locally grown Yellow-crowned Night-Herons

Over the weekend I investigated the suspicious rumors of Yellow-crowned Night-Herons nesting in marshes around Durham and Chapel Hill.  What could these birds possibly be doing around the triangle, when they should be down at the beach?  Eating crayfish and raising young?  Likely story!

And by "rumors" I just mean great photos of nests taken by top local birders...clearly this was a mystery in need of investigation!

Luckily I was able to convince Will Cook to let me cover the highway 54 waterfowl impoundments for the Chapel Hill Spring Bird count.  I had never birded these spots before (until recently I thought they were duck prisons and I'm not into captive birds), so I wasn't sure what to expect.

But when I arrived at dawn, lo and behold the trees were filled with Yellow-crowned Night-Herons!

Yellow-crowned Night-Herons at the New Hope Creek waterfowl impoundment

Well, actually I only counted 7, but it was still a heck of a lot more Night-Heron action than I expected to find!

When I passed back by their haunt at 9 am, there wasn't a single one left to be found.  They had all gone off to roost for the day I assume.  They are Night-Herons after all, so-called because of their nocturnal (or maybe crepuscular?) behavior.

Look at those toes! How can that be comfortable?

I'm not sure whether the local population is growing or it's just that birders aren't at these little artificial highway-side marshes at dawn very often (I suspect both).  All I know is that there is a ton of habitat similar to the area I covered that is either inaccessible or virtually never checked.

A simple extrapolation leads me to believe that at least several dozen Yellow-crowned Night-Herons must breed in the area.  Yet until 5 or 6 years ago these birds were almost never detected on area spring bird counts.  The previous record high count for the Chapel Hill Spring Count was 11 individuals.  If only I could have been at two impoundments at once perhaps I could have broken the record...

Oh well, maybe next year!

Spring Sprang Sprung

It has been a whirlwind the past few weeks with birding, term papers and field work…and now I find myself finally updating this blog with the first week of May gone.  Most of the exciting spring migrants have already passed over the rapidly warming central piedmont in favor of higher latitudes and elevations. 

Blackpoll Warbler

I saw this Blackpoll Warbler out my window the other day; a harbinger of the beginning of the end of spring migration.

According to the old-timers at the Carolina Club’s 75^th Anniversary meeting in Raleigh this past weekend, the rain storms just didn’t come at the right time to cause the fallout that every birder prays for in spring.  As a result many of the uncommon transient warblers were downright rare.  Nevertheless through two full days of leading area field trips for CBC participants I was able to turn up 21 warbler species.  Not bad at all!

Of course this says more about the sites I was assigned than anything else.  

On my Saturday morning trip to the ever popular birding hotspot, Mason Farm, we stumbled upon one migrant flock that had a Magnolia and Cape May Warbler—both gorgeous males!  And the entry marsh had a about a dozen sandpipers: mostly Solitary with a few Least and a Spotted. 

In the afternoon I took a smaller group to Eno River State Park where we got Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Scarlet Tanagers and lots of Black-throated Blue Warblers.  But the coolest sighting might have been the Red-shouldered Hawk that flew by with a snake in its bill.  

My co-leader, Mike McCloy, showing CBC members a Kentucky Warbler at Howell Woods

On Friday I led a group to Howell Woods down in Johnston County, which is thick with bottomland swamp species such as Hooded Warbler, Kentucky Warbler and Acadian Flycatcher. 

Acadian Flycatcher

It even has the elusive Swainson’s Warbler, which cooperatively sat up and sang for the group giving nearly everyone fantastic looks and me a passable photo of lifer #1553!

Swainson's Warbler!

Legendary naturalist Scott Weidensaul was in our group and even he was thrilled by this bird.  Or at least he said as much before electrifying the club and visitors with a talk about the wonders of bird migration.  Both Scott’s presentation and the venue, the recently completed North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, left me awestruck.  It was a fantastic way to cap the meeting.  

~~~

Last weekend I covered Quail Roost with Tom Krakauer for the Durham spring bird count again and we crushed our total from last year by about 10 species.  We had Natalia Ocampo-Penuela partially to thank for this; she came along to get a few life birds and ended up spotting one of the better birds of the count: a gorgeous male Blackburnian Warbler!  But the best bird for me was a flock of about 120 Bobolinks we found in a field of alfalfa. 

Bobolinks! Durham bird #204

Since the count was in late April, it was the first chance to see many of the returning breeding birds singing away on territory, such as this Blue Grosbeak…

Blue Grosbeak

…or this Yellow-breasted Chat.

Yellow-breasted Chat

We also saw a nice male Orchard Oriole.  

Orchard Oriole

There’s still time for some late-moving migrants, but once June rolls around and the summer heat really fires up I recommend visiting the beach or the coast...and to bring a bathing suit as well as binoculars!

Fall SWAMP count with SAWS

A whopping 14 masters students woke up early last Saturday morning and came out to tag along for a bird count with me in the Duke University Wetland Center (DUWC) Stream and Wetland Assessment and Management Park (SWAMP).  This shows that bird watching is exploding in popularity!  That, or that graduate students will do just about anything for free donuts and coffee, which were graciously provided by the Student Association of Wetland Scientists (SAWS) Duke Chapter.  But probably the real draw was celebrity leader Jeff Pippen who took time out of his busy schedule of finding rare seabirds in Durham to educate us all about everything natural that was to be found.

Jeff Pippen distilling wisdom in SWAMP

The Al Buehler fitness trail runs right through the SWAMP site and gets lots of traffic.  During our count we happened to be sharing space with an actual collegiate cross-country meet.  Obviously this isn’t the most conducive setting for birds and birding and we weren’t able to find any exciting fall migrants. 

A Belted Kingfisher at the pond was a crowd-pleaser.  But the best wetland bird came after everyone had left and I stole off on my own to count one final section of the site that is inaccessible to the public.  At a small vernal pool I stumbled upon a very agitated Green Heron that kept flaring its crown feathers, croaking and flicking its tail.

Green Heron

Here's a video of the tail-flicking part:

I was happy to see the Green Heron, but I think it was upset I hadn’t brought the others.  Even if the birds weren’t spectacular, it was a gorgeous morning and nice to show the restoration areas and new board walks and platforms to the group.  For me it was also more data for my bird study and I learned some new wetland plant species from Jeff.

Check out that Dodo!

 A big thanks to Jeff and all the SAWS participants for making such a great day!

Spring Bird Counts

Northern Waterthrush

Last week I led the inaugural spring bird count in the Duke University Wetland Center (DUWC) Stream and Wetland Assessment and Management Park (SWAMP).  Randy Neighbarger from DUWC, as well as two Nicholas School masters students, Rachel Workin and Laura Mendenhall, and Robert Meehan all helped with the count.  We were unfortunate to end up counting on a gray drizzly morning, so bird activity was a bit slow, but we did get 40 species in a little over an hour, which isn't bad at all.  The best find was the site's first record of Northern Waterthrush heard chipping just below the dam.

Solitary Sandpiper

The weather and birds were actually much better the couple times I happened to be out at the SWAMP site in the week leading up to the official count.  I already mentioned the Prothonotary Warblers (new bird for the site) I had there in my last blog post.  But the morning before the count I also had two Solitary Sandpipers at 'Richardson Lake' (a new bird for SWAMP and for me state bird #249!).  It was the first time I had been able to put the new bird blind to good use;  I got a great video (see below) from it of the SWAMP in top form: both a  turtle and wetland bird are happily foraging, while pollution (represented by the large plastic bottle) is kept from reaching Falls Lake.



I also took this video of a Great Blue Heron catching and then losing a fish right by the dam.  A few minutes later it scooped up and swallowed a large crayfish before flying away.

Summer Tanager

Over the weekend I helped out with the Durham spring count up in the northernmost reaches of the count area at Quail Roost (which, ironically, was devoid of any sign of quail).   It has been Tom Krakauer's count territory since 1985 (coincidentally, the year I was born) but his hearing and hiking ability are not what they once were and he needs help to count the area effectively.  I was happy to be of assistance as this is truly a unique part of Durham, which I had never visited despite being born and raised just 20 minutes to the south.  The farmland and open fields have not yet been tainted by development and suburban sprawl and are habitat for a few birds that can be seen essentially nowhere else in Durham County: Grasshopper Sparrow and White-crowned Sparrow for sure, and probably Purple Martin too.  Those three species were added to my county list along with Eastern Meadowlark, Louisiana Waterthrush, Orchard Oriole and Cliff Swallow.

Tom and I picked up just over 80 species for the day, though we missed some relatively easy stuff that we probably could have found with more persistence.  A 90-species day is easily within reach and will be a goal for next year.  Reaching the century mark should be a real challenge, though certainly achievable.

Purple Martins nesting in Durham County
(my first digiscoped capture!)

At our last stop of the day, a Purple Martin box near Tom's house, I captured my first digiscoped images just by holding my Droid X up to my scope.  I was actually pleasantly surprised at how effective this crude technique proved to be.

This may be my last blogpost for a few weeks as I'm gearing up for a big trip to the southeastern corner of Europe to attend my brother's wedding on a Greek Island and see some remnants of ancient civilizations (as well as some migratory birds of course!).  I leave the US while on the doorstep of several list milestones: my NC state list is at 249, my ABA list at 298 and my Durham County list at 147.  But this trip to Europe should push my life list well over 1500.  My top targets are Bee-eater, Roller, Elanora's Falcon and Griffon Vulture.  Can't wait!

Christmas Bird Count highlights!

I signed up to help out with four Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) in North Carolina this year: Durham, Chapel Hill, Bodie/Pea Island and Mattamuskeet.

Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work to go out and count every single sparrow and chickadee, but it helps contribute to a long-running data set. And these counts are also a great chance to get out with some fantastic birders who have fantastic scopes, which greatly increases the odds of seeing rarities.

An unusual early snowstorm made for an especially wintery feel to the counts this year. And I was among the many people who skipped the Chapel Hill CBC to go sledding; Yahoo! I did see some decent birds on the Al Buehler Trail on my way to the Duke Golf Course--a CBC no man's land stuck between the Durham and Chapel Hill count circles.

I can't even remember if I participated in the Durham CBC last year, but the memory of this years' should last awhile! The above comment about scopes didn't hold true as Doug Shadwick and this professional birder from France took their fancy scopes off to some wind-sheltered field leaving Robert Meehan and me to cover the frozen windswept section of Falls Lake by the railroad grade using Robert's "Parkinson's disease" tripod to attempt to count unidentifiable "ducks" several miles away.

Despite this handicap we found quite a few lingering shorebirds including these Dunlin who were out ice-skating.

But the most unusual find was a blue form Snow Goose that flew over us early. After we finished counting we went on a short wild goose chase and found the flock by a nearby pond where it had already been spotted by another birding party.
Brian Bockhahn has way better pictures from when the goose was much closer.

Of course a Snow Goose goes from being a highlight in Durham to becoming merely one of several thousand "Down East."

One odd Cackling Goose hanging out with a flock of snows was the celebrity goose of the Bodie/Pea Island CBC and a new NC bird for me.
(Hooray for two awful goose pictures!; see Ali Iyoob's way better photo)

Our party's best find was this White-winged Dove we stumbled upon at North Bodie (Life bird #1446!). I've been double-checking every Mourning Dove since.

But our rarity was eclipsed by other ridiculous sightings of Black Rail, Long-eared Owl and two Saw-whet Owls! Unfortunately only a few people got to see these rare and impossible to see species and I was not among them.

I did catch a fleeting glimpse of a Virginia Rail, which I'll count as a state bird, since I had previously seen one in Vermont. I also saw my first Sedge Wrens in NC by the Bodie Lighthouse at dusk. My "Grass Wren" sighting in Ecuador kept this from being a life bird.

I did get a second life-bird (#1447) for the day in an Orange-crowned Warbler at North Pond. I had poorly seen, but not counted one last year at Mattamuskeet, so I was glad to finally get a good look at one.

Fittingly, Orange-crowned Warblers seemed to be all over the place the next day at the Mattamuskeet CBC. But my best warbler there was definitely the Yellow-throated I found with a flock of Pine Warblers near the south end of the causeway.

Other state birds for the day were Common Moorhen, Canvasback and Common Merganser, but after hours of birding I had not seen a life bird; no Eurasian Wigeon or Golden Eagle. But just before sunset Brian and his party told us about a couple Clay-colored Sparrows nearby in a yard. Ali kindly showed us the spot and my 1448th life bird (thanks Ali!; his photo).

On our way back down the causeway we spotted an American Bittern standing awkwardly by the roadside away from cover for #1449. I was pretty excited about this since Robert had seen three invisible bitterns over the past couple days while I was standing next to him.

So in just two days I was able to see four life birds and 12 state birds (those mentioned above plus Merlin and Black Scoter, which should bring my NC list up to 230); not bad at all!

It's amazing how ubiquitous the snipe are in the Mattamuskeet area as it seemed like there was one in every front yard.
A quick shout-out to Ali, Matt Daw and Kyle Kittleberger. It's great to see young people into birding and at 16(ish), these Raleigh kids are metaphorical zygotes to the birding world. Yet they are already such knowledgeable, intelligent birders. Their exuberance is infectious and their nonstop bird story-telling made the drive home go quickly.

Before I end I have to reprimand everybody for losing my nest quiz from last time by not guessing.

In fact hardly anyone even read the last post. I guess the septuagenarian backyard bird-feeder theme is revolting to the modern birder hoping to shed such stereotypes.

But for all zero of you who were curious, the answer was Band-winged Nightjar.
Here's the follow-up shot up of the fledgling starting to resemble mom. I did find this nest around 1300 meters elevation--about 500 meters below its altitude range (Ridgley and Greenfield) so its identity was a bit of a surprise once I finally worked it out.

Coming very soon... My top ten bird sightings of 2010!

Stay tuned...

Chatham County fall count and transition to ebird

I have been meaning to post much sooner, but a few relevant changes have been taking up what would normally be blogging time:

1) A new computer! My 4-year-old Dell is on its last legs and rather than watch it die along with whatever data I hadn't managed to back up, I got a new sleek and light ASUS.

And this change led me to...

2) Move all my bird lists to ebird.

I only used Avisys listing software for a couple years, but I was never really that impressed. It could do a lot of things as a piece of software, but rarely in an intuitive or expedient way (somewhat reminiscent of Windows 3.1 in look and function). Surprisingly it is the best piece of bird listing software available based on reviews.

Anyway, in order to move my lists over from Avisys to ebird I had to first update my Clements checklist from 2005 to 2009...an exercise in tedium that highlighted all that is wrong with Avisys.

(you should really skip reading this example, but I'm going to write it anyway as if you care)

Between 2005 and 2009 ornithological experts split, lump and rename dozens of bird species (i.e. White-vented Storm-Petrel should be renamed "Eliott's Storm-Petrel"). When trying to update to the new checklist with updated names, new species discoveries, lumps and splits, Avisys doesn't know what to do with my sighting of a now nonexistent bird--there is no White-vented Storm--Petrel anymore.
The solution? Sift through .pdfs from 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 of Clements updates for the line that says: "White-vented Storm-Petrels shall heretoforthwith be knownst as 'Eliott's Storm-Petrels'" and manually rename the species. But often the bird will have changed names again, or the latin name also changes, or Avisys simply can't recognize a crucial apostrophe or hyphen, or for unknown reasons an error message still comes up when trying to update.
For "problem species" Avisys advises you (if you are patient enough to read through a page of instructions--which is necessary to achieve most things without problems in the Avisys world) to put that sighting in a different "safe" species temporarily, run find a pen and paper to scribble down the change you made in order to remember to change it back once the checklist has successfully updated. So I renamed my Storm-Petrel "White-faced" (a species that existed in 2005 and still exists today under the same name) and then repeated this process with 25 other "problem species" only to have to swap them back later after a successful checklist update.
Anyway, the whole process must have taken 2 hours and I had not even gotten started importing data into Ebird! There are at least 1,000 easy ways Avisys could easily make the update process run more smoothly. Why anyone puts up with this sort of insanity from a program that costs ~$100 when a superior free version (ebird) is available is beyond me.

end rant.

After using ebird for about 2 days, I already love it. Here are just a few reasons why:

1) It's free
2) My lists are accessible from anywhere with an internet connection
3) Checklists update automatically
4) Beyond normal features of listing software it allows all sorts of interesting data analysis
5) It combines every birder's data set into one worldwide database that is free to explore

Just messing around with it I can see that I'm 5th among ebirders for Rhode Island life lists (and only 5 ticks away from 3rd) link and 1st among ebirders for Ecuador for 2010 (though only by 3 ticks, so I may soon be surpassed!) link. Clearly not enough birders use ebird!

Before this post becomes nothing but text, check out this pic from the Chatham County fall count at Jordan Lake last weekend:

A 1st-year bald eagle.

And check out this Red-headed Woodpecker.


We checked the mudflats for shorebirds, but didn't come up with anything super exciting:

Shorebirds:
Greater Yellowlegs
Lesser Yellowlegs
Least Sandpiper
Semipalmated/Western Sandpiper
Spotted Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
Wilson's Snipe

As always there were lots of Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets. We also saw two Forster's Terns and Caspian Tern.

We hardly had any warbler's worth mentioning:
Black-and-white
Common Yellowthroat
Pine
Magnolia
Northern Waterthrush

Last year when the drought was worse the lake much lower and we saw a Ruff near the mouth of Morgan Creek. This is a pretty rare bird for NC, caused a lot of commotion on the carolinabirds listserve and required me to fill out paperwork for official record-keeping in Raleigh.

Anyway, nothing was spotted this time around to cause any waves, but I did see a Bobolink and two Wild Turkeys for North Carolina birds #206 and #207.

#208 showed up in my bird bath the other day:


A Veery (and yard bird #70)!

From now on I am going to try and include one video clip at the end of each post. I'll start (and end this post) with this one of a flock of 51 Purple Sandpipers I encountered on Wrightsville Beach on New Years Day 2010. Has anyone ever seen this many purples flock together before?