2011 bird-a-day challenge ends after 77 days

My 2011 birdaday challenge came to an end just 3 days before the official start of spring. I didn’t expect to make it so far into March, but if I could have sustained my list just a bit longer, I could have potentially ridden a wave of spring migrants much further. It will be fun to see if I can get more than 77 next year.

Final list is below. Notable missing easy birds are: Mallard, Common Grackle (which I saw the day after busting), Red-winged Blackbird, Chipping Sparrow, Eastern Meadowlark, Winter Wren and Belted Kingfisher.

I spent the afternoon of the bust day playing disc golf at Sugaw Creek near Charlotte, but the park let me down and didn't have any early migrants nor any of my remaining "easy" birds.

01/01/11	Red-breasted Nuthatch
01/02/11	Pine Siskin
1/3/2011	Barred Owl
1/4/2011	American Kestrel
1/5/2011	Ruby-crowned Kinglet
1/6/2011	Purple Finch
1/7/2011	Yellow Rail
1/8/2011	Lark Sparrow
1/9/2011	Piping Plover
1/10/2011	Red-throated Loon
1/11/2011	White-winged Scoter
1/12/2011	Red-tailed Hawk
1/13/2011	Cedar Waxwing
1/14/2011	Eastern Bluebird
1/15/2011	Black Vulture
1/16/2011	Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
1/17/2011	Brown Creeper
1/18/2011	Dark-eyed Junco
1/19/2011	Cooper's Hawk
1/20/2011	Song Sparrow
1/21/2011	House Finch
1/22/2011	Pine Warbler
1/23/2011	Eastern Phoebe
1/24/2011	Field Sparrow
1/25/2011	Hairy Woodpecker
1/26/2011	Canada Goose
1/27/2011	Pileated Woodpecker
1/28/2011	Yellow-rumped Warbler
1/29/2011	Short-eared Owl
1/30/2011	Blue Jay
1/31/2011	Fox Sparrow
2/1/2011	Red-headed Woodpecker
2/2/2011	Rock Pigeon
2/3/2011	Brown-headed Nuthatch
2/4/2011	American Crow
2/5/2011	Mourning Dove
2/6/2011	American Woodcock
2/7/2011	Ring-billed Gull
2/8/2011	Turkey Vulture
2/9/2011	Hermit Thrush
2/10/2011	Golden-crowned Kinglet
2/11/2011	American Robin
2/12/2011	Great Horned Owl
2/13/2011	White-crowned Sparrow
2/14/2011	Great Blue Heron
2/15/2011	European Starling
2/16/2011	American Goldfinch
2/17/2011	Downy Woodpecker
2/18/2011	Tundra Swan
2/19/2011	Dovekie
2/20/2011	Swainson's Hawk
2/21/2011	House Sparrow
2/22/2011	Brown Thrasher
2/23/2011	Eastern Towhee
2/24/2011	Killdeer
2/25/2011	Common Redpoll
2/26/2011	Fish Crow
2/27/2011	White-throated Sparrow
2/28/2011	Red-shouldered Hawk
3/1/2011	Tufted Titmouse
3/2/2011	Savannah Sparrow
3/3/2011	Red-bellied woodpecker
3/4/2011	White-breasted nuthatch
3/5/2011	Northern Flicker
3/6/2011	Horned Grebe
3/7/2011	Carolina Wren
3/8/2011	Double-crested Cormorant
3/9/2011	Carolina Chickadee
3/10/2011	Wild Turkey
3/11/2011	Common Loon
3/12/2011	Marbled Godwit
3/13/2011	Bonaparte's Gull
3/14/2011	Northern Gannet
3/15/2011	Swamp Sparrow
3/16/2011	Northern Cardinal
3/17/2011	Northern Mockingbird
3/18/2011	Bald Eagle
3/19/2011	BUST!
3/20/2011	Common Grackle

Twitching the Redpoll

This was my first real North Carolina “twitch,” a birding trip with the sole purpose being to see a single anomalous state bird.

In this case it was an easy choice to go after it. Common Redpolls rarely show up in North Carolina and when they do, they don’t often stick around to be seen for very long. Here was one staked out at a bird feeder just 40 minutes west of Durham. Plus Robert Meehan needed a ride.

For etiquette reasons I only took horribly distant photos. To approach a rare bird like this will lead to it instantly flush into the nearest window at deadly speed, or alternatively into the maw of a feral cat or talons of a Sharp-shinned Hawk, robbing fellow twitchers of a potential lifer. So you'll need to use your imagination to its full potential!

Boy I really need to get myself a digi-scoping setup! Mark Kosiewski got some great shots through his scope the following day.

If you squint hard enough you can make out the stubby yellow bill and black chin.

I hope lots of people got to see this bird. It stuck around for a few days, but as far as I can tell it is now officially MIA.

My last pure “twitch” was for a Virginia’s Warbler that showed up 20 minutes outside Providence while I was at Brown some four years ago. It was the first state record and a lifer for me.

Common Redpoll was not a lifer for me. I saw my first redpolls on Stewart Island in New Zealand (of all places!) back in 2009. But it was my 299^th ABA tick and my 247^th NC tick, so I’m rapidly approaching milestones.

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I’ve miraculously survived the month of February in my bird-a-day challenge. But I’ve only got about 7 or 8 easy piedmont birds left, so I’ll probably kick the bucket just before or after Spring Break.

I really should have started one of these last year. My schedule was perfect to make it through 365 species: Three weeks of winter NC birds to start the year -> fly to South America in late January and tick nothing but lifers through early August -> return to NC to get summer residents in the piedmont and coast, then fall migrants through the end of October into November -> surviving through November and December would have been dicey as some winter residents would have been used up from the previous January.

Anywho, at least this way I’ll be setting a low bar to be bested repeatedly in years down the road. The list to date (birds in bold were life or state birds):

01/01/11	Red-breasted Nuthatch
01/02/11	Pine Siskin
1/3/2011	Barred Owl
1/4/2011	American Kestrel
1/5/2011	Ruby-crowned Kinglet
1/6/2011	Purple Finch
1/7/2011	Yellow Rail
1/8/2011	Lark Sparrow
1/9/2011	Piping Plover
1/10/2011	Red-throated Loon
1/11/2011	White-winged Scoter
1/12/2011	Red-tailed Hawk
1/13/2011	Cedar Waxwing
1/14/2011	Eastern Bluebird
1/15/2011	Black Vulture
1/16/2011	Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
1/17/2011	Brown Creeper
1/18/2011	Dark-eyed Junco
1/19/2011	Cooper's Hawk
1/20/2011	Song Sparrow
1/21/2011	House Finch
1/22/2011	Pine Warbler
1/23/2011	Eastern Phoebe
1/24/2011	Field Sparrow
1/25/2011	Hairy Woodpecker
1/26/2011	Canada Goose
1/27/2011	Pileated Woodpecker
1/28/2011	Yellow-rumped Warbler
1/29/2011	Short-eared Owl
1/30/2011	Blue Jay
1/31/2011	Fox Sparrow
2/1/2011	Red-headed Woodpecker
2/2/2011	Rock Pigeon
2/3/2011	Brown-headed Nuthatch
2/4/2011	American Crow
2/5/2011	Mourning Dove
2/6/2011	American Woodcock
2/7/2011	Ring-billed Gull
2/8/2011	Turkey Vulture
2/9/2011	Hermit Thrush
2/10/2011	Golden-crowned Kinglet
2/11/2011	American Robin
2/12/2011	Great Horned Owl
2/13/2011	White-crowned Sparrow
2/14/2011	Great Blue Heron
2/15/2011	European Starling
2/16/2011	American Goldfinch
2/17/2011	Downy Woodpecker
2/18/2011	Tundra Swan
2/19/2011	Dovekie
2/20/2011	Swainson's Hawk
2/21/2011	House Sparrow
2/22/2011	Brown Thrasher
2/23/2011	Eastern Towhee
2/24/2011	Killdeer
2/25/2011	Common Redpoll
2/26/2011	Fish Crow
2/27/2011	White-throated Sparrow
2/28/2011	Red-shouldered Hawk

Yellow Rail!

The new year has scarcely begun and I have already seen what will almost certainly be in my top ten birds of 2011. Like a feathered mouse, the Yellow Rail is widely regarded as being one of the hardest to see breeding birds in the United States.

A few people have emailed me asking for details/advice on seeing this elusive bird. For their sake, I've written a quick narrative about our find:

Expectations were low (and that always helps). After spending a couple hours sorting through Chipping Sparrows looking for an "easy" Lark Sparrow at the nearby North River Golf Course, Jacob Socolar, Robert and James Meehan and I were struggling to stay dry while fording a small tidal creek at North River Marsh.


Wet and mud-splattered, we proceeded to tie ropes anchored with water-filled juice bottles around our ankles. Thus manacled like convicts we combed through a vast Spartina prairie which Jacob assured us was John Fussell's most reliable spot for Yellow Rails.

After about two hours puzzling over fleeting glances of ammodramus sparrows and marsh wrens and the occasional misstep into a deep hollow hidden by Needle Rush or a patch of quick mud we were cold and filthy and nearly ready to admit defeat. Suddenly a small yellow-and-brown streaked bird popped up from near our rope. It fluttered away from us for about three seconds showing obvious white patches in its wings before settling back down and vanishing some 60 feet ahead.

I recorded our unsuccessful attempt to flush it again.

No, you won't see the bird in this clip, but it does show our setup and the sort of habitat in which we found it.

The sighting left us ecstatic and we were hardly bothered when we again were unable to find the Lark Sparrow. We finished our day at Fort Macon State Park where we found a few Common Eiders near the rock jetty.

Jacob, Robert and Jimmy had to drive back to Durham that night, but I stuck around Emerald Isle for the weekend. It would be a longer and birdier stay than I had planned!

The next day I went back to the golf course and found the Lark Sparrow almost immediately in the exact location we had spent hours searching the previous day.

That's birding for you I guess.

I spent the afternoon birding Harker's Island where the best bird was probably a wooden decoy of a Long-tailed Duck I found inside the museum.

On Sunday I braved the frigid temperature and kayaked out to the Rachel Carson Estuarine Reserve, a shorebird paradise across a channel from Beaufort.

It was swarmed with Dunlin, Oystercatchers, Willets, Marbled Godwits and Short-billed Dowitchers.

Here's a dowitcher foraging in the classic "sewing-machine" style.

Bird highlights of the trip were Red Knot

and Piping Plover.

The next morning I woke up to blizzard conditions. I had never even seen snow at the beach before and I was staring out into a white-out at Emerald Isle!

The icy roads made my long weekend even longer. Madness!

The weather did turn the ocean into a lake, which made for excellent sea-watching conditions when visibility wasn't diminished by precipitation.
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I received a lot of responses to my last post about my top ten birds of 2010. I'll go over those next post.

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So far I have come up with 5 target birds for 2011:

1. Golden Eagle (if I were going to the neotropics this year I would replace "Golden" with "Harpy")
2. Black Rail (the Yellow Rail has me foolishly optimistic)
3. Gryphon Vulture (I missed this 4 years ago in Crete, hoping to see one in Croatia)
4. Roller
5. Eurasian Bee-eater

Help me add more!

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Ali inspired me to try this bird-a-day silliness. It will be fun while it lasts, but I see no chance of making it past February.

Birds so far:

01/01/11	Red-breasted Nuthatch
01/02/11	Pine Siskin
01/03/11	Barred Owl
01/04/11	American Kestrel
01/05/11	Ruby-crowned Kinglet
01/06/11	Purple Finch
01/07/11	Yellow Rail
01/08/11	Lark Sparrow
01/09/11	Piping Plover
01/10/11	Red-throated Loon
01/11/11	White-winged Scoter
01/12/11	Red-tailed Hawk
01/13/11	Cedar Waxwing
01/14/11	Eastern Bluebird
01/15/11	Black Vulture
01/16/11	Yellow-bellied Sapsucker