The Great Backyard Bird Count

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!

Random Photos and Haiku for a Quiet Weekend

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.

A Million Sparrows (and Ospreys and Gators)

My neighbor the Chipping Sparrow

At the Catholic high school I attended, we used to sing a song during liturgy services that included the lines "You are worth a million sparrows/ sheltered by the Lord." Even though I wasn't a birder at the time, I wondered about the math behind this equivalency: which bored Vatican bureaucrats came up with this? What's wrong with sparrows, anyhow?

Before I started birding, I thought sparrows were boring (after all, the insignificance of sparrows is officially enshrined in Catholic theology!) When I first started birding, I found sparrows—and the endless identification problems they posed—utterly terrifying.

And this weekend, they were all I wanted to see.

Some visitors last week set my sparrow lust in motion; a large flock of Chipping Sparrows discovered my feeder, and has been keeping me entertained (and dangerously distracted from work) for hours on end. I'd seen these birds only a couple of times back in California, and close-up in my tiny yard, it's easy to see how colorful they are. (They're also quite gluttonous—one day last week, I watched a fat little guy perched at the feeder, calmly eating sunflower seeds for about 5 minutes. I left the room to brush my teeth—and when I came back, about three minutes later, he was still there!)

The other bird I've been trying in vain to find is the White-throated Sparrow. Around here, the White-crowned Sparrows are supposed to be (relatively) uncommon, while the White-throated Sparrows are regular wintering birds. But so far this winter, I've seen numerous White-crowneds and no White-throateds (which would be a life bird for me).

Yesterday, I ran into a birder at La Chua who knew I had been trying to find White-throated Sparrows—he said he'd seen a flock just minutes before, and was nice enough to walk with me back to where they had been. And of course, once we got there, they were gone.

Still, it was a great day out--we saw a pair of Ospreys mating, and about four American Bitterns hunting in the water. But I still wanted my sparrows.

So today, I broke my pledge to go somewhere other than La Chua, and headed back there again. Everyone had been seeing those darned sparrows there but me. My friend from yesterday said he has the best luck finding them early in the morning, so I got there just before 8 and started looking.

Already, it seems that winter is ceding its way to spring. The Sandhill Crane flocks were thinning out as the birds started heading north to their breeding grounds (according to park rangers, they'll be gone by next week), and the little thicket of plum trees where the White-throated Sparrows had been seen was already in bloom.

The nesting Ospreys were still there; here's one of them on its nest:



The little plum tree thicket was quiet except for a couple of Orange-crowned Warblers, so I worked my way towards the prairie. There, of course, were the White-crowned Sparrows, the now-resident Harris' Sparrow, and half a dozen or so migrant birders following in his wake. The Harris' Sparrow is quite bold: today, he was feeding on the ground with the White-crowned Sparrows, and got within 10 feet of me! (But of course he flew the minute I reached for my camera!)

I saw a flock of sparrows moving back towards the trailhead, and decided to follow them. Back among the plum trees, I finally found what I came for: a flock of White-throated Sparrows! They were darting about through the trees quite quickly, but a few got close enough for good looks. None of my photos are suitable for public consumption, unfortunately.

The weather started getting warm; a real change from the sub-freezing temperatures of the past week. The alligators were out, taking full advantage of the sunshine. I like how this guy made a custom-fitted little niche for himself among the lotuses:

So I finally got what I was looking for—my long-sought White-throated Sparrows and a third good look at the Harris' Sparrow. I'm not sure if I'm worth a million sparrows, but a few good sparrows can make you feel like a million.

Eye on the Sparrow

Don't have a cow: The non-birding scene at Hague Dairy

Hague Dairy is one of the big local birding hotspots, but until now, I haven't been there. The prospect seemed both intimidating and unpleasant: it's a bit a a drive from my place, in an out-of-the-way rural area outside Gainesville, and it's not open to the public in a user-friendly way—it's not a park, but an actual working dairy (actually, a laboratory dairy run by the University of Florida)—so while visitors may enter the and sign in for permission to wander around, there are no signs to show you where you are or where the interesting stuff is. The official story there is the cattle ARE the interesting stuff.

So I was happy to tag along with Alachua Audubon's fieldtrip to dairy—most of the people who attended knew the area well and were happy to show me where the interesting stuff was.

One of the places birders like there is also one of the most repulsive: a massive dungheap and a holding pool filled with...well, once you smell it, you'll know. But birds don't find this problematic: a large flock of Brown-headed Cowbirds and American Crows were pecking happily around on top of the tall heap of you-know-what, and in that regrettable holding pond, we spotted a lone Least Sandpiper, a Common Snipe, and a big flock of White Ibises, looking conspicuously clean considering their surroundings. Here's one of them.

Further along, we reached a more pleasant area, filled with the usual moss-draped oaks and shrubs. There, we found a Prairie Warbler, a Yellow-throated Warbler, and a Black-and-White Warbler. Along a nearby fence were numerous Eastern Bluebirds and Palm Warblers, both members of the brownish Western population, and of brighter yellow Eastern population. I also got a Chipping Sparrow, a species I had seen back home in California, but not often:

I also had the opportunity to be utterly confused by the birds everyone else was identifying as Yellow-rumped Warblers and Savannah Sparrows: I had seen both birds a million times back home, but these?! Then I remembered that the Eastern race of Yellow-rumpeds iaka (Myrtle Warbler) is different from the Western (aka Audubon's Warbler) in a few ways: I knew how they differed in the spring, but not in the fall. Now I know.

Today at Bolen Bluff, on the prairie, I had another sparrow: I'm pretty sure it's not a Savannah, or a Song Sparrow (the two common species I'm really familiar with—I suck with sparrows)—but I'm not sure what is is. Suggestions welcome!


Fall is shifting slowly, but surely into winter. Here's my chance to finally get up to speed on sparrows. Oh crap!