Everything but the Sparrow

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.

After the Deluge

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.

Mellow Yellow

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.

Bad Shots of Good Birds

The best thing about photographing mushrooms? They can't fly.

I've been having endless amounts of fun looking for new Florida birds. The birders here are great, and have been really generous about teaching me the calls and field marks of all local specialties.

I've been having less fun, however, trying to get decent shots of these birds. Since it's the midst of fall migration, all the really interesting birds are tiny, active little things, and the foliage here is denser and darker than the coastal sage scrub and mountain oaks and sycamores back in California. And it's hard to focus on a shot of these little guys while simultaneously keeping one's eyes open for spiders/snakes/mosquitos/passing cars/cyclists/gators/Gator fans and other local hazards.

Still, even lame shots of new birds are a nice souvenir of a day in the field. One of my favorite new birds is the Prothonotory Warbler, and here's a bad shot of one. (He was SO close, but hopped away before I could get any other shots.)



One of my goals coming out here was to get some good shots of Northern Cardinals, which are abundant, pretty, and relatively slow moving. Mission (not quite) accomplished:



One bird that was surprisingly cooperative and allowed a not-sucky shot was this White-eyed Vireo, who I saw at Loblolly Woods Nature Park this morning:



And to give everyone's eyes a break, here's a shot of the appropriately named beautyberry, a local native popular with birds. This very cooperative plant was also at Loblolly: