A Light Summer Post

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.)

Nuthatch Patch

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!

Lots of Stuff at Bolen Bluff

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.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

All I want for Christmas are a few more lifers! Like this Baltimore Oriole.

A few months ago, something evil happened to my car's stereo system--for some reason, the buttons on the face plate stopped working, which means I can no longer change radio stations or adjust the the volume on the darned thing. Now I'm stuck with the embarrassing soft-rock station I was listening to when the thing broke, and worst of all, said station has been playing non-stop Christmas music since Halloween. I can't decide which version of "There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays" I hate most: Bing Crosby's, The Carpenters' , or Barry Manilow's pseudo "jazz" version. (I could just drive with the radio off, but adversity builds character.)

All this xmas cheer was bringing out the Grinch in me: just when the rest of the world gets to slow down, build snowmen and gingerbread houses and basically have a gnarly time, I'm trapped in finals week hell, writing and grading exams and racing to get stuff ready for next semester, while getting more and more homesick by the moment. Being constantly reminded by a dead anorexic that I ought to be home with my family eating pumpkin pie only makes things worse.

But the second-best cure for homesickness is distracting yourself with the good stuff where you are that you can't find at home. So yesterday I threw myself into the glory that is north-central Florida by participating in the local Christmas Bird Count.

My team was to cover the north-eastern section of Gainesville, which includes several large parks and lots of tiny retention ponds. Most of us met at Morningside Nature Center at 5 a.m. to look for owls: the moon was nearly full and fantastically bright despite a layer of clouds. We had a gorgeous—but owl-less—early morning walk.

And of course, the slackers on the team who didn't join us until 7 went out to their assigned part of our territory, and immediately spotted a Great Horned Owl. Go figure.

Our team of seven broke into three subgroups, and I was lucky enough to be placed with our team leader, a naturalist who works for Gainesville's park system. He did most of the finding, and I made myself useful by writing everything down. Thanks to him, I managed to get two more lifers: a Brown-headed Nuthatch (a now-uncommon bird here that is only regularly seen locally in Morningside) and a Baltimore Oriole.

Between writing stuff down, counting things up, and trying to find more birds, I didn't have much time to take pictures. I wish I had gotten a shot of that Nuthatch! But we did manage to find a fairly cooperative Red-headed Woodpecker: they're gorgeous birds; their heads look like they're covered with red velvet:



We birded until 5, with a brief break at a surprisingly good pizza place for lunch. At 5:30, all 11 teams assembled for dinner and the final count-up: the first half of the event consisted of individual teams eating (yet more) pizza while frantically tallying up their sightings and trying to calculate distances and travel times involved. The highlight of the evening was the final collective reading: we went through all the expected county birds, and each team announced how many it had found. Someone entered all the numbers in a computer database, and the numbers (compared to past highs and typical records) were displayed on a video screen for all to watch.

Some teams got some good stuff: There was a sighting of a Limpkin, and the Harris' Sparrow at La Chua stuck around for the count, as hoped. Our territory didn't yield anything exceptional, except for the Nuthatches.

But it was still a great day of birding. And the pizza wasn't bad either.