It Could Have Been Worse

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.

Spacing Out

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?

Ocala National Forest: A Sucky Photo Super-Post!

An early morning treat, badly captured, near Ocala National Forest.

The observant may have noticed that I've managed to stretch three days of vacation into three weeks of blog posts. There are a few of reasons for this: first, Glenn and I collectively got thousands of photos out of our trip, and at least some of them had to go to good use; second, it really was the BEST birding trip I ever had (so far).

And third and most crucially, the birding in Gainesville since then has been pretty dull: most of our winter birds are gone (except for the gluttonous Chipping Sparrows who now camp out my courtyard and require me to buy a 5-pound bag of feed EVERY WEEK), and spring migration here is only showing hints of starting. While the trees and bushes back in California are swarming with Hermit and Nashville and Black-throated Grey Warblers (and Hooded and Bullock's Orioles and Warbling Vireos), here we've got...well,not much. Yet.

And yet, yesterday there arose an opportunity to see a rare local treat: this week's Alachua Audubon field trip was to Ocala National Forest , where our goal birds were Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, Florida Scrub Jays, and Bachman's Sparrows. All but the Florida Scrub-Jay—which I had only seen once before, at Merritt Island—would be lifers for me; and the seriously endangered Red-cockaded would be a valued treat for anyone who cares about birds.

The trip was everything I had hoped for: several of my favorite local birders showed up, we got just about everything we wanted to see, and the weather was great. The only problem was that all my photos sucked.

For instance, there's this photo of a Bachman's Sparrow, which we saw shortly after we parked and started our hike. We could hear the sparrows almost as soon as they arrived, and this guy popped up only minutes later.He wasn't that far away, but I still missed a good shot:

I figured my sparrow shots would be barely worthy of being called documentary shots. But no matter: what I really wanted was to see the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, and get a semi-identifiable photo.

We soon came upon a stand of trees where a colony of the woodpeckers had been known to nest. The birds nest in tree holes, and there were some trees with nest boxes already inserted, just for them:

All the trees with Red-cockaded nests—either manmade or bird-made—were conspicuously marked with rings of white paint:

This should have been our clue as to where to look—but the nest trees, even the ones that looked recently used, were quiet. But we heard the chattering of woodpeckers in the distance, and soon saw flashes of black and white against the pines—there they were!

I raised my camera to get a shot, but then lowered it: the birds were too far; the shot wouldn't be any good.

Then the birds took off, still chattering, and we followed. Along the way, I saw this Swallowtail, with a messed-up left back wing. I'm not sure what kind he is:

The chattering continued, and we followed it into the woods. We got good looks at about three birds—but every time I lifted my camera, they'd fly off or do that annoying woodpecker thing of hopping around to the opposite side of the tree. A few us us broke away from the group and plowed deeper into the woods. In the distance, the birds called and swooped from tree to tree, allowing great looks—and took off before we could get them in our viewfinders.

The others in our group were ready to move on, so we gave up our hunt. Now I was kicking myself for not at least trying to get a shot at that first RCW—he was far away, but at least he was standing still. We left the pine-filled sandhill area of the forest for an area of scrub nearby. Here, we hoped to find some Florida Scrub-Jays.

The path through the scrub was covered with fine sand, almost like very dry compacted beach sand. The sand was covered with several new-looking sets of animal prints: little canine ones that must have come from a coyote or fox (the trail was out of the way, and unlikely to appeal to dog-walkers—and no human prints but ours were in evidence), and several sets of bird prints, including these:

We were fascinated by the odd trailing marks behind the prints: was the bird (which must have been crow-sized) dragging its feet? Its tail?

The Scrub-Jays, as we hoped, came through: a pair of them soon popped up, screeching loudly at a nearby Eastern Towhee. Scrub-Jays are notoriously bold, and both birds came close enough to allow potentially decent shots:

Unfortunately, it was high noon by time we got there, and the sunlight and glare off the white sand made everything look oddly backlit. So despite having the most cooperative of avian subjects, this photo still sucked. But at least the bird is clear and identifiable.

And all the best images of the day are stuck in my brain. Luckily, I have a really good memory.