Nature walk on the first day of summer

I walked down a path strewn with wildflowers.
Warblers, vireos, and cuckoos were singing and carrying caterpillars to feed their insatiable young.
An Eastern Kingbird peeked out barely visible as she sat on her nest.
A fuzzy baby Baltimore Oriole shrieked until a harried father popped a juicy black tidbit in its mouth.


Stopping to watch a Dung Beetle roll his heavy load,
I noticed hundreds of minuscule brown toads the size of my pinkie nail hopping frantically out of the way of lumbering feet.
A small Northern Ring-neck Snake darted off the path into the grass and a large black rat snake lay curled in a tree like an inner tube tossed for spite.


Dragonflies darted like glittering jewels of blue and green.
I would need to bring a backpack full of field guides to identify the abundance of nature that surrounds us.
Happy first day of summer.

Behind the Bins

For various reasons, I have decided to start a separate birding blog. I want to explore, learn another platform and try a topic specific blog. I may hate it. We'll see. If you are interested, pop over there.

Behind the Bins

Bermuda Longtail

“White birds! White birds!” I lunged and staggered out of the surf. Without my glasses even the beach chairs were a blur.

“Where? Where?” I yelled as I groped toward where I thought my chair was.

I found my glasses and whirred around. My sister was pointing up at the rocks that protected the bay. Sure enough. There were 2 white birds, wheeling and darting around the rocks. I squinted against the morning sun. The birds winked in and out as they turned and the sun flashed off their wings. They were far and the binoculars were in the hotel room. Of course.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and watched as more birds joined the original 2. Soon there were 6, then 9, then 13.
They weren’t behaving like terns or gulls. Could it be?

We both stood there shivering in our swimsuits facing into the sun, hoping and praying that they would come closer to shore. I needed to see the tail. As more birds joined the throng, a few came closer. We could see the black wing tips and wing patches. But I wanted to see the tail. Finally, one bird wheeled off and flew in front of the black surface of the rock. We could easily see the tail streamers and the black markings on the otherwise white bird. Ah. Thank you.

The White-tailed Tropicbird, known locally as a “longtail” breeds in Bermuda. But it was late September; the season was over. An otherwise abundant bird was not common at all. The birding deities smiled on us on our last day on the island.

Panting in the heat

I took off my hat to wipe my forehead. I could feel the trickle of sweat slide down my neck. I love the heat, but 112F was even too much for me. I had decided to take a walk on the interpretive trail in the early part of the day, knowing that it would be brutal in the afternoon sun. As I walked along the path I looked for movement in the Mesquite and Cottonwood trees. There were Verdin fledglings flitting in the trees and Wilson’s Warblers beside the river. A Roadrunner dashed out to snatch a butterfly. I saw a covey of Gambel’s Quail poking along the shrub line. As I continued along the 2.5 mile path, the heat began to build and I realized that I had not brought any water. Rats. I decided to turn back.

I was not birding on the way back but striding along. I was hot, sweaty and thirsty. It was only 10 in the morning and already the sun was beating down. I had been out about an hour. I was thinking about a nice cold glass of water and a shower. I approached a shady spot and stopped to fan myself with my hat. In the tree was a Great-tailed Grackle that appeared to be panting. It’s beak was open. A hummingbird zipped past and landed in the shade of the tree too. It was also beak agape and its tongue was hanging out. Interesting, I never knew that birds could pant; or would pant. On the mountain, we do not have sweltering hot days.

In the 4 days I was in the desert, by the afternoon, most of the birds I saw were all panting. I saw this in small passerines, a Roadrunner, woodpeckers, as well as a kestrel perched on the logs outside my balcony. Have you seen this?

Surprise!

I have been to many birding festivals. Some of them are large, well established affairs; while others are small or new or both. They are all so different. The Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival in Homer Alaska is in its 15th year. It is well organized with field events, workshops, boat tours and fun-filled (can I say zany?) evening doings. There are lots of people yet it is small enough that I keep running into the same folks over and over again. It is sorta like having friends in town.

One of the joys of birding in a new location is knowing that many of the birds will be new. For some of them, it is simply a matter of going to where they are and bingo—like the Red-faced Cormorant. Others, I have searched high and low for, to no avail—like those irruptive Crossbills. But when there is a surprise, it is an unexpected bonus. The surprise for me was an immature Yellow-billed Loon. They are around, but not common. There had been talk about one being found, but then it disappeared. No one at seen it recently. I asked the captain on our boat trip if there was any chance that it was still around. He didn’t sound hopeful. Oh, well. We all shrugged. He offered the possibility of an Aleutian Tern. We all happily abandoned the loon for the tern.

Coming back into the harbor after seeing Tufted Puffins, Red-faced Cormorants, thousands of Common Murres and one Aleutian Tern; what should appear next to the boat, but the oddest, palest loon I have ever seen. It just popped up beside the boat and then disappeared. Surprise!



Gosh, I love surprises. You just never know.

Northern Exposure

I am heading off to Anchorage for a business trip tomorrow morning at 5am. I will be taking some vacation as well. As luck would have it, the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival is the 4 days preceding my business trip. I do not know if I will be able to blog from Homer, Alaska; if I can I will let you know what is happening. I will be driving back to Anchorage on Sunday. Then after the conference, I will be spending some time with the good folks at Wilderness Birding Adventures on a Northern Owl weekend.

Packing for something like this is always a struggle for me. Since I often squeeze in some birding time on business trips, you would think I would have a system after all of this time. The crux of the matter is the outdoor clothes are often bulkier than business wear. This trip was particularly hard to pack for, since the forecast says mid 40s and rain the entire time I am gone. So, I had to pack, not only the rain poncho, but rain pants, Neos, and cold weather gear, like long underwear, wooley hat and gloves. Yikes, I hope I don’t need all of this.

So I will be out of touch for about 2 weeks. Hang in there. I will have cool stuff to tell you when I get back.

Birding with your Ears

Birding by ear is so important and one of the key elements to a good birding day as opposed to a not so good birding day (there are no bad birding days) and to be brutally honest about it, I suck. I have no audio memory. I actually retain maybe 1 new birdcall every year, which means by the time I am about 400, I may have all of them down pat. My memory path is visual. I can literally see the pages of the bird guide in my head, so all I have to do is close my eyes read it. While this is a good thing and a trick I have relied on for years and years in the field, (and in life) it does not help to locate the bird. To add insult to injury, I am deaf in one ear. I sort of hear in mono. So I end up turning around and around on the path like a broken wind-up toy trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. As result, you would think I try to bird a lot with other people. Nooooo. Of course not, that would make too much sense. (I also live up here on the mountain. Not a lot of birders up here.) My friend Diane (who does not live on the mountain) has an excellent ear. I try to finagle birding with her as often as she will tolerate it.

I have a lot of respect for all of you birders that can hear the difference between a Robin, a Scarlet Tanager (except for chick-burrr) , or for that matter a Redstart. On one of my ListServs there is talk about how hard it is to hear the difference between a Pine Warbler and a Junco. I don't even think I have ever heard a Pine Warbler, but who knows, maybe I have and just assumed it was a Junco, or for that matter, a Chipping Sparrow.

Sigh. I can’t do it. For me it needs to be short, sweet and onomatopoetic like Bee-buzzzzzzz, whippoorwill, Ol’ Sam Peabody, or murmuringtrees.

I have Birding by Ear on my ipod and a very long flight coming up. Maybe this year will be different. I’ll let you know.

Birding King Ranch

I arrived at the King Ranch Visitor’s Center in the pre-dawn at 5:45 am. Yawn. There were 8 people milling around 2 vans. We would be driving an hour south to the Norias Division of the ranch and meeting 5 more people at the southern gate. On the list, the big 4—Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, Audubon’s Oriole, Northern Beardless Tyrannulet, and Tropical Parula. The scouting the guide had done several days before really paid off. We found a Tropical Parula and a Hooded Oriole right away. We looked long and hard for the owl though. We walked through live oak motte after live oak motte searching, listening, straining for any flicker of movement. Finally one owl started calling, coming closer, coming closer.... It popped out and we got great views. Fantastic.

The day passed with life bird after life bird flitting through. I ended up with 12 life birds on King Ranch. Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, Northern Beardless Tyrannulet, Audubon’s Oriole, White-tailed Hawk, Olive Sparrow, Vermillion Flycatcher, Sprague’s Pippit, Green Jay, Harris Hawk, Black-crested Titmouse, Cave Swallow and Bronzed Cowbird.

I loved the Ranch and would highly recommend it to everyone.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Greetings from Texas.

I am in San Antonio for a conference. I flew down here a little early to go on a Whooping Crane tour and to pop over to King Ranch for a full day birding tour. I flew into Corpus Christi and stayed in Aransas Pass. There is a very birdy local park just outside of Portland called Indian Point Park. You can get great pictuers because the bird are fairly close. I spent a morning there with some very nice folks from the Audubon Outdoor Club. I then drove to Rockport to board the Wharf Cat for a 4 hour tour (10a-2p) of Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. There were only 9 people on the boat. No jostling for rail space. We ended up seeing 56 cranes and the Wharf Cat was able to get fairly close. It was awesome. Many of the cranes were in family groups like the one in the picture (the baby is brownish). But there were also some juveniles hanging around together in cliques. If you want to go, you gotta go soon though, they are already starting to leave. It was a mere $30. Best of all, I didn't get seasick.

And King Ranch! What an amazing experience. I picked up 10 life birds including the Ferrigunious Pygmy Owl. Sweet. If you are anywhere near Kingsville, you must arrange a tour. Definately worth it. The local birding is great as well. There are Harris Hawks and Crested Carcaras sitting on utility poles like we have Red-tails in the Northeast. I got some great pictures which I will post. If you are anxious, you can go to my Flickr page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ucbradley/
More later. Gotta go to work.