Thursday, September 29, 2016

More Desert Birding Equals 4 Life Birds

I scheduled my trip so that I had free time on Friday and Saturday to go birding. The reason was to explore Nevada's birding locations but also to see if I could score a few life birds. I was going to rent a car and head out to explore but my boss actually gave me his rental which saved me a bunch of time (and money). I started out super early on Friday and headed northwest to the mountains in search of Townsend's Solitaire. I didn't really pay attention to the map and didn't realize how high up I was going until the sign said "Elevation 8452 ft". Suffice it to say that I didn't realize how cold it would be either - um 35 degrees and me with no jacket. Despite freezing and not being able to catch my breath in the high altitude, I managed to find not one, but 6 Townsend's Solitaires. Life Bird! Again, heard them before I saw them. This is the typical pose - right on top of the tree.

Townsend's Solitaire
One of the birds did come down a little bit. Notice the big white eye ring which is the best field mark.

Townsend's Solitaire
I only saw a few other birds at the top of the mountains including this Mountain Chickadee.

Mountain Chickadee
And of course, this Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warbler. Boy, you can find these birds literally anywhere.
Audubon's Warbler
After heading down the mountain, I still has some time before my first meeting of the day so I headed over to another city park - Floyd Lamb - which was on the way back to the city. I'm glad I did. I met alot of birders there. They were all looking for a Canada Warbler which showed up a few days before. Canadas are eastern warblers. We have them here in PA and NJ in spring and they even nest in our area. When they show up out west, its big news. We didn't find the Canada warbler but I got 2 more life birds. The first was Gray Flycatcher. This bird is not much to look at which is probably why I don't have it on my list yet. This trip, I really studied and was able to find the bird.

Gray Flycatcher
The other lifer was Costa's Hummingbird. Once again, the voice gave it away. This photo is a female. Wait til you see the male (next post)

Costa's Hummingbird - female
And once again, an unexpected sighting - a Brown Pelican in the middle of the desert.

Brown Pelican
I met a woman from Texas named Missy who was birding there too. We ended up birding together for most of the day which was really great. After a few hours of working, I met up with Missy again at Desert Park where we found a few birds but really not much to write about other than this interesting Leopard Lizard. Check out those spots.


From there, we made our way to another mountain park in search of Crissal Thrasher. We busted there too but got these views. We saw a Coyote and an Osprey. This Jackrabbit was HUGE.

Jackrabbit
And so was this view of Red Rocks.

Red Rocks
Thus ended Friday with 3 Life Birds in the bag. With that, I headed back to the Vegas Strip and literally collapsed in the bed.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

From the Mountains to the Desert

My month of travel continued by flying from Denver to Las Vegas for another work event. I arrived and headed out to a park near the airport for an hour before heading to our newest office. This was a weird experience for sure. Sunset Park is a city park with ball fields and swingsets and a concrete pond smack in the middle. The pond attracts a variety of birds since it is an oasis of water in the middle of the desert. Some birds were expected including this Verdin.

Verdin
And this Wilson's Warbler. I saw a bunch of these on the trip.

Wilson's Warbler
I also expect to see alot of hummingbirds when I'm out west. The problem is that I have a hard time making an ID when they are molting like this one. Don't worry. I sent the photo to Harvey. He'll identify it for sure.

Unidentified Hummingbird
What I don't expect to see in the desert are Ross' Geese. There were 2 at the park. Wandering around the picnic pavilions with the other domestic geese and ducks. Weird. Ross' geese are pretty adorable no matter where you see them.

Ross' Goose
Here was another weird sighting. I was walking along the path and started seeing dirt flying. And then this little critter popped out. Its a Pocket Gopher. Here he is pushing the dirt out of his hole.

Pocket Gopher
Then, I headed to work and dinner with my coworkers and out to Freemont Street which is the absolute weirdest thing I've ever seen. The photos and videos that I took are not fit for this blog. Let's just say that "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" and leave it at that.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Mile High and Beyond

So I basically jumped off that boat at 6 PM on Sunday, went home, packed and jumped on an airplane on Monday morning. By 6 PM Monday, I went from being at sea level to being a mile high in Denver. I dragged my coworker out to a nearby park to do some birding. We basically busted on the birds but did get to see some interesting wildlife. Lots of Black-billed Magpies were around.

Black-billed Magpie
We found this Gopher Snake along the path. Sadly, another one was run over by a pickup truck.

Gopher Snake
We also found this little mouse in the middle of the path. He was alive but didn't look very good. We moved him off into the grass where he scampered away.

Mouse
Our big mistake was thinking that we could Uber to the park and back to the hotel. Getting there was easy. Getting out proved to be a little tricky. We ended up walking about 6 miles in order to get back to the park entrance so that the Uber driver could pick us up.

Of course, that didn't deter me. The next day, I headed out to a different park in search of some life birds. Once again, I busted on the birds and ended up walking another 8 miles or so to get out of the park.
Red-tailed Hawk
Juvenile Black-crowned Nightheron

White-tailed Deer
I am learning that it is very difficult to go birding on a work trip if you don't have a rental car. Here is a screenshot of my iPhone "Health" app. You can see that on Sept 18th, I was on the boat so not much walking. On the 19th, I walked all through the airport and then all over the park in Denver. The rest are from Las Vegas which deserves its own blog post.




Monday, September 19, 2016

Sea Level

Out to see again on Saturday night headed to the blue Gulf Stream waters in search of birds. Calm seas and calm winds were a mixed blessing for birding. As you can imagine, the calm seas are good for the birders but the calm winds are not great for sea birds. Pelagic birds like petrels depend on the wind to whirl around the seas.

We lucked out with Black-capped Petrels on the trip. We saw at least two. Both were sitting on the water and also lazily flying around the boat. This is a master flyer. You can pick it out by the clean black cap (hence the name).

Black-capped Petrel
I've never seen one sitting on the water before. Incredible.

Black-capped Petrel
The bird flew pretty close to the boat.

Black-capped Petrel


Black-capped Petrel
We saw plenty of other birds including many Great Shearwaters. Notice the difference between this bird and the Petrel above. The cap on the Shearwater is much bigger.

Greater Shearwater
 Here is one of them taking a bath.

Greater Shearwater
We also saw 3 species of whales including these Pilot Whales.

Pilot Whales
And this Hammerhead Shark cruising the surface. Yikes.

Hammerhead Shark
But the best show of the day was watching the Spotted Dolphins. These guys were amazing. We first saw them in the distance but they were hard to miss. They were jumping so far out of the water. Check out this photos. I drew an arrow from the launch site to show you how far out of the water this dolphin flew.


Here they are a little closer to the boat. 3 in the air at a time.


Look how happy this guy looks flying through the air.


Here they are playing in the wake of the boat. There were a dozen of them bouncing around. Fun stuff.


We missed the main target bird. A few people saw one of the White-faced Stormpetrel but all I saw was a bird zip through my binoculars and disappear into the vast sea. Sigh. Still a good trip.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

What You Can Learn on FaceBook

You know, I'm not a big fan of FaceBook. I use it because the birding community uses it. It took me a long time to figure out that there are "groups" that people join. (Actually, Di showed me the groups). I joined a bunch of bird groups including I Heart Shorbirds. It paid off this week. Notice the photo below - good ol' T7K. I've seen this bird on our beach alot.


Most of the banded shorebirds that show up on my beach have the green flag like T7K but occasionally I find one with a different color. That's what happened on Labor Day. I went down to the beach to look for banded birds. T7K was there. So were others including an odd one that caught my eye. This one had many colored bands and a white flag. I chased it up and down the beach to get a good photo.


What I didn't notice until I got home was the wire sticking out of the back of the bird.


I enter all of my sightings and photos into a website called bandedbirds.org . After I enter them, I can search the database to see where they were originally banded and where they've been seen since. When I searched for 23C, no results appeared. Why? This bird is obviously the subject of a research project. Having no results, I went to the best place for answers - FaceBook.

I posted the photos above with a question - Does anyone in the group know anything about this bird? The answers flowed fast and furious. One guy said that white flags mean that they were banded in Canada. Great info. The comments also agreed with my assumption that the wire is actually an antenna attached to a small transmitter like this one. You can see the wire.



Someone said that the bird was probably part of this season's James Bay Research Project but we wouldn't get any info until the researchers returned from the tundra at the end of Sept.

The Internet rocks. Just like that, researchers were posting to say that they knew the bird and shared the following info. 23C is an adult female Sanderling. And, she's also a Mom! Here is a photo of her nest taken on July 9th. Can you see the 4 pale green eggs?


The posts kept coming in all day. Another researcher reported that our Super Mom successfully raised all 4 eggs into babies! Here is one of the babies with his/her own bands. Just a little ball of fluff really.


23C made her nest in a little scrape in the tundra way up in the high arctic. The researchers also posted a map showing the Polar Bear Pass National Wildlife Refuge which is on an island in Nanuvit territories in Canada. I added the mileage between the nest and the Villas beach.


What a bird. The researchers use the transmitter to track the bird's migration path but I'm sure that sightings on Villas beach are also helpful. I'll keep my eyes peeled for the babies. Wouldn't it be ironic if one of them showed up too?

If you are at the shore, you know where to find me . . . on FaceBook of course!

Monday, September 5, 2016

Crab Fest

Do you love to eat Maryland style crabs? I do. Connie does. So do the birds. This Herring Gull came up with a prize in the rough surf on our beach. Look how proud he is.

Herring Gull - Blue Crab
 This Laughing Gull took advantage of the Herring Gull's enthusiasm when it shook off the flippers.

Laughing Gull
Even this little Sanderling tried to chomp on the leftover leg even though he usually only eats crab eggs.
Sanderling
Not to be outdone, this Ruddy Turnstone climbed up on a horseshoe crab to go to work.

Ruddy Turnstone
On the other hand, this Semipalmated Plover decided to sit it out.

Semipalmated Plover
Crab Fest indeed.