Sticky Post

This weather here makes everyone wet and sticky.

I should be having a whale of a time. I'm in a birding paradise, in a small and easy-to-navigate town where people actually drive sanely, and fall migration is in full swing, with the promise of dozens more lifers just outside the door. But most of the time the very idea of going outside repulses me.

Why? It's sticky here.

Not just slightly humid, the way it was in central Orange County for most of the summer. Not just a bit hot. I'm talking 90-degrees with 90% humidity sticky. Walk-to-the-mailbox-and-return-90-seconds-later-drenched-in-sweat sticky. And I don't even want to talk about how I must look to my students after walking across campus from my office to the lecture hall.

I am miserable, and everyone else around here looks dry, well-groomed and happy. "Welcome to Florida," they say sweetly whenever I mention the weather. "Don't worry, by November, it'll be really nice out."

Compounding the misery are the mosquitos. Yup, they exist back in the OC. But not in the mind-blowing density that they do here. And I am cursed with a taste mosquitos crave.

Last week, I came back from Palm Point Park with five ping-pong-ball-sized welts on my left arm. So when I set out with my local birding mentor today, I made a point of slathering myself with bug repellant. This worked for about an hour, until we hit the Bolen Bluff trail at Paynes Prairie State Park, a usually reliable spot to find migrating warblers.

We only got two—an American Redstart (these are common here), and an Ovenbird (a lifer for me). But I did see swarms of mosquitoes in concentrations previously unimaginable to me. OC birders are familiar with the swarms of non-biting gnats lingering over the front ponds at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary. Imagine those swarms at about twice that density, then turn them into aggressively buzzing and biting mosquitoes. In 90 degrees of nearly liquefied air.

There probably were tons of birds out there, but I was too itchy and panicked to see or hear most of them. (Besides, it's hard to hear any birds over the constant drone of mosquitoes.) I did hear something that I swore sounded like a Bell's Vireo, but perhaps I was subconsciously homesick for some nice, dry, coastal sage scrub, and thus hallucinating.

The other factor making birding such a sticky proposition are the large number of spiders, many of which build huge webs across trails, just at face level:



This is a Golden Silk Spider, and is just as big as it looks—its body is over an inch long. It gets its name from the yellow web it weaves, which is strong enough to catch birds. I accidentally walked through one such web yesterday, and found myself ensnared in sticky yellow strands with a thickness and texture somewhere between dental floss and Silly String. Thankfully, these spiders are not venomous, and not aggressive towards people—but the moment I got home, I threw my clothes into the hamper and jumped into the shower.

Despite all this, I managed to get a few lifers this weekend: White Ibises, Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, Eastern Bluebirds, Carolina Chickadees, and Eurasian Collared-Doves. I should be happy and grateful—and I am—but I'm also hot and itchy. And worried about contracting malaria. And sticky.

But some of the birders are going out again tomorrow morning to look for fall migrants, and have invited me along. And I'm going.

Storm Birds

Another new bird for me: A Red-bellied Woodpecker at Palm Point Park, by Newnans Lake.

Fay loomed psychically over Gainesville like an empty threat for most of the week, before dumping torrents of rain on Thursday and Friday. And I was soon to find out that around here, storm-blown pelagic birds are the silver lining to hurricane clouds.

Through a great site called Birdingpal.org, I contacted a local birding master who told me that Newnans Lake is THE place to be the day after a hurricane or tropical storm, and invited me to join him and several others to look for pelagics there on Friday morning.

But when Friday rolled around, rain was coming down in sheets, all the local schools and government offices were closed, and public-service announcements were warning of the dire consequences of "non-essential travel". I figured that there was no way they'd be going out on a day like this, and went back to bed.

That afternoon, I got an e-mail from him: he and the others had seen seven tern species, some phaloropes, and a Leach's Storm Petrel.

And I had wimped out. I blame it on my Southern California background: if you'd spent your life in a place where the tiniest hint of condensation becomes STORM WATCH 2008! in the local TV news, would you get up at 5 am to drive through unfamiliar rural roads through a tropical storm?

But--my new birding mentor's e-mail continued—they were going out again on Saturday. Could I join them then?

It was still raining on Saturday morning. But there was no way I was missing out.

Once there, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of birders with spotting scopes, all scanning the lake. A large flock of Black Terns drifted back and forth over the course of the morning. I also got three new tern species: Sooty, Common, and Sandwich Terns.

The other birders were thrilled with the influx of seafaring birds. I was thrilled by everything: The common resident Tri-colored Herons (a lifer for me) . The resident Bald Eagles (not new birds for me, but by no means routine, either). And the moss-filled oaks and cypress trees surrounding the lake were filled with noisy Red-bellied Woodpeckers and warblers--I got two new warblers as well, a Prothonotory Warbler and a Northern Parula.

Nobody could re-find the Leach's Storm Petrel seen the day before, but we did get another good bird: a Magnificent Frigatebird, which I miraculously managed to photograph, sort of:


This was so much fun, I decided to go back again on Sunday. The fact that someone had spotted a Jaeger on Saturday afternoon was all the more reason for a return trip.

The Jaeger was indeed there for most of Sunday morning, but it sadistically chose to stay on the opposite shore of the lake from us, far out of decent photo range. Through our spotting scopes, we could see that it was a solid dark brown (thus immature), and had wingtips that ended before its tail when it was resting on the water (which was most of the time). I think the others sort of decided it was a Parasitic Jaeger. Or a Pomarine. Or something...

This was Mystery Lifer #1 of the day. Mystery Lifer #2 was this hawk, who, according to the other birders looking at it, was either a very dark Broad-winged Hawk or a Short-tailed Hawk:


But I also got a few new birds I could ID definitively (or that were identified definitively for me by others): a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, a Prairie Warbler, and an Anhinga. There were also lots of interesting new butterflies to wonder at:


I could not ask for a better weekend: 12 lifers in 48 hours, the company of pleasant and knowledgeable birders, and a great place to look for birds. And I was happy to find that, contrary to the warnings I've heard from local acquaintances, my birding adventures out here won't resemble a violent mashup of "Kingbird Highway" and "Deliverance" after all.

This could be good!