2011: The rundown
It is all the rage at this time of the year to take a look back, to tally the past 12 months and take stock of the birds you’ve managed to cross paths with during the last spin around the sun. I’m no different, and perhaps even more eager to do so as I just came off a Little Big Year consisting of the four counties of the Research Triangle, the part of North Carolina where I hang my hat, and binoculars.
This sort of post is the ultimate in self-gratification, but bear with me. I’ll try to put in a bunch of photos to make it somewhat more exciting that the backside of the baseball card stats that only hard-core listers* care about. But I do. Listing appeals to my obsessive nature, and it’s fun to find new birds even if I mostly sort of stumble upon them. I’m not really competitive about it except with myself (though I admit I peruse the eBird top 100 lists more than I should…), and it’s a useful way to catalog my birding experience. Yeah, I list. What of it?
*A tangent, I suppose I would have to define myself as “hard-core” in that I’m sort of obsessive about keeping careful lists for relatively arbitrary geographical entities (e.g. counties), but I’m not a super hard-core twitcher (though I have been known to twitch). I guess I feel like a distinction needs to be made there, even if it really doesn’t.
So, now that I’ve defended myself from my imaginary demons and hastily constructed strawmen, here’s the run down of my birding year, 2011.
I saw a total of 357 species and entered eBird checklists for 11 states. In decreasing order of species, those states are North Carolina (242), Texas (168), Florida (96), Massachusetts (80), South Carolina (69), Missouri (58), Pennsylvania (47), New York (35), New Jersey (9), Illinois (3), and Maryland (1). Those last two were from airplane layovers. Yes, I eBird airports.
I had 11 new birds for the state of north Carolina, including the second state record of Allen’s Hummingbird and some incredible White-tailed Tropicbirds putting me at 324 for North Carolina.
State bird, lifer, stunner
The year saw me add 12 ABA-area life birds, the most I’ve had in a long time. Plus, an additional two that the jury is still out on. King Rail, heard in Orange County, Florida, in March gets put on the provisional list because I never actually saw it (yeah, I’m something of a philistine when it comes to counting life birds), and Aplomado Falcon, in Cameron County, Texas, is currently from the population that isn’t countable. But, the bird I saw was sans jewelry, which means it was a wild-born individual, and a little bird told me that the Texas Bird Records Committee is going to re-evaluate that population soon. So, fingers crossed.
Even so, 12 is pretty good. Especially when it contains long-time nemesis birds like Great Shearwater and Ross’s Goose. Twas a good year for lifers.
On the home front, the Triangle Big Year ended at 209, a respectable total that included such awesome inland birds as Parasitic Jaeger, Long-tailed Duck, American Oystercatcher, and Greater White-fronted Goose. Like my North Carolina Big Year in 2008, it meant a ton of new birds on my Triangle area county lists, which is sort of the reason you do something like this. For my home county of Orange, I added 13 new species the best probably being the Scissor-tailed Flycatchers that hatched (but not fledged?) young out west of Chapel Hill.
For Chatham County, there were 24 new county birds. Top billing goes either to the Golden-winged Warbler (a long-time state nemesis) or the Franklin’s Gull, the bird that should have been mine had I been aware enough to trust my birding gut. Note to kids out there, always trust your birding gut if it’s telling you to stop…
You should have been my sighting...
But it was Durham and Wake Counties that pulled in the big lists and anchored my Big Year attempt. I ended up with 36 new birds for Durham County, highlighted by the aforementioned Parasitic Jaeger. Awesome. With Wake, it was 40 new birds, best of which was probably the completely random Surf Scoter at a forested pond by the airport. It goes to show you how much luck plays a role in any listing game.
Unexpected is thy name
The run of great birds in the triangle this year almost makes up for the embarrassing dip of Eastern Screech-Owl (I even went out the night of the 31st and had zero luck) and the bewildering lack of chasable Black-bellied Plovers this fall, as well as the fact that a county line misunderstanding had me miss a half dozen amazing shorebirds (including, but not limited to Piping Plover, Willet, American Golden-Plover, Red Knot…) that I thought were outside my boundary but in fact were barely over the Durham line. That certainly stung.
But in the end it was a great year, one I’m not likely to repeat in 2012. But I have other plans. The Triangle Big Year, having been put to rest for the time being, will be replaced by a renewed attempt at making some headway in the Carolina Century Club, my challenge to see 100 species of birds in as many North and South Carolina counties as I can. So today, January 2, will see me next door in Alamance County looking for total ticks. Onward and upward, friends. There’s always something new to look for.
Thanks for reading.
December 2011: Retrospecticus
The year ends. The eBird totals tick back over to zero. The Big Year comes to a close.
But then, every single bird you see is a new one. A new start with new numbers to beat and new goals to reach. Good-bye 2011. Hello 2012. The first bird of the new year is…
Well, no. Probably not White-tailed Kite. That was merely a memory of past days in the field, as mentioned in December on this blog. A quick reminder before we hurdle headlong into 2012 and the masses of year birds we’re sure to rack up on Day 1:
Here’s a review of the new Nat Geo field guide that I hope many of you picked up over the holidays. It’s good. Real good.
Here’s a few more random shots of the Rio Grande Valley, including the wonder that is Estero Llano Grande, the amazing cryptic Pauraque, the fearsome Aplomado Falcon, and the epic Tropical Parula.
Here’s a look at the bird bona fides of Texas Governor, presidential candidate, and professional huckster Rick Perry.
Here’s the Birder Jargon Project on our frustratingly limited vocabulary when referring to great birds.
Here’s a report on the Durham CBC, plus a couple new Big Year birds I picked up that afternoon.
And here’s some photos form the holidays in Missouri. Sparrows, yes, but also longspurs. Longspurs!
That was December. Here comes January. My New Year’s Resolution is to light a fire under this blog. We’ll see if I can keep it as long as I kept my resolution last year to not swear as much…
Thanks so much for reading.
Mr. Smith’s Longspur
Show Me Sparrows
Christmas Day. My family made it into Missouri late the night before, so any sort of holiday activity we had planned was put off by 24 hours. My son, still wired on the holiday (both Christmas and Hanukah. We double-dip around here) in a way that only a two year old can be, finally went down for a nap after running around in circles since the moment he woke up. As a birder celebrating the season with family, you take the opportunity to get out when you can, so when my dad suggested we go for a walk to the field behind the housing development where my parent’s live, and sweetened the deal with the revelation that he’d had Harris’s Sparrow there in the past, I was game. So we headed to the the end of the road and turned into the old farm field following a flock of sparrows that we, or I, hoped would contain that elusive Harris.
We only had an hour, so the time to beat the brush eventually came to a close without that giant Zonotrichia, but there were plenty of other sparrows around to keep up busy, 11 species in all including a surprise Lincoln’s and a handful of American Trees, both of which pretty unusual in North Carolina and the second a review species to boot.
White-throated Sparrows are everywhere, as they are across much of the continent these days. Still, when they get in front of you it’s hard not to take a photo. Especially during those rare times when a feeder isn’t in the frame.
Fox Sparrows are uncommon in my part of North Carolina, and generally signify a good day in the field. In Missouri, though, they’re everywhere. That’s a hard thing to get my mind around.
Also, too, White-crowned Sparrows. These were the indicator species for Harris’s Sparrow presence. There were lots of them around, especially in the more open, brambly parts of the field. They may not have quite the cache as their more range-restricted co-geners for which we were searching, but they lack none of the class. Great birds, especially in large numbers.
More to come from the Show-me State, my dad and I are off to the edge of the prairie to look for Smith’s Longspurs and the Harris’s Sparrows we missed yesterday. You’ll, no doubt, hear about it whether we find them or not.
Stay tuned!
Bound for Mo
Next week I’ll be reporting from the midwest, as The Drinking Bird show is heading out on the road for the holidays. As of tomorrow evening I’ll be in southwest Missouri, ostensibly for family time, but I think we all know that means a little bit of bird time too.
It’s been a couple years since I was home in Missouri, and the last time I was there was pretty slow from a birding perspective. I managed to get out once and see a Rufous Hummingbird, mostly because it was within literal walking distance of my parents’ house. Back in 2007, before I was encumbered by child, I did a fair bit better picking up Brewer’s Blackbirds, Cackling Geese, and a nice little LeConte’s Sparrow. But that’s been four years now. How time flies.
I would like another shot at this one...
My goal, of course, is to have things go a little more like the first trip and less like the second. I’ll have more time, which bodes will for at least one trip to the hinterlands of western Missouri for another crack at LeConte’s Sparrow, not to mention Harris’s Sparrows and Rough-legged Hawks and possible a Prairie Falcon and a decent shot at my big target, Smith’s Longspur. Western Missouri may not immediately strike you as a good place to bird, but the great thing about birding is that just about everywhere has something to draw you in, and this place is better than many.
So Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/etc to all those of you who visit this here blog. I hope for a season full of birds for you and yours, but mostly you because if you’re like me, very few other people care.
The Return of the Leaden Falcon
The word aplomado is spanish for lead-colored.
The falcon Aplomado is birder for reborn.
There was a time, in the not too distant past, when Aplomado Falcons, the lanky, lead-colored racers of the American southwest, ranged from the coastal plain of Texas all the way across the southern US into Arizona. Then they were gone, more or less mysteriously disappearing from their northern reaches in the early part of the 20th Century due to reasons not well understood. Intensive cattle ranching, and its effect on falcon prey specoies, may have played a role, or an ongoing century long drought in the southwest that has made parts of the region wildly different than it was 100 years prior. Whatever the cause, the last known breeding pair, in New Mexico, failed to fledge young in the 1950s and after that the only Aplomado Falcons north of the Rio Grande were the occasional vagrant, as noteworthy then as Crimson-collared Grosbeak or Ruddy Ground-Dove is now.
That all changed when in 1987 hacked individuals were released in the area around Laguna Atascosa NWR in coastal Texas, historically a stronghold for the species. I actually saw one of these birds in 1995, an adult perched on a fencepost next to the road in the late afternoon sun. I don’t remember much about it, the fog of time conspires to recreate the memory for me now as nearly dream-like, except that the extensive jewelry the bird wore on both legs marked it as one of these reintroduced birds. Notably, 1995 was the first year the introduced Aplomados bred on their own, and since then nearly 100 captive-bred birds have been released in and around Atascosa resulting in 37 pairs and 92 wild raised fledglings, making the coastal plain of Cameron County, Texas, the best place north of Mexico to find these unspeakably beautiful raptors.
When I was in Texas for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, I admit I didn’t even have Aplomado Falcon on my radar. I guess I assumed that the 200-odd birds flying free around south tecas would just be too difficult to find. Everything, as the Texas Tourism Board is wont to say, is, in fact, bigger in Texas, especially the open country in which a foot long falcon can disappear. But it serves me right for underestimating the combined birding knowledge available there in the RGV that week in November, because the place to be is apparently a stretch of dirt road just south of Atascosa called old Port Isabel Road. There we, Christopher of Picus Blog, his wife Pamela, and myself, were directed if Aplomados we wanted to see. Christopher wanted some photos, and I’m an easy sell when the quarry is falcon.
Old Port Isabel Road offers some pretty great non-falcon birding as well. I managed to flush up a Cassin’s Sparrow (in an appropriate location, this time) and the only Cactus Wrens I’d see on the entire trip. A big female Merlin had us jumping out and grabbing at scopes as it perched atop a power pole, but once the real deal Aplomados were spotted, the Merlin was all but forgotten.
We saw three in all, all fairly distant but within range for decent scope views. It’s truly a remarkable bird, and while all falcons are worth a close look, this species, with its stylish creamy bands and relative rarity north of the border, is arguably the sexiest falcon in the ABA-area.
As cool as this bird is, though, the question of countability is one that raises an ugly specter over this otherwise gorgeous bird. When the last unequivocally wild Aplomado Falco left the United States, the species was denied its official status as a self-sufficiant population of birds in the ABA Area and, therefore, it was deemed uncountable by the powers that be. Those early birds, like the one I saw in 1995, were clearly from a reintroduced population, and by even the most liberal interpretation of the rules would deem them unlistable for any ABA sanctioned list. I couldn’t tell whether the birds I saw this past month were banded or not, and many of the wild-raised individuals are not anymore. This success has led birders to petition the ABA for the ability to officially count the species once again on their life lists and rumor has it, the Texas Bird Record Committee is planning to take up the gauntlet look at the data to determine whether the population is sufficiently sufficient. My hunch is that they will accept the population, leaving the decision to the ABA committee to hopefully follow suit. In any case, it’s a bird I’ve got in my pocket.
The question of whether a species is “countable” or not seems like the very definition of inside baseball esoterica. But “countable” means more than just a tick on the list, it’s a real milestone in the natural history of this species north of the Rio Grande. Sure, you can tick it, but more than that, it means that a group of experts believes that the Aplomado Falcons of south Texas have recovered enough, that their population is strong and stable.
Being able to put it on my list will be a cool thing, no doubt, but better, I’m glad to see the little leaden falcon back where it belongs, coursing over the southwestern prairies on sickle wings. Subject to an enthusiastic welcome back.
Bull City Bird Count 2k11
Compared to the more established triangle Christmas Bird Counts in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, Durham is something of an anomaly. CBCs based around metro areas usually have their center in the center of the associated city, but Durham, by virtue of its proximity to Chapel Hill and the fact that Chapel Hill’s count circle takes a significant chunk of Durham’s southern reaches , sits off to the north. This is not a bad thing. Midtown Durham offers little in the way of birding opportunities, and southern Durham is all housing developments and strip malls anymore. North of Durham, though, hosts acres of gamelands, the far and of a major lake, and the best of the rural triangle. It’s a great place to host a bird count.
Assuming you can get one of those productive spots. See, CBCs, more than anything else that birders do, is based on a hierarchy system. Long-time participants hold on to their pet spots like grim death, and it generally takes something like death to open up. I used to be one of those fortunate few with a traditional spot back when I was living in Missouri, but now? I’ve only been in North Carolina for 8 years, how can I be expected to earn a hot spot with that sort of thin resume?
Luck, I guess. I had neglected to let the count coordinator know that I was interested in helping out for this camp, partly because I knew I was going to get assigned one of the lesser areas, but 24 hours before the count is scheduled to kick off, I get an email saying that someone pulled out at the last second, and would I like to do a favor and take the Flat River Waterfowl Impoundment this year?
Would I ever!
So that’s how I found myself in a gravel parking lot, in the bitterly cold pre-dawn, giving my very best owl impersonations to the inky gloom. I busted out the Screech Owl whinny, the Barred Owl bark (my specialty), and even , in a fit of madness, a few Saw-whet toots just for the hell of it, but no owls were forthcoming. So I headed back to my car to warm up and wait for the sun to shed a little more light on this gift I had been given by the grace of the birding gods.
I was greeted, upon the beginning of my walk, by Song Sparrows. Many multitudes of Song Sparrows. Piles upon piles of Song Sparrows chimping out of the frost-covered grasses like hundreds of slightly busted squeak toys.
I had never seen so many Song Sparrows in one place, and every attempt at pishing, which I attempted every 200 meters or so, brought another two dozen out of the brush like feathered shrapnel. They were followed in abundance by slightly smaller piles of White-throated Sparrows, who were in turn followed by merely dozens and dozens of Swamp Sparrows. There three species were in evidence the entire time, and I’d wager that upwards of 90% of the bird mass I encountered yesterday took the form of one of those three birds.
I peered through them diligently – there’s something about a CBC that brings out the OCD birder in all of us – for that Lincoln’s Sparrow I knew would be in there to no avail. But in poring over these flocks of birds a few other sparrows became more evident. Next in abundance where the Field Sparrows, then the handful of Savannah Sparrows in the more open sections of the gameland. the the pair of hulking Fox Sparrows, followed by singles of lingering Chipping Sparrows and a single, stunning, adult White-crowned, a bird that can be easily missed some years. It was probably, apart from the long-awaited Durham County American Kestrels, the best bird of the day.
Low lake levels prevented the desired waterfowl diversity I had sort of expected, and aside from a small flock of Wood Ducks I flushed screaming from a small pond, the water portion of the day was a bust. But 46 species showed themselves to me in the end, a pretty good count notwithstanding.
So for the second half of my day I headed home to await the reports of rarities I knew would be coming forthwith. The first arrived in the form of a text from Scott Winton, reporting an easily findable Anhinga at a neighborhood pond north of Durham. With my son just down for a nap and the go-ahead from my wife (naturally), I was off. Along the way I got a second text from Scott asking if I knew about the Greater White-fronted Goose found nearby.
I did not.
I needed all my bird-finding mojo to pick up these two birds in the time I was allotted by my wife. So after quickly ticking the Anhinga (easy as pie, thank you very much), I headed out to the goose spot much faster than anyone should probably drive on those backroads, arriving to see a flock of a couple dozen Canada Geese within which was a single solitary specklebelly.
Two for two. Not only were they county birds, but they were new Big Year birds as well, my first in almost a month. A fine end to a surprising and successful Durham CBC.
Thanks to Scott for keeping me in the loop.
