Good Birds, Near and Far

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.

Fire Birds

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.

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.