OC Warbler

On My Nightstand: National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America, 6th Edition

2011-12-05T09:40:00.001-08:00

My first-ever birding guide was the National Geographicguide. Well, it technically wasn’t mine – I “borrowed” it from my (non-birdingbut inquisitive) parents when I first took an interest in identifying birdsseveral years ago.

At the time, (around 2003), I had no idea how dynamic andfast-changing birding knowledge was, and I figured the dog-eared book that myparents had picked up on a whim many years earlier – which I now realize wasthe inaugural edition of the National Geographic guide from 1983 – was, like myhigh school algebra texts, a source of immutable truths. Little did I know thateverything from the genetic relationships among birds to their common names totheir ranges and populations was in constant flux. I was puzzled as to why people called thosegorgeous white raptors in our area “White-tailed Kites” when the guide saidclearly that they were “Black-shouldered Kites.”

I still have that guide, along with many other, newer ones –Kaufman, Sibley, Crossley, and several other, more specialized guides. So when I was given the opportunity to checkout the newest update of the National Geographic guide, I couldn’t resistcomparing it to the original – the book that helped launch my life as a birder.

Both the similarities and differences between the originaland latest update are striking: the same signature Bald Eagle on the cover,quite a few of the same illustrations, and even same descriptions. Both listthe Ivory-Billed Woodpecker as “probably extinct,” but for strikingly differentreasons. (The description of its range and distribution in the new guide willbe heartbreaking to anyone who rejoiced at its putative rediscovery a few yearsback.) But new illustrations, very much in the same style as the older ones,also abound, as well as significantly expanded or revised descriptions ofcertain birds. (The description of White-crowned Sparrows in the 6^thedition, for instance, goes into helpful detail about their various subspecies,their songs, and distribution, which the original, shorter description lacked.)

Another useful detail the guide includes is an index ofsubspecies range maps – this can be a great benefit to those who spend a lot oftime birding on the road.

More striking to me was the extremely liberal definition of“birds of North America” used in the book. Flipping through it, one sees dozensof accidental and even extinct species not found in other North American fieldguides. I personally appreciated thesegraphic reminders that North America (or parts of it, at least) is closelylinked, biologically and geographically, to the far corners of Asia andNorthern Europe, and for any enthusiastic birder, this feature will be atantalizing reminder that any trip to the field can bring unexpected surprises.But for beginners or others looking for a straight-ahead quick reference tobirds one is likely to encounter on a typical trip, this expanded inventorycould be a needless distraction.

A characteristic feature of any field guide is the frontmatter – all the stuff the guide presents before actually getting to the birdsthemselves. Kaufman’s useful pocket guide, for instance, has a friendly, simplepreface that captures a “birding for everyone” vibe, and the first words in thepreface of Crossley’s graphically rich guide are “I don’t like text,” whichtells you everything you need to know about the orientation of the rest of thebook. The National Geographic guide strikes an accessible, yet serious tone inits front matter: the brief descriptions of bird classification, ranges, andfield marks are written to be understandable to beginners, but include enoughinformation (such as a two-page illustrated spread of labeled head, wing, andbody feather tracts) to be a useful reference for more experienced birders aswell.

Any review of a field guide is supposed to end up with theanswer to the question “so, how does this rank among the other guides for thesame area?” I really hate answering this question because I don’t have a singlefavorite North American field guide – like many birders, I like having anassortment of them for different purposes: Kaufman to keep in my back pocketfor quick reference, Sibley to keep in my car for more comprehensive ID checks,and Crossley to keep at home to study before and after looking for a new bird.Also, I often find myself needing more than one set of illustrations to ID abird definitively, especially if it’s molting or in some transitional plumage.The new National Geographic guide, for me, falls into the “keep in the car”category – a great combination of quick reference and comprehensive descriptionthat will be a useful addition to my arsenal of references.

How the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak Got His Chest

2011-10-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, long before you or I were born, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak wasn’t called that. Back then, Giorsbeaks’ chests were snowy white. And Grosbeaks were very proud of their looks.

At that time, there was one particular Grosbeak who loved two things: (1) berries and (2) himself. All the other birds said his egotistic, gluttonous ways would eventually come back to bite him in the vent.

One October day, this Grosbeak was feeling both unusually hungry and unusually proud of himself. He had planned his southward journey to go through the verdant land now known as Florida, which he knew was filled with berries in October – bright red magnolia berries, fat clusters of tiny, lavender-colored beauty berries, and big, juicy purple pokeberries. The very thought of them made him swoon, and he was very pleased with his itinerary.

He was pleased with himself for another reason, too: while the other Grosbeaks changed into modest brown plumage for their trip, he had decided to keep most of his snappy black-and-white spring feathers.

“You’re being an idiot,” the other Grosbeaks said. “That outfit’s too worn to make it all the way down south."

“What’s the point?” a disapproving Magnolia Warbler scolded. “Seriously. You’re going to be too busy eating and flying to check out any ladies with that getup of yours, and they'll be too busy to notice you.”

The Grosbeak didn’t listen. He know they were only saying that stuff because they were jealous.

That October day in Florida, things started even better than he expected. Almost immediately, he spotted shiny red clusters of ripe berries. Then he did what any discerning epicure would do when presented with nature’s bounty at its finest: he stuffed his face.

OMG those berries were amazing. Best of all, he hardly needed to move to gobble down one cluster after another, each more succulent than the next. Reddish juice dribbled down his snowy white breast, of which he was very proud, but he was too hungry to care.

“Look at you! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” It was some Grosbeak he didn’t know, who was dressed in an old man’s brown-and-beige fall outfit. “Show a little class. Look at all that crap you’re dripping on yourself!”

“Yaah pal? Well check it out, I’VE got this bush full of berries and you don’t.”

“That’s because I’ve already had my share. And look at me, I managed to keep myself clean. Mark my words, kid, no gal’s gonna want to nest with a slob like you.”

Whatever, Gramps, the Grosbeak thought. He kept eating. When he was too full to move, he decided to preen himself – not because he cared what the old guy thought but because he wasn’t sleepy or hungry and couldn’t think of anything else to do. Yeah, and it had been several hours since he’d cleaned himself. Okay, maybe more than that.

This was weird. No matter what he tried, the juice stains just wouldn’t come out. -- they were stuck to him like the black on his wings.

He panicked. He began to peck harder at his chest. Nothing. Still bright red, like a cowboy’s bandanna hanging in front of his breast. His beautifully pristine white breast was ruined, and it was all his own fault.

In South America, he made a point of hanging with birds who didn’t know him. But when it was time to go back north again, he know he’d have to face the music. Nesting season was approaching – how would he explain this to the girls?

The flight back to North America was the most depressing trip of his life. The breeding grounds were a playground of happy activity when he arrived. He saw a lot of familiar birds, but didn’t want to face any of them.

“Hey there!” It was the prettiest, fattest female Grosbeak he had ever seen. Great, she’s just here’s to taunt me, he thought.

“Did you just get here?” She was still talking to him,. “Mm, look at you! Pokeberries?” She was staring at his chest, cocking her head. “I like a man with a good appetite.” She hopped towards him. Startled, he hopped backwards.

“What’s the matter? Have you already got a mate?”

“N-no! I –“

“Well, if you don’t have anyone lined up, I’m here – unless you’d prefer me to spend the summer with him.” She turned her head towards a loudly singing voice nearby. “But I kind of like your looks.”

His heart felt as though it would burst. “I do, too,” he said.

Soon, word got out among the male Grosbeaks that the dork with the juice stuck on his chest had scored the hottest female Grosbeak in North America. Grateful and chastened, our Grosbeak built his pretty mate the biggest, nicest nest in the area. The other females eyed that nest and the happy couple from a distance, then gazed at their own dumpy nests and plain black-and-white mates and sighed. No, they’d say to their mates. Nothing’s wrong! What makes you think something’s wrong?

Miraculously, the guys got the hint. The next spring, when they returned to the nesting grounds, all the men were sporting handsome red bibs. And with all the time saved from not having to preen their breasts so much, they had the time and energy to build bigger nests and take better care of their chicks than ever before.

And that’s how the Rose-breasted Grosbeak got its chest.

Summer Flies

2011-08-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

Where has the time gone?

I took a break from blogging (about birds, anyhow) with the intention of focusing on my paid writing assignments. The summer doldrums seemed like a good excuse. What's the point in writing about birds when there are no birds of note worthy of writing about?

But there were. Weirdly, just after our nearly warbler-less spring migration ended, all sorts of interesting things somehow ended up passing through Gainesville and surrounding areas. Late in May, a sighting of a white-morph Great Blue Heron (a.k.a. Great White Heron) brought birders from all around to Camps Canal, a tiny tributary south of Paynes Prairie State Park. When Glenn and I drove down to see it, we found it waiting for us in the shallows of the canal, right near where we parked.

Nearby was an immature Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, a bird unusual in our area.

A fairly new tradition among Gainesville-area birders, which has just started to spread to other areas, is the June Challenge. This is a friendly competition to see who can get out and bag the most birds in our county (Alachua County) during the month of June. It was designed as a fun way to keep birders motivated even during the slowest, hottest, most mosquito-plagued time of year. I wasn't feeling terribly ambitious this year (did I mention it was REALLY hot out? And mosquitos are everywhere?) so I sat it out. Officially, at least: I did go out and look for goodies that other, braver birders had previously discovered. The best thing about the June Challenge is that it is an oddly non-competitive competition: anyone who sees something interesting is supposed to report it so others can find it too. Among the interesting things discovered were a Common Loon who somehow ended up in a fountain at a busy intersection in the middle of town:

Towards the end of June, some local birders discovered a spot on the shore of Orange Lake filled with shorebirds, including numerous Roseate Spoonbills, which are locally uncommon. Even though this little point on the shore is in the painfully cute town of Macintosh, in Marion County, the lake itself is considered part of Alachua County, so birds found within are fair game for Gainesville's June Challenge. This made me wonder if one could count birds on the shore of the lake for the Alachua County June Challenge, which in turn made me glad I wasn't doing the challenge officially!

Orange Lake has proven to be a fun spot, and Glenn and I have returned several times since. This week, migrating shorebirds have started showing up there, including several Stilt Sandpipers (a life bird for me).

This week reports of southward-bound warblers have started trickling in, and this morning, I saw some: a couple of American Redstarts, a Black-and-white Warbler, and a few Prairie Warblers.

Meanwhile, the summer class I'm teaching is about to end, and students are already trickling back (however reluctantly) for fall semester--the other, bigger fall migration in Gainesville.

Where has the summer gone?

Birding at the End of the World

2011-05-23T15:44:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, the world was going to end and the righteous among us were to ascend bodily to Heaven. Since we figured we wouldn't be going, we decided to try birding at Cedar Key instead.

It's a good thing we did, too: the birding was great. Not amazing fallout day great, but quite good for a day at the tail end of an unusually slow spring migration.

We weren't expecting much. But we did know of a spot where a good sighting was almost guaranteed: the Cedar Key Scrub Preserve, where we found three Florida Scrub-Jays in the exact same place where we saw them (or their cohorts) on our last few visits.

It would be more precise to say the Scrub-Jays found us. "Isn't that a Scrub-Jay?" our friend Elizabeth asked, pointing at a backlit bird on top of a tree about 50 feet away. Before we could answer, the bird swooped down--and landed on a bush right by the trail! His friends soon followed. Yup, it was a Scrub-Jay!

We spent about half an hour enjoying their company (and not seeing much else) before taking off to Shell Mound, part of the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge. I brought my spotting scope in hope of getting some good shorebirds, but we only saw the usual suspects: Willets, Semipalmated Plovers, and Ruddy Turnstones.

Once we got to Cedar Key proper, we noticed a Kingbird working the trees and utility poles right by the lot where we parked. I figured it was just an Eastern Kingbird -- I haven't seen one in a while and even "easy" flycatchers throw me -- but I never remembered them having such large bills:

Elizabeth pulled out her ever-present Sibley guide and I was happy to realize I was wrong: it was a Gray Kingbird, a bird that almost never appears in Gainesville, but does show up occasionally at Cedar Key. Even better, we soon found, there were TWO of them.

We saw both of them dash repeatedly in and out of a tree in the parking lot, which led to another discovery: they weren't only hanging out there, they were NESTING there! It was a life bird for Glenn, and a very cooperative one at that.

While in the parking lot, we ran into a birder who said he had seen a family of Great Horned Owls roosting in the cemetery a few weeks earlier. After a break for (a very tasty) lunch, we headed there and started looking into the trees.

No owls. But Elizabeth spotted a late Blackpoll Warbler, and we watched flocks of fledgling Northern Cardinals chasing their parents around the headstones, begging for food. We stood there and considered the striking juxtaposition between those energetic new little lives and the silence of the long-gone ones memorialized just underfoot.

Our best sighting came near the end of our day. While on the boardwalk overlooking the water by the cemetery, we saw a large vulture fly by. Only it wasn't a vulture: it was flying fast over the water, rising higher into the air until it disappeared over the cemetery. Its flight and wing shape and color were wrong for a vulture, it had the head and beak of a hawk, but it wasn't one of our usual suspects--what was it?

Glenn managed to get off a quick documentary shot:

Elizabeth pulled out her Sibley guide again, and then we had an answer: the closest thing our bird resembled in the book was a dark-morph Short-tailed Hawk -- an uncommon bird for this area. Back home, we e-mailed the picture to some expert local birders who confirmed our guess and told us that a pair of them had been nesting nearby at Shell Mound. Our third great hyper-local bird of the day.

It was too good a day for the world to end.

Eat Like a Bird!

2011-05-10T18:24:00.001-07:00

(Cross-posted at my cooking blog. Because I'm too lazy to put up two separate posts.)

This Northern Parula flew 1,000 miles or more across the Gulf of Mexico – without stopping, eating, or sleeping – before landing in Florida during spring migration. This grueling flight took him somewhere between 18 and 25 hours.

Before setting off on this flight, he spent some serious time fueling up. In the days leading up to his trip, he piled on the calories, ballooning from a lithe 1 ounce or less to a staggeringly obese 2 ounces – virtually doubling in weight. Wired graphically described this phenomenon of avian gluttony as “the equivalent of having a hamburger for lunch on Monday, and 100 hamburgers for lunch on Friday.”

When Mammy told Scarlett O’Hara to eat like a bird, this probably wasn’t what she had in mind.

Those of us who enjoy watching birds also pick up strange eating habits during migration. These usually involve consuming large quantities of coffee before sunrise, feeding from ziplock bags filled with trail mix, and toting energy bars bent and flattened from hours in our back packets. Like our avian quarry, birders focus on high-protein, high-energy natural food sources when on the road. Birder snacks of choice usually involve nuts, seeds, whole grains, and/or fruit, often scented with hints of bug spray, sunscreen, and car exhaust. On the other hand, migrating songbirds – even some that typically eat seed – favor the high-calorie goodness of insects and their larvae, food sources most birders tend to avoid.

Still, our eating habits can be frighteningly similar. When shopping for bird seed for my backyard feeders recently, I saw a shiny little bowl filled with freshly shelled Brazil nuts, peanuts, sunflower seeds and unusually fat raisins. I was about to help myself to few bites when I realized it was sample of one of the store’s specialty birdseed mixes.

And it looked better by magnitudes than most of the cheap-ass trail mix I’ve lugged around on birding trips. The woodpeckers around here eat better than I do.

My husband and I joke that someday, we’ll have to buy a bag of that super-fancy fruit-nut mix, pour some into a pretty bowl, and feed it to our birder buddies. My prediction is that they’ll think it looks familiar, but assume it’s that pricey brand of organic snack mix they never quite felt like splurging on.

And since it’s near the end of another spring migration season and my Audubon chapter is holding its annual end-of-the-birding-year potluck soon, the occasion for our little experiment is now upon us! MWAAHAHA!

Seriously, I’m not going to do it. But I will do something very much like it. As a tribute to those hard-working birds and my friends who love them, I devised a munchable treat with the same base ingredients as that fancy bird mix – peanuts, raisins, sunflower seeds, and bigger, blingier nuts of some kind. And millet, because almost all birdseed mixes contain copious amounts of it. But being a good citizen, I resisted the urge to take these from a 25-pound bag with NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION printed on it.

Because just plain old nuts and raisins mixed together seem kind of abstemious, particularly for a festive occasion, I spiced them them up and converted them into a sweet-salty-tangy-spicy cocktail nibble. I’ve always been addicted to Indian snack mixes – exhuberently spicy blends of fried grains, nuts, dried fruit, and spices – and I’ve modeled the seasoning in my mix after these. The recipe on which I base my spice mix comes from Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking.

The optional chile in my souped-up birdseed mix not only makes me happy (since I love hot stuff) but evokes two rituals familiar to birders. Serious backyard birders know that an effective technique for keeping squirrels off suet and other bird feeder food is to spike it with hot pepper, since squirrels can’t tolerate the taste of it. Birds, on the other hand, can’t taste chiles at all. This evolutionary adaptation both allows the birds an additional food source and enables them to propagate chile plants, whose seeds pass undamaged through their digestive systems: a win-win for both the eater and the eaten.

Spicy, salty, snacky food, of course, also goes beautifully with beer. And for some sociological reason I’ve yet to figure out, serious birders are very often passionate hopheads as well. On the last fall migration count I did, two of the guys on my team brought a nice assortment of microbrews to go with their sack lunches. One of my favorite birding blogs occasionally features knowledgeably written reviews of beers that happen to have birds on their labels. The birds, I suspect, are just a happy excuse to enjoy another beer.

And so is my “birdseed.” Enjoy!

****************

Spiced People Seed

Note: Jaffrey’s recipe – which uses a different assortment of grains and nuts than I chose to use – calls for raw nuts and grains, all to be separately deep-fried and carefully drained. She assures readers the end result will not be greasy and she’s probably right (she usually is where Indian cooking is concerned) – but if you don’t need double in weight for an upcoming trip or don't want to mess up your kitchen, oven-roasting the nuts or using already-roasted ones will work just fine, at least for the choice of nuts and grains I have chosen.

Puffed millet is available from health-food stores. Amchoor, a tangy powder made from dried green mango, is available at Indian markets.

3 whole cloves
a 3/4-inch piece from a cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
neutrally flavored oil (such as canola) as needed for frying
2/3 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts (or raw peanuts, deep-fried and drained)
2/3 cup roasted, unsalted cashews (or raw cashews, deep-fried and drained)
1/3 cup shelled, roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds (or raw seeds, deep-fried and drained)
1/3 cup shelled, roasted, unsalted pumpkin seeds (or raw seeds, deep-fried and drained)
4 tablespoons raisins, briefly deep-fried until puffy and drained.
3 cups puffed (NOT raw) millet
2 tablespoons canola or other neutrally flavored oil
½ tablespoon whole black mustard seeds
3 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon or more ground cayenne, or to taste (optional)
1-1/4 teaspoons salt
2-1/2 teaspoons sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons ground amchoor

1. Grind the cloves, cinnamon stick, and peppercorns together in a mortar and pestle until powdery; set aside.

2. Combine the nuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, millet, and raisins in a large bowl; set aside.

3. Heat a small saucepan over medium heat and add the 2 tablespoons oil. When hot, add the mustard seeds.

4. When the mustard seeds have stopped sizzling and popping, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sesame seeds, turmeric, and cayenne.

5. Pour the fried seeds, spices and oil over the millet, nut, and raisin mixture. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until the seasonings are evenly distributed.

6. Cool the mixture, then store it in an airtight container.

The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

2011-04-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

Oooh! Cute!

Spring migration has been a bust. My little corner of Florida has been blessed with calm, sunny weather for the past month, which is great for people and birds -- but not for people who want to look at birds. As one of my more knowledgeable birding pals told me, migrating birds want to get to their breeding grounds fast, and if the weather is clear, they're not going to stop. And in my area, not that many migrating birds have seen a need to stop.

Last week, Glenn and I went on Alachua Audubon's annual pilgrimage to Fort DeSoto, and scored a couple of Cape May, Black-throated Blue, and Blackpoll Warblers -- but no other migrants. Last night, a powerful thunderstorm hit Gainesville, and as I lay in bed watching the lightning flash across the sky, I wondered how many migrants might have chosen to spend the night in town rather than fly through the storm.

The answer: not many. A quick early-morning trip to Bolen Bluff revealed a single migrant warbler -- a male American Redstart -- and dozens and dozens of squirrels. Oh boy.

Still, the transition from winter to spring still shows itself in the changing inventory of birds. Local summer breeders such as Summer Tanagers and Blue Grosbeaks have started showing up, and rumor has it the Purple Gallinules have arrived on Paynes Prairie, just in time for breeding season. I haven't seen one locally yet this season, but on a trip south about a month ago, we got to see a particularly pretty one at the Orlando Wetlands, where they occur year round:

Luckily, when there's nothing else to look at during the hot season, there are always babies. Like the one above. He/she was one of four we saw peeping and sort-of walking in the underbrush at Lettuce Lake Park, in Tampa. Holy cow. Cutest. Thing. Ever. Times four.

All of us who watched the little family were enthralled. We figured the babies must be really young, given there were still so many of them (and there were a large number of hungry alligators nearby). We marvelled at how different they looked from their parents. The little puffballs made me wonder if there's some kind of universal template for all precocial chicks, and at some point in their fuzzy little lives a program goes off to turn the little things into chickens, or Mallards, or whatever.

I certainly wouldn't have been able to tell whose babies these were had the parents not been nearby: we heard them calling loudly and flying low over the lake all afternoon. One was always with the babies, never more than a foot or two away.

It still amazes me that in only a matter of months, those tiny little balls of fluff will turn into this:

Not just any old babies, but Limpkin babies -- a vulnerable Florida specialty. To see four of them being so well cared for was just as good as seeing some random migrant just passing through.

On My Night Stand: The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds

2011-03-01T03:51:00.001-08:00

Cedar Waxwings from The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds.

Shortly after we first started birding, my husband and I saw an unusual hummingbird. It was mostly green and grayish underneath, like an immature Anna's Hummingbird (an expected and common species in southern California, where we lived at the time.) But unlike an Anna's, this bird had a distinctive golden crown, utterly unmistakable.

We didn't have a field guide with us, so we just stared at it for a few minutes, took several photos, then went home to figure out what its story was. And we drew a blank.

No hummingbird in either or our guides looked anything like our bird. There was an illustration of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird in one of them that showed some yellowish stuff on its head, but the build seemed wrong. Flummoxed, I posted the photo and a query on the Orange County Birding listserv. And the verdict was unanimous:

It was an immature Anna's Hummingbird. With pollen on its head.

Duh. It was, after all, feeding in a goldenrod bush, clearly visible in the photo.

The moral here is that birds don't always look like the canonical illustrations in field guides. This drove me nuts when I first started birding. (Sometimes, it still does.) Birds have an annoying tendency to move around, hold themselves in weird positions, or transition s-l-o-w-l-y from one plumage to another. They're no more likely to stand around all day in full profile view wearing canonical secondary plumage than are female homo sapiens to look like cover models in Vogue.

But for the past year or so, word was out that a new guide would change that. A few weeks back, I got my very own review copy of The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds in the mail and eagerly tore into it. Whoa.

Many, many far more knowledgeable birders than I have already reviewed Crossley's book, so I'll keep my comments fairly brief. As most have noted, Crossley deserves major props for originality--his is a bird ID guide that looks like no other. While most guides contain an illustration or two of each species, always in that nice full profile view or a top-down flight shot, Crossley dedicates a full page montage of half a dozen or more photographed birds (all from his own photos), each in a different position and plumage, to all but the rarest species.

If his plate of Cedar Waxwings doesn't give you a pretty good grip on what the bird can look like, both close up and at a distance, in flight and standing still, nothing will.

I field-tested the book once. (More precisely, I brought it with me in the trunk of my car to show off to a friend during a recent sparrow-hunting trip to La Chua--the book is way too large and heavy to be carried into the field.) Shortly past the trailhead, we saw a flock of sparrows we were unsure about--Vespers, perhaps, or maybe something else? In a winter sparrow hunts, it's way too easy to turn any expected bird into some exotic rarity. And the individual birds that gave us the best views, weirdly, posed themselves directly facing us so all we could see were their faces and bellies--were Vespers supposed to be that pale underneath? I honestly couldn't recall from any of my other field guides.

So we went back to my car, flipped open the Crossley guide to the sparrows and started looking. Almost all the plates showed frontal as well as side views of the birds, which was enormously helpful. One shot showed a bird that looked exactly like the puffed-up frontal view of the bird we just saw--a Vesper. Mystery solved.

Helpful and beautiful as the book is, it's not one I'd recommend as a sole resource for a beginning birder, although I'd definitely recommend it as a supplement to more accessible works such as the Kaufman guide. Because the photos take up so much space, there's little room for explanatory text. The ages and sexes of birds are labeled on some, but not all, of the plates--in his introduction, Crossley says this is intentional, so the reader can figure it out on his or her own. Much of the concise but useful explanatory text under the plates, as other reviewers have noted, contains banding ID abbreviations of bird names. For instance, part of the description under "Harris's Sparrow" reads "song like WTSP at one pitch." Aren't most newbies self-conscious and confused enough without having to figure out what WTSP means? Even experienced birders can get thrown by these--a local master told me he once spent hours staring at his list from the previous day, trying to figure out what the hell kind of sparrow a ROSP is. (Hint: he was birding in Florida.)

Oddly, even the labels under the individual birds shown in the comparative size guide at the beginning of the book -- a very useful feature -- are reduced to four-letter codes, even through there's more than enough space under each photo to print out the full common name. I can just picture some poor novice flipping through this, saying, "Honey, you know that pretty duck we saw at Kanapaha Gardens yesterday? It's called a Wodu!"

So what good is this book? If I had to carry something in my back pocket for quick reference on a day in the field, I'm sticking with my Sibley or Kaufman guides. But if I'm chasing something new, I'll be sure to get a good look at it in Crossley before setting out. And I'll be sure to keep Crossley in the trunk--or close at hand when I get home--for further study.

Backyard Birds (A GBBC Retrospective)

2011-02-24T06:59:00.000-08:00

I didn't do the Great Backyard Bird Count this year for the simple reason that I spaced out and forgot it was taking place. But I've been thinking a lot about my backyard birds and the pleasure they give me. I work at home, and as I type away at my laptop, I can look out my window at just about any time and see a Northern Cardinal or even a Baltimore Oriole flitting around my feeders. What's not to like?

But the best thing about backyard birding is the sense of place it gives me. The inventory of birds in my yard reminds me of where I am in time and space, and connects me to the physical world in an intimate and tangible way. When I see Yellow-throated Warblers on my feeder in January, I am reminded that I am now in Florida, not back in California, nor anywhere else in the eastern U.S. The birds tell me this is home now. This is where I am, and where I have to make all the new connections in my life.

The birds tell me not only where I am now, but where I've been. As a thought experiment, I've compiled cumulative bird lists for the last few places I've called home, and I'm giving them below. The differences among them are stunning.

My Current Backyard Bird List (Gainesville, Florida)

Birds seen or heard in my back yard, or seen or heard flying overhead:
Northern Cardinal
Tufted Titmouse
Carolina Chickadee
Carolina Wren
House Finch
American Goldfinch
Indigo Bunting
American Crow
Fish Crow
Boat-tailed Grackle
Baltimore Oriole
Pine Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Palm Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)
Blue Jay
American Robin
Cedar Waxwing
Red-shouldered Hawk
Barred Owl
Mississippi Kite
Swallow-tailed Kite
Downy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Mourning Dove
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Eastern Phoebe
Brown-headed Cowbird
strange greenish thing that may or may not have been a female Painted Bunting

Bonus birds: Seen or heard within 100 yards of home:
Sandhill Crane
Whooping Crane (no, really!)
White Ibis
Cattle Egret
Killdeer
Northern Shrike
Northern Mockingbird
Summer Tanager
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Pileated Woodpecker
Northern Flicker

Where I hang out on vacation: Bird list for my parents' place in Los Angeles:

Birds seen or heard in or flying over their back yard:
Mourning Dove
California Quail
House Finch
Lesser Goldfinch
Anna's Hummingbird
Rufous/Allen's Hummingbird
California Towhee
Spotted Towhee
White-crowned Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
California Thrasher
Western Scrub-Jay
American Crow
American Raven
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Great Horned Owl
Hooded Oriole
Bullock's Oriole
Mountain Chickadee
Greater Roadrunner
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon's)
House Wren
Bewick's Wren
Bushtit
Black Phoebe

Bonus Bird: Seen or heard within 100 yards of the house:
Zone-tailed Hawk (seen by my husband)

Bird list for my last home: Costa Mesa, California:

Birds seen in the public areas immediately adjacent to our apartment, or seen flying overhead:
Mallard (wild)
Mallard (domestic)
Great Blue Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron
Black Phoebe
Mourning Dove
American Crow
Townsend's Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon's)
House Finch
Black-headed Grosbeak
Western Tanager
Tree Swallow
Great Horned Owl
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Anna's Hummingbird

Bonus Birds (seen or heard within 100 yards of the apartment complex):
American Wigeon
Double-crested Cormorant
Downy Woodpecker
House Sparrow
Bushtit
Northern Mockingbird
Rock Pigeon

What's in your back yard?

Good Birds, Near and Far

2011-02-13T15:06:00.000-08:00

Usually, when I don't post for a while, it's because I'm either too busy or haven't seen any birds worth writing about. But lately, I've found myself in a novel predicament: I've been too busy to blog but have seen TONS of good stuff -- way more than than can be done justice in a single post.

But some sightings are too fun not to share. So here is an abbreviated highlight reel of my last few weeks of birding.

1. Do You Want To Get Bitten by an Endangered Bird?

So said the conservationist leading our Alachua Audubon field trip through the Tall Timbers Research Station and the nearby Wade Tract, near Tallahassee, last Sunday morning. It was just after sunrise, and he had just caught and banded a very grumpy female Red-cockaded Woodpecker, which people couldn't resist trying to pet:

We had arrived at Tall Timbers on Saturday afternoon, just in time for a miserable downpour. This didn't stop us from our planned afternoon bird walk through the reserve, where we saw and heard two kinds of nuthatches: Brown-headed and White-breasted. The former are rare in Gainesville and the latter have long been extirpated, so this was worth getting wet. After a cozy night in Tall Timbers' very rustic bunkhouse (as a veteran of last year's trip told me, "it costs five dollars a night and is worth every penny") we got up way before sunrise, waited for the world's slowest drip coffee maker to do its job, then took off to the Wade Tract, just over the Georgia border, for a morning of sparrow and woodpecker banding.

Besides the RCW, our wrangling and banding efforts yielded a surprisingly colorful Bachman's Sparrow:

Worth getting up at 5 a.m. and slogging through the woods in 30 degree weather? Absolutely.

2. Snow Day in Florida

Yesterday's Alachua Audubon field trip was also to an out-of-town destination: Matanzas Inlet, near St. Augustine. One of the things Glenn and I have missed since moving to Gainesville is regular access to shorebirds -- back in California, we hit the beach just about every weekend to look for and photograph sandpipers, ducks, and waders. So we were looking forward to the opportunity to walk around on a real beach once again.

We also learned in the days leading up to the trip that a couple of rarities had been lingering there: a Snow Bunting and an Iceland Gull, which would be lifers for both of us.

We were SO there.

So we woke up at 5 a.m. yet again, joined up with the rest of the group at a local meeting spot, and carpooled to St,. Augustine -- where it was, once again, way colder than anyone had expected.

After half an hour checking out gulls and terns (including several Greater Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls) we saw something promising: another group of birders about 100 yards from us staring intently at something nearby .

"They must have the Snow Bunting!" someone said, and we moved towards them as quietly and discreetly as a dozen really hyped-up people possibly could. Glenn was photographing gulls a distance away from us and I wondered if I should fetch him to find the Snow Bunting.

"Guys, watch where you're going; from where they're looking, the bird must be really close to you!" our trip leader yelled.

"Omigod, there it is!" screamed someone just in front of me.

"Where?"

"THERE!!" She pointed at a cream-colored pouf that shot into the air, fluttered across the beach -- and landed right in front of Glenn!

A few minutes later, we all the bird in our sights. We explained to a curious bystander that the bird we were looking at normally lives in the far north, and rarely appears in Florida. "You guys drove 90 miles to see a bird?" he asked.

Hell, yes.

3. The Orange Revolution

I love my backyard birds, but I always thought my visitors were kind of boring. Lots of usual-suspect birds: Northern Cardinals, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadees. I always envied my friends who regularly got cool and locally rare birds at their feeders, such as Painted Buntings and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks.

But over the past two years, I've noticed that things tend to pick up in my back yard in the winter. Then, we get flocks of American Goldfinches, Pine Warblers, and a persistent Palm Warbler and a Yellow-throated Warbler.

Two weeks ago, we had a new visitor: a large, dusky orange bird lighted on our peanut feeder, and I realized it was a juvenile Baltimore Oriole! They winter here, but are extremely local and not often seen outside a few privileged neighborhoods -- and ours, until now, wasn't one of them.I told Glenn, who immediately set out an orange half impaled on an old chopstick. We waited a few days, but the bird didn't return. Then, early last week, I heard unfamiliar chattering outside and saw flashes of orange by our feeders: not one, but THREE Baltimore Orioles -- a juvenile and two adults!

The next day, I saw yet more orioles: an adult male and three female/juvenile birds. And they have been sucking down oranges and chomping on peanuts in our yard ever since. I love how they really get into fruit that's the exact same color they are.

The best part is I don't have to leave the house to see them.

Birding Is a Front for Something (We Just Don't Know What)

2011-01-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

Birders get a bad rap in the public mind. Most people think we're senile, pith-helmeted dorks -- annoying, embarrassing to be seen with, but basically harmless.

Then this article in Slate.com (by Nathan Heller), comes along with its own strange view of what we do. This piece is so peculiar I couldn't help sharing it with the other birders in my life.

Here are some of the salient passages:

"...a bird-watcher's motives can seem puzzling, if not downright suspect. Rising at vampiric hours, these people leave polite society behind to spend long stretches staring not at dazzling vistas or strange beasts but at birds—and often unexotic ones at that. They pack enough high-end equipment and field expertise to undertake a hunt but never touch their prey; the consummating act of birding is, at most, a picture snapped for private use and from a distance, in the manner of a pervert with a beach pass. Birding is the sort of hobby that seems like a front for something."

I'm not clear what kind of mental leap was necessary to go from a fundamental misunderstanding of the pleasures and virtues of birding to an insinuation that birders are a bunch of perverts or worse. I could go on and on about his out-of-hand dismissal of "unexotic" birds -- which, to Heller, probably means anything smaller and less colorful than the Froot Loops toucan. But the bigger point is this: just because the pleasures of someone else's hobby are lost on you doesn't mean that hobby is somehow sketchy or evil. Seriously. If I lived in fear of everyone with a pastime I considered pointless and stupid, I'd never leave the house.

"...there are four species of birder at large in the world. The first and least intimidating group includes those who see bird-watching as an endeavor roughly equivalent to Tuesday-night poker, volunteer gardening, or mah-jongg—an open-access hobby and a chance to connect regularly with friends. These people are frequently novices... a second group, an autonomous cadre of enthusiasts who set their own schedules and often dwell on single bird groups or locales for stretches, like a book critic taking a month to read an author's full oeuvre. Then there are the specialists. These people focus on one kind of bird obsessively and always, often with accompanying Web sites. Fourth are the listers, who chase birds to check them off a list. Some keep life lists (birds they've seen in their lives);* some keep year lists (starting anew every January); and others make up to-do lists by country, state, and so forth (certain New York City listers work by borough). There is, possibly, something compulsive in this approach...."

There's perhaps some truth about the first and fourth categories -- but I don't think I've met anyone in the two middle groups. The only people I've met who systematically bird only one place are biologists who are paid to do so. And if there are serious birders who pursue only one kind of bird to the exclusion of all others, they are rare birds indeed. And many birders I know, myself included, fall into more than one category -- I love birding as a social activity, and I also like keeping lists of my sightings.

And what about the bigger, unspoken, fifth category that almost all birders fall into: people who enjoy birding as an opportunity to commune with nature and be reminded of the fundamentals of how the world works?

To his credit, Heller does actually follow a few birders into the field (he says nothing about whether he enjoyed his search for American Coots or not). But strangely, nowhere in his article does he ask any of them WHY they got into birding what they hope to gain from it, or how birders contribute to society as a whole. Instead, he wastes numerous column inches verbally scratching his head over why we're out there or trying to posit birding as a complicated metaphor for something related to environmental angst in the post-nuclear age.

Dude. If you want to know why we bird... just freaking ask.

Santa's (Partial) List for Birders

2010-12-18T11:16:00.001-08:00

December brings many thoughts to a birder's mind: Sparrow ID. The Christmas Bird Count. And...shopping.

I hate shopping. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I hate mall crowds. I hate sacred music whose lyrics have been turned into commercial jingles. I hate the knowledge that most of American society judges people on the brands of clothes they wear rather than on any substantial features of intellect or character.

And yet, I love the holidays. I love the lights, cheesy decorations, and weirdly decorated foodstuffs. And strangely enough, I love getting gifts for those close to me whose tastes I know and understand (or who know me well enough to drop really large hints).

For me, the only fun part of holiday shopping is discovering something that I just know someone close to me will love. Extra fun comes from discovering said item is inexpensive. So as a service to the birding community, I've devised a short list of budget-friendly surprises for the birders on your list -- so you don't have to:

For the Completist Who Needs To Know the Root Causes of Everything:

We all know this guy -- and for some inexplicable reason, it's almost always a guy. He knows not only what specific birds eat (beginner stuff), but also the life cycle of whatever that food source is. He's memorized the annual arrival and departure dates of every migrant in his area for the past century, and is endlessly frustrated that nobody thought to document the fall arrival dates of, say, Magnolia Warblers in Alachua County, Florida, prior to 1885. He keeps track of every AOU attempt to re-classify birds and most likely has every bird book you think he'd like.

But chances are he doesn't yet own The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (Princeton Field Guides), and he definitely should. So he wants to know everything about birds going back to the beginning of time? Here, the roots of the avian family tree are magnified and illuminated in glorious detail. (Did you know that during the time of the first dinosaurs, the year was 385 days long and days themselves were only 22 hours and 45 minutes?) Meticulous colored illustrations of feathered dinos are accompanied by detailed accounts of their anatomy and life history. Think of a a bigger, blingier version of The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, but with dinosaurs instead. If this doesn't make your nerdy friend (or his dinosaur-loving kid) want to jump into a time machine right this very minute, nothing will.

For the Birder with an Aural Fixation:

In every birding community, there's always one person who can hear a millisecond-long chirp a mile away and immediately ID the bird responsible. I'm not that person. But I've always wanted to be: I've loved and wondered about bird song long before I started birding formally, and since I'm pathologically nearsighted (the first words any new opthamologist says to me are "holy crap, are you myopic!"), learning to bird by ear has given me a leg up in the field. I may be always the last person to actually see an interesting bird on any given day, but I'm often among the first to figure out it's actually there.

Of course, the more one birds, the more one realizes how much more there is to know. Birds are so fascinating to watch (if you're lucky enough to see them) that the complexity of their vocalizations is often overlooked. For a birder who wants to know more about all those wonderful songs and calls, there's no better source than The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong.

I discovered this book after hearing its author, Donald Kroodsma, give a talk at a bird festival last year. Of course, the topic of his talk was bird vocalization, its origins, and its uses in bird life.

His book is every bit as warm and engaging, yet intellectually rigorous, as his speaking style. As a trained linguist, I appreciated how he approached both the acoustic and neurological aspects of bird vocalizations. His writing shifts seamlessly from detailed discussion of bird evolution and how it is reflected in different types of song acquisition in birds to deeply personal impressions of how it feels to sit alone outdoors in the predawn hours, waiting to record awakening birds.

Kroodsma's book is a multimedia experience: it comes with a CD of bird song snippets that one should ideally play while reading through the relevant parts of the book. It also contains lots of graphic information--mostly spectrograms (voice prints) of the bird songs on the CD. Enjoying all this as Kroodsma intended, however, can be inconvenient--when I had access to a CD player (e.g., in my car), I wasn't in a position to read the book, and when I was reading the book (in bed, for the most part), I didn't have a CD player nearby. (Yes, I could have downloaded the CD onto my iPod, but since when should reading a book require effort or thought?)

It occurred to me that this book was the reason why interactive readers such as the iPad were invented--I can picture this as a killer e-book, with hyperlinks to sound files (instead of CD track numbers in parentheses in the text) and animated spectrograms so readers could simultaneously hear a bird song and see its graphic representation. Just a thought, if the right person is reading this...

For the Eastern Birder Who's Okay With Delayed Gratification, or Knows You're a Procrastinating Flake:

A dumb argument that tends to come up among birders is the debate over which bird guide is the best: Kaufman, with its user-friendly organization and carefully doctored photos or Sibley, with its wonderfully detailed drawings? Or is the best the National Geographic guide or the Stokes guide?

One reason this is a dumb argument is that different birders have different preferences and priorities; some may find one guide more comfortable to use than another. Another reason is that a serious birder really can't rely on just one guide: there is just too much variation in how a species can appear for any one guide to reflect accurately. And a field guide that's compact enough to be usable won't have absolutely all the information one might want on a given species. Different authors have different interests, and I find that having several guides means having several sources of complementary -- rather than redundant --information.

So I was happy to learn of another guide that may soon to added to my arsenal: The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds Like the Stokes and Kaufman guides, it's illustrated with photos --but the photos and lively and distinctive. Here's an example of one of my favorite winter birds, the Cedar Waxwing:

All this is well and good, but there's a catch: the book will not be available until January 1. But if you have a patient birding pal who wouldn't mind an IOU in his or her stocking, this could be a memorable choice.

For Relatives from Outside the Americas Who Go Crazy Whenever They See Hummingbirds:

This isn't just a hypothetical scenario. A few years ago, when I still lived in California, my South African nephews came to visit and were bowled over by the whole concept of hummingbirds. (And these were kids who grew up in a place where baboons and hippos occur in the wild!) Watching their fascination with hummers reminded me of how amazing those little birds really are.

It was only about a year after their visit that I discovered this. If only I had it around as a local present for them to enjoy during their stay here! Yes, it's more pricey than anything else on my little gift list, but it's still cheaper than taking the whole bunch of them to Disneyland.

Down the River

2010-12-04T05:06:00.000-08:00

A scene from the St. Johns River, near DeLand.

Fresh-Squeezed Florida is one of my favorite non-birding blogs. Its owner—who blogs under the name Gainesville365—is, like me, a transplanted Californian in Gainesville trying to make sense of this place. So far, she's done a much better job of it than I have--in her two years here, she has explored and blogged about every interesting nook and cranny in north Florida.

So I was delighted to receive an e-mail from her inviting me to join her on a boat tour of the St. Johns River near DeLand. She had gone on the tour there a few weeks before, she wrote, and found it truly special. But Blue Heron River Tours, the young company sponsoring the tours, needed help getting its name and mission known to the public -- would I be interested in joining her, The Florida Blogger, and possibly a third local blogger on one of their tours?

Of course I said yes. We arranged to carpool out to DeLand together and stop at one of her favorite places nearby for a late lunch on the way back. I was thrilled at the opportunity to meet her and talk to her in person, and to see a part of Florida I hadn't yet visited.

But I got a sad e-mail from her shortly before the trip: she had fallen ill, and would not be able to join us. But two other local bloggers I followed would be there and the trip was still on.

Blue Heron River Tours is based at Hontoon Landing Resort and Marina, just down the road from Hontoon Island State Park. The river front resort was pretty and quiet, as was the stretch of the St. Johns River that we explored on our tour.

Our tour boat moved slowly, by design -- both so we could have time to look for birds and animals on the shore, and to protect any wintering manatees in the area from possible collisions. We didn't see any manatees, but birds were plentiful and cooperative. My favorite bird sighting was a pair of Purple Gallinules, which don't occur in Gainesville during the winter--but seemed perfectly happy wintering only two hours away. Here's one of them, just coming into its adult plumage:

Anhingas were everywhere, posing dramatically.

Our guide and captain, Gary Randlett, clearly loved the river and was deeply knowledgeable about its natural history and role in human history. He took us off the main river and down a narrow canal, which he explained had been excavated by loggers in the 19th century. Now it looked utterly natural, as if it had been there forever. Something about that canal struck me as deeply romantic, despite the fact that it existed just so people could find trees to cut down. And I wasn't the only one who thought so: the trees lining the canal's banks -- so close we could touch them -- were filled with colorful painted birdhouses, all put up by locals as memorials or tributes to loved ones:

Towards the end of the tour, we saw an Osprey dining delicately on a fish...

...and a deer grazing close to shore.

Only an hour from us, no doubt dozens of tourists were on a boat trip at Disney World, listening to a canned spiel from a "cast member" and oohing and aahing at mechanized animals and birds. Meanwhile, the real Florida, in all its glory, waited nearly undiscovered for its fans.

Buffalo, Buffaloed

2010-11-27T17:57:00.000-08:00

What did I ever do to you?

For hundreds of years, wild bison have roamed the expansive area now comprising Paynes Prairie State Park. Believe it or not, bison aren't limited to the American west: at Paynes Prairie, seeing bison wading through a pond full of blooming lotus and flushing a sunbathing Anhinga or two isn't all that odd.

But if a proposed plan by Florida State Parks goes through, the bison will all but disappear, as will the herds of wild horses that also roam the prairie – not to mention a large part of the park's natural integrity.

The plan, allegedly still under discussion, is to remove all but a few bison and horses from the prairie. The animals, according to the Gainesville Sun, will be donated to whichever vendor takes them out, in return for their services.

The few remaining animals will be allowed to stay on the prairie – but in fenced-in enclosures close to one of the observation decks. This way every visitor will be guaranteed a bison sighting every time! None of that complicated stuff about nature taking its own course. And no more will visitors have to deal with tedious issues such as figuring out what the animals are doing as they wander rudely in and out of easy view. That's science, and science is HARD! After all, who goes to a state park to learn stuff about nature?

And gone will be the horrific possibility of seeing an actual WILD ANIMAL on the trail only a few yards from you! Everyone knows that WILD ANIMALS are DANGEROUS! WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??

But seriously...the plan is baffling in its short-minded stupidity.

For one, the very "need" to take out the bison and horses is questionable. The official story is that that herd of 44 bison is becoming overcrowded and inbred, and increased development in the areas on the perimeter of the prairie increases the risk of an animal escaping the park and potentially injuring someone. And because bison and horses are technically livestock, the Park Service, which owns them, could be held liable for any such injuries. And keeping the few token beasts in an enclosure would make visitors happy, because now it's too hard for people to see them.

Let's consider these. As longtime park volunteer Chuck Littlewood stated in a recent righteous rant (how's that for alliteration?), nobody has been injured by a horse or bison in the thirty years since the animals were re-introduced to the prairie. (I've seen bison the the trail only a few yards away – they're comfortable enough around people to hold their ground, but they certainly won't go after anyone who just leaves them alone.) And because the animals are replacements for naturally occurring, indigenous wildlife, there is a solid legal basis for classifying them as wildlife rather than livestock. The inbreeding and overpopulation problems could be solved by selectively culling the herd – they don't have any natural predators in the park except for unusually large or ambitious alligators, so this may be a necessary evil.

As for the risk of escapes, bison and horses outside the park are no more dangerous than those within its boundaries. And seriously, people who choose to live on the edge of a wildlife preserve have no right to get their panties in a twist if a beastie or two occasionally breaches park borders. When I lived in California, I knew that having a well-stocked earthquake kit and stabilized bookshelves were part of the price of living there. When I moved to Florida, I knew my earthquake kit should be re-purposed as a hurricane kit. Every place has its advantages and risks, and dealing responsibly and non-hysterically with the latter is called being a grown-up.

Speaking of which... some of the best commentary on this half-baked plan came from the Independent Florida Alligator, the University of Florida's (technically unofficial) student newspaper. Having taught at UF for two years, I can characterize the typical UF student as bright, but still a work in progress. But some of those darn kids actually nailed down the inconsistencies of this proposal with laser-sharp accuracy. I'll just quote some of their better comments on the matter. First, there's this righteous snarkfest. Then there are these more modest comments:

"45 bison don't have enough room on 21,000 acres???
No one can see them, yet having 45 of them risks injuring people: which is it?

And the prairie is NOT a petting zoo; reducing the healthy herd to 8 females stuck standing around the visitor center sucks. Why not add a sign at the visitor's center: 'we sold all the male bison to meat factories and there are no bison actually on the prairie. We just keep these here to give the impression wild animals roam free! Enjoy your view'"

"Little children have walked the trail and seen the bison from up close! The bison are prone to move away from people and have not been a problem, The repair of fences could vastly reduce the "risk to the community."
The thirty years that the bison have been there has not produced enough concern for fences or bison -- nor a problem.
Lastly, Why would you give away a herd worth $$$$$ Follow the money! "

"..'the Florida Park Service believes this is the best course of action after consulting with UF geneticists and the National Bison Association, a non-profit organization that matches bison sellers to meat buyers.'
Boy sounds like they have the animals' best interests in mind!"

Park volunteers I've talked to echoed the second commenter's concern: the plan is for the Park Service to simply give away the meat from several dozen bison. If they must cull some of the animals, the volunteers argued, why not sell them? Buffalo meat is more expensive than beef on the commercial market, and the monies made from meat sales – if a cull is deemed necessary – could go toward the upkeep of the fences surrounding the park. One volunteer said he calculated that the funds that could be earned from selling a few animals a year at retail value could keep the fences around the park maintained – and the rest of the animals safe.

A public hearing on the matter is scheduled for Tuesday, November 30 at 7:00 p.m. Details are available here (scroll down to the bottom of page 3). If you live around here and care about our state parks staying distinct from petting zoos, you should consider dropping by.

Failure To Launch

2010-11-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

A late breakfast at the Viera Wetlands.

Florida both sucks and rocks. On the sucky side are sticky 100-degree summers, man-eating mosquitos, and a political climate that would make most Third World banana republics look like Switzerland. Honest to God, the stuff in Carl Hiasaen's novels is not exaggeration.

On the upside, there's an ecosystem like none other in the US -- third-magnitude springs seemingly behind every bush, a dizzying inventory of dragonflies and butterflies, and of course, tons of birds, including several species not found anywhere else in the US. And a couple weekends ago, Glenn and I spent an excellent weekend looking at them.

It started with what used to be a routine event: the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle, another wonderful and purely Floridian thing. Once upon a time, I had been a technical writer on the Space Shuttle program (it's not nearly as exciting as it sounds) and always felt a bit of pride whenever one of those things went up. Over time, I stopped looking for announcements of upcoming launches. But now the program was coming to an end, and this would be the second-to-last scheduled flight. Glenn thought it would be fun to photograph a space launch, we were only a two-hour drive from Cape Canaveral -- so off we went.

We knew, too, that the launch was likely to be delayed or cancelled--it almost always has been as of late. But even if this happened, there were still birds to see in the area. Lots of birds.

The launch two Fridays ago (a re-try from failed attempts on Wednesday and Thursday) was scheduled for 3:00. So we left Gainesville before sunrise and planned to spend the morning at the Viera Wetlands, about half an hour south of our planned launch viewing site in Titusville. At Viera, two potential life birds for both of us -- a Snail Kite and a Great Cormorant --had been reported, and even better, both had been making regular appearances over the past week or so.

We got to the Viera Wetlands at 9:00 and I immediately felt an alien sensation: cold. It was REALLY cold. Back in Gainesville, temperatures had been in the mid-eighties until a few days earlier, and it did not occur to me to bring a jacket. For that matter, I had totally forgotten that I even owned such an object, and after about half an hour, I found myself digging through my overnight bag (we were spending the night with Glenn's photographer friend Harry) and putting the second shirt that I had bought over the one I was wearing. Never mind that they weren't in even remotely harmonious colors and one of them had stripes and one of them a print. I was COLD.

This was one of those times I was glad I don't have kids: they would have been humiliated.

But thankfully, the wetlands were nearly free of other people, except for a few retiree birders, who generally have no business lecturing others about their fashion choices. And there were a lot of birds: within fifteen minutes of our arrival, we got great looks at two birds that almost never appear in our area, only a two-hour drive away: a pair of Caracaras and a noisy exhibitionist Limpkin.

And after about two hours of searching, we found the Snail Kite!

This bird was either an adult female or a juvenile. Still, it was distinctive and cool, and a new bird for both of us. Glenn called Harry to let him knew we'd arrived and found the Kite, and he told us the shuttle launch had been (unsurprisingly) scrubbed because of technical issues. But we no longer cared: this gave us more time to look for birds.

After a pleasant lunch chez Harry, he drove with us back to the wetlands to look for the Great Cormorant--who was exactly where Harry had said it would be:

After getting our Great Cormorant, we took another spin through the wetlands to get more looks at the Snail Kite. Then we headed back to Harry's place, where he showed off his cooking skills and his new barbecue by grilling up a raft of enormous steaks.

And it no longer mattered that the Space Shuttle launch had been scotched once again. We got two life birds, a splendid dinner, and a long evening with good friends. What more can one want?

Life Goes Ani

2010-10-23T16:30:00.000-07:00

Fall migration has been great. So great, I've been too busy looking at birds to write about it. But I hope to make up for this shortly.

Last weekend was supposed to be the peak of fall migration for north-central Florida, and I was determined to squeeze in as many sightings as possible. But Saturday's Alachua Audubon field trip to Bolen Bluff-- where I had a record fifteen-warbler day this time last year--was pleasant, but uneventful: lots of Black-and-white Warblers and American Redstarts, but not much else.

The most memorable bird of the trip was several miles away. We had worked our way to the bluff and down into the prairie basin when the news arrived.

"GROOVE-BILLED ANI! GROOVE-BILLED ANI AT THE OBSERVATION DECK AT LA CHUA!" yelled one of the hard-core birders, holding up his cell phone. He had just gotten a call from the local birdhead who had just found it. We watched in puzzlement as he sprinted away from the rest of the group.

"Hey, where are you going?" our trip leader asked.

"GROOVE-BILLED ANI!" he yelled back.

As we progressed down through the prairie looking at Indigo Buntings and early Savannah Sparrows, we talked about the Groove-billed Ani. First, we explained what it was for the beginning birders present, who were beginning to think that the rest of us were insane. Then, we marveled at its presence in Paynes Prairie: these birds are rare visitors to our neck of the woods and this would be only the tenth sighting on record.

On the next morning's trip to Palm Point, everyone was still talking about it. We learned that our friend from the day before had shlepped two miles back to the Bolen Bluff trailhead, driven across town, then shlepped another two miles down the La Chua trail--only to find that the Ani had flown the coop. Meanwhile, Palm Point was yielding a terrific assortment of warblers, including a very bold Magnolia,

a strangely bland-looking Cape May,

and a third warble that Glenn managed to photograph, but couldn't ID.

"What is this?" he asked me, pointing at his viewfinder.

I looked at the bird. Some faint stripes on the head. Wing bars, A bit of streaking on the flanks. Definitely a warbler, but what? I called over our trip leader and asked him.

"Wow, that's a Blackburnian!: he exclaimed. "Where did you see it?"

Another confusing fall warbler for our collection--and Glenn had captured a life bird without knowing it!

But everyone was still talking about that Ani. The next morning, I opened my e-mail and found a message saying it had been seen on Sunday morning, while we were looking at warblers at Palm Point. It was still early. I showed Glenn the e-mail.

And then we went to La Chua. One of the great things about being self-employed is that you're free to make stupid decisions. Yes, I should have been making cold calls to potential clients or going to some shmooze breakfast with the Chamber of Commerce, but this was a Groove-billed Ani we were talking about here.

We got to the observation deck around 9:30 and met some local birders on their way out who said they had seen it about ten minutes earlier! So it was still there! Cool.

So we waited.

And waited.

Another birder showed up with a spotting scope. "So you're looking for it too?" I asked. "Looking for what?" he asked.

He hadn't heard about the Ani. But once I told him, he was all in.

An hour later, another birder arrived, an extroverted older guy who immediately introduced himself to the three of us on the platform. "Well, since we're going to be here a while, we might as well get to know each other," he said.

As the day progressed, it got hotter and hotter on the platform, and my lust to see the Ani was rapidly losing out to my lust for a hot pressed Cuban sandwich. The two other gentlemen on the platform with us were great company, but this whole experience was beginning to suck.

By 1:30, we gave up and headed home.

The next morning, I got another e-mail: the first guy who joined us on the platform -- who didn't even know the Ani was there -- had gotten a video of the bird and posted it on YouTube! Apparently, the video was taken around 4:40 that afternoon, which meant that guy had been waiting there a good five or six hours. Holy cow. Well, I guess he was more deserving of a sighting than we were.

And here's what we would have seen if only we waited around another four hours:

Okay. So the Ani had been there for a few days. It tended to show up either early in the morning, or late in the afternoon. So we'd try for an afternoon sighting.

On Tuesday, we got to the platform around 3:30. La Chua is invariably silent and birdless in mid-afternoon, and this was seriously depressing. But as the sun went down, the chorus of Red-winged Blackbirds got louder, White and Glossy Ibises began flying in, and things began to look promising. But no Ani. We waited until 5:00. The park closed at 6:00, and it would take over half an hour to walk back to the trailhead. So we left.

On the way back, we ran into a ranger in his truck, no doubt headed to the observation platform to herd any late lingerers back to the trailhead. I recognized him: he was not only a ranger, but also a serious birder. He stopped his truck and rolled down a window.

"So, did you see it?"

"No."

We saw him again on the way back, parking his truck near the trailhead. We asked him if he had seen anything. He smiled and looked apologetic.

We had missed it by fifteen minutes. Again.

We decided to give the Ani one more shot. But not until Thursday. On Wednesday morning at sunrise, we were meeting with a friend who'd show us where some of the last locally nesting Burrowing Owls were. And unlike the Ani, the Burrowing Owls were right where they were expected to be. Who doesn't love a Burrowing Owl, especially with a face like this?

We resumed our Ani hunt on Thursday morning. When arrived at La Chua, just before eight, it was foggy and cool out, and Palm Warblers and Indigo Buntings were everywhere. But our goal was the Ani, and we didn't stop until we got to the observation platform.

And there, about thirty feet off the trail in the fog, was a mid-size black bird with a long tail--not a crow,nor a grackle. I had brought my scope, and I focused it on the bird: it had a thick beak and shaggy head feathers: our Ani!

We spent the next two hours watching it. Some other local birders joined us on the observation platform, and we all watched in delight as it flew in and landed low in a shrub just off the trail. In books, the Groove-billed Ani looks fierce and predatory, but in real life, it's downright cute -- its vocalizations are gentle and sweet and the bird itself has a weirdly wistful face that reminds me of a Muppet. One of the other birders told me Anis are social birds, and this one looked like it wanted company. We all felt a little sad that it was so far away from others of its own kind. But its generous display for us more than made up for its elusiveness earlier in the week.

And it only took me a week of waiting to get the bird.

Adventures in Recursive Mimicry

2010-09-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

Since moving to Florida, I've become enthralled by the wonder that is the White-eyed Vireo. Its bouncy little song -- "Pick up the beer, CHICK!" -- was one of the first new bird songs I learned here, and its gaudy yellow spectacles one of the first field marks.

Last week, I learned something even cooler about this song: not all White-eyed Vireos have the same one. The first and last notes are often imitations of other bird calls. On a birding field trip last weekend, our leader pointed out opening notes of White-eyed Vireo songs that were striking imitations of Summer Tanager call notes, and final notes that sounded like warbler chips. And despite the nearly endless variation in possible sounds to mimic, all these vireos produce that distinct, loud, and bouncy melody. Wow.

I thought about this again this morning when I returned home from a run, and heard something that sounded like the water-droplet call note of a Summer Tanager -- followed by that bouncy little melody. "White-eyed Vireo doing a Summer Tanager mash-up," I thought, feeling quite smart.

I stopped and listened. The bird did it again. And again. Then he switched to a completely different sequence of repeated trills and warbles.

It wasn't a White-eyed Vireo. Or a Summer Tanager. It was a Northern Mockingbird imitating a White-eyed Vireo imitating a Summer Tanager.

How crazy is that??

I Love the Pain of Warbler Neck!

2010-09-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

A Yellow-throated Warbler. The ones with yellow lores, like this one, are native to Florida; the ones with white lores are migrants. So this isn't a migrant. Darn.

THE WARBLERS ARE BACK! And I am itchy and in pain, and it's all their fault.

News of interesting migrants started trickling in a few weeks ago--the master birders of the area, of course, managed to find the season's first waterthrushes and Worm-eating Warblers way before the rest of us. But their good news inspired me to go out and look for migrating goodies.

Among the most sought-after migrating warblers around here is the relatively plain but elusive Kentucky Warbler. I'd seen one only once before, so I decided I had to find one. So two Sundays ago, I went to Bolen Bluff (which has the double advantage of being both a migrant trap and being only a fifteen-minute drive from home) to see what I could find.

When I arrived, I saw lots of critters flying around, both near and far. Unfortunately, about half of them were mosquitos. And mosquitos LOVE me. When I'm around, they won't be deterred by long sleeves or DEET. I'm like a walking French Laundry for mosquitos.

Whatever. Chip notes were echoing temptingly from the trees, and I was there to find warblers. Something dark shot across the trail and landed in a tree only feet away from me: a Veery. Not a warbler, but still a cool migrant.

My walk, accompanied by the ugly buzz of feeding mosquitos, yielded a Northern Waterthrush, two Black-and-white Warblers, two Hooded Warblers, several Northern Parulas, a bold little Ovenbird, an American Redstart--and best of all, my Kentucky!

Bolen Bluff had proven so productive, I decided to go by again with a friend last Sunday. One thing I love about birding Paynes Prairie is that it's never the same place twice. This time, there were flycatchers in abundance (Acadians and some other thing that looked a little like an Eastern Pewee, but wasn't), as well as several Summer Tanagers in strange transitional plumages that made them look quite exotic. My friend and I scored a bright Prothonotory Warbler, and best of all, a bright Blue-winged Warbler who foraged calmly a mere six feet off the ground for several minutes while we watched him, only yards away. This was a lifer for my friend, and a second-sighting-ever for me, and we were both enchanted.

Then he flew closer still, and was only about ten feet from us--at the exact moment some obnoxious insect decided to crawl up my friend's pant leg and bite her repeatedly. This sent her screaming into the woods to find and remove the thing, while that Blue-winged Warbler sat nonplussed only feet away. Sometimes I think the birds and bugs have some kind of deal worked out with each other.

I had left a voicemail with another friend asking her to come with us, but she only got it yesterday. So we decided to go out this morning (both of us were free) and we headed to Palm Point, where a few lucky souls had seen seventeen warbler species in the last few days! When we got there, we found something nearly as good: a couple of the area's master birders, looking for the same things we were. Our official quarry was a male Cerulean Warbler that several people had seen: it would have been a lifer for both me and the friend who came with me, and a year bird for everyone else.

I didn't get the Cerulean (I had to leave before everyone else, so I'm sure they got it, since that's how things normally work), but I was around to see trees full of warblers: Yellows, Prairies, Yellow-throateds, American Redstarts...all the usual fall suspects, but all gorgeous and fun to watch. And all several stories overhead.

Now my neck is sore from being bent backwards for several minutes at a time in pursuit of tiny backlit things in the treetops, and I'm covered with bug bites. But it'll be worth it if I could get a Cerulean. There's still a month of fall migration left, and I'll be waiting.

I Get a Lifer, and It Takes Me a Week To Realize It

2010-08-30T03:35:00.000-07:00

The birding situation in Gainesville is oh-so-slightly improving. The temperatures have plummeted to the mid-eighties (woohoo!), and the migrant and wintering warblers have started drifting back in.

A couple of weeks ago--just before things started getting good again--I decided to go on another "practice birding" outing: I'd go and just try to get looks at as many far-away and partly hidden birds as possible, and if any early migrants showed up, all the better. I headed to Bolen Bluff, a well-liked local migrant trap only fifteen minutes from my place. Since it looked like it might rain (it always does at this time of year), I didn't bring my camera.

The parking lot at Bolen Bluff was empty when I got there, which meant I had the place to myself. Just by the entrance, I got my first-of-season Black-and-white Warbler--a good sign. A while later, I spotted a female/juvenile American Redstart--also good.

Off the trail leading out to the prairie, I heard an unfamiliar song: three high, slow notes followed by three fast ones: wee...wee...wee...weet-weet-weet. Or something like that. It was loud and insistent, and whoever was singing must have been close by. Then I saw movement in the trees a few feet above my head--then none. Then something moved again, but it was behind a clump of leaves--but still singing. Ooh, I hate it when birds to that!

I stood there following shadows and movement with my bins for about ten minutes, while my evil little quarry flitted and sang away, slipping in and out of view. Finally, it deigned to perch on a bare branch, and it was an unremarkable little thing indeed: pale and plain underneath, brownish, plain wings and back. Its only defining visual feature from where I was was a distinct white eye line.

Meh, I thought. Red-eyed Vireo. But what's the deal with that song? Maybe it was a juvenile; I've been thrown off by the vocalizations of juvenile sparrows and Northern Cardinals before. Whatever.

I went home, entered my sightings on eBird (I counted my mystery bird among the several Red-eyed Vireos I saw that morning), and forgot about it. Sort of. But that song still bothered me.

A week later, I was flipping through the warbler section in my Kaufman guide when I saw that bird again: Swainson's Warbler! I read the description of its song: "clear,ringing teer, teer, teer, whipperwill."

I hadn't even considered that possibility, but that sounded about right. But I wanted to make sure, so I went to Whatbird and played the Swainson's Warbler song: that was the song I heard at Bolen Bluff! Cool.

After conferring with one of the local birding gurus, I learned that the Swainson's Warbler wasn't just a lifer for me, but a rare sighting in the Gainesville area in general. But my report was solid enough that the gurus let it stand. (They know I'm not clever enough to make up something this laboriously detailed.)

And again I was grateful for that birding-by-ear class I took back in California (we learned not just the songs of Southern California birds, but how to listen to birds in general), and for my decision to spend part of the summer on "practice birding." For once, my practice has paid off!

The Birds Are Back, and So Am I

2010-08-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting in the last month or so because until recently, there hasn't been much to report. The combined forces of oppressive Florida heat, summer rainstorms (which are unpredictable, but always seem to hit when I'm outdoors and miles from my car), and plain old summer birding doldrums have left me with precious little to brag about.

This doesn't mean that I stopped birding. No matter how awful the weather is and how few birds are out, I simply can't stop. There have been a few nice summer treats -- Orchard Orioles, Blue Grosbeaks, Indigo Buntings, and Purple Gallinules -- but not much else.

When the birding is boring, I try to turn it into a skill-building challenge. Sometimes, I know all that's out there are the year-round residents, such as Tufted Titmice and Carolina Wrens--and I make a point of trying to find them in the treetops. IDing them by voice is easy, but actually getting one in view in the thick summer foliage is not. I try to train myself to locate them by the direction of their voices, and focus on discerning bird-like motion in high clusters of leaves.

Sometimes this makes me feel like a complete idiot: I can hear a nearby male Carolina Wren practically screaming into my ear, but I can't get a visual on him anywhere. Lately, big groups of juvenile Northern Cardinals and their parents have been calling each other in just about every bushy habitat in town, but sometimes I can hear at least three individuals but not see a single one. How do they pull this off?

I've been treating these as my practice birds, to keep my reflexes sharp for fall migration. Already, warblers have started trickling back into the area. In the last few weeks, I've gotten my first of season Black-and-whites, Ovenbirds, American Redstarts, and Prothonotaries. The weather is still hot and humid, but the birds tell a bigger story: fall is on the way.

I hope my summer birding practice will pay off.

This Is the West

2010-07-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a three-week visit back to Southern California, where, like here, it was the midst of the summer birding doldrums.

Two years ago, I would have found my last three weeks of birding thoroughly boring. But since moving away from California, I looked forward to trips back to revisit all the birds I used to take for granted. All those drab, common, little brown or gray things that haunt back yards and parking lots in the Los Angeles area--California Towhees, Bushtits, Wrentits, Black Phoebes--simply do not occur in Florida (ever) and I missed them.

My trip back was mostly filled with family events centered around the arrival of a new nephew (welcome aboard Quinten!), so I didn't get to do as much birding as I would have liked. Still, Glenn and I did manage to get out and revisit a few old haunting grounds.

We met some old birding pals at Bolsa Chica one weekend just to see the sights and catch up with the regular populations of nesting Least and Elegant Terns. But we also got to see the one and only rarity known to be hanging out in Orange County that week: a strangely sedentary Sooty Tern:

Shortly after our visit to Bolsa Chica, we visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which houses a large collection of taxidermied birds. One exhibit stated that Sooty Terns hold the record among birds for the longest period of time they can endure in the air without landing. I don't remember the exact duration (weeks? months?) but it was pretty mind-boggling. This made me wonder what the deal was with the mysterious Sooty loafing on that sandbar at Bolsa Chica: Was this normal behavior? Was he sick?

On the way down the coast to visit one of my sisters in San Diego, we stopped by San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, one of other other old favorite spots. Ducks and shorebirds there are plentiful and easy to see, which makes the sanctuary a popular spot for photographers. We saw, among other things, several young American Avocets, still covered with baby fuzz, as well as Black-bellied Plovers and a number of other goodies:

Now I'm back home. There are no Bushtits or Anna's Hummingbirds or Spotted Towhees anywhere near here. But my yard is filled with Northern Cardinals and Tufted Titmice and scolding Carolina Wrens. I rather missed them when I was gone.

Wordless Wednesday: A Family Outing on Paynes Prairie

2010-07-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

Wordless Wednesday: Who's Eating Whom?

2010-06-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

A Light Summer Post

2010-06-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

Another poor helpless creature being needlessly exploited by my selfish need for attention.

I haven't been posting much as of late for a couple of reasons: first, my pathologically bad luck at finding cool birds as of late has left me precious little to write about, and second, I've started another blog on my other obsession, FOOD!

Because birding—even pathetic, unsuccessful birding—makes me hungry.

Anyhow, I was fortunate that several of my posts got "promoted" onto the edited side of salon.com, the online magazine hosting my other blog site. So I got LOTS of hits and comments and good stuff right off, which is a good thing.

Sort of.

Well, yesterday, the kindly editors at Salon agreed to cross-post a fluffy little piece I wrote about, of all things, spaghetti. And within hours there was a (relative) crap-storm of comments accusing me of sexism, xenophobia, imperialism, and just plain old irresponsible ignorance.

Holy crap. This was about SPAGHETTI. It wasn't as though I was writing about abortion or the differences between Long and Short-billed Dowitchers or the continued existence of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers or anything else worth really fighting about. I regularly write more snarky and potentially inflammatory stuff here and the only comments I usually get are "Nice photos!"

This is because birders are sane. And polite. And accustomed to staying quiet around deranged creatures.

All this has left me a bit shell-shocked. Now I'm kind of scared to post anything, anywhere, without being virtually yelled at. So I've decided to simultaneously write and flame myself. So you don't have to.

******
Saturday at Morningside Nature Center

June is the quietest—and thus the worst—time of year for north-central Florida birders: the spring migrants are long gone (How dare you refer to them as 'migrants', as if they don't belong! Who gave you the right to judge which birds do or don't belong in your community!) and the year-round residents are mostly hunkered down quietly in their nests.

This, of course, is no excuse not to look for birds. On Saturday, Glenn and I went to Morningside Nature Center to see what we could find. Among other things, we wanted to look for the locally rare Brown-headed Nuthatches that favor the wooded areas there (Just because SOME Brown-headed Nuthatches in Gainesville like to nest in pine flatwoods that doesn't mean ALL of them do! All I see here is peddling in tired stereotypes.) we'd seen a nesting pair there a few months ago and hoped they (and their now-fledged chicks) would still be around.

We didn't see any Nuthatches, but we did see several Red-headed Woodpeckers, one flying continually in and out of its nest hole in a snag not far from the parking lot. We heard, but didn't see, a number of Summer Tanagers, all singing quite loudly. I was pleased to learn recently that they nest here, and will be around all summer. (Did it ever occur to you that Summer Tanagers don't exist for your pleasure? They're hard at work raising families and all you can do is look at them?)

Normally, I like to start my forays at Morningside by the reconstructed 19th century farmstead, whose trees and plantings attract numerous songbirds. But today, the area seemed crowded with visitors being lectured to about traditional Cracker architecture ("Cracker" is a blatantly racist term! I've e-mailed the moderators and told them to remove this post!) by docents in period dress. So instead, we explored the area just around the picnic tables.

Our best bird of the day was a fairly new one for both me and Glenn--and we saw several of them! Just as we arrived and got out of our car, I heard unfamiliar buzzy honks!! high overhead. Flying high above us, at mind-boggling speed, were a pair of Common Nighthawks! (Uh. It wasn't night and those sure as hell aren't hawks. Don't you proofread your crap before posting it??)

They lingered in the area, swooping and diving overhead the whole time we were there. I'd only ever seen them very briefly, around sunset, when they were pointed out to me by more knowledgeable birders.

We also saw an Eastern Bluebird, a Great-crested Flycatcher, several Pine Warblers, and lots of Eastern Towhees, singing and hopping around low in the bushes. Then it started to rain, and we headed home to await another day of birding.

(Well, you still suck.)

Bug Me

2010-05-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

A Zebra Swallowtail near High Springs.

There are any number of things to hate about summer in Florida. First, there's the unholy trio of heat, humidity, and hurricanes. Then, there's the relative absence of interesting birds (which is just as well, since hiking around in our summer weather can be downright agonizing.) And finally, summer is when all the really big, sticky, bite-y, and noxious bugs come out to play.

On the upside, some of those bugs are kind of cool looking. And on Saturday, Glenn and I went to look for some of them.

The last Alachua Audubon field trip of the season was not a birding trip, but a butterfly walk, jointly sponsored by some local butterfly club, whose official name I unfortunately forgot. We met in High Springs and planned to carpool to nearby O'Leno State Park, where a Striped Hairstreak had been seen—the first in the county.

This sounded really promising, even though I had no clue what a Striped Hairstreak was. Our patient trip leader unloaded a veritable library of butterfly guides from the back of her car and passed around a few opened to color illustrations of our quarry. It was a little orangey-brown thing that looked almost exactly like the two other hairstreaks on the same page.

Birders, of course, face similar issues: distinguishing scarily similar relatives such as Long-billed and Short-billed Dowitchers, for instance. But at least birds are more than an inch long.

We set off for O'Leno—and I realized that I had forgotten my binoculars. At least, I thought, we'd be looking for butterflies nearby at eye level, and not at migrating warblers in the treetops.

But once we got to O'Leno, we found the trees filled with birds. Birds! Those same creatures that have been assiduously avoiding me for the past month were now flying and perching and singing out in the open—but too far away to see in detail without binoculars. There were Hooded Warblers (which I just learned are local nesters), Summer Tanagers (ditto), Northern Parulas, and all the familiar and cute year-round residents, just above my head. They must have known that I had left my bins behind.

Birds have a perverse sense of humor.

It didn't take us long to find the Striped Hairstreak, even though it was in foliage well off the trail. Everyone was looking at it in awe. Someone kindly lent me a pair of butterfly binoculars, and maybe I saw it—the little bins weren't meant to focus that far away. Drat.

After we toured O'Leno, we went to our trip leader's home, where she had planted the mother of all butterfly gardens (she said she had tallied 61 species in her yard over the past few years). . She—and all the other Butterfly People—not only recognized all the different local butterflies, but their eggs and caterpillars and the plants that serve as their hosts. And I thought birders were the extreme geeks: I can't think of any birder who'd recognize the eggs and newborn chicks of every bird on his or her life list. I certainly can't.

At any rate, we saw more butterflies in her little garden than in O'Leno. There were also lots of dragonflies, such as this Blue Dasher:

And here is some kind of skipper that the Butterfly People found noteworthy. Again, I'm spacing out on the exact species, since I didn't think to take notes during the trip. Any ID help would be appreciated!

Summer in Florida is bug time, and bug time can be a good time.

Show and Tell

2010-05-18T14:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I did something I've never done before: I took a non-birder friend birding. This friend is a colleague of mine who's endured God-knows-how-many of my Monday morning weekend birding reports—and she decided that she had to see for herself what all the fuss was about.

So on Sunday morning, I picked her up and took her to La Chua, a perfect place for a birding virgin: a long, flat trail overlooking several waterways, offering guaranteed sightings of Big Pretty Birds. And for the first time in weeks, the birds decided to cooperate with me. (I suspect they decided to make an appearance for my friend's benefit, not mine.)

Near the trailhead, I set up my spotting scope so she could get good looks at the nesting Osprey pair, and while we were there, a Brown Thrasher and a Great-crested Flycatcher lingered close by—close enough for good looks even without optics. Other usual-suspect birds—Northern Mockingbirds, Northern Cardinals, Carolina Chickadees—hopped around nearly, singing loudly and allowing more good looks.

I was counting on a short trip; I figured that a non-birder would grow quickly bored of staring into clumps of foliage for signs of movement. But my friend was surprisingly game—and naturally skilled. We lingered on the trail by the Osprey nest for a good half-hour, watching songbirds come and go.

We moved on towards Alachua Sink: just before the sink, the trail opens up to a flat expanse of prairie and grazing land. There, we saw several Wild Turkeys—a fairly common occurrence there. But today we got unusually lucky: one of the male birds was in the middle of a feverish courtship display:

This dude kept up his prancing and preening for a good half hour, while a nearby female pointedly ignored him. We kept tabs on their seduce-and-snub act while looking out for other birds in the area: a group of three Red-bellied Woodpeckers (a family?), a Blue Grosbeak, and passing overhead, a Sandhill Crane and a Mississippi Kite. Another productive half-hour spent standing nearly still.

Near the sink, we got another good summer bird, and an ideal piece of avian eye candy for a new birder: a Purple Gallinule:

Along the main part of the trail, we saw all the usual egrets and herons (though not the Least Bitterns that others had reported seeing a few days earlier), as well as Wood Storks and the whole range of non-avian wildife known to inhabit the area: a huge herd of bison, wild horses and pigs, a four-foot long soft-shell turtle, and of course, dozens of alligators.

I was happy and grateful that the birds and other critters were all out and about for my friend. Maybe now she understands what all the fuss is about.

Glenn's 15 Minutes of Fame!

2010-05-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post: Glenn was the featured photographer on Smugmug's Photography Corner this month! His interview (and an assortment of his photos) are here..

Enjoy!

eBored

2010-05-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

The migration gods frowned on me for the second weekend in a row: In what should have been the last weekend of the big spring migrant push north through Florida, I scored exactly two migrant warblers. So instead of contemplating the wonders of birds, I'll contemplate the wonders of a tool every birder should take advantage of: eBird.

EBird rules: It's an easy way to keep your lists (and will even sort your sightings out by date and location) AND all your sightings will be made available to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology for their investigation of bird life. It allows you to share your lists with other users or even e-mail them to random people who aren't eBird users.

But eBird occasionally sends me into spasms of angst. Whenever I enter my sightings in eBird, I'm aware that I'm not just doing it for myself, but for the Sake of Science! So I'd better be darned sure of my ID when I click on those little boxes by bird names. What if those shiny black things I saw were Boat-tailed Grackles rather than Common Grackles? Would this bad information—compounded exponentially by all my other misidentifications over the years—cause the hard-working folks at Cornell to have a completely skewed view of grackle populations in Florida, leading to misguided policy decisions that could cause the whole lot of them to go extinct? AACK!

Citizen science comes with certain responsibilities. And occasionally, the usually pleasant early-afternoon task of logging my morning sightings onto eBird sends me into an existential panic attack. For instance, take this typically atypical session:

Observation type:

"Travelling count", according to eBird guidelines,refers to counts taken while moving over a specified distance for a certain duration. "Area" count" refers to counts made while covering the same patch of ground repeatedly. Which box do you check when you go somewhere, bird the parking lot for half an hour, wander a mile down a trail, bird a patch down there for an hour, then come back?

What the hell. Travelling count.

Date:

What day was Saturday anyhow? Did I leave my calendar in my office again?

Distance covered:

If you birded a loop trail, does the distance refer to the circumference of the loop, since that is what you physically walked, or the area of the territory bounded by the loop, since that's where all the birds you saw came from? And how do you calculate that anyhow if you don't know how long the trail was? Or if the loop doesn't actually form a circle, but an irregular blob, and your calculus skills are really rusty?

Okay, 3 miles. Because it's a nice round number.

Number of people in your birding party:

I went there alone. So that's one. But then I ran into Rex and Phil and this couple from Orlando. So that's five. Then I ran into Cecelia and Barbara and Craig, but then Rex left and Cecelia and I split from the rest of the group to look for King Rails, and on the way back we ran into Craig again and his roommate from college so that makes it..

Still five?

Kirtland's Warbler is an excellent observation! Please click to confirm.

Yikes, did I actually click Kirtland's Warbler? I meant Common Yellowthroat. My bad.

Ivory-billed Woodpecker is an excellent observation! Please click to confirm.

What, you don't believe me?

But in the end, it's worth the angst. I've got a convenient online database of all my sightings—a virtual scrapbook of my outings. And I'm helping advance science (in the same way I used to "help" in the garden when I was three). And the collective wisdom of the thousands of seasoned birders who also swear by eBird should cancel out the negative effects of my screwups.

I hope!

A Day at Fort De Soto

2010-04-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

Fort De Soto is Da Bomb! Or a bomb, depending on when you go.

It is a truth widely acknowledged among Florida birders that the single best thing a person can do during spring migration is head to Fort De Soto County Park , where warblers and tropical vagrants drip from the trees like blooming flowers, their little beaks dripping with the sweet purple juice of the plentiful mulberries that grow all over the park. Fort De Soto during migration is Da Bomb. No, not just Da Bomb. More like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and every bomb past, present, and future combined.

"OH..MY..GOD!" an acquaintance gasped orgasmically when recalling last spring's Alachua Audubon trip there. Her eyelids fluttered and her hand trembled as it passed over her rapidly beating heart. "It... was...AMAZING! ! We had TWENTY-FIVE species of warblers! And there were thrushes EVERYWHERE!"

"One year I saw THREE cuckoo species in the same tree! At the same time!" another friend recalled dreamily."

"I can't believe you didn't go last year! YOU HAVE TO GO!" exhorted another friend.

So we went. And since the trip started at 8 a.m. and Fort De Soto is about 150 miles south of us, we got up at 4 a.m., pumped ourselves up with caffeine, and set off for our super-fantabulous day of warbler-watching.

And at about 7:30, we found ourselves in a stunningly beautiful park buffeted by what felt like 30 mph wind gusts. Not good. And a St. Pete birder helping organize his Audubon chapter's field trip told us that things had been unusually quiet for the past few days.

For this we got at at 4 a.m. and drove nearly three hours??

No matter. Our hardy band of Gainesville birders assembled just before 8 and pressed on. (As did several other Audubon groups, who had all planned to be here at the height of migration.) We started at the still-quiet beach, where we got a nice inventory of shorebirds, including Piping Plovers and American Oystercatchers. The latter were strangely unafraid of people.

Just as I had feared, we ended up seeing more birders than actual birds at all the famous hotspots in the park. The vaunted mulberry trees were waving violently in the wind, with only a few unusually persistent Cedar Waxwings clinging to their branches. Near North Beach, Glenn got his life sightings of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak and a Veery. An Indigo Bunting made a brief appearance, as did a female Black-throated Green Warbler. A male American Redstart lingered in the area for most of the day:

But the best bird we saw was this one:

We all agreed this guy was clearly a Black-and-white Warbler; he was feeding and moving exactly like every other Black-and-white I've ever seen. Was that strange head pattern a form of melanism? Or was he a crossbreed? Did he any idea he was a crazy-looking freak of a bird?

Our merry band of birders slogged through the wind and nearly birdless silence of the woods until around 5:00, stopping only for a brief lunch break. We chatted about birds, food, plants, and past trips to Fort De Soto that were SO, SO much better. In the company of fun people in a pretty place, the absence of interesting birds didn't really matter all that much. It was still a good time.

We'll definitely be back—after all, it can only get better!

It Could Have Been Worse

2010-04-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

Every slasher flick needs one of these!

This weekend, a dream nearly came true, and it was not a good thing.

Last week, I kept having this awful spring migration anxiety dream: I could just tell the trees were dripping with birds, but my parents/family/friends all needed me to be somewhere else. In my dream, I kept telling everyone (including my darling birder husband) that there were tons of warblers and tanagers and buntings outside, but they wanted to stay inside and nap or go shopping or something else equally boring, and for some reason, I was obliged to join them.

But of course, dreams and reality are (usually) two different things. And this weekend was looking pretty darned good: On Saturday, we were headed to Palm Coast to see one of my old Sea and Sage Audubon buddies, who was out here to visit another old friend. She said she wanted to go birding with us, and that the friend she was staying with would hook us up with a local birder. Cool.

The first sign that things were going south was the fact that our Palm Coast birder connection had just gotten out of bed when my friend's host called her, around 10:00 on Saturday morning. Could this person possibly be a real birder? It turned out, predictably, that the answer was no: she was a darling person with a personality I wish I could bottle and sell, but the only birds she had any interest in were raptors. All those "little things" held no interest for her. Sigh.

But in her company, we did manage to see several Bald Eagle and Great Horned Owl nests, as well as several adorable not-quite-fledged owlets, who looked like giant Muppets.

It was a great seasonal treat. But I still wanted my warblers.

Well, there was always Sunday back in Gainesville—when there would be an Alachua Audubon trip to River Rise State Park, where I had my life sightings of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, as well as numerous sightings of Summer Tanagers, Black-throated Blue Warblers, and dozens of other goodies last year. If we left Palm Coast before sunset, we'd be back in Gainesville in time for a nice home-cooked dinner and a reasonably early night in preparation for a morning of warbler-chasing.

But about halfway back to Gainesville, my car started shaking and riding weirdly—a seriously flat tire. Luckily, there was a long right-turn lane just ahead; we pulled into it, turned on the emergency blinkers, and called AAA. And waited.

Then I noticed the odd rectangular blocks of stone sticking out of the brush just off the side of the road. Tombstones. Gnarly. Don't about half of all teen slasher flicks in the world start with a couple getting a flat tire right by a cemetery? And the sun was about to set, too.

So our romantic Saturday night consisted of driving around the dreary town of Palatka on our tiny little spare tire, looking for an open tire shop where we could get our flat tire patched or replaced. No luck. And our options were (1) spending the night in a town whose distinguishing features are a huge bail-bond shop and huger adult superstore or (2) driving the remaining 60 miles back to Gainesville on that tiny little spare at 40 mph with our emergency blinkers on, gaining us the emnity of every driver in north-central Florida. We chose the latter option. It sucked less than the former, but not by much.

And Sunday's trip to River Rise also seemed to be a wash: We dragged our sleep-deprived carcasses all the way out there only to find that nobody but us and one other birder buddy had any interest in stopping and looking for treasured migrants—or for that matter, any birds at all. Summer Tanagers and Yellow-throated Vireos were singing everywhere, but nobody wanted to stop and look for them. Instead, we sprinted grimly down the trail and only stopped to discuss...trees. Okay, trees are cool. But they're here year-round, don't move and are freaking easy to find. Migrant birds are not. Seriously. Can't that discussion about the difference in bark patterns between loblolly and short-leaf pines wait until summer??

But at the very end of the trip, the outing was redeemed: Just as we were about to leave, we found a feeding flock containing a Hooded Warbler, a Worm-eating Warbler, a Black-and-white Warbler, and a handsome male Common Yellowthroat. The absence of chlorophyl in any of these organisms caused most our our group to roll their eyes in boredom (this was an Audubon trip; why were they even there??) , but I didn't care. I'd gotten my warbler fix for the week. It wasn't the best I'd ever had, but still, my first worm-eaters and hoodies of the year.

And best of all, I made it out of a creepy cemetery in a sleazy prison town alive, just before sunset. Thank goodness for small favors.

The Snottiest Grackle in the World

2010-04-13T14:33:00.001-07:00

Boat-tailed Grackles are boringly common out here, so despite being big and noisy, they're easy to ignore when you're looking for more exotic birds.

But not this guy. He and his cohorts were strutting snootily around the Viera Wetlands last weekend as if they owned the place—which I supposed they do. I loved how he marched about with his shoulders pushed back and his chest pushed forward, with a nearly military bearing, all while puffing up the feathers on his head like some kind of tribal headpiece. He and the other male Boat-taileds seemed to be involved in an ongoing pissing match, with each noisily attempting to chase off the others.

I'm pretty sure this was all springtime hormones at work: While their men postured and posed, the duller female Boat-taileds darted through the reeds bearing nesting materials.

The guys take charge of the grand gestures, while the girls do all the heavy lifting. The lives of Boat-tailed Grackles look distressingly familiar.

The Boat-taileds weren't the only birds showing off at the wetlands. We travelled to Viera because one of Glenn's friends had told him that Limpkins were nesting here. But when we arrived, his friend had bad news: An alligator had paid a visit to the nest the night before.

The alligator had managed to take a nest full of eggs just days from hatching—but fortunately, he didn't get any of the adults. And the adult Limpkins we saw were bold and noisy; the unfortunate events of the preceding day didn't seem to slow them down. This Limpkin seemed to follow us from pond to pond, almost as though he wanted our attention. At times, he or she was almost too close to photograph:

The Limpkins were a treat since they don't occur (anymore) in Gainesville—at least not on a regular basis. We also had fun looking for the more elusive and sneaky birds, such as Marsh Wrens and Least Bitterns. We managed to find several Least Bitterns on their rare forays out into the open: our first sightings of this bird this year:

The wetlands looked and felt different—and the birds acted differently—than on our last visit, on New Year's Day. Then, it was foggy and quiet except for a few other hard-core birders determined to start their year lists with the visiting Masked Duck.

That's a cool thing about the best birding places: they're never really the same place twice.

Fire Birds

2010-04-04T08:46:00.001-07:00

A Brown-headed Nuthatch in Ocala National Forest

One of my favorite Alachua Audubon field trips last year was the spring trip to Ocala National Forest, where I got my life sightings of Bachman's Sparrows and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. Glenn wasn't here to join me then, but he is now—and yesterday 's trip back to Ocala National Forest was his turn to discover these birds for the first time.

The trip started auspiciously: One of the first birds we spotted as we entered the forest was a Florida Scrub Jay. These rare birds are growing ever rarer, but when they're around, they're surprisingly easy to see. This is because they're obsessively curious and nearly fearless: almost every time I've stopped to check one out, it would fly in closer to check me out. And yesterday's bird did exactly that: he flew and hopped until he was just feet away, at eye level.

We parked our cars and started the main part of our walk in the same place we explored last year—in a sunny, grassy stand of pines where the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers were known to be nesting. An unfamiliar but very pretty song rang out repeatedly from the pines—our guide identified it as our Bachman's Sparrow. The birds only like open grasslands and recently burned areas, which is why I haven't seen them in my usual birding spots in town, but they were clearly here in big numbers:

It didn't take us long to find the stand of nesting trees favored by the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers: trees with nest holes are clearly marked with white paint around their trunks. But the white-painted trees were quiet, except for the songs of Pine Warblers and the call notes of Palm Warblers.

We moved on to an area that had undergone a controlled burn just the week before. Black, ashy twigs crumbled under our feet and pale, limp cactus paddles caught in the fire looked as though they had been steamed to death—which they probably were. I didn't think it looked too promising for birds—but then a faint chorus of squeaks, like the sounds of a dog's plastic chew toy, grew louder in the trees: the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers! Several of them were flying around, chasing each other and squeaking loudly.

And just like last year, they were too fast and too high to be photographed. But they were there, and they were very cool.

Also squeaking loudly were several Brown-headed Nuthatches, who stayed low to the ground and were a lot more cooperative for photos.

We stood in the burnt-out area for the better part of an hour, watching the birds chase each other. The controlled fires keep the underbrush low and promote the kind of open pine woods and grassy undercover that birds such as Bachman's Sparrows and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers like.

Out of the destruction comes life for vulnerable birds: we had discovered a strangely appropriate place to bird on the day before Easter.

It's on the House: A Repost

2010-04-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

Two things I almost never do here are (1) repost material I've already written and (2) write seriously about natural history. I avoid the former because it's lazy and boring, and the latter because there are birders out there far more knowledgeable about the history and science of birding than I am (for instance, this guy and this girl.)

But today, I'll make an exception and repost a piece I wrote on the life of an important, but seriously under-appreciated figure in birding history—the only one I've ever attempted to do. As my friends in Oaxaca and Barcelona would say disfrutele!

******************
Yesterday was the first day of the term at the school where I teach, so I got to campus early to gear up for my two classes of the day. (Nothing makes waking up on Mondays easier than the prospect of lecturing for 4 straight hours! Ha ha.)

But the great thing about getting to campus early is that I get to check out the birds. At 8 a.m., even my busy urban campus is loud with birdsong: Cedar Waxwings, Bushtits, Yellow-rumped Warblers, random parrots I can't ID. My third-floor office overlooks a stand of jacaranda trees that top out at about the second story of my building. I often see flocks of birds flitting about, but they're too tiny and far off to ID. I'm tempted to bring in my spotting scope and set it up by my window, but everyone thinks I'm weird enough as it is.

By mid-afternoon, my lectures for the day were over, and I found myself, uncharacteristically, sitting in my office without any urgent work-related tasks. So I decided to take a break, surf the web, and see what I could learn about some of the more routine birds I see on campus.

And I was surprised by what I found: as I've found out in my birding by ear class, nothing is ever as obvious as one would think. Birds do things one wouldn't expect. And people who work with birds aren't who we think they are, either.

For instance, take the House Sparrow: as all birders know, it's a European import usually seen Stateside foraging for muffin crumbs outside of any Starbucks. (On campus, they're usually seen eating hamburger bun and tortilla chip crumbs outside the food courts.)

What I didn't know, however, was that the little junk-food-junkies weren't named for their predilection for human edifices, but for the 19th-century birder who first studied and formally identified them as a distinct species: Gregory House, a British surgeon and amateur naturalist.

House was an avid traveller and taxonomist with an obsessive eye for detail: during his North American travels, he drew numerous sketches of, and wrote extensive descriptions of, two other seemingly unremarkable birds that everyone else thought too boring to bother with: these birds are now known as the House Wren and House Finch.

Unfortunately, House suffered from chronic pain brought on by a leg injury suffered during the Crimean War. He died of an opium overdose--perhaps accidental, perhaps not--at the age of 54.

And today--House's birthday, April 1--seems like a perfect occasion to honor this unheralded champion of the common bird.

Two of Everything!

2010-03-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

Get a room!

My car is coated with pollen, my normally polite students are grumpy and distracted, and field of boring (non-avian) warblers on American Idol is almost down to the single digits. Which means only one thing:

SPRING IS HERE!

It not only feels like spring, but sounds like spring. On my morning runs (just after sunrise, which is allegedly when all the muggers and kidnappers are back in bed) I hear calls and songs and scolds from seemingly twice as many birds as before, all going at double speed and double volume. The intensity and urgency of their calls makes me want to run faster—but it also tempts me to go home, grab my bins, and walk my route, checking the trees for migrants. Some of the vocalizations are unfamiliar, and I want to know who's making them. Most likely, our year-round residents in a hormone-induced frenzy, but still. Alas, this time-intensive option isn't doable on work days. So I run faster.

At our feeder, we're also seeing signs of spring. Our resident male Northern Cardinal has been feeding his mate, a sign that nesting will soon begin. Two Carolina Wrens have been following each other closely as they explore our peanut feeder and occasional meal worm treats—no doubt a pair. They've been eating heartily in anticipation of —well, whatever it is they're up to! Over the weekend, one of them managed to gobble down two meal worms at once:

I've learned, though, that spring migration doesn't hit Gainesville until relatively late in the season. The summering Northern Parulas are back, and word is out that the first Prothonotory Warblers of the season have been spotted—but we're not expecting a real influx of good stuff for a few more weeks. Meanwhile, our winter birds are still here: the Chipping Sparrows still arrive by the dozen at our feeder every morning, and on Sunday, we got a new bird at our feeder: a wintering American Goldfinch:

Now where was this guy back in December, when I put down major ducats for all that thistle seed nobody touched?

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday Winter Warblers

2010-03-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

Black-and-white Warbler, Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park.

Yellow-rumped Warbler, Morningside Nature Center, Gainesville.

Palm Warbler, Morningside Nature Center, Gainesville.

Nuthatch Patch

2010-03-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

A Brown-headed Nuthatch at Morningside Nature Center

Gainesville is an odd place to bird. We're too far north to get all the famous Florida specialties such as Snail Kites and Anis, and on the southern end of the range for many typical birds of the continental U.S. Typical bird-feeder visitors such Tufted Titmice are rare to nonexistent only a few hours south of us, and everyday backyard birds common just north of here get Gainesville birders strangely excited. One of these is the Brown-headed Nuthatch.

Bird guides list these as common and easy to find, but here in Gainesville, they only occur in one place: Morningside Nature Center, a sprawling park filled with longleaf pines and scrubby palmettos. And even at Morningside, seeing one is not always a sure bet. But the past few weekends, we got lucky: we saw not one, but two, and noticed they were a pair, and were nesting!

While hiking the back trails at Morningside, I saw two more Brown-headed Nuthatches, who took turns pecking violently inside a deep hole on the side of a dead tree, squeaking loudly the whole time. The birds seemed to be traveling together, and it wasn't clear to me if they were feeding at that tree or trying to excavate a nest hole. I actually have no clue if Brown-headed Nuthatches are capable of excavating nest cavities by themselves, but it seemed like an interesting idea to contemplate.

The local Nuthatch Patch is a good place to be right now. Can't wait for the Nuthatch Patch hatch is a few weeks!

Sparrow Me the Details

2010-03-06T12:48:00.000-08:00

A Field Sparrow at La Chua trail at Paynes Prairie State Reserve

Something has long puzzled me about the popular portrayal of birders—and it's not our image as humorless, pith-helmet-wearing ninnies tiptoeing pretentiously across the savannah with binoculars nerdily jammed to our (generally pale and unattractive) faces. It's the baffling phenomenon in which writers, trying to sound as though they get what we're doing, always citing the phrase "little brown jobs". This term, they inform the reading public in a confidential whisper, is a central example of birdwatcher cant; it's what birdwatchers call all those plain little brown birds—such as sparrows—that nobody can tell apart.

There are a couple of problems with this: First, birders never actually say "little brown jobs". At least, in my five or so years of birding, I've never heard a serious birder say that. For that matter, I've never heard a casual or even a newbie birder say that. And I have no clue where people get the idea that we do.

The other falsehood behind the mysterious "little brown job" meme is this: While it's true that many birders find sparrows and some other small birds frustrating to ID, this is not because they are so plain. On the contrary, it's because sparrows have hellishly complex plumages, on tiny, fast-moving bodies. (This distinction is somehow lost on journalists with looming deadlines and no binoculars.) And the difference between a common yard bird and a rarity could be a tiny difference in color on exactly the part of the bird that's currently being obscured by a branch.

As some of my students would say, "That's SOOO unfair! How can you expect us to do something SOOO HARD??"

But this challenge is part of what makes birding so entrancing, even when it makes you want to rip your eyeballs out.

Here's an example: This, I'm pretty sure, is a Savannah Sparrow:

And this is a Song Sparrow. I think:

In a birding class I took back in California, I learned that a reliable way to tell Savannahs and Songs apart is that Savannahs have a yellowish wash on their "eyebrows", while the Songs have a solid gray color. This seems to hold for the birds pictured here. However, I learned from a reliable source that the Savannah Sparrows out here don't always have that yellowish wash above the eye.

The other common diagnostic for Song Sparrows is the presence of a dark spot in the center of the chest. However, my reliable source says this isn't a foolproof diagnostic, either; sometimes Song Sparrows lack it and other sparrows have it. The Savannah Sparrow above, for instance, seems to have a nice little splotch on its chest.

But—my sparrow-maven friend reminds me (and I keep forgetting)—tne thing that's unlikely to vary no matter what strange pose the bird hits is its overall shape and proportions. Here's another Savannah Sparrow; its tail looks noticeably shorter than that of the Song Sparrow:

Ergo, the second bird up is a Song Sparrow. Maybe.

Just to show that not all sparrows look alike, here's a Grasshopper Sparrow:

We saw this bird at Persimmon Point, just above the La Chua trail at Paynes Prairie State Reserve, a few weeks ago. Persimmon Point and La Chua are only a football field apart as the crow (or sparrow) flies, but the Grasshopper Sparrows are picky: they like the open grasslands at the former site, but not at the latter.

Sparrows used to be among the birds I gave myself the right to ignore because they were just too confusing. I'm still confused, but helped a bit by my realization that sparrows are just as varied and finicky about their surroundings as people. Swamp Sparrows, for instance, show up precisely where Grasshopper Sparrows don't: near the water's edge at La Chua. They look a little like Savannah and Song Sparrows. But they're not:

(Spring break has just begun, and I desperately need a break from the epic explain-a-thon that is my teaching life.)

And maybe this is where the "little brown job" thing came from: Some clever birder back in prehistory, tired of trying to explain the differences between sparrows to distracted reporters who just wanted sound bites, gave in and came up with a sound bite. And to his embarrassment, the sound bite stuck.

But it was better than rambling pointlessly on about the differences between Song and Savannah Sparrows, and looking like a total dork in print.

Everything but the Sparrow

2010-02-23T03:55:00.000-08:00

Home Improvement: An Osprey and an epic nest in progress.

When I was little, I wasted a lot of time looking forward to the next developmental milestone in my life. I couldn't wait to be able to ride my bike without training wheels. Then be able to stay home without a sitter. Then be allowed to drink coffee and wear makeup and make out. (The latter milestone regrettably arrived only after the "I'm of legal age and you can't stop me" milestone.)

I've not tried to rush my development as a birder so much, but I still celebrate the developmental milestones when they come. When I first started, I was quite proud of myself for figuring out that Snowy Egrets and Great Egrets were indeed different birds, and the former wasn't just a younger version of the latter. Then I mastered all the year-round residents in my area and learned to identify them by sound. And I looked forward to the next steps: Being able to casually toss off words like "primaries", "tertials", and "malar stripe" in the field without referring to the diagram in the Sibley guide. Being able to set up and train a spotting scope on anything, no matter how far away and fast-moving, in seconds. And maybe a few years from now, mastering the "hard" birds I'd been allowing myself to ignore: sparrows, immature gulls, warblers in primary plumage, and Empidonax flycatchers.

Last week, Glenn and I went on Alachua Audubon's trip to Persimmon Point, a part of Paynes Prairie State Reserve not normally open to the public, and there our able trip leaders scared up eight sparrow species, one of which was a lifer for both Glenn and me (a Field Sparrow) and another that was a lifer for him and still a great novelty for me (a Grasshopper Sparrow). And I realized that they indeed looked quite different from the usual Savannah and Vesper Sparrows hanging in the public parts of the prairie, and if I saw them on their own, they'd jump out at me. And I also realized that I wanted to seem them and their relatives again. And so did Glenn.

We couldn't go back to Persimmon Point, but La Chua was right nearby, so we set off for an early-morning sparrow hunt there. When we arrived, the parking lot was nearly empty, but the trees were noisy with birdsong, a portent of a promising day. What was not so promising was my realization that I had left my binoculars at home. So I left Glenn with his photo gear to get a head start on our sparrow hunt, while I drove back home to get them.

While I was gone, Glenn kept himself busy shooting a pair of Osprey building a nest not far from the trailhead. One of them brought in—and subsequently dropped—a stick over six feet long.

Brown Thrashers, Gray Catbirds, Eastern Towhees, and Northern Cardinals were all noisily foraging in the leaf litter not far off the trail. We caught a glimpse of a Hermit Thrush, and saw and heard several White-eyed Vireos hopping in branches just overhead.

We made a point of exploring the trail slowly, in case any interesting sparrows (or other small birds) were around. There weren't—we got a quick glimpse of a single White-crowned Sparrow, and saw a number of Savannah and Swamp Sparrows—but that was about it. The exotica were not about to make a show. It took us a couple of hours of exploration to make it to the observation tower at the end of the trail, and all along the way, people kept telling us that they had seem Whooping Cranes close up. And when we got there, we saw them too:

This guy was standing only ten feet or so from the deck, unworried about the crowds of cooing visitors almost close enough to touch him. Even more amazing was that there was not just one Whooper there, but six—at one point, I saw two groups of three in my binoculars at the same time. And even better than that was that they were vocalizing, something I'd never experienced before. Their cry is strange—long and clear and sort of sad, like a weird cross between a loon and a Canada Goose.

But the best thing about seeing so many Whoopers so close up was watching them interact: one of the three-bird sets clearly consisted of a couple and an interloper, whom the other two kept trying to chase off. I'd never seen Whooping Cranes fight before. Here are two of them, just after they (temporarily) got rid of their unwelcome companion:

So these grand, majestic, seriously endangered birds can be as petty and petulant as everyone else. For some strange reason, I found this somewhat reassuring.

I may not have gotten my desired sparrow fix, but I got a life lesson of sorts—even though I don't quite understand it yet.

The Great Backyard Bird Count

2010-02-14T19:16:00.000-08:00

Our backyard Yellow-throated Warbler

Some of my best birding as of late has taken place at the kitchen table. We've put up a peanut feeder near our (not-so) squirrel-proof seed feeder in our back yard, and have started putting out a few mealworms every day in hope of attracting interesting insectivores.

So far, our gambit has been paying off—our new, improved collection of yard birds has made its appearance just in time for this year's Great Backyard Bird Count.

We've always had Carolina Wrens flying in to check out what the Chickadees and Titmice are up to, but now they linger longer to sample meal worms and peanuts.

Surprisingly, we've had several kinds of bug-eaters hanging out regularly at the peanut feeder. One of my friends mentioned that she had a Yellow-throated Warbler in her yard that liked to eat peanuts, and we thought this individual was just weird. Now we've got our very own weirdo! He/she comes by at least once an hour, and is our prettiest backyard visitor yet:

Interestingly, the north part of Florida is just about the only part of the country where Yellow-throated Warblers occur year-round. We're hoping he chooses to stick around in the spring and summer.

Besides nut-nomming warblers, we also have Chipping Sparrows experimenting with carnivorism. I'm not sure if this guy actually finished the worm or decided to stick to millet:

This fat Pine Warbler also hangs out regularly at the peanut feeder. He doesn't mind sharing the feeder with Tufted Titmice and Carolina Chickadees, but always chases off the Yellow-throated Warbler if he tries to fly in at the same time. This makes for some interesting aerial battles. Here's our Pine Warbler in a mellow mood this weekend:

I submitted one list for the Great Backyard Bird Count, for a two-hour period at our feeder on Saturday afternoon. Here's what dropped in:

—2 Carolina Wrens
—1 Yellow-throated Warbler
—1 House Finch
—16 Chipping Sparrows
—4 Mourning Doves
—1 Northern Cardinal
—1 Pine Warbler
—1 American Crow (heard overhead)

Conspicuous by their absence were the Carolina Chickadees and Tufted Titmice, usually regular visitors in our yard. In the last few weeks, we've also had a Red-bellied Woodpecker and a Downy Woodpecker flying in to check things out, but they didn't show up this weekend. We've also had one-time appearances by a Common Grackle, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (during the summer), half a dozen curious American Crows, and a young Cooper's Hawk.

And of course, no backyard birding bonanza would be complete without this guy lurking about in the background!

Friday Fiction

2010-02-05T14:10:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't win this month's First Friday competition! (The winning story, was, indeed, deserving of the honor.) As one of my chefs during my ill-advised tour through cooking school would say, "Too bad, so sad!" And also, "There's no crying in cooking." And by extension, nor in writing.

My consolation is that the interwebz is a place where any loser with delusions of talent can post any ole thing while hunkered down in Mom's basement in his/her underwear. (For the record, right now I'm hunkered down in place I pay for myself, with a Yellow-throated Warbler at my peanut feeder and jeans and a comfy sweatshirt over my underwear.)

And here's my story. Because I have to do something with it! Amusez-vous bien.

Big Day

Ed loved birds before he loved me, and he taught me to love them too. I started my life list the day we met. He proposed to me the morning I saw my first Lazuli Bunting. And we've celebrated every anniversary with a Big Day, often dragging our reluctant children along.

Now our life lists are in the thousands, and the children are complaining about our Big Days again.

"You're not supposed to drive at night, remember?"

"We're only out a little before sunrise, dear. "

"But how will we find you if something happens?"

Even some of our birder friends have started up with these lectures. Ed thinks they're just jealous.

But we'd never give up our special day, not with so much left to see. This morning, Ed took me to Santiago Oaks, just as we'd planned: our first Big Day started here, long before it became a park. "Our big day will always be a Big Day," Ed said, squeezing my hand. "Happy anniversary."

We started on the rim of a gorgeous ravine. Phainopeplas swooped overhead, and a few feet down the ravine, brilliant flashes of blue shot through the brush: my favorites!

“Ed, look! Lazuli Buntings!”

Ed aimed his camera down the ravine. “Will you look at that. Bill’s going to be awful jealous when he sees my shots of these little guys.” He stepped off the trail.

“Ed—don’t!”

“It’s not that far; I just need to get a bit closer for this shot.”

“But look how steep it is!”

“Claire, I know what I’m—DAMN!”

I heard gravel and dry twigs giving way under his feet, and instinctively, I reached out and grabbed his wrist. But Ed’s a lot bigger than me, and we both tumbled into the brush.

Somehow, we both managed to make it back up to the trail, with Ed cursing the whole time. “My camera! Damned lens is cracked! And no one will fix this model anymore!”

“Sweetheart, it’s okay.”

He looked at me and smiled. “Of course it is, dear. At least we found those Lazulis. I don’t even need to go down there; look how bold they are.”

The Lazuli Buntings were now in the bushes right off the trail, just uphill from us. They didn’t seem to notice as we approached them. We moved closer. The Lazulis flitted about, oblivious to our presence.

We sat on a flat rock just across the trail from them and watched, mesmerized. I didn’t even need my binoculars to get a close look at them—every wingbeat, every tiny twitch and flutter was crystal-clear. We no longer cared if our Big Day count stayed in the single digits.

“Wow,” Ed said softly, “It doesn’t get any better than this, does it?”

From where he was facing, Ed couldn’t see the startled hikers pointing down the ravine, the ranger yelling into his walkie-talkie, or the paramedics struggling to carry two stretchers down the hillside. But I think he knew.

“No, sweetheart,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

Spacing Out

2010-02-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

Goodies and loot in the exhibition hall at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival

The coastal areas around Cape Canaveral are know for exceptional birding spots; birding festivals are known for attracting exceptional talents in the craft and science of birding, so it stands to reason that a birding festival just north and inland of Cape Canaveral would be an event to remember. And it was. Sort of.

This year's Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival was a sprawling five-day bird orgy, featuring both Kenn Kaufman and David Sibley as keynote speakers, and every seasoned Florida bird-nerd with a quadruple-digit life list as a field trip guide. Glenn and I got there on Friday afternoon, the third day of the festivities (and the first day I could get away from work), and jumped into the fray.

It didn't take long for us to find birds: in the back of the exhibit hall was a collection of rehabilitated raptors, courtesy of the Raptor Project. The raptors somehow managed to look both fierce and cuddly at the same time:

The star of the show was an Bald Eagle named Uncle Sam, who lost part of a wing tip in a collision with a car. He was prominently perched in front of a large American flag:

The ringleader of the raptor exhibit put on several shows, which ended with soaring music, a spotlight on Uncle Sam, and an affirmation of how wonderful life is in the U. S. of A. It was heartfelt and sincere, though I couldn't help remembering that my first-ever sighting of a Bald Eagle took place in Canada. And the graphic effect of the eagle against the flag made me think of this.

An ironic thing about bird festivals is that I always end up seeing fewer birds than I would in a typical weekend stomping around at home, and this time was no exception—this was largely because all the field trips we would have liked were filled by the time we got around to registering. But we did get to attend a number of informative workshops on warbler and raptor ID, and the effects of weather on bird migration. They were all clearly presented and useful—but just made me want to go out and See Stuff.

The one field trip we managed to get into was focused on ducks at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We saw hundreds of them—but all were ones familiar to us from California (including a Eurasian Wigeon), and almost all seemed to be miles away; discernable only with spotting scopes. Yawn.

So Glenn and I amused ourselves with birds that were, to our mind, a bit more interesting—such as this immature Roseate Spoonbill, who flew in to feed only feet away:

Just outside the reserve, we also saw some exceptionally bold gulls shamelessly harrassing Brown Pelicans for food:

Just before we returned home on Sunday afternoon, we attended Kenn Kaufman's keynote address, "Pride in the Name of Birding" I suspect he'll want to give it again, so I won't give up too much of it, except to note that it involved a number of shaggy dog tales, some of which involved actual (or imagined) dogs:

On our way out back to our car, and our drive back home, we ran into a couple of Gainesville birding pals—who announced excitedly that just outside the auditorium, a Cattle Egret had just eaten a female/immature Painted Bunting (the latter was already dead; probably from a window collision). And we'd missed it by minutes.

Oh well. What do you expect to find at a birding festival—birds or something?

Random Photos and Haiku for a Quiet Weekend

2010-01-24T16:28:00.001-08:00

I was really stoked
Whooping Cranes just down the street!
Oh my freaking god!

Over winter break
A Chestnut-backed Chickadee
North of Monterey.

Near New Smyrna Beach
A tiny Piping Plover
Feeding by the waves.

Florida Scrub-Jay
Looks like his western cousins
But vulnerable and rare.

I must buy more seed
Chipping Sparrows ate it all!
Greedy buggers, them.

The Cardinals are back
Singing and feeding outside
Spring is coming soon.

The Big Chill

2010-01-20T03:55:00.000-08:00

I love winter in Florida!

North Florida is kind of invisible to most people. When people think of Florida, they think of palm trees and flamingos. Friends and family are flummoxed when I tell them that Gainesville is closer to Atlanta than to Miami. And that it gets frickin' cold here.

Like the last few weeks, for example. Temps plummeted into the teens at night and barely hit the forties during the day. There were rumors that we might get snow (we didn't). But we did get cold. Very cold.

On a Saturday walk at La Chua, Glenn and I found out the hard way that it was even colder out than it looked. Alachua Sink and the surrounding streams, normally rippling with the movement of fish, water snakes, and alligators, were oddly still. Big, clear, sheets of ice covered the streams, and Common Moorhens and American Coots skidded awkwardly over them. Other birds, like this Grackle, went about their business near the edges of the ice:

A lot of birds were feeding closer to the trail than normal. Wood Storks, usually visible only at a long distance from the observation tower at the end of the trail, were foraging in large numbers only feet away from us:

Even odder were the dozens of Turkey Vultures congregating on the islands in the water just off the trail; I'd only rarely seen them there before. It didn't take long for us to figure out why they were there: the icy water was filled with stiff, frozen fish, done in by the cold:

And a great feast was had by all!

Except, of course, for the fish. And the alligators, who were apparently too cold to even put in an appearance that day.

There was no doubt a lot more to see on that cold Saturday, but after a few hours out, my fingers were almost completely numb. By the time we got back to the car, I could barely feel or hold onto the car keys in my pocket. Even after an hour indoors scarfing down an excellent (and hot!) deep-dish pizza, our toes were STILL cold. We wondered if we had frostbite, something neither of us had experienced before. And I wondered how I'd explain to people that I had lost my toes from frostbite suffered while hiking through a swamp in Florida.

Just another gorgeous winter day in our little slice of paradise, somewhat north of the tropics.

The Game of Life

2010-01-15T04:39:00.000-08:00

Violent video games and birding are not things one generally thinks of at the same time—until now!

This little game has it all: Action! Gore! Cheesy circa-1985-arcade-game music! And an unavoidable reminder of the vulnerability of migrating birds.

Don't expect World of Warcraft-level graphics or animation here—but as you maneuver your flock of geese (I think that's what they're supposed to be) through the gauntlet that is the natural and manmade world, you'll be thankful you're not a migrating bird.

Home Again (Or I Saw My Millionth Eastern Phoebe and Nobody Believed Me)

2010-01-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

Seeing Red: A Vermilion Flycatcher at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

My winter break back home in California was everything I hoped it would be: I got treated to a birthday dinner at my new favorite Los Angeles restaurant, my sisters and their spouses (and one very pampered nephew) converged on my parents' place for several days of eating, drinking, and gossip, and I got to catch up with some old friends and an old favorite birding spot.

Glenn and I met up with John and Joan at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary a few days after Christmas. Overhead, I heard the squeaky winter chorus of Cedar Waxwings in the nearly leafless sycamores, and the quacking of ducks—hundreds of them—off the ponds. Then there were more songs from my birding past; the shrieky squeal of Cassin's Kingbirds, the buzz and tail-snapping thwip! of Anna's Hummingbirds, the chattering of Bushtits. San Joaquin looked, sounded, and smelled like home.

Just as my sisters and I immediately check out the fridge upon entering my parents' place, the four of us immediately set out to find all the good stuff that had been spotted recently at the marsh. The first bird we sought out and found was a bright male Vermilion Flycatcher that had been there for several days: it flitted about in the same area for about 20 minutes, allowing us good looks and lots of photo ops.

After we were done ogling the Vermilion, I kicked back and enjoyed the usual suspects, which were not so usual for me anymore: Say's Phoebes, Black Phoebes, yet more Cassin's Kingbirds, and that thing over there...mehh, Eastern Phoebe. Bo-ring.

Wait...

I'm not in Florida. Eastern Phoebe. Irvine, California. Does. Not. Compute.

"Joan, I think that's an Eastern Phoebe!"

Joan, an experienced East Coast birder, agreed. "You should get a picture of it—someone reported one a while back but no one's been able to find it again."

But I only had my little point-and-shoot camera with me, and by time I got it out, the bird had taken off, never to be seen again. When Glenn caught up with us, we waited in vain for the mysterious bird to return. Why couldn't it be a noisy, in-your-face pain-in-the-butt bird like the Eastern Phoebes in Gainesville?

Whatever. There was still a lot more to see. We got a dizzying inventory of ducks, including some that I had not seen regularly there, such as Wood Ducks, Redheads, Canvasbacks, and Ring-necked Ducks. As we were about to break for lunch, we ran into a couple who said they had just seen a female Common Goldeneye off the footbridge behind Pond C. We were there in a flash—and the Goldeneye was waiting for us:

This made it a Dozen Duck Day. On our way back out to the parking lot (our lunch plans got kicked back an hour by that Common Goldeneye), we spotted someone taking photos of something in the far end of the lower parking lot. We crept closer to see what it was: a Burrowing Owl!

After lunch across the street at Fatburger, we returned to the marsh. By now, it was almost three; there would be about two more hours of daylight. We found a Sora and a Virginia Rail, watched a Peregrine Falcon fly in and land on a tall post, and a while later, watched a White-tailed Kite dive-bombing the Peregrine in an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge him from his perch.

At sunset, we watched a flock of White-faced Ibises circle the front ponds before settling in for the evening. We hugged our friends goodbye until our next trip west, and headed back up to Los Angeles. Once home, I reported my Eastern Phoebe sighting to Orange County Birding, and was met with polite silence. No documentation, no bird!

No matter. It was the other birds that made the day memorable. As for that Eastern Phoebe—I can step outside my place in Gainesville and get one within 10 minutes. So there.

The Last and the First

2010-01-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

Since my teaching schedule gives me a week off between Christmas and New Year's Day, Glenn and I have developed a tradition of a New Year's road trip: when we were back in California, this generally involved a getaway to a cute (and potentially birdy) spot such as Santa Barbara or Monterey, and a stay in a comfy B&B.

This year, we spent New Year's Eve in the company of the world's largest palmetto bug ("palmetto bug" being a polite Florida regionalism for what other American English speakers call a BIG-ASS COCKROACH); said bug was promenading calmly across the wall behind the beds in our somewhat down-at-the-heels motel. Glenn caught it in a plastic ice bucket and flushed it down the toilet.

Then, as we watched that sparkly ball drop over Times Square, we toasted each other with big bottle of the excellent Arrogant Bastard Ale and marveled that for the first time, we were actually watching the ball drop live, rather than on three-hour tape delay viewed from the West Coast.

And we were exactly where we wanted to be. Our digs were about as romantic as the DMV, but we were just moments away from some of the best birding in Florida: Merritt Island National Wildlife Sanctuary. We had visited the reserve for the first time last spring, loved it, and were curious to see what birds we could find in the winter.

On New Year's Eve, we stopped by the Visitor's Center at the reserve, and, as on our last visit, immediately spotted Painted Buntings on the feeder behind the volunteer greeter's desk. Two males and a greenie were hopping in and out, looking as tame as House Sparrows. But our cameras were in the car, Glenn wanted to look for eastern shorebirds, and we just figured they would be there when we came back later.

They weren't. (A resolution for the New Year; Take advantage of every opportunity as it comes; it may not come again.) But our shorebird hunting at Canaveral National Seashore, located inside the reserve, gave us a gorgeous morning at the beach and my final lifer of 2009: a Northern Gannet:

The Gannets were seemingly everywhere: every few seconds, a flock of a dozen of them would appear in the north, flying south just beyond the surf line. Occasionally, one would dive for a fish. This was a bird I'd never seen before, and wasn't expecting to see, and now there were hundreds of them. A wonderful way to end a year of good birds.

On New Year's day, we woke up reasonably early and set out to the Viera Wetlands, a well-known birding and bird-photography hotspot about 30 miles south of Titusville. Weather reports the previous evening had warned of heavy rain for New Year's day, but it was still (sort of) dry at the wetlands when we got there. And we immediately found ourselves in the company of several hard-core birders eager to get a jump start on their 2010 year lists: my first bird of 2010 was a Loggerhead Shrike, and my second an American Kestrel. Not too shabby.

The other birders soon pointed out the main reason we were there: a male Masked Duck, who had been lingering there for the past few days. It was hiding in a cluster of pickerel weed when we arrived, but was soon chased out into open water by a territorial Common Moorhen. We all agreed we owed one to that Moorhen:

As we admired the Masked Duck, the rain started to come down—but not before we managed to get and photograph another local specialty, a Limpkin:

The rain continued to come down, now in big cold sheets. But it was still a good New Year's day. We ended the old year and started the new with some darned good birds. I hope this bodes well for everything else in the new year.

Just Another Whooping Crane

2010-01-04T06:42:00.000-08:00

These things keep turning up in my neighborhood. This one has been around for three days now. What's a girl to do?

Nothing but kick back and enjoy. I reported this guy to Operation Migration, and they told me that this is bird #829 from the fall 2008 migration class. So he/she first came to Florida from Wisconsin, with a flock lead by an ultralight aircraft, last year.

The bird's ID number is a bit misleading. At the moment, there are nowhere near 829 whoopers left on the planet. According to Operation Migration's website, there are only 383 birds in the wild (including those in the ultralight-lead flock) and 152 in captivity. So a grand total of 535 in all.

I've taught undergraduate general-ed classes about this size.

Amazing that a bird this big and strong-looking can be so vulnerable—and yet, seem so happy foraging away only feet from a busy highway.

And even sadder to me is watching all the thousands of drivers just whizzing by this big white apparation without realizing what an amazing sight they have just in front of them. They obviously don't give a whoop.

Preview of Coming Attractions

2010-01-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I haven't posted in while, but not for a lack of interesting birds. Just the opposite: I've been all over and managed to find fun stuff just about everywhere. But...since most of my traveling involved either multiple connecting flights during the holiday rush or road trips with overnight stops in numerous random places, I chose to leave my camera behind.

Glenn, however, got some great shots that I plan to post and brag about once we finally get home.

In brief, we traveled from north-central Florida (home)to southern California, then to northern California, then back to Southern California, then back to Florida, this time the Space Coast area. And here are some of the highlights of our trip (in no particular order):

-Vermilion Flycatcher
-Masked Duck
-Common Goldeneye
-Burrowing Owl
-Painted Bunting
-Northern Gannet

And not all of these showed up where one would expect, either.

Details to follow. And all the best for a peaceful, prosperous, and bird-filled 2010!

(Practically) Backyard Birds

2009-12-16T14:48:00.000-08:00

As I stepped outside for my morning run today, I saw and heard a huge flock of Sandhill Cranes flying overhead, no doubt headed for the nearby UF Beef Teaching Unit (a grassy pasture in which beef cattle are no doubt being taught to do any number of nefarious things). And I considered how lucky I was to be able to count Sandhill Cranes among my backyard birds.

The Beef Teaching Unit is only about 100 yards from my place, and as I jogged toward it, I saw two large white birds mingling with the Sandhills. Definitely too tall to be White Ibises, which also frequent the pasture. And WAY too big to be Cattle Egrets. Too tall and heavy-bodied to be Great Egrets, which don't hang out there anyhow. Which meant they had to be...

WHOOPING CRANES!

Awesome! I sprinted home, grabbed my bins and camera, and headed back out, hoping they would stay for me. And they did, just long enough for me to get a few blurry shots. As they flew off with their Sandhill Crane companions, I could see their black wing tips and the other sure field mark of a Whooping Crane, several colored bands on their legs.

Now I can rightfully claim not only Sandhill Cranes, but Whooping Cranes, as (practically) backyard birds. How lucky is that?

Round Up The Usual Suspects

2009-12-06T14:29:00.001-08:00

Not a rarity around here, but Bittern nothing.

The weekend started with a series of missed appointments: someone from Alachua Audubon was supposed to drop by my place on Friday to pick up stuff for their upcoming silent auction, and there was supposed to be a field trip to La Chua on Saturday morning. But late on Friday, my Audubon contact called to say she was delayed at work; could we meet up at the La Chua trip instead?

This sounded perfect—but on Saturday morning, I woke up to the pounding of rain on the roof. Like an idiot, I got up anyhow, mindful to put on a pair of semi-water-resistant boots instead of my regular hiking shoes, and headed for La Chua. It was still raining when I got there. And it was still raining 20 minutes later, when the trip leader (the only other person who showed up) made the obvious decision to call the thing off.

But my Audubon contact called me an hour later, and I got the stuff to her later that morning. And on Sunday morning, I made my way back to La Chua, alone.

I had really been looking forward to the field trip because the leader was a crackerjack birder, the kind of guy who can instantly ID a sparrow or warbler from a single distant call note—so I knew I'd see a lot more with his guidance than I would alone. And I suspect I was right: My goal for Sunday was to scare up some good wintering sparrows. But I heard and saw nothing but Savannahs and a few Eastern Towhees. The prairie was weirdly quiet, devoid of both bird song and people.

But as a consolation prize for a morning of mediocre birding, the common year-round residents were unusually bold and cooperative. Great Blue Herons seemed to cross my path on the trail every few minutes, some standing only feet away. One of them calmly strolled past me, ambled into a nearby swampy area, and helped himself to some breakfast:

Further down the trail, I was startled to see a Red-shouldered Hawk perched quietly on a snag just off the trail. The bird didn't seem at all perturbed when I stopped to look at him:

Bald Eagles and Northern Harriers swooped by regularly, and I saw a couple of American Kestrels, a bird I don't recall seeing before at that spot. From the observation deck at the end of the trail I could see the wintering Sandhill Cranes in the distance. The water was filled with American Coots, Common Moorhens, and most likely, several species of wintering ducks. But from where I was, the distant water birds were impossible to ID; without a scope, this was as close as I could get:

Some of the most interesting drama was on the platform itself. For the past few weeks, I've been overhearing visitors scratching their heads over the possible back story behind this:

Cooperative birds and an interesting mystery; there are worse ways to spend a quiet Sunday morning.

Portrait of a Squirrel-Proof Feeder

2009-11-29T14:22:00.000-08:00

This feeder is spring-loaded so that if anything heavier than a songbird or two (e.g. a squirrel) lands on one of the four metal perches, the green cage on the outside drops down, cutting off access to the food inside the feeder.

Most squirrels land on it once or twice, get the message, and move on. Or rather, move down: they realize they can get more food for less effort by foraging under the feeder for seeds dropped by birds.

But this guy was determined not to give up: I've seen him approach the feeder from the top and cling to the cage upside down. I've seen him take unsuccessful flying leaps at it from the shepherd's hook it hangs from, or from the nearby birdbath, which he kept knocking over. (And which I have subsequently moved further away.) Over the course of a few weeks, he has learned to avoid putting his full weight on the perches.

The picture above shows his solution: it's a labor-intensive one; note that he's straining to keep his weight centered on the back of his long squirrelly torso so that the cage won't drop. He can't hold that position for long; he usually hangs on for about five seconds before scurrying away. And he probably burns more calories trying to get stuff out that feeder than he takes in.

I know I can make the whole problem go away by hanging the feeder from the middle of a long high branch, where there won't be any squirrel-jumpable access points. But I've grown way too fond of having my visiting birds at eye level, just outside my back door. And I have to give this guy props for persistence and problem-solving savvy—something I've been striving to cultivate in my students throughout my teaching career. After all, if Gators can get extra credit for extraordinary effort, why not squirrels?

Picture This

2009-11-24T14:55:00.001-08:00

As always, I had some excellent adventures over the weekend. But I have not a picture to show for it. If you will, try to imagine why.

Picture this: It's 6:20 a.m. on Sunday morning, and I have just pulled into the parking lot of Gainesville's Target: this is the meeting place for Alachua Audubon's trip to Cedar Key. When I had gotten up an hour earlier, I checked online to find there was a 60% chance of rain and thunderstorms that would last throughout the day. Any sensible person would have gone back to bed. But I'm not a sensible person.

6:35 a.m: I return from the restroom at a nearby gas station to find that I am one of the drivers for the trip (the reason for the rendezvous at Target was for us to consolidate into carpools and arrange rides). I load my passengers, who I already know—a fellow UF faculty member and another local birder—into my embarrassingly dirty car and we take off, just as the rain starts.

7:00 a.m.: Our first stop is supposed to be at the Scrub Jay reserve just outside Cedar Key. But the rest of the caravan is nowhere in sight—I had gotten stuck behind a traffic light on the way out and the others are now WAY in front of me. Probably looking at Florida Scrub Jays. But my car is old and weak, and the road between Gainesville and Cedar Key is a bit of a speed trap, so I drove conservatively. My UF colleague, in the catbird seat, assures me that the guy in front of us drives like a maniac, so losing him was kind of predictable.

7:45—We pull into the Scrub Jay reserve just as the others are returning to their cars. They didn't see any Scrub Jays. Thank goodness. Otherwise, I would have felt awful. Even more awful than I already felt about fulfilling everyone's worst stereotypes about slow Asian drivers.

8:00—We're at the side of the road off the first bridge leading into Cedar Key, looking at a bold, brightly colored, and perversely cooperative Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow (or whatever this bird is officially called now...). All of us who had brought cameras are hitting ourselves upside the head. Why? It was raining cats and dogs, so we had all left our gear in our cars. Meanwhile, that sparrow—whose buffy head and breast shone orange in the tiny bit of sunlight peeking through the rain clouds—just sat there, as if daring us to bring our cameras out into the rain. Bastard.

8:20—The 10 or so field trip participants are huddled under a picnic shelter by the beach, resigned to our Big Day being more like a rainy Big Sit—or more accurately, a Big Soak. "Okay, did anyone bring a deck of cards?" our trip leader said only half jokingly. Still, we manage to rack up about 20 species.

8:45—We caravan to Cedar Key's tiny airport, where a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher had been lingering a few weeks before. It's still raining buckets. As soon as we arrive, our trip leader debarks from his car and tells each of the other drivers that we're going to Shell Mound—with luck, the rain will have stopped by time we get there.

9:00—It's still raining torrents at Shell Mound. Our trip leader reluctantly scotches the whole trip. Everyone gets back in their cars and heads eastward back to Gainesville.

9:15—My UF colleague in the front seat is clearly unhappy, and growing unhappier by the moment as Cedar Key receded into our rear-view mirror. I ask him if he wants to go back to Cedar Key and wait until the rain let up. He wanted to go back to Shell Mound instead, which we did. We passed several other field trip participants heading home as we reversed course. They must have thought we were crazy.

9:30—Miraculously, there was a break in the storm and we were in business. At Shell Mound, we lingered on the boardwalk overlooking a sandbar and reed-filled area, and found a number of birds everyone else had missed: White Pelicans, Clapper Rails, Marsh Wrens, Marbled Godwits, and a Wilson's Plover. There were also yet more Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrows and several Bald Eagles out in the distance. But the clouds lingered ominously overhead, and we left our cameras in the car.

11:00—The clouds darkened again, and we got into the car just as the rain started to fall again. On the way back, my passengers insisted that I stop for gas, even though I had 3/4 of a tank left; they paid for the fill.

12:00—Back at Target, the skies are clearing and the sun is starting to shine though the clouds. My friend in the front seat declares that he is going to Hague Dairy, since the skies to the north of us look clear. The poor birder in the back seat, who has said scarcely a word over the course of the whole trip, is no doubt relieved to be free of us.

1:30—A particularly intelligent squirrel has figured out how to feed off my "squirrel-proof" bird feeder. It's now stopped raining, and I have my camera out to catch him (or her) in the act. But the squirrel has had its fill and doesn't return.

But it was still pretty cool when it was there. And when that sparrow was there at Cedar Key. And those Clapper Rails. You just have to trust me on this.

Autumn Flocking and Mating

2009-11-15T13:39:00.001-08:00

A garland of cranes folded by friends:

A walk to the altar with alligators and Bald Eagles as witnesses:

Successfully mated pairs must be good providers. This pair foraged all of Gainesville and scared up not one, but FIVE flavors of cake! The flock was impressed.

An avian centerpiece...

...and the avian guest list:

Did I mention that both the bride and groom are birders with mad skills, about a quarter of the guests brought binoculars to the ceremony, and about another quarter wished they had remembered to?

I hope my friends will have as many days as joyful and filled with the companionship of family and friends as yesterday. Long may you flock together!

Scenes From the Prairie

2009-11-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

Wild horses on Bolen Bluff trail, Paynes Prairie State Reserve

Fall migration is over. The warblers I enjoyed only a few weeks ago are now (I hope) safely ensconced in their winter digs in the tropics. And our winter visitors have only begun to settle in: A flock of Chipping Sparrows has already planted itself underneath my feeder, and the Eastern Phoebes ( not nearly as clean and natty-looking as my western Black Phoebes) have been singing loudly just about everywhere. This guy was on the prairie at Bolen Bluff:

Paynes Prairie is always a good place to visit when you want to go out, but know there won't be that many birds. There is always some interesting non-avian distraction. For the past month or two at Bolen Bluff, I've passed by this beautiful wasps' nest: I love how symmetrical it is. It looks like something that could be sold at Crate and Barrel as a yuppie decorative item. But I understand that the wasps who built it can deliver a nasty sting:

There's something perverse about the fact that temperatures in the mid-70s feel a bit chilly here. And when we turned back the clocks last week, it did feel unexpectedly autumnal. A strange reflex of this change of seasons was the eruption of yellow blooms at La Chua last weekend:

There have been rumors of Grasshopper and White-crowned Sparrows—and even an errant Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher—at La Chua over the past few weeks, but I haven't found any of these, yet. Right now, I'm just enjoying the autumnal weather (such as it is out here), and waiting for the chirps and calls of winter visitors.

She's Just Not That Into You

2009-11-02T13:58:00.000-08:00

Hey Shiny Cowbird,

Thanks so much for meeting me at Hague Dairy last Saturday. It was great to finally meet you. It's always a pleasure to meet a new bird for the first time. All my friends told me not to expect a tropical bird like you all the way up here, so I was genuinely touched that you decided to drop by.

No, I didn't have any trouble finding you. Well, actually I would have, if the trip leader on the Alachua Audubon field trip hadn't pointed you out. I didn't really know what you looked like, and it would have been kind of hard picking you out with all your Brown-headed relatives flocking around.

And thanks for being so cooperative. At least you thought to wait for us on a post with only a handful of other birds on it, rather than parking yourself on that barn roof in the middle of several hundred Brown-headed Cowbirds. And you actually stayed fairly still up there, too, so we all got to spend a lot of time looking at you through our scopes.

No, no, I'm not just saying all of this to sound polite, I mean it. What do you mean, I don't sound very excited? Were you excited to see me? Okay, that's different.

It's just—oh wow, I have no idea how to put this—I didn't feel a spark when I saw you like I get with other lifers. You know that spark. Like when you see a Painted Bunting or a Hooded Warbler or—

Wait, there's nothing wrong with the way you look. You look exactly like everyone said you'd look. Kind of like a Red-winged Blackbird without the red. Or yellow.

No, I'm NOT describing you as an even more boring version of a mundane bird. Did I say that? Look, I can't just make that spark happen. And we met in a crappy area. Seriously. You were perched above a manure pit. Doesn't really make a great first impression.

Yes, I know that birding isn't about just the pretty birds, it's about understanding and respecting all of you, and appreciating what all of you tell us about the natural world. And I know you're a great bird and you've got a lot to tell me. But right now, the chemistry is just not there. I just can't get myself worked up over you.

Sorry, Shiny. You deserve better. It's not you, it's me.

Two Goodbyes

2009-10-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Dominick would have gotten a better shot: A House Wren at La Chua Trail.

This month, two friends passed suddenly, before I could even say goodbye.

The first was an old friend that had been a part of my life and my family's life since my childhood: Gourmet magazine. The corporate bean-counters at Condé Nast decided axe the revered 70-year-old franchise while continuing to support its vapid kid sister, Bon Appétit.

I love cooking as much as I love birding, and as a former professional cook, I can say with objective certainty that the difference between Gourmet and Bon Appétit was the difference between Roger Tory Peterson and the doofus I met a while back who mistook a Great Egret ten feet away for a pelican.

All the obituaries for Gourmet sneered that it was fusty and elitist, not designed for "the way people live today" in "these recessionary times". I call bullshit. True, it wasn't meant for people who are content with microwaved Lean Cuisine for dinner. But neither was it unusable: most of the recipes were easily do-able by any competent home cook, and the magazine had a regular section dedicated to recipes meant for weeknight cooking. And these generally contained lots of (cheap) pasta and veggies. And it featured, along with its wonderfully out-of-left-field travel and food culture articles (Slovenian food! The cooking of Yemenite exiles in Israel!), the ever-entertaining Roadfood column, which lovingly described regional specialties at some of the most blue-collar, American vernacular eateries imaginable.

Bon Appétit, by contrast, features celebrity hamburger recipes.

I looked forward to a new issue of Gourmet every month, to travelling vicariously to decidedly weird places and trying the accompanying recipes—the smells and tastes made me imagine I was there. My subscription was cheap, the writing was great, and the recipes were fun to make and to think about. When I was too busy to follow them to the letter, which was often, I'd just riff off them and still get some pretty good stuff.

And I just got my last-ever issue in the mail yesterday. It even had a bird on the cover—just for me!

And as usual, when I tore off the shrink wrap and opened it, all those annoying perforated "Send a gift subscription to a friend!" cards fell out.

I feel like filling them out and sending them all back to Condé Nast as a protest.

The demise of Gourmet was a sad surprise. But even sadder, and more surprising, was the passing of Dominick Martino, known affectionately as "the unofficial official photographer of Paynes Prairie". He lost his battle with bone cancer—which I didn't even know he was fighting—last week.

The first time I met Dominick was on my first-ever visit to La Chua. I went with another local birder, who had volunteered to show me around. Dominick was, as usual, tooling about in the little golf cart provided to him by the park, and immediately struck up a bird-related conversation. As we left, my host remarked, "Some people around here are kind of afraid of him."

"Really? Why?" I asked. I couldn't imagine anyone being afraid of such a friendly and jolly character.

"Well, if you get to talking with him, you might get sucked into 45 minutes of conversation. Sometimes, he just can't stop!"

It was true that he could talk forever about the flora and fauna of Paynes Prairie. And about taking photos. Both of which he clearly loved.

There was rarely if ever I time that I went to La Chua and didn't see him there; he was as much a part of the landscape as the alligators and wintering Sandhill Cranes, and his New York accent was as interwoven into La Chua's soundtrack as the calls of Red-winged Blackbirds. I thought of him as the Tommy Lasorda of Paynes Prairie: a knowledgeable and shamelessly biased booster.

The last time I saw him was in early August, during an especially pleasant day of birding: I was at La Chua with a friend and we were enjoying summering Purple Gallinules, Swallow-tailed and Mississippi Kites, and even a few distant Whooping Cranes. Dominick was at the observation platform at the end of the trail with his camera, and we spent close to an hour up there, chatting and watching storm clouds go by. As usual, he was having a whale of a time watching the movements of the birds and animals. And despite the typically repulsive Florida summer heat, it felt like a perfect day to be alive, with perfect company to share it with.

If he was already sick at the time, he certainly didn't look it or act like it.

I can't say I knew Dominick all that well, except for his love and knowledge of Paynes Prairie. But my visits to La Chua, his usual haunt, will be sadder without him. Like my lamented subscription to Gourmet, I figured he, and the pleasure of his company, would always be there.

Goodbye, old friends. Life will be a lot less fun without you.

15

2009-10-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

Fallout Boy: A Rose Breasted Grosbeak at Bolen Bluff. (No, really)

I heard an NPR interview last year with a statistician who said he always started introductory classes with the following trick: he'd divide the class into two groups, leave the room, and have one group record the results of 100 actual coin tosses, and the other make up series of 100 imagined coin tosses that would look as random as possible. Both groups would then write the results of their real/imagined tosses on the board, and when he'd return, he'd try to determine which series was the real one and which the the imagined one.

He said it was always easy to tell the actual coin toss sequences from the imagined ones: the real sequences always looked implausible (a series of 20 consecutive tail tosses, for instance), while the fake sequences looked suspiciously even.

The moral? Reality is inherently implausible.

On Friday, a number of implausible but agreeable things happened: the temperature plummeted from the high 80s to the low 60s; a grand double rainbow surfaced as a took my morning run, and UF (and, as I later learned, ALL of Gainesville's public schools) shut down for UF's homecoming celebrations. (WHY grade-schoolers should get the day off because a bunch of old galoots in RVs want to relive their youth is a bit of a head-scratcher.)

On Saturday morning, I woke up to pleasantly chilly weather and clear skies—perfect for a long walk!—as well as a Badbirdz Reloaded radar report promising Tons of Migrants. But I felt none of the usual frenzy for acquisition that goes with my Saturday mornings during migration. My miserable luck over the past few weeks had beaten me into a Zen-like state of equanimity: I had broken free from the deluded belief that I could find warblers at Bolen Bluff the same way I find weird microbrews at Trader Joe's. Like the Buddha, I would desire nothing, and simply wait for the universe to do its thing. Whatever it was.

Unlike the Buddha, I still had my bins and a desire to look at birds—any birds. So I hitched up with the Alachua Audubon field trip to Bolen Bluff on Saturday morning. Since it was the last weekend of migration and the weather was so pleasant, over a dozen people showed up. And almost as soon as we hit the trail, we heard and saw a male Hooded Warbler. Not bad.

And only moments after that, we had a few American Redstarts. Nice, but unremarkable. Then a Black-and-white Warbler. Then a Magnolia Warbler. Following scolding flocks of Caroline Chickadees, we found yet more Redstarts. It was beginning to look like that radar report was spot on.

Our next treats: high in the trees was a pair of male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. And in a berry-filled camphor tree known by birders for its popularity with thrushes were—thrushes! The zone of my brain reserved for East Coast thrush ID is still a fuzzy mess, but reputable people in our group IDed several Grey-cheeked Thrushes and Wood Thrushes.

And despite the dozen of us stomping happily and loudly down the trail, the birds kept coming: we found a tree just off the trail containing about 5 warbler species, including a pair of Black-throated Green Warblers (the first and only I'd seen all season), as well as Bay-breasted and Chestnut-sided Warblers. Ovenbirds hopped around on the ground nearby, and in a nearby tree was a female Scarlet Tanager.

By now, everyone was oohing and aahing in weak-kneed joy. Our trip leader, a hard-core, seen-it-all-before local birder, was overwhelmed. This morning had made up for absolutely all the mornings of bug bites and warbler-less ennui of the preceding months.

The one area in which I didn't not get lucky yesterday was in getting pictures: the hungry warblers were high in the trees and moving fast.

Out on the prairie, we added two more to our warbler count: a Common Yellowthroat and several Palm Warblers. We looked around for Yellow and Prairie Warblers, which failed to materialize, and were beginning to wonder what our final warbler count would be. We were up to 14. Could we hit 15?

It should be mentioned that the number 15 has local relevance beyond being an a good round number: as any self-respecting college football fan knows, 15 is also Tim Tebow's number, and Saturday was UF's homecoming weekend home game, which means GO GATORS!! WOOHOO!!

(Okay, there's a municipal code requiring all Gainesville-based blogs to say that at least once a year. Now where was I?)

Oh yes, birds! There were lots of them! On our way back out of the prairie, we got good looks at a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and yet more Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. We spotted another warbler that may or may not have been a Prairie—but none of use were sure enough to call it make it our #15.

Still, there were plenty more warblers on the way back out to the trailhead: more American Redstarts and Yellow-throateds and dozens of Magnolia Warblers ( we teased our leader every time he spotted something and said it was "just" a Magnolia! ) Then we saw something else: a bit like a Magnolia, but not really. Not a Prairie either. It hopped around about 20 feet in front of us for a couple of minutes while we passed a bird guide around and examined it: a Cape May!

We had hit 15! And this was a great bird to get, too: Cape Mays show up in Gainesville pretty regularly during spring migration, but rarely during the fall.

WOOHOO!

And that afternoon, the Gators won (barely) their hard-fought battle against Arkansas, with concussion-suffering #15 leading the way. Coincidence? I think not.

Gator fans, you can thank Alachua Audubon later.

Georgia on My Mind

2009-10-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

Look, it's a warbler! A female Common Yellowthroat at Altamaha Waterfowl Management Area

I was fed up with birding.

Specifically, I was fed up with hunting in vain for fall warblers. My weekly strolls through Paynes Prairie, normally a highlight of my weekends, had morphed into angst-ridden death marches: watching unidentifiable backlit splotches zipping through tangles of leaves four stories in the air only reminded me of my lack of skills/luck/decent bins.

The birds were making me feel like crap. (Yup, it was all their fault! Blasted invisible Golden-winged Warblers!) It was time to step away from those sadistically elusive migrants and do something different.

And luckily, this week I was already committed to the best possible thing for a burnt-out birder: a birding festival! Because birding festivals are a great way to avoid birding.

I've only been to a few festivals, but if these were typical, birding festivals seem to involve the following:

1. Name tags with pictures of birds on them!
2. T-shirts featuring the same bird that's on your name tag!
3. Banquets with no-host bars where $7/bottle wine sells for $5 a glass!
4. Field trips where someone invariably plants him/herself directly in front of you whenever anything interesting shows up!
5. An exhibition hall filled with reps from local birding/conservation groups, reps of major optics companies, and some random guy selling photos/paintings of birds!

The Colonial Coast Birding Festival on Jekyll Island, Georgia, was no exception. The only reason I went was because a couple of my friends here in Gainesville, both serious birders and professional biologists, were among the speakers/presenters, and they had invited me to join them. (They often invite me to join them on their birding road trips; why they'd want such a clueless birder in their midst was a mystery: I figured they just wanted a low-maintenance person to split the cost of their hotel room.) So I navigated the festival's labyrinth of a website, registered for the festival, signed up for several field trips and seminars, and hitched a ride up to Jekyll Island (and shared a comfy hotel room) with my friends.

Jekyll Island is only a 3-hour drive north from Gainesville, so I wasn't expecting the variety of birds to vary too much from what I'd get back home. But I got a few surprises. Roseate Spoonbills are plentiful there, and we saw several on our drive in. (They're a fairly recent arrival on the local scene, I'm told):

The Spoonbills are coastal birds, which might explain why they aren't attracted to the inland delights of Gainesville. But there were yet more treats: on a Saturday morning trip to Altamaha Waterfowl Management Area , our group found a male and female Painted Bunting foraging together: it was a lifer for the birder who first spotted the male; she thought at first that it was a brightly colored flower! But as usual, the little beauty and his girlfriend flew off before I could get any pictures. We also had dozens of Bobolinks—a fairly new bird for me.

Another treat of the Altamaha trip was the group I ended up carpooling with: the friendly and knowledgeable trip leader, the Painted Bunting Finder, and a guy from Athens whose non-birding-related goal was to sample barbeque in each of Georgia's 100+ counties. He loved his food, and for lunch we ended up at a dumpy-looking little roadhouse (not a barbeque) at his suggestion: everyone dug into huge baskets of perfectly fried shrimp and oysters and tankards of sweet tea (too sweet for me and the Painted Bunting Lady, who was from Ohio and unfamiliar with the weirdness that is sweet tea.) I had a fish sandwich because I was broke, but it was still pretty tasty.

After lunch, my new friends dropped me off back at the festival headquarters, at the soon-to-be-demolished-and-rebuilt Jekyll Island Convention Center. This left me an hour to kill before the seminar on shorebird ID that I had signed up for. So I wandered through the exhibit hall, looking for anything that might have changed since the previous day. I found one new thing: where the seven-layer-dip and chicken fingers had been at the previous evening's social hour, there was this:

My friends came back from their afternoon of birding just after my shorebird seminar ended. They wanted to show me around the island, and they wanted to check out the campground, which had a number of feeders and water fixtures that were known for attracting good birds. There, we saw several American Redstarts and Northern Parulas, and at the feeders and birdbath were about four female Painted Buntings!

This was very cool, and suddenly I didn't hate birds, or looking for birds, anymore. I could have stayed there for hours. But we had to leave for the banquet and keynote address (a talk on bird song by Don Kroodsma) . The talk was great, and featured several eminently quotable lines. My favorite: "Science is organized curiosity." I wish I could brand this on my students' foreheads at the start of each semester!

On Sunday, our last day at the festival, I tagged along with my friends on the trip they led, then we had lunch at one of their favorite barbeque places. On the drive back to Gainesville, we listened to the CD that accompanied Kroodsma's bird song book. The variety of songs and calls was fascinating, but for some reason it made us all quite sleepy.

Back in my friends' driveway in Gainesville, I unloaded my gear and asked how much I owed them for the hotel.

"Nothing! It's paid for since we're trip leaders," they said.

Wow. Maybe I don't suck after all. Or maybe I have some redeeming non-birding-related qualities. Either way, it's good to feel normal again.

The Depths of Incompetence

2009-10-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a male Summer Tanager...

Five fun facts I learned this weekend:

1. Cats are not only predators of nesting Northern Mockingbird chicks, but also take their eggs.
2. Squirrels are likewise known to feed on Mockingbird eggs.
3. Monk Parakeets build ginormous colonial nests on electric poles in south Florida, which causes birds, people, nests, and random other stuff down there to occasionally get zapped into oblivion. Many people find this problematic.
4. Ghost Crabs are major predators of Snowy Plover chicks in Florida.
5. Warbler lust can lead to physical and spiritual ruin.

I gleaned all this important information from the fall meeting of the Florida Ornithological Society , which took place this weekend here in Gainesville. If this year's meeting and last year's fall meeting in St. Augustine are any indication, FOS meetings are great fun, in a seriously weird way: they're a cross between a small birding festival and a low-budget academic conference, with a laid-back vibe unexpectedly generated by some of the most intense birdheads imaginable. Almost all the attendees were professional biologists or wildlife managers (a guy at my table at Saturday's banquet proudly showed off a scar from a California Condor bite); the few other amateur birders there other than myself all had life lists approaching four digits.

Nope, I had no idea what I was doing there, either.

Everyone else was there to either share their latest research or network with like-minded professionals. My goals were more modest: (1) to have fun and (2) to improve my birding skills by learning at the feet of the masters. Both goals were easily attainable: there was lots to do (social hours! field trips! PowerPoint presentations with lots of bar graphs! Beer in the parking lot of the hotel where FOS was held! (Don't ask...)) And the other birders there were AMAZING.

But their awesomeness didn't help me see any birds. And uncooperative migrants nearly ruined the weekend for me.

I scored a lifer on a Saturday field trip (a Magnolia Warbler) and got several good birds overall (a Blackburnian Warbler and a couple of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks), but the whole weekend, I felt hollow. I hadn't found any of these birds myself, I would never have been able to ID them by myself, as all were tiny backlit silhouettes darting through the tops of dense 4-story high trees. I could barely see most of the birds we found, let alone get any photos of them.

The thrill of the hunt is all about the satisfaction of skills rewarded, and here I was getting spoon-fed like a baby. The kind of colicky baby that gets more food on the floor than in its mouth at mealtime.

On Sunday, a kind couple from Tallahassee patiently tried to point out the Ovenbird and Hooded Warbler in the brush about 30 feet in front of us. "See that branch over there? There's another branch behind it leaning to the left and there's some Spanish moss near that? The bird's just behind it—do you see it?"

"Yes, thanks," I lied after about 10 minutes of their careful tutelage.

I was sleep-deprived, covered with bug bites, and plagued with serious warbler neck and self-loathing. The number of birds I'd actually seen and IDed myself that day was in the single digits. My big weekend of migrant hunting, which I had been looking forward to for weeks, was shot. And now all I wanted to do was crawl into a big hole into the ground.

Luckily, there was a big hole conveniently nearby: Devil's Millhopper , locally known as the Biggest Sinkhole Ever (or at least, the biggest sinkhole in the greater Gainesville area). People kept telling me that it was really awe-inspiring and worth checking out. Why? Because it was a Really Big Hole! And there are stairs leading to the bottom of it! Ooh!

The inside of Devil's Millhopper was pretty—lined with ferns and what would have been nice little waterfalls in the rainy season—but it was not the vertigo-inducing thrill-fest I had envisioned. And it wasn't all that deep either—it took me all of 10 minutes to walk to the bottom and back up again. Maybe this is exciting here in Florida, where there are no mountains or canyons to speak of, but for someone who grew up surrounded by canyons and hills, this was seriously lame. And there were no birds in there, either.

But when I emerged from the Really Big Hole, on the rim were several birders from the field trip, who had been told they had check the place out before heading home to Jacksonville or Tallahassee or wherever. We chatted, and I learned that everyone on that trip had been frustrated by the uncooperative birds—about half the group had given up and left early. So it wasn't just me.

And the trips weren't a total loss: I learned a few more cool factoids about birds and plants, and I still saw more birds with the FOS posse than I would have seen on my own.

Which begs the question: is it possible to see a negative number of birds?

Lots of Stuff at Bolen Bluff

2009-09-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

A Yellow-throated Warbler at Bolen Bluff

This month's good news on the home front is that Glenn landed an interesting-sounding freelance gig that will look great on his CV (and replenish his photo-gear budget). The bad news (for me) is that said gig is back in California and starts tomorrow—where he'll be until Thanksgiving. So much for his very first East Coast fall migration!

But before his departure, we made a point of trying to squeeze in as much birding time as possible. Last week, I took him to Morningside Nature Center to see, and photograph, a couple of birds new to him: Red-headed Woodpeckers and the locally famous Brown-headed Nuthatches, whose only regular spot in Alachua County is at Morningside.

The Red-headed Woodpeckers were noisy and abundant, giving us a morning full of good looks and pix. We found three Brown-headed Nuthatches only feet from the parking lot, squabbling with each other in a tree by some picnic tables. But they flew off before we could get any decent photos.

Glenn won't count any bird as a lifer until he gets a good sharp photo of it, so the Nuthatches remained an unattained goal. So we went back on Friday (the one day I don't teach--I made up for my day playing hooky by working most of today)--and found the park filled with people bearing leaf blowers (WHY? It's a freaking NATURE CENTER) and the birdy area where we had seen the Nuthatches the preceding week ominously surrounded by orange netting and peopled by guys in hard hats. Uh-oh. It looked like someone had decided to "improve" the park with some kind of development. At any rate, the roar of power tools and leaf blowers drove off any birds that might have been around.

So much for a quiet morning looking for Nuthatches!

We beat a quick retreat to the Bolen Bluff trail, where we figured (1) there wouldn't be any construction or a whole of lot people and (2) we'd find some warblers or other cool stuff. We were right on both counts.

On the woodsy northern part of the trail were big flocks of chattering Carolina Chickadees and Tufted Titmice. We scanned the flocks for warblers and found an American Redstart and several Yellow-throateds.

We ran into other hikers who told us there was "lots of stuff" out on the prairie. It wasn't clear what kind of stuff they were talking about, but we went out anyhow. Just as the woods gave way to the prairie, we saw a bold little Northern Waterthrush, hopping about on the trail, bobbing its tail. The brush and trees along the edge of the prairie trail were filled with Palm, Prairie, and Yellow Warblers:

We also spotted a Northern Parula (whose presence in the open brush rather than in the woods threw us for a loop). And all through the woods on the way back to the trailhead, we could hear calling Ovenbirds. This gave us an eight-warbler morning—a good number, even if comprised of unsurprising birds.

Later, we learned from friends with connections to the park service that the work being done back at Morningside was not, as we feared, a nefarious attempt to cover the center of the park with concrete, but preparation for their annual native plant sale. And we were assured that if someone did try to pave over Morningside, there would hell to pay; there would be no way local birders and park lovers would put up with it.

It's always a happy surprise to find that not all civic authorities are short-sighted and evil. But it's sad that this should have to be surprising.

Pop Quiz

2009-09-22T16:07:00.000-07:00

At UF, there is an official policy in place for dealing with students with swine flu: Since Gators are generally hardy creatures, the university is instructing people with "typical" symptoms just to stay home and ride the thing out, rather than trudge to the student health center and risk passing the bug on to others on campus.

This, of course, makes total sense. But it is making life a living hell for faculty. Why? Because we can no longer require documentation for extended absences—and as was always the case, are not allowed to penalize students who've been legitimately ill. We're just supposed to trust that people who disappear for weeks on end are actually sick, and not flaking off. Even UF's student newspaper recognizes that this policy is ripe for abuse.

Already, one of my TAs came to my office nearly in tears, saying that she's been swamped by a deluge of three-week's-overdue assignments from random people who never told her they were sick. But now they're all claiming (possibly retroactive) swine flu. And apart from monitoring the Facebook pages of each of my 150 students to see if any good parties coincided with their absences, there's Nothing. I. Can Do. Grrr.

I can't do anything about lazy shmucks ditching my classes. But I can keep you honest. (And yes, I taking my totally non-birding-related frustration out on you.) So I'm giving you all a pop quiz: Take out a pencil and your copy of Sibley and answer the following question:

This is a photo Glenn took at Cedar Key on Sunday. There are at least three Plover species represented in this shot.

What are they?

Get to work, people!

Oh Wow! A Real Live Bird!

2009-09-21T03:25:00.000-07:00

It was sunrise, and the Red-shouldered Hawk was in his usual tree by the boat deck at Powers Park. And he wasn't going anywhere.

Back in California, Glenn had struggled to get close-up shots of Red-shouldered Hawks. The ones we saw were always tiny rufous specks off in the distance, and skittish ones at that—if you lifted a lens in their direction 100 yards away, they'd see you and be off before you could even focus.

But not this guy. We'd seen him in that same tree, in that same spot, several weeks in a row, looking down at us disdainfully. When he wasn't in that tree, he was on the ground, only feet away. Or maybe in a nearby tree. This would have made for a perfect photo opportunity. Except for one thing.

Glenn didn't have his big lens with him, and we weren't there to take pictures. It was the Fall Migration Count, and we were there to count birds.

And thanks to our bad-ass buteo, there wasn't a songbird to be found anywhere in Powers Park. We could hear Tufted Titmice and Cardinals in the distance, and a few woodpeckers darted in and out, but no migrants were to be found. I heard a far-away Northern Parula, and a more intrepid member of our six-man/woman/child team bushwacked his way into the brush on the edge of the park and found a Kentucky Warbler, but that was it.

This had to be the lamest migration count ever. And it would only get worse.

After about three hours of hopeful but futile searching at Powers, we moved on to Gum Root Swamp, which was indeed swampy—so much so that we found ourselves stomping around in about 4 inches of brackish water for most of our time there. There, we found a couple of Yellow-billed Cuckoos, an Eastern Wood-pewee, a single American Redstart, and a Black-and-white Warbler—and, apart from a few other year-round residents, not much else. It's really sad when singles of such relatively common birds are the highlight of your count.

Then it was back to Powers Park for our lunch break. Our depressed team leaders drank beer with lunch and hoped things would improve in the afternoon. They didn't.

I've always thought that a frustrating fact about birding in Florida is that many of the bugs are as big as birds, and bird-like movements all too often turn out to be butterflies or grasshoppers. This bad photo shows how perversely large the invertebrates are out here in proportion to other critters—this spider actually has a baby gecko stuck in his web!

All at once now: Eew! Gross!

At least this was something interesting to look at. As was this Green Anole: they are native to the area, but are being pushed out by invasive Brown Anoles:

Our afternoon birding somehow managed to be even less productive than our morning attempts. But on Sunday was another day, and I spent it birding once again. A quick morning power walk through Bolen Bluff yielded a bold Ovenbird right by the trailhead, several Baltimore Orioles, a Summer Tanager, and a tree with about half a dozen Northern Parulas.

I was sure there was more to be found in there, but my time was limited: Glenn and I had reservations for Alachua Audubon's boat trip at Cedar Key. Here we enjoyed the ocean breeze and sightings of dozens of American Oystercatchers and other shorebirds:

This compensated (sort of) for Saturday's disappointment. And there will always be next weekend. And it had better not suck.

After the Deluge

2009-09-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

Just when I think I've got things figured out here, the rules change. Shortly after moving here, I noticed that summer/autumn mornings tend to be hot and dry, and afternoons hot and rainy. One of my biologist friends told me this is because all the evaporation of the many local lakes and rivers during the morning condenses into rain clouds by afternoon—when all that moisture returns to earth in the form of rain. I've trained myself to get up at the crack of dawn for my daily run, in order to avoid the rain and heat of the afternoon.

But this weekend, things got weird. There was no rain at all on Thursday and Friday, but on Saturday, just when I really, really, wanted to go out and look for fall migrants, it rained on and off all morning. I took Glenn to Loblolly Nature Center, normally a good place during migration, and got nothing but mosquito bites and dozens of White-eyed Vireos.

Then it started to rain, and since Glenn didn't want all his photo gear to get wet, we headed back to the car.

This would have been a reasonable time to pack up and go home. But instead, we went to the Lake Wauberg entrance to Paynes Prairie State Park (I optimistically assumed the rain at Loblolly was just a local squall), where we paid $6 to get in and saw next to nothing. And got rained on again.

Saturday was shot. The drive home took us past the Bolen Bluff parking lot, empty except for a couple of familiar-looking cars. No doubt other birders braving the rain—and no doubt they were seeing boatloads of migrating wonders in there.

On Sunday morning, I woke up early to the sound of rain pounding on the roof. Great. By nine or so, it seemed to have passed, so we headed down to Bolen Bluff. It's an odd place--whenever we go, some areas are nearly silent, while others filled with the squawks and chirps of feeding flocks on the move. And the quiet and active spots are different every time.

Feeding flock #1 was in a shady, swampy, palmetto-filled area usually devoid of interesting birds. But on Sunday morning, it was noisy with calling Ovenbirds and singing Yellow Warblers, along with various more prosaic hangers-on. But all were too fast, and too deep in the brush, for any photos. Our consolation for missing good shots of the warblers was a sighting of a bright male Summer Tanager, perched fairly low on a branch hanging across the trail in front of us:

Feeding flock #2 was a crazy combination of everything: White-eyed Vireos, Carolina Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, and Downy Woodpeckers were all feeding together, albeit peevishly—I know one shouldn't anthopomorphize animals, but their sharp warning calls whenever anyone else got close definitely suggested they didn't welcome each other's company. In this flock of residents were a large number of Northern Parulas, a couple of Yellow-throated Warblers, and a couple of Black-and-white warblers.

As we were heading back to the trailhead, we ran into one of the local birding hotshots, who told us he had seen a Blackburnian Warbler there the day before (aha! So his was one of the vaguely familiar cars in the lot!), and had a female/immature Chestnut-sided Warbler that morning. Both of which, (naturally) we missed. Later, I found out from the grapevine that this guy had seen 12 warblers on the morning we saw him! And he was, characteristically, too polite to brag about this in our presence. Because we suck as birders and there was really no need for him to rub it in.

Well, at least we got this guy.

There's Always 'Fun' in Fungus

2009-09-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

This is not a bird, but it's still kind of cool. Whatever it it.

It's the last official weekend of summer, and everyone I knew is getting some.

On their blogs and tweets and by e-mail, they brag about how great it is, and how surely everyone must be getting some--it's a three-day weekend, they say, and there are a lot of people out there looking for the exact same thing as you. So if you're not getting any, it's your fault for not trying.

On a weekend like this, if you don't get outside and find some good migrating warblers, you are a sorry-ass loser.

I'm pleased to report I'm not a TOTAL sorry-ass loser. But despite three mornings spent craning my neck at weird angles while peering at microscopic, backlit flying objects in the tops of 4-story-trees, my weekend count was disappointingly low. I did get one lifer—a Blue-winged Warbler at San Felasco Hammock—but apart from that, only the usual suspects in tinier than expected numbers: tons of Northern Parulas, a single Prothonotory Warbler, a couple of Yellow-throated Warblers and Ovenbirds, a nice big flock of Yellow Warblers, and a single immature American Redstart. And all of these successfully eluded our attempts to get decent photos of them.

So my consolation eye candy for this week is something else that's kept me occupied on the trails: the strange and colorful mushrooms that have been popping up after the heavy rains of the last few weeks.

The variety of mushrooms out here is far bigger and more dramatic than back in California: in the coastal scrub of southern California, most life forms—birds, insects, and mushrooms (when it's wet enough to support them)—are beige or brown, like the surrounding sand and rocks. Here, plants and animals are much brighter, like this Day-Glo orange shroom:

Just as alien to me as bright orange mushrooms were these green mushrooms, which look almost like misplaced leaves growing from strange angles out of the tree trunk:

Here are some lacy white ones. I don't know the names of any of these varieties, nor do I know if they are poisonous or not:

These cute little red things, however, just look poisonous to me. Or at the very least, seriously hallucinogenic.

For some reason, I couldn't get my camera to allow a closer shot of these (nor the other, equally cool-looking red mushroom with white dots that I spotted last week). And as I mentioned, I don't know the proper names for any of these varieties. Any ID help will be gratefully accepted!

Eat It Up

2009-08-31T06:46:00.001-07:00

Bon Appetit!

Small birds lead grueling lives: from the moment they pop out into the world as fertilized eggs, they are in risk of turning into someone else's lunch. When they're not worrying about getting eaten themselves, they are either migrating, mating (or engaged in stressful mating-related activities such as fighting for territory or fighting off potential competitors)—or eating.

A knowledgeable source told me that warblers typically eat their weight in insects every day. I haven't gotten around to independently confirming this, but if it's anywhere near true, the only people who should ever be told to "eat like a bird" are sumo wrestlers. And maybe this guy.

During migration, appetites increase as birds fuel up for consecutive all-nighters of flight to the Southern Hemisphere. Last spring, a flock of Chipping Sparrows ate their little way through a 4-cup-capacity feeder-full of seed at my place every day for about three weeks before taking off for points north. Their company was getting quite expensive.

Now the birds are heading back south and some have deigned to stop in Gainesville. Not too many of these, however, have deigned to allow themselves to be seen by me this weekend. One of the more cooperative ones was this Black-and-white Warbler, grabbing one of many juicy snacks by the Bolen Bluff Trail in Paynes Prairie State Park:

This Red-eyed Vireo wasn't eating at the moment, but most likely, he or she was thinking about it. How do I know this? Hey, this is the internet—it has to be true!

Mellow Yellow

2009-08-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

Hood birds are good birds!

This week brought the best and worst of fall: The migrant warblers are finally starting to move through Gainesville, filling the trees and brush with tantalizing little flashes of yellow. But just as all the good birds arrive, so does a new academic year. Today all hell broke loose another year of inquiry and discovery began at UF, which means my weekdays will be filled with wall-to-wall classes and meetings, and my weekends with grading and administration. And of course, during the summer when my schedule is totally flexible, there's NOTHING OUT THERE but House Finches.

Nature is cruel.

My last weekend of summer vacation was a perfect way to segue into fall: On Friday night, I was hanging out wondering where to bird on Saturday, when a friend called and asked if we'd like to join her at San Felasco in the morning. This was a perfect choice: we had been the previous week and seen some tantalizing hints of the fall wonders to come (first of season Yellow-throated Warblers and American Redstarts), and another week of migration and another pair of eyes could only make the birding better.

And it was: after a slow start ("Why did we come here??") we saw flashes of non-leaf-like movement in the trees. A fat brownish bird that we thought was an early Hermit Thrush hopped in front of us for a moment, then darted into the brush. In a nearby tree several small birds flitted promisingly: we raised out bins and found five different warblers: a Northern Parula, a Prothonotory, a Black-and-white, an American Redstart, and a male Hooded—the latter a lifer for Glenn, and the first really bright male for me! Awesome, dramatic-looking birds.

We also saw another interesting yellow bird: this time, not a warbler, but some bigger bird, with faint washes of reddish orange on it. A female something-or-another. Later that evening, another friend IDed it as a female Summer Tanager:

It's great having Glenn out here: now I don't have to come home to an empty house every evening, and I get to relive the thrill of seeing all the East Coast birds for the first time all over again. (And I get infinitely better photos to use here!) One of the most common year-round residents here is also one of the prettiest: the White-eyed Vireo, a fairly new bird for Glenn:

Can't wait to see what else fall migration brings in—if only I get enough time to get out and enjoy it.

A Moving Experience

2009-08-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

Fresh Start: A juvenile Northern Cardinal checks out our new place.

I hate boxes.

I hate stepping around them. I hate taping them together. I hate filling them with stuff, then lugging them down multiple flights of stairs and wondering how I'll fit them into my car.

I hate finding them in odd corners, opening them and finding my life's belongings wrapped up in 10-year-old pages from defunct alternative newspapers, which reminds me how pathetic and old I'm getting. I hate wondering where they are, and once finding them, trying to figure out where to put them next.

And this is all I've done all summer. Moving SUCKS. Glenn has finally moved out to Gainesville to join me, but this meant (1) moving out of our place in California, where 10 years of random crap had prodigiously, yet stealthily, accumulated, (2) simultaneously moving out of my tiny pied-a-terre in Gainesville, which was too small for all this stuff, and (3) moving INTO a bigger place in Gainesville. Orthogonally related to all this was (4) sorting through and discarding tons of stuff from my high school and college years still at my parents' place, in preparation for their possible (but not imminent) move. My heart nearly broke as I shredded dozens of absolutely hilarious letters from my sophomore roommate and my freshman-boyfriend-who-turned-out-to-be-gay. The idea of paying for and dealing with yet another moving box was just too awful.

All this misery came to a head last weekend, when both Glenn and the movers arrived at our new place. Between packing and unpacking stuff, watching poor Glenn do battle with both jet lag and an uncooperative wireless router, and trying to figure out WHY our Florida renters' insurance policy costs four times more than our old policy in California ("This is Florida", was the best answer my insurance agent could come up with), I haven't had much time for birding or blogging. Yup, it sucks to be me.

But the payoff for all this stress is significant: Among the charms of our new place are much-improved backyard birding opportunities. The feeder at my old place attracted a fair number of birds, but was in a thoroughly dismal location:

Here's the same feeder now: near real live trees!

We already have a number of Tufted Titmice and Carolina Chickadees coming by regularly:

A family of Northern Cardinals (an adult male and female and two juveniles) comes by several times a day as well—at my old place, it took about three months for the birds to warm up to my feeder.

There are also a lot of Carolina Wrens, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, and Blue Jays in the area that we hope will drop by: we've put up a suet feeder and a hummingbird feeder to make the place more interesting for them.

Meanwhile, fall migration is slowly but surely starting up. We went by Palm Point Park yesterday in search of migrant warblers, and found a Black-and-white Warbler and several Prothonotary Warblers. The Prothonotary was a lifer for Glenn:

At San Felasco Hammock State Park this morning, we saw Yellow-throated Warblers, Northern Parulas, Worm-eating Warblers, American Redstarts, and a Black-and-white Warbler. The park was quite birdy (and buggy); I'm sure there were a lot of good birds in there that we missed.

And back home, there's almost always something flitting about in the back yard. There's nothing like the company of birds to make a random building filled with half-empty boxes feel like home.

Didn't You See It? It's Right In There!

2009-08-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

Look, it's that thing! It's in those trees!

Summer birding frustrates me to no end: First, it's freaking hot out. Second, there not many birds around. And third, the few that are around are fiendishly difficult to see in the thick summer foliage. During a brief but pointless outing to Lake Wauberg yesterday, I heard only the usual suspects—Northern Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, Red-bellied Woodpeckers—and actually saw only half a dozen birds. Not species. Birds.

And since I paid $4 to get there (the lake and a very pretty boardwalk are accessed through the Paynes Prairie State Park main entrance), this adventure cost me—as Glenn pointed out— 66 cents a bird.

I persist in doing this to myself every weekend to get my bird-locating skills in tune for fall, when all the good migrants show up. That, and a weekend without birding would be just too sad.

Finding small birds in trees is, for me, the hardest thing about birding. There's nothing worse than being with a group of ecstatic people all looking at some marvelous rarity when all I can see are leaves. I've dipped on way too many birds this way. Like that beautiful bright male Cerulean Warbler at Loblolly Nature Center last fall—I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with three people who were all looking at it. Or that Bay-breasted Warbler at Palm Point a week later. Or...or...or...

Of course, all my birding companions tried to be helpful. They sincerely wanted to share the moment with me, and all tried their best to help me locate the prize. Unfortunately, more times than not, birders' "help" in such situations goes something like this:

"Did you see it yet? It's right up there!"
"Where?"
"In those trees—you know, through that green stuff."

Uh, thanks.

Describing the location of birds in random tangles of moss and vines is hard, as I know from the rare occasions when I'm actually the one doing the locating and explaining. But sometimes, even directions that are (probably) completely coherent throw me. Such as directions that refer to really specific tree types: I'm terrible with tree names.

Back in California, half the songbirds that would show up on the Orange County Rare Bird Alerts listserv would be reported as being seen in a Myoporum tree. And birders I'd run into would constantly describe some cool thing they saw a couple hundred yards away as being in a Myoporum. And I had no idea what a Myoporum was, except that there must be a lot of them in Orange County. Whenever someone mentioned one, I promised myself I'd look it up when I got home, but I never got around to it.

The 600+ birds of North America and their plumages and vocalizations are enough of a challenge—right now, I have neither the time nor brain cells to add trees to the mix.

In Florida, botanical directions are even less useful to me; most of the plants and trees around here were completely unfamiliar to me when I moved here, as were their names. And there's simply a greater diversity and density of intertwined green stuff around here than in the coastal sage scrub near my old place in Orange County, and thus more unfamiliar names to trip me up.

And to make matters worse, many of the serious birders around here are not only experts on local birds, but all-around polymaths of the natural world. They not only know all the birds, but can and will tell you—in gory detail—about the life cycle of every life form in north-central Florida. On just about every Alachua Audubon field trip, one of these people would nonchalantly reach out, pluck a leaf off some green life form, rub it between the fingers, give it an appreciative sniff, and say something like this:

"You know what this is? It's a [unfamiliar plant name]. These things like to grow in [name of typical north-central Florida habitat]. The [name of historically significant Florida ethnic group] used to use their [name of plant part, plural] for [name of useful object or purpose]."

If only I could keep all these fragrant, useful, and historically significant plants in my head while simultaneously trying to learn East Coast bird songs and avoiding snakes and spiders. Then, maybe, I'd actually be able to see all those *$%& cool migrants everyone else is gasping at.

But there are a few masters at the subtle art of oral bird location. A few tricks I've learned: clock directions are good ("it's at 2:00 in the tall tree in the middle"). Describing locations in terms of a fixed location such as the horizon or a tree top everyone can see and agree on also works. As do easily calculable measurements ("it's at 2:00 in the tall tree in the middle, about a third of the way between the sky and the trunk").

And then there was the most effective way of all, favored by one of the local birding gurus: if you're the finder, keep the bird in your sights. Line your head up with that of the clueless soul who hasn't seen the bird yet. Then gently grasp that person's head (ask first) and point it where your head is looking: at the bird.

It worked on me. No redundant vocalization needed.

Bird Tweets

2009-07-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

Shut up and bird!

I'm probably the last person under 80 in the civilized world without a Twitter account. I have several principled reasons for this: (1) sloth, (2) my life is generally boring, (3) on the rare occasions it's not boring, I'd much rather throw myself fully into whatever I'm doing than tell everyone about it, and (4) all those perpetually exciting people with Twitter feeds would probably agree with (2).

But there is a weird, haiku-like allure to some tweets. At best, they're like phone calls from kidnap victims: just enough info to leave you hanging for more. Thus,some pundits have declared blogging in full sentences to be hopelessly démodé. Just in case they're right, here's my weekend as a series of fake tweets!

Saturday, 8:00 a.m: 2 early 4 migrants at Palm Point. Here anyways. Y?
8:05: Whistle-like call/song in trees. Can't ID.
8:06: Can't locate calling bird. Where is it?
8:07: Nothing in trees but 2 ducks. No other birds. Who's calling?

8:08: Black-bellied WHISTLING-DUCK. DUH!

Sunday, 7:50 a.m: Deer at Paynes Prairie, by parking lot. Awesome!

8:15: Bobwhite calling. Can't find it.
8:20: 12-foot gator w/open mouth. Moving towards us. Yikes.
9:00: Found 2 Purple Gallinules! Freaking pretty birds.

9:01: Gallinules have 2 babies! Very cute.
9:15: Cool lavender dragonflies are everywhere! They look blue in pix.

10:00: At platform at end of trail. 2 rangers there.
10:01: Rangers are saying 2 Whooping Cranes seen earlier!
10:15: Waiting 4 cranes. Lots of growling gators. 1 is on trail by platform now.

10:30: The Whoopers are here! Mated pair. 2 far 4 pix.
10:32: Will they breed here? We all hope so.
10:40: Swallow-tailed Kites overhead!

11:00: Effing hot out here! Thunderheads moving in.
11:15: Ack, rain! 1/2 mile back 2 parking lot.
11:30: Swallow-tailed Kites again, and a Mississippi Kite too!
11:45: Hot. Thirsty. Sticky. Need a shower badly.
12:00: Outta here and heading home. Bye till next weekend!

Scenes Through the Rear View Mirror

2009-07-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

On the move yet again...

Well, I'm back in Gainesville. I'm counting down the days until fall migration starts, and I promised Glenn that our reward for moving and unpacking in the midst of a Florida summer will be a day tubing at Ichetucknee Springs. We'll also snorkel with the manatees in Crystal River in the winter. And of course, there are zillions of Florida birding hotspots we still haven't hit.

But I'll never see our little apartment in Costa Mesa again. We were fantastically lucky to be 15 minutes away from some of Orange County's best birding spots—Huntington Central Park, Bolsa Chica, and the San Joaquin Marsh. Of course, we can always go back during our visits to my family in Los Angeles, but this will require a 90-minute drive and—the horror!—advanced planning. I'll miss having Bolsa Chica as a convenient place to procrastinate.

The only birds I saw during my last trips to my usual spots were the usual summer suspects. (The only noteworthy bird I encountered in my last week was a Least Bell's Vireo, which was singing loudly but remaining stubbornly out of sight.) So I gave up hunting for non-existent rarities, and instead made a point of trying to get shots of some typical scenes from a Southern California summer.

Here's a common sight at Talbert: a Matilija Poppy, aka "Fried Egg Poppy". These are apparently native to California.

Bolsa Chica in the summer is a sure-fire spot to see Elegant Terns, a So Cal specialty. The shot contains hundreds of them, along with Caspian, Forster's , and Least Terns. It was unclear what flushed this giant flock into the air:

Another summer treat at Bolsa Chica is the chance to see nesting Least Terns and Snowy Plovers up close. Even adult Snowy Plovers have that baby cuteness about them:

And to conclude the nature shots, here is California's state bird, the California Quail. This guy was at San Joaquin Marsh, along with a covey of about 20 others, mostly babies:

While beautiful, these birds are jaw-droppingly dim: when I was small, I was shocked to see our arthritic and slow-witted dog actually catch and kill one—while tethered on a leash! Choosing the dumbest bird in the world as our state mascot was NOT a smart move. Whoever pulled that off couldn't have played up the gorgeous-but-vapid Californian stereotype any more if he tried.

Finally, here's an ode to the non-bird-related institution I'll miss most:

By The Sea

2009-07-12T15:21:00.000-07:00

Greed is good: A fledgling Least Tern at the Least Tern Reserve at Huntington State Beach.

My summer trip home is drawing to a close; I return to Florida next week (just in time for hurricane season! Whoopee!). The good news is that Glenn will be coming with me. The bad news is that means the end of 10 years in our nearly-seaside aerie in Costa Mesa. We'll be back in Los Angeles fairly frequently to visit my family, but no longer will we have our own little space just minutes from beach.

So we've been doing a farewell tour of all our favorite beach spots. Our first beach stop was the Least Tern Reserve at Huntington State Beach, which we visited on Thursday morning. The reserve itself is a fenced-off area on a pretty beach justifiably popular with surfers.

We volunteered there as docents two summers ago; it was great fun watching mating and nesting behavior of the terns, and seeing how much the chicks grew every week. (Less fun were the occasional run-ins with belligerent people who couldn't understand WHY tossing frisbees at nesting birds is not a good thing.)

This year's crop of babies is now in fledgling stage: most of them can (sort of) fly, but are still depending on their parents for handouts.

Just up the mouth of the Santa Ana River was a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers. Both looked rather scruffy. A friend who was with us thought one of them might have been oiled. (This photo is a bit backlit and washed-out, but it will do for documentary purposes.)

In Talbert Marsh, just inland from the reserve, we heard what we thought were Nuttall's Woodpeckers, Hooded Orioles, Bullock's Orioles, and European Starlings calling and drumming loudly from somewhere nearby. It turned out to be a very vocal Northern Mockingbird in full-on mimic mode.

(In Florida, the Mockingbirds near my place imitate Carolina Chickadees, Northern Cardinals, and even Sandhill Cranes. At first they sounded like completely different birds to me. Then I realized that Mockingbird songs, like wines, are very much dependent their terroir for their flavor.)

On the way out of the reserve, we saw a mysterious—and sad—sight: a dead (but still fresh) Clapper Rail on the bike path leading from the parking lot to the beach:

It hadn't been there when we arrived, so it must have died within the last three hours—how, we have no clue. I have a huge soft spot for Clapper Rails and was hoping to see one before I left—but not like this. It's always a tragedy to know that an endangered bird has died. We reported it to the local birding gurus, and it is now headed for an educational taxidermy collection. It will now spend the rest of eternity being ogled at by busloads of schoolchildren on field trips. I suppose eternity could be a lot worse. (It could be a lot better, too.)

It was a perfect day at the beach, with postcard-blue skies and huge cobalt waves curling over the heads of surfers too busy and happy to mess with the terns. But I couldn't help feeling depressed about that poor Clapper Rail. I just hope it met its end quickly and painlessly, and enjoyed its preceding years foraging with its companions in the nearby marshes, with the sound of the waves crashing in the distance.

Is Avocet Right For You?

2009-07-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

Seasonal Birding Disorder (SBD) is a serious ailment that affects thousands. If you are a North American birder who suffers from ennui, irritability, or depression during the summer birding doldrums, you are not alone. And there is a solution.

Try Avocet. Avocet is easy to take—only a few doses a week have been shown to alleviate the major symptoms of SBD:

Avocet is most effective when taken with water.

Avocet should not be taken by those with chronic vision problems, or people suffering from liver disease or high blood pressure. Avocet is not for everyone, including birders who've just returned from New Guinea, Costa Rica, or Alaska. Side effects may include sunburn, dry mouth, and increased hormonal activity.

Prolonged or excessive use of Avocet may result in drowsiness or a return of SBD symptoms:

If you experience drowsiness or other SBD symptoms while taking Avocet, stop immediately and contact your mental health professional.

Avocet is available without prescription and is not covered by most insurance plans. If you suffer from SBD, ask yourself: is Avocet right for you?

Go Team!

2009-07-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

Three cheers for the red...

white...

and blue!

Have a burger, re-read the Constitution, and remember, don't poke lit sparklers in people's faces.

Happy Independence Day!

Life's Little Dramas

2009-06-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted much lately because I haven't seen that much: by any objective measure, my birding over the past few weeks has been disappointing. Nothing makes me feel like more of a lame-o than submitting sighting lists to eBird that barely hit the double digits.

Yet I thoroughly enjoyed the few outings I had over the past few weeks. We may not have seen that many birds, but just about every one had a story.

While in Los Angeles, Glenn and I met up with one of Glenn's photographer friends at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. It's not a hugely birdy place, but it has a lot of very tame exotics, which make for great photos: peafowl preen only inches away from squealing toddlers, and colorful Red-whiskered Bulbuls perch conveniently on the tops of tiny manicured trees:

Even the wild birds there are extraordinarily tame. This Black-crowned Night-Heron was only a couple of feet away from me when I got this shot:

Glenn's friend, who has a membership to the Arboretum and visits it frequently, told us this Night Heron has devised a clever feeding technique: it waits for the local juvenile Homo sapiens to throw bread into the pond for the Mallards and Wood Ducks, perches on the shore near the floating bread, and waits for carp to come to the surface to take the bait...

A short trip to Bolsa Chica likewise yielded only the usual suspects. Happily, the usual suspects in the summer include lots of babies: fuzzy little Snowy Plovers, even tinier and cuter than their parents, skittered about like wind-up toys, and fledgling Least Terns squealed noisily for parental handouts. Just off the Wintersburg Channel, a pair of baby Black-necked Stilts were exploring their new digs:

Glenn decided to sleep in this morning, so I took a long walk through Canyon Park, through the south end of Talbert Nature Reserve, and down the Santa Ana River bike trail. I was hoping to get a glimpse of the ever-elusive Lazuli Bunting, but wasn't entirely surprised when it refused to materialize. Instead I heard several Yellow-breasted Chats and Blue Grosbeaks, and saw several Bullock's Orioles. Hovering over the river were flocks of dive-bombing Least Terns. On the mudflats in the river were several egrets and herons, including this immature Reddish Egret:

Glenn and I had seen Reddish Egrets here before in previous years; once, we saw two of them. Seeing an immature one in the same place a year later makes me wonder if they're breeding here now.

Every bird has a story—but some you can only guess at.

Birdlessness

2009-06-18T08:01:00.001-07:00

What are you looking at?

Seneca famously said that luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation. Oprah says in just about every issue of her magazine that if you have a big goal, you should (1) understand what motivates you to pursue it, (2) break your big task into smaller, manageable ones, and (3) enlist the help of mentors/friends/allies.

With this sage advice in mind, I set off again on Saturday morning in pursuit of Lazuli Buntings. The opportunity was there: scads of them were reported at the Blue Jay Campground in Cleveland National Forest just days before. The preparation was in place: I know what they look like and sound like, and what kinds of habitats they like. And I know that this is the time of year when they're here. I know why I want to see them (just because), and what I needed to do to carry out my mission (download the directions to the campground and get my butt out of bed early enough to get there during prime birding hours.) And if there were any interesting birds in the area, there would likely be interesting birders besides Glenn and me, too. If the Lazulis were out there, chances are someone would be there to point them out to us. How could we lose?

The campground was apparently somewhere off the Ortega Highway, a beautiful but dizzyingly windy little road that clings to the upper ridges of the Santa Ana mountains. As we wound our way uphill and local drivers zipped around us on hairpin turns, I remembered why I had a somewhat dark mental image of the Ortega Highway: wasn't it known for lots of gruesome car crashes?

Now it was starting to rain, and all those CAUTION: ROCK SLIDE AREA signs were starting to look more ominous. According to Google Maps, the campground was 38 miles from our place. We had now gone about 45, and the road seemed to grow narrower and steeper as we progressed. Had we passed it? Was the entrance not marked? Our birding time was limited because of afternoon obligations, so we cut our losses, turned around, and stopped at Caspers Wilderness Park , a more than respectable spot for birds.

We stopped at the visitor's center, which has a pleasant outdoors area with numerous bird feeders. The center itself is becoming a new home for a colony of Cliff Swallows:

Further into the park, we relocated the drip which we had visited before. Last time, we had seen Orioles, Grosbreaks, and Phainopeplas there, just feet away from us. (And a birder friend we were with also saw a Lazuli Bunting, which we had missed.) But today, we mostly saw Acorn Woodpeckers: a family of there was nesting in a nearby tree, and they darted back and forth noisily with food for their babies. When not tending to the nest, they'd stop for a drink of water:

We wandered around the area and saw Oak Titmice, Western Scrub-Jays, and White-breasted Nuthatches, as well as a pair of screeching Red-shouldered Hawks. This was all quite pleasant—but still no Lazuli Buntings. And now our birding time for the weekend was over.

Seneca was obviously not a birder: There are some kinds of luck you just can't prepare for.