they returned to try to see the bird. It stayed hidden for the next 20 minutes, so Bob and I decided to head back to Phoenix. We had talked with Wes Fritz in the morning and decided not to go to CA to try for the brown shrike because it had not been seen today, and the weather was going to get very rainy starting tomorrow afternoon. But on our way up to Phoenix we heard that the shrike had been seen this morning, and we quickly decided to head to San Francisco after all. So we are sitting at the airport waiting to board our plane.

We saw 23 more new birds for the week, and the streak-backed oriole brings the YTD up to 696. We are hoping for a trifecta tomorrow with the brown shrike. Stay tuned!

Tufted Flycatcher Instead of a Brown Shrike

2010-11-29T01:21:00.005-05:00

The brown shrike in northern CA went missing again, but the tufted flycatcher at Big Bend NP was refound, so yesterday morning I flew to Midland-Odessa, TX to be in position to drive 250 miles down to the park. I arrived about 1:30 PM and waited until 9:15 when Bob Ake--the birder from VA doing a full ABA big year--finally was able to get there. I watched several college football games that were not very exciting except for the LSU/Arkansas tussle.

We took off in our rental car only to have a flat 20 miles down the road. Bob managed in the dark to get the tire changed, and we returned to the airport to get a new vehicle. All of this meant we did not get to sleep at Fort Stockton until 1 AM. 5:40 came all too quickly, but we wanted to make sure we arrived at Big Bend plenty early. Unfortunately, in my haste to get to the site, I was pulled over just as I arrived by 2 very serious park police who pointed out that as I had passed them a few 100 hundreds back I was doing 54 in a 30 zone. My explanation that we were anxious to see the flycatcher did not make a bit of difference. They were "by the book" guys including insisting that we stay seated in our car.

As soon as they finished giving me a ticket, we jumped out and saw a birder--Jay Hand from Tucson, AZ--with his camera taking pics of the tufted flycatcher. It was a cool but sunny morning, and we joined in the photo parade. The bird is small, and mostly stayed 20 feet up in a large cottonwood doing his very animated flycatching routine. As a result my 2 photos above are not quite as good as I would have liked, but definitely show you what a tufted flycatcher looks like (click on the photos to enlarge). This is only the 5th record of this bird in the US, but is the 2nd one that I have seen.

We ran into a woman birder who had been on a pelagic trip with us back in the summer. She and another birder, and Bob and I took a stroll around the grassy area with a variety of trees checking out what other birds were around. It was a flycatcher morning--vermillion, ash-throated, and black and say's phoebes were feeding along with the tufted. We saw 29 birds today, and the tufted flycatcher raises the YTD to 695.

About 10 AM we decided to start back toward Midland-Odessa to make sure we got back in plenty of time to catch our flight to Phoenix. A streak-backed oriole was found near Yuma, AZ yesterday by Paul Lehman, so we are in Phoenix tonite and will drive early tomorrow morning to try to see the oriole. As we drove this morning we also heard that the brown shrike was found again, and a lapwing was found yesterday in Storrs, CT. Our plan is to fly to San Francisco tomorrow evening where Wes Fritz will pick us up for the 5 hour drive up to Arcata, CA to look for the shrike. Stay tuned!

Early Thanksgiving Morning

2010-11-25T06:52:00.004-05:00

It is early Thanksgiving morning, and since it is going to be a very full day, I wanted to get a posting out before all hell breaks loose. For starters, I want to talk a bit more about our recent trip to Italy. Having lived there for a year back in 2003-04, we have made some friends one of whom is Giulia. After we returned to NC in the summer of '04, Giulia and her friend Claudia came to the states and spent Thanksgiving with us. Since these 2 women had taken such good care of us at our favorite wine bar--Fuori Porta--it was a real treat for us to show them what an American Thanksgiving was all about. After visiting with us they then went to Austin, TX to see our friends Craig and Renee.

Because of these visits, Giulia's parents wanted to have us to their house the next time we visited Italy. So CKay and I went with Giulia to have a meal with her folks. It seemed like Thanksgiving all over again in that there was so much food that her mother had made--crostini fiorentini, pasta bolognese, pork, goat, potatoes, etc. Lots of wine was consumed along with her father's homemade grappa. And all the talk had to be mostly translated thru Giulia because her parents speak very little english.

On our most recent trip we went again and this time Craig and Renee joined us. Giulia made a great pureed squash and chick pea soup to start. Her father made the classic salt cod dish called baccala. The top photo is of Craig and partially of CKay with the huge skillet of baccala sitting in front of them. Like the first visit, we all had a fine time getting to know our friend Giulia's family a bit more, and sharing simple Tuscan food together.

Also when we lived in Florence, we spent a lot of time trying various pizza places. Most pizza in Florence is the very thin crust pies, but there are a few places that make the Napoli style pizza which has a crust more like what we are used to here in the states. Our favorite Napoli pizza joint was a 5 minute walk from our apartment. We would get a couple of margarita pizzas made with fresh mozzarella to take home where we would add our own extra toppings like arugula or prosciutto.

The bottom photo above is of Vicenzo, il pizzaiuolo (the pizza maker), and the margarita pizzas he made for us on our last trip. He makes pizzas 6 days a week from 7:30 PM until midnite, usually 4 at a time. When my daughter Jess would come with me to pick up the pizzas, he would make one in a heart shape for her. When Vicenzo goes on vacation, the pizza place is closed.

Changing the subject back to birding, today is the end of week #47. There are only 5 weeks left in this big year, but the flurry of rarities has continued. A tufted flycatcher was seen last Sunday at Big Bend NP, but not reported until Tuesday. Yesterday's search by local birders came up empty, but they are going to try again today. And the brown shrike was relocated in northern CA yesterday. So while I am very much looking forward to sharing a Thanksgiving meal with my family later today, I also am thinking about how to get to CA to try to see the shrike. Stay tuned!

Is 700 Species Possible in the Lower 48 States?

2010-11-23T15:57:00.019-05:00

It is Tuesday afternoon and I did not go to California yesterday morning. The brown shrike that was found early on Sunday disappeared by the end of the day, and has not yet been relocated. I knew this before I boarded my plane home on Sunday evening. While I would love to add a brown shrike to this big year, I have been quite happy being home the past 2 days, getting some needed rest. Plus, Thanksgiving is almost here.

I did go birding with my local birding buddy, Pam (top photo), this AM. It was unseasonably warm--over 70 degrees--and a bit windy because of the weather front that came in this afternoon. In the past week the leaves have mostly fallen, but as you can see in the pic, there is still some good fall color here in NC. We really did not see many birds, but did get a nice photo of the cedar waxwing (bottom photo). We also had a bald eagle fly over.

After my last post, Ned, a friend of Bob Ake's, commented that he was wondering if it was possible to see 700 species in just the lower 48 states in a calendar year. As I have said a few times in this now almost 11 month long blog, I originally did not think it was possible to see 700 different birds because of several factors.

The 1st is that when you study the probable birds you could find in the lower 48, the number is around 650. Second, each of the next 50 birds become increasingly more rare in their incidence in the lower 48. Third, when they are found, they often do not stay around long enough to travel any distance to their location before they have moved on.

Fourth, if any birder had seen more than 700 birds in the lower 48 states when doing a big year, I figured I would have read about it. Fifth, so far only 12 birders have seen over 700 birds in 1 year in the full ABA area. Finally, my goal was to use birding as a focalizer of a grand travel adventure for the year, and not necessarily to try to set a record.

As a result, I never even bothered to check until about 2 months ago to see what the record for the lower 48 states was. That is when I discovered the info I have shared recently. First, the ABA "official" record is 685 set in 2005 by my friend Dan Sanders. Second, Sandy Komito emailed me that when he set the full ABA area record back in 1998 of 745 birds, he saw 692 of those in the lower 48 states, but did not submit that number to the ABA.

With the good fortune of the past few days when I saw the fork-tailed flycatcher, the Ross' gull and the pink-footed goose, I am now at 694 birds for the year which means I am now the record holder (official and unofficial) for the lower 48 states. I also know, barring just horrendously bad luck, that I will see common redpoll and rock sandpiper before the end of the year.

I also said recently before seeing the last 3 rarities that I felt 695 was probable by year's end. Which finally gets me back to Ned's musing about 700 for the year. Over a month ago I suggested the chances were "slim and none at all, and slim had just left town". Now I have to say that slim has returned to the edge of town. Will 4 more rarities appear in the next 5 weeks, and will I be able to reach them--maybe.

What I do know because of the number of rarities that have already shown up this year, that seeing 700 bird species in the lower 48 states is doable. In fact, if I somehow had been able to see all of the following rarities that did come to the lower 48 already this year, then I would be over 700.

For starters, I did not decide to chase after rarities until July. As a result, in the winter I missed the amazon kingfisher, tamaulipas crow, and roadside hawk in TX, and the ivory gull in both MA and GA. I missed the western spindalis in April, and the bahama mockingbird in May in FL. I chose not to chase a red-necked stint in MA in July, and a lesser sand plover in WA in September because I doubted they would stay around long enough.

Some 1 day wonders this year included an aztec thrush in March, black-vented oriole in April, and a green violetear in September in TX; a common ringed plover in MA in September; and an arctic loon and horned puffin in WA in October. The recent thick-billed vireo in FL was seen and photographed but not reported for 4 more days, and by the time it was confirmed, it also disappeared. And I missed the most recent ivory gull in CA by 6 hours.

Some pelagic birds seen this year on other trips than the ones I took included great-winged, herald and white-chinned petrels; wedge-tailed, black-bellied and white-faced storm-petrels; and short-tailed albatross.

Hindsight shows that I could have reached in time the amazon kingfisher, the bahama mockingbird, the roadside hawk, the winter ivory gulls, and the red-necked stint. Therefore, at a minimum I would have 5 more year birds as of today, and at a maximum there are a total of 19 rare birds that came to the lower 48 states that I was not able to see. If I had, then my YTD number would be at 713 which means hypothetically, Ned, it would have been possible this year to see 700 birds in the lower 48. And with 5 weeks to go I will still be trying to do just that! Stay tuned!

Even I Don't believe What I Did the Past 48 Hrs

2010-11-21T17:27:00.011-05:00

It is Sunday afternoon about 6 PM and I am back in the Boston area getting ready to fly home again. But you say, "I thought he was in Denver". I was there for all of 7 hours yesterday. I was on my flight to Denver yesterday morning at 6:20, landed at 11, and was watching the bird (top 2 photos) at noon with a group of local birders (bottom photo). The bird was not close, so I could not get my own pics and instead have downloaded the small photos above taken by Glenn Walbek, the birder who found the gull. It was great to see this bird because the only other Ross' gull I ever saw was back in 1975 in Newburyport, MA. I was told by the local birders that it was only the 3rd Ross' gull for Colorado.

While I was enjoying seeing the 693rd bird for the year I received a call telling me that the pink-footed goose I missed outside of Boston was relocated. I called American and booked myself to fly back to Boston rather than Raleigh. I arrived in Boston this morning at 1:30 and was picked up by my friend Richard who took me to his house to get some sleep.

I was out at the new site for the pink-footed (only the 3rd one ever seen in MA) about 8 AM and before 9 several other birders had arrived when the goose was found mixed in with a large group of canada geese. Unfortunately, we were only getting very frustrating 1-2 second looks of its head as it would raise it ever so briefly while feeding. After about 20 minutes the goose made a very short flight to another spot that we could not even see from the edge of the field it was in, and we could not try to get closer because of the "do not trespass" signs.

I decided to not waste any more time hoping it would reappear and instead drove an hour over to Plum Island to see if I could find a gyrfalcon that was reported from there on Saturday. On my way in I stopped at the local seafood cafe and ate some pretty good fried clams.

It was a beautiful, chilly day with lots of birds around including about 20 hooded mergansers, a rough-legged hawk and a eurasian wigeon. I spent 4 hours thoroughly enjoying the late fall day and all the birds at the refuge. As the sun was getting low in the sky I decided to head back to my friend's house, stopping at the cafe again to pick up a lobster roll for the road.

23 more birds were seen over the past 2 days for the week, and the gull and goose bring the YTD up to 694. I will be flying home in a couple of hours, but I just heard that a brown shrike--a rarity from the asia--was found today in northern CA. I may be on another flight early tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Fork-tailed Flycatcher!

2010-11-19T19:07:00.014-05:00

About 11:45 Wednesday morning I found out that a fork-tailed flycatcher was seen that morning at a small park in Stamford, CT. I checked the airline schedule and found I could catch a 2 PM flight to NYC. I was supposed to arrive at 3:25 which meant I could make the 40 mile drive up to Stamford just in time to see the bird before dark. The plane pulled away from the gate at 2 PM and immediately its engines were turned off because of high winds in NYC had caused a delay.
We finally took off at 3 PM, arriving in NYC about 4:20, but by the time I got my rental car, and made the drive with fortunately little traffic, it was totally dark at the park. So I grabbed a motel room hoping that on Thursday morning the bird would still be there.

I pulled into the parking lot at 6:30 AM to find about 10 other birders with scopes and cameras in the adjacent natural area waiting to spy the fork-tailed. It was sunny but quite chilly. About 7 AM one of the birders found it perched in a tree. We all moved closer, but it was still too far away for my camera. I asked one of the photographers to email me a pic, but he did not do it. (In 2011 I met Doug Koch who had seen the same fork-tailed flycatcher, and he sent me the photo above that I was able to add to this post).

Also on Wed. afternoon I received a report of a pink-footed goose near Boston, MA and a possible thick-billed vireo in Miami, FL. Having spent 30 minutes enjoying the flycatcher, I decided to make the 3 hour drive up to Boston in hopes of quickly finding the goose so that I could drive back to NYC yesterday afternoon to be able to fly to Miami. On my way up I received confirmation that a thick-billed vireo was in Miami.

About 10:30 AM as I was getting close to the pink-footed site I saw a bunch of cars, and people with scopes scanning a field full of geese. It was not where the pink-footed had been seen, but I pulled in to find it was the location of a barnacle goose that had been in the area for a few weeks. Another couple arrived at the same time. I had met the husband at the hawk tower at Bentsen Rio Grande SP back in March. They were on their way from upstate NY to FL but had detoured thru MA to see the 2 geese, and then planned to stop in to see the fork-tailed in CT. The 2nd photo shows the barnacle goose with some canada geese around it (center facing left--smaller, white face and dark throat, neck and upper chest with a gray/black back). This is a bird I saw way back in January in NJ (click on photo to enlarge).

I then went to the pink-footed site, but yesterday there were no geese there, just a large group of turkeys. Since the pink-footed goose has only been recorded twice before in MA, there were lots of local birders out checking the surrounding fields. Because the farmer who owned the field said that the geese came in every afternoon, I decided to "stake-out" the field as did several other birders. I was the last to depart at dusk without a single goose landing in the field--just a few flyovers.

After staying with good friends in Lincoln, I was back on goose patrol this morning at 6:30, checking several possible fields, plus a large reservoir. I found plenty of canada geese on the reservoir, but very few geese in the fields, and none again landed at the primary pink-footed goose site. I had made a reservation this morning to fly to Miami this evening, so at 11 I started driving back to NYC to drop off my rental car. Enroute I spoke with the Miami birder who had confirmed the vireo yesterday. He said this morning 10 birders searched for the vireo but did not relocate it. So instead I flew home to NC late this afternoon.

Today is the beginning of week #47. A total of 22 birds were seen. The fork-tailed flycatcher is a life bird and raises the YTD to 692. As I was driving home from the airport this evening I got a call from Bob Ake telling me that an adult ross' gull was found at a reservoir near Denver, CO. I have a plane reservation for 6:20 AM tomorrow to chase this latest rarity. Stay tuned!

Home Waiting for the Next Rarity

2010-11-16T23:18:00.007-05:00

It is Tuesday evening and I just finished watching with my wife the 6th Harry Potter movie in preparation for the 7th one that will be released this Friday. My daughter will be home next week for Thanksgiving and as with the previous 6 movies we will be seeing it together. I also just reread the 7th book to be ready for the new movie. Obviously if I have time to be doing all this it means that I am still in NC patiently waiting for another rare bird to show up that I have not yet seen this year.

The photos above are more of the food we ate while visiting Florence, Italy recently. The top is a plate of grilled vegies with a very special cheese called buratta. It is hard to describe but essentially it is similar to a fresh mozzarella on the outside and cottage cheese like on the inside. My wife eats this plate almost every lunch at our favorite wine bar, Fuori Porta. The middle photo is of fresh taglierini with baby artichokes, a dish we ate at our favorite Florentine restaurant, Buca' dell Orafo. The bottom photo is what was left of a dozen grilled fresh porcini mushroom caps that we all shared at Buca. One reason we like being in Italy in the fall is to be able to eat fresh porcini. I also had as good a risotto as I have ever had made with a different wild mushroom called finferle that is somewhat like a chanterelle.

After my last posting I was asked if I knew Sandy Komito and whether he was still actively birding. I have never crossed his path as far as I know, but have obviously communicated with him recently to get the info about his lower 48 number from 1998. Sandy is now in his late 70's, but still does get out to bird from what I have been told. For example, he was on one of Debi Shearwater's pelagic trips this past summer.

Since I have no new big year bird sightings of my own to report, I suggest you check out Bob Ake's doings on the link to his blog on my blogsite. He just saw the taiga bean-goose today, and is on his way to TX next to try to see a crimson-collared grosbeak--a bird I saw back in February. While I am glad to have a bit of time at home, I am hoping for a rarity to show up soon. Stay tuned!