Yard Squad Challenge

 Did you know there is such a thing as Fantasy Birding?  I didn't either until I got drawn into the competition from the real world side.  Fantasy Birding, like fantasy football or baseball, is an 'armchair' way to be a birder from the comfort of your own home.  So for anyone who likes competition and likes birds but is more of a fair-weather nature fan, go check out fantastybirding.com.

Red-tailed Hawk- species I can find throughout the challenge. (digibinned)

Now what does this have to do with me?  Well, the organizer of the website is also hosting real world birding competitions, that will also have a fantasy component.  Around 125 folks from around the world, divided into 12 teams, will go out and try to see the most bird species possible over a 3-month period during spring migration.  Each individual person will bird within their "yard" patch, up to a 5-mile radius circle.  The 5-mile circle just happens to be the same as my other competition, so now I have double the motivation.  

Bufflehead (male)- wintering ducks will be early targets

Going through the checklists from eBird hotspots over the past 100+ years, I have the potential for around 195 species, although a few of those were one-time vagrants.  The reality is seeing 150 species during this time would be a amazing.  The clock for me starts at midnight today EDT, and I can't wait to get going!  If you'd like to follow along with my progress (outside of the blog) and even join the competition as a fantasy birder, I encourage you to go check out the website.  My team is the American Dippers, although hopefully we don't dip on too many species.  

Common Goldeneye- most of my images will probably be this bad but the species is clear.

I have a list of target species to get started with as soon as possible and my plan is to start with a stop at a local pond tomorrow on my way home from work.  We also get points for adding media to our sightings, so maybe you'll get to see some horrible photos of birds as I see them.  And on top of all this, I still have some bird species to confirm breeding in for the CT Breeding Bird Survey but more on that next time!

From the South

It's the time for my annual migration (lol, eyeroll)  down to Florida to see the parents and the birds hanging around.  The first few days have been rainy, rainy, rainy.  Finally, today I got up and decided to brave the cloudy drizzly skies and head out to my favorite spot, Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve.

By the time I got there, the rain had gone away although it threatened most of my walk.  I spent two hours walking along the boardwalk and tallied up 30 species seen.  Not too shabby.  The best of the birds was a drake Wood Duck that decided to take a quick flight in a circle from its hiding spot.  I also spotted two Yellow-throated Warblers mixed in with groups of other warblers and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers.  One of the 'other warblers' was a Black-and-White Warbler that was only a few feet away.  Such an awesome place to walk and bird.  

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera even though I had some great looks at birds (afraid of the rain).  So I'll post a couple of cloudy day feeder pictures.  Oh and a few shots from the Bald Eagle nest that you can view live webcam coverage of.

Common Ground Dove

Female Red-bellied Woodpecker: "What'chu lookin at?"

Common Grackle: common for sure but their colors are not!

Painted Buntings: female to the left, male on right

Bald Eagle: sans fish, bad parent!

Bald Eagle: a little extra nesting material in transit

My Snowy Owl

There has been a large influx of Snowy Owls in the Northeast this year.  Since I have started birding again in a real way, about the last five years, we haven't had a decent showing of Snowy Owls... until this past week.  By the way, it's a lifer.  After a couple of reports of Snowy Owls seen in CT, one was close enough to make a run for.  So in the middle of the afternoon, I booked out of work for an hour or so and headed to Milford Point.  It was worth it.

Light might not be the best and led to a very soft image when in conjunction with my crappy lens.  But a record shot it is.  I was lucky enough to see another one about a week later in the same area but obviously a different bird, being very dark.  This one I believe was called a female, I have no skill in figuring out the difference.  I'm just glad that they are here and I hope I have another chance to get out and take a bit better of an image.  As I got to this point, at the boundary where the US Fish and Wildlife Area began, the bird seemed to be paying more attention to me and so I snapped a few quick shots and backed up so as not to spook the bird.  Not everyone is as accommodating, on Sunday I even saw two men walk through the off-limits area to go around the other side of that bird to get closer.  I heard that the bird left shortly there-after. 

The map above illustrates locations of all the spots where Snowy Owls have been seen in November and so far this December.  This data was pulled from eBird a website where everyone can participate in a citizen science project that collects sightings of birds all over the world. 

 

Without actually downloading data from eBird and creating my own maps,  the above is the total number of reports for Snowy Owls from Nov-Feb for the past 5 years.  While this is influenced by a lot factors (ie. number of people birding, ease of birds visibility, and number of reports); it's more an illustration of the chance of seeing one.

Here's the same data BUT from the 5 years previous.  aka.  2004-2008.  It looks like the last big year for Snowies in Connecticut was 2008 the winter before I started birding again.  There's lots of great ways to look at birds sightings and distributions on eBird, like these two graphs from the website.  Go check it out and submit your observations!

Cackling Goose

I have started thinking about getting the next installment of my west trip from the summer together but I thought I would write a quick post about a fun bird I had the other day.  I am one of the volunteers who counts migrating hawks, vultures, and raptors in general at the Boothe Memorial Park Hawkwatch in Stratford (CT).  While I was at the count this past Sunday we had a group of Canada Geese go overhead.  While counting the individual birds one stuck out as being significantly smaller.  There's a lot of talk about how to identify Cackling vs. smaller subspecies of Canada Goose but this bird, all by itself in size, must be a Cackling Goose.  If you want to read more about the different subspecies and idenitifcation tips for Canada and Cackling Goose, check out David Sibley's blog post: http://www.sibleyguides.com/2007/07/identification-of-cackling-and-canada-goose/

Here's my goose.

 

What do you think?  

West Trip part 1

I recently ran into a birder friend who quickly chastised me for not having blogged in awhile.  (Thanks Jeff!)  And it inspired me to pull out the keyboard, dust off my thumb drive, and see what I could come up with.  As of late, I haven't been doing a whole lot of birding around town and had no idea what to even blog about.  Then I had an epiphany (more like I had a moment of stupidity before becoming normal again), I just went birding out West!!

So without further ado, here is the first installment of a likely three part series of blog posts on birding the middle of the country.  To be more precise, it will cover two days of birding in South Dakota outside of Rapid City and then a few random shots from travels through North Dakota and Montana. (Ok it was a little more ado).

Mid-June I set out for a day on a birding field trip with other conference attendees.  One of the perks in working in natural history is that you do fun field trips at conferences like that.  We headed into the Black Hills-

That's what a trail looks like in the Black Hills.  I have previously mentioned to the leader, one of my target birds, and we spent substantial time trying to chase it down.  Here's what the nest looks like-

Know what the bird is yet?  Welllllll it's gray and brown and likes to hang out in streams.....

It's an American Dipper!  We found a few adults although none were willing to let us get close enough for a good shot.  I'll take it all the same.  I did get a couple of other life birds as well..  Here's one of those-

This male Black-headed Grosbeak was standing guard over his lady as she sat on a nest a few feet off of a well travelled path.  Almost every stop we made had either Black-headed Grosbeak or Red-eyed Vireo singing.  Luckily, even the vireos cooperated with an ok picture-

Probably my favorite stop of the day was up on top of a hill on the side of a dirt road.  There wasn't a huge showing of spectacular birds or anything it just had a cool feel to the place.  I think it has something to do with the pine trees.  We did see some Chipping Sparrows and an American Crow but they aren't in this picture-

Let's see, life birds on the day for me included:  American Dipper, Black-headed Grosbeak, Red-naped Sapsucker, Mountain Bluebird, and Western Wood-Pewee.  I really wanted Pinyon Jay and Lark Bunting but we got skunked.  Check in for the next installment to see if we found them on a day of birding post-conference.   Here's a cute little Veery that popped out to say 'Hi!' to us. 

Ooops almost forgot about the FUNNEST part of the day.  A thunderstorm came through but instead of soaking us with water, it covered everything in a layer of hail!.

And one other lesson I learned... when trying to decide where to go, just ask the Western Meadowlarks.

Ode to a Plov....er

I've been in Florida for a few days and got out to do some shorebirding this morning.  I was hoping to find my Piping Plover that I found two consecutive years in a row, check it out in this post.  I arrived at Bunche Beach while the tide was  fairly low but it meant less birders around and better opportunities to get closer to the birds.  I didn't find my banded bird but I did find a couple of others.

Banded Piping Plover

I'll send in the sightings to the USFS and hopefully will get some more information on when they were banded and where. 

A different banded Piping Plover

One of the issues with birding today was the five Bald Eagles that were moving around.  Every time the eagles took off, the shore birds would all take off too.

One of the Bald Eagles on the beach

LIFE BIRDS.  First up is this Snowy Plover.  I was looking at a Piping Plover and noticed this smaller lighter bird behind it.  The second thing that caught my eye was the gray legs.  Going back and checking the field guide all the characteristics were good for Snowy Plover.  A life bird!

Distant look at the Snowy Plover

As the tide chased me in, I turned and saw this bird; slightly larger than the Piping Plover, darker, and strongly banded.  A Wilson's Plover!  Another life bird!  The Wilson's is not infrequent to this beach according to what I've heard, I just keep missing them. 

Wilson's Plover

Here's another shot of the Wilson's Plover.  I was so focused on the Wilson's that I didn't notice the Snowy Plover in the background until I was looking back over my photos.

Wilson's and Snowy

 

Here's a few more birds for the day.

Marbled Godwit

Semipalmated (?) and Least Sandpiper

Black-bellied Plover

 

Oh I guess I should write a poem about plovers now....

 

When talking of Plovers, where to start

Bodies so small and eyes so wide

They've stolen my heart

while I was watching the tide.

 

I got drawn in by the one with bands

Two years in a row she said Hi

On the beach of white wet sands

But alas it seems she's gone for her final fly.

 

I know, I know... I'll stick to my day job. 

Fall FALL Migration!

I LOVE fall migration and this year is a great one.  This week at work we've had our second all time high for bird species on campus.  That's beating out three spring migration seasons, pretty impressive.  So why is fall migration my favorite (recently decided)?  The weather is nice, the birds are plentiful, and the species hint at how busy feeders will be in a few months.  One of the best parts is how tricky the birds are, leaves on trees obscure views, species are in nonbreeding plummage and those tricky sparrows that have been gone for months suddenly arrive and id's need refreshing.

Clay-colored Sparrow

 

Anyway, recently I've been hawk watching and enjoying the sparrows as they file back into the weedy grassy sections of lawns.  Rather than talk about species and birding adventures, here's a few photos.  As for how my competition is going... I'm not sure.  I'm doing ok but I don't know how the Oregon list is going. 

Northern Harrier- (young bird)

Palm Warbler- Yellow (Eastern)

Palm Warbler- Brown (Western)

Black-throated Blue Warbler

Could it be a Lincoln's Sparrow??

Nope, It's a Swamp Sparrow

Black Scoter (female) *LIFE BIRD*

 

Birdy Corner = Great Bird

On Wednesday while driving onto campus I was running a little later than usual and was planning on just heading straight up to my building without taking my usual diversion around grounds.  One corner of one of the parking lots is an edge habitat and lawn, we refer to it as the "Sparrow Nook".  I noticed some decent activity, a migrating flock of American Robins, congregating Brown-headed Cowbirds with European Starlings mixed in, and a few Blue Jays poking around as well.  The activity was too much to just drive by.

I noticed something sparrowy and once I had binoculars out was fairly perplexed...  yes it was a sparrow but one that I hadn't seen before.  With no camera and no field guide, I tried to pick out all the features I could and headed up to my building to do some quick internet research.  I couldn't quite pin down the species before my coworker came in and I tried giving her details that maybe she could ID.  Finally, I just dragged us both out there with a point and shoot camera with a 20x optical zoom. 

We had come up with a tentative ID of Lark Sparrow and with some more internet research it was confirmed.  Sue (my coworker) will probably blog some info about the species on our work blog HERE.  The quick story is that Lark Sparrows are vagrants in Connecticut and only a couple show up in CT every year if that.  Oh and it was a LIFE BIRD for me.  Enjoy the grainy photos!

A Little Off Course

Emails came over the listservs all day of an American Avocet in Stratford, CT near the Birdseye Boat Ramp.  In need of some species for my state challenge and in need of some gym time, I did a quick workout after work and with plenty of light left, I made my way to the boat ramp.  The last email came in at 5:50pm that the bird was still sitting on a jetty near the boat ramp. 

Tough looking into the sun but the Avocet is way in the back.

Yup, a DIGIBINNED CELL PHONE picture.

I managed to find the bird right away, sitting on the jetty just as stated.  An Avocet had been first sighted on Monday, I'm guessing this is the same bird.  No surprise it was far out, easy to quickly pick up with binoculars, not so great to photograph with a cell phone.  American Avocets breed throughout much of the west and can be found year round on the West Coast.  They winter in Florida and according to The Sibley guide can be found up through North Carolina during migration.  This one got a little off track. 

'record shot'- zoom from the cell phone.

Relapse

Before heading to Europe I realized that I have been slacking on keeping my CT year list up to date!  In case you forgot (or dont read my blog all the time), I'm challenging my friend Heather in Oregon to a birding challenge.  Who will get the most species in there respective state for the year. 

My list, over there on the right had been hanging out at 60 species even though I have been out, I swear!  Well, before I get carried away with all the European birds I'm about to see and hopefully blog about, I wanted to update my CT bird list!!!  yup I'm up to about 160 species.  That's probably about 100 species under what's been seen in the state so far.  I'll have to start chasing harder when I get back to CT. 

France 2012 Prep



Chartes Cathedral- wiki photo



In a few days I will be setting foot in France for the first time in my life.  A small group of friends and myself have decided to go see the Olympics in London this year and a stop in France at a friends family house will take up the first week of our trip.  After a quick stop in Chartres to see the Tour de France, we will head further west out to Brittany.  The exact town we are staying in is still beyond my knowledge but the general area will be near Quimper. 

We have no set plans for our time in Bretagne (Brittany) and I plan on doing some birding!  and maybe some blogging.  This is my first time going to Europe with a pair of binoculars and the time set aside to do some birding.  My Christmas present this year was a copy of the Birds of Europe and after a few months of lazy studying I put the book down.  Now with days to go I am kicking myself for not putting in more effort but here illustrates my true nature of being a bird watcher/ observer as opposed to a true tick-er. 

To maximize my study time ( I still have packing to do of course), I have turned to eBird for some help.  The birding observations in this area of France are very limited, from what I can poke through it looks like there are maybe 5 checklists in total for the 50 mile radius of Quimper.  At least one of those is an older checklist from 1980 and the others seem to be quick lists.  Still it's enough to use the "Explore Data" feature and churn out the following bar chart for the months of July and August. 

My plan is to use this condensed list of 135 species to cram in the next few days and on the 6-hour flight.  With any luck, I will come home with LOTS of pictures, a few interesting stories, and some more data to feed into eBird.  More data will not only give some more info as to what is actually in the area but may be a baseline for future species expansions and declines.  At the very least it will give someone else making a trip to the area a better idea of what birds they may encounter on their trip.  Wish me luck!

Scouting Trip

Almost two weeks ago on a beautiful Friday I headed up to the Northwest part of the state to do a little scouting for a bird field trip I'm helping lead next month for the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collection 2012 meeting.  I met CAS conservation biologist Twan Leenders at Mohawk Mountain State Forest, our first potential stop.  There is a small Black Spruce Bog located in the forest with a small boardwalk.  When I got out of the car the first thing I noticed was a chorus of Chestnut-sided Warblers up and down the forest road. 

This area has a great variety of plants, it's a mix of upland forest, some cleared early successional habitat, and the spruce bog.  There were many High Bush Blueberry plants and lots of them in flower.  One Ruby-throated Hummingbird was enjoying their inflorescence.  This female hummingbird was taking a rest before flying to another flower and inserting her bill into the flowers to drink some nectar.  As we walked along there was a good variety of birds, many of which will stay around and nest.  Some birds seen or heard, Black-and-White Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Canada Warbler (a lifer for me), Blackburnian Warbler, Veery, Ovenbird, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Common Raven, Red-shouldered Hawk, Rufous-sided Towhee, and Red-eyed Vireo.

This Rufous-sided Towhee was hanging out in the edge habitat of a cleared area.  Vegetation in was all low and shrubby, perfect for these sparrow relatives.  I love their 'tow-hee' song and there was more than one.  This male sat out on the edge of a branch to show off for a few minutes. 

Not an extraordinary bird but still one of my favorites!  The ever adorable Black-capped Chickadee made an appearance in the spruce bog.  There were two birds moving around in the underbrush both seeming to be as curious of me as I was of them.  While watching the two, one began loudly begging to the other although to my amature eyes, they both seemed adults.  Possibly courting behavior?

Our last stop was not really a part of our scouting... it was really to try for another life bird!  And I was successful!  Thanks to Twan's knowledge of the area and great ears, we were able to chase down this Cerulean Warbler on River Road.  Cornell's allaboutbirds website says this of the Cerulean Warbler "Cerulean Warbler is one of the species of highest concern in the eastern United States because of a small total population size and significant declines throughout its range. Under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Listed on the Audubon Watchlist".   

This spot produced many good birds and was teeming with life in general.  American Redstart, Barn Swallow, Tree Swallow, Veery, Blackburnian Warbler, Warbling Vireo, and Indigo Bunting, among others.  A fantastic day in the field, with a great companion, and many birds to add to my year list for my competition.  I need to get outside more often!