A Broken Ankle, Holidays, Snow, Funerals, Hockey

What do all of these things have in common? They are all deterrents to birding and thus hindering your reading list. The good news is that I think we are back on track. Connie's ankle is healing which means that she can drive herself. The holidays are over. The snow is melting. The funerals are past. Hockey continues. Birding can commence for 2016.

The first real birding that I did in 2016 was to participate in the Philadelphia Mid-winter Bird Census. This year, I had a lot of territory to cover alone. Looking for birds while keeping notes prevented photos.

Photography resumed last week in the form of shooting pictures through my open office window. The birds were very cooperative due to the 16 inches of snow which makes them rely on our bird feeders for a living. Here are a few shots from the day. First is an iconic male Cardinal in the snow.

Cardinal

Next is this little piggy of a Chickadee. This guy has a sunflower seed AND peanut in his mouth.

Chickadee

Speaking of seeds, here are some more photos of birds with seeds. All shot from the open window looking out onto the patio. A Junco in classic gray and white.

Junco

 A Song Sparrow.

Song Sparrow

 And of of many White-throated Sparrow with the diagnostic white throat and yellow eye lores.

White-throated Sparrow

As you can see, I shoveled the patio for the birds. Peanut also liked the shoveled paths since the snow was deeper than she is!

Varied Week But Not Today

This week:

• Our location was varied - started in Florida, spent the night in Virginia, arrived home in Pennsylvania and spent the day today in New Jersey.
• Our weather was varied - 86 degrees in Florida but only 33 degrees today. 
• Our TV watching was even varied - we watched shows that we never heard of before in Florida like "2 Broke Girls" and "Pitbulls and Perolees" (not kidding), then football and our soap opera at home.

The only thing that wasn't varied was my luck chasing the Varied Thrush that showed up right in the Villas about a month ago and has been seen sporadically ever since. The Varied Thrush is a bird from the north and west. Of course, with everything that is going on at home (Connie's broken ankle etc) I haven't been able to go after the bird until today. And of course, with my luck you know how the chase was going to end up.

I met Harvey at 7:30 AM and headed out to Cox Hall Creek to look for the bird. Harvey has seen the bird a few times and agreed to help me find it today.  The last report of the bird stated that it was in the Holly Woods near a Bluebird box. The report said that the bird was seen hanging out with another rare bird - the Red-headed Woodpecker. We spent 2 hours freezing our hands and feet off looking. We finally found a Red-headed Woodpecker but the Thrush could not be found.

Red-headed Woodpecker

By 9:30 we needed warmth and breakfast. Harvey went home to do chores and I headed back to the park to look again. I started to feel better when I found another Red-headed Woodpecker. Again, no Varied Thrush but to my surprise, I stumbled on 4 Bobwhites scurrying up the path in front of me. I managed to snap a few shots before they scattered into the grass. They are so small and so cute. I noticed that some of the quail have white faces and some have tan/beige faces. Turns out that the birds with white faces are male and the beige faces are females. 2 of each in this covey.

Bobwhites

I re-found one of the male birds huddled under a bush just off the path.

Bobwhite

Still no Thrush so I went to Wawa for a Diet Coke and much needed bathroom break. Back to the park for third try. The wind was really howling all day. So much so that even this Merlin was sitting in the woods instead of on top of a snag like he usually does. Merlins are falcons and should be used to the wind, but today was too much for this guy. He really liked watching Peanut running around below him. Good thing Merlins eat birds and not mammals.

Merlin

I'll cut to the chase - no Thrush. A few other birders were looking for the bird throughout the day without luck either. One guy dipped for the 7th time today. Another missed the bird for the 5th time. I don't feel that bad about not seeing this elusive bird. I hope it hangs around so that I can try to vary my luck.

What Paulie Missed

I'm down in Florida visiting the old folks this week. I dragged Connie down here with promises of mending her broken ankle poolside rather than home. 2 days drive with Peanut in the back seat and 3 days of visiting.

My mother was very anxious to take Peanut to the new dog park that Dave found near their house. The park has a "nature park" attached to it too. Dave borrowed a golf cart for me, Connie and Peanut to bomb around in. Here is Peanut on her first ride.

Golf Cart Ride

We went. Peanut was just OK with the dog park but the nature park was a hit. Late afternoon was a good time to visit. Close up views of Grackles - you can see the purple iridescence when the Florida sun hits them just right.

Grackle

This female Merganser was showing off her 'doo in the pond. No males were there, so I'm not sure why she was so interested in showing off.

Female Hooded Merganser

The star of the show had to be 2 Meadowlarks in the grass at the park. They let me get really close while they hunted for bugs. This one cranked out the famous musical song right in front of me. Wow.

Meadowlark

The pond was full of birds including American White Pelicans, Wood Storks, Egrets and Cormorants. The Pelican is in flight.

American White Pelican with Storks

Paul and Linda are my mother's neighbors. A very nice couple from New Jersey who we see each time we visit. Paulie (as we call him) sent me a newspaper article from the local Villages paper about New Year's Day birding. He wanted to go along. We never made a plan so I knocked on their door New Year's Eve - no answer. I went by the house New Year's Day - no answer. Oh well, I went birding alone (frankly, it was a joy to be by myself for an hour). Here is what Paulie missed:
First bird of 2016 - Eurasian Collared Dove

Eurasian Collared Dove

 Loggerhead Shrike calling from a tree along one of the many golf courses near the house.

Loggerhead Shrike

 A gang of Ibis (or is that Ibi ? ) hunting the golf course edge.

White Ibis

Best bird of the day - this American Bittern in the marsh.

American Bittern

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers love Florida. They are in every other tree along with Palm and Yellow-rumped Warblers.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

This Osprey was poised to fish in the mist of the morning. Connie saw him/her catch a fish later in the day.

Osprey

The Villages are known for having very tame Sandhill Cranes that walk around the golf courses. They are so tame that the golfers have to shoo them off of the putting greens. They don't even move when a ball plops down near them. As tame as they are, they didn't like Peanut. Here are 3 of them squawking in unison as we walked past them.

Sandhill Cranes - upset with Peanut

Once Peanut was in the car, the alert was over and the Cranes allowed more photos. Clam as cucumbers.

Sandhill Cranes

All in all, day one of 2016 was a hit. Easy birding racked up 38 species plus I got to swim and a home made pork and sauerkraut dinner.  Too bad for Paulie. I hope he gets out birding soon.

Christmas Bird Count 2015

It's that time of year again - Audubon's Christmas Bird Counts are happening all over the world. CBCs as they are called, take place each year between Dec 14 and Jan 5. Birders concentrate on counting all of the birds of any species in a particular area. I have been assigned to Pennypack Environmental Center area for the past 5 or 6 years now. 

Barbara Granger, a fellow DVOC member has joined me for the past few years since she is familiar with the area. I am glad for the help. In past years, its just been me and Roxy alone in the woods for hours.  This year of course, Roxy didn't join us :-( but Peanut sure had fun on her first CBC! I'm an idiot and forgot to snap photos of my 2 companions this year so sorry about that. 

The area isn't "sexy" as far as the cool birds that other areas have which is probably why it gets left to me. The better birders already claim the good spots. We get the expected Chickadees and Nuthatches, some common sparrows and a few Mallard ducks. We walk over 2 miles up and down the Pennypack creek searching for and recording each bird that we see or hear. Our big win this year was that we saw all of the woodpeckers possible. We started with Downies at the Environmental Center feeders, Red-bellied near the center, added Flicker in the woods and heard the unmistakable call of the Pileated along the path. A few minutes later, we heard and saw Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. That left only Hairy to complete the set. Barbara found one late in our day! Yay.

The only other interesting birds for the day were Great Blue Heron which is not always on our part of the creek.

Great Blue Heron

And Crows. We counted 25 of them at the police horse stables. This one was perched on the coral. 

American Crow

We noticed this unusual wing pattern on another Crow. The primaries shouldn't be white like that. Weird.

Weird Crow

I know that you are probably disappointed with the lack of photos from the day but it is difficult to photograph and count at the same time. I hate to miss a few birds while concentrating on the photos. 

I hope to have something more exciting to report soon. 

Soggy, Sparse West Coast Trip

Another week, another work trip. I'm starting to get a feel for what my cousin Susan goes through with her job. Not always fun even when you plan a day for sightseeing and birding. The latest trip was out to Seattle and San Francisco.

I planned to go to Seattle early to meet with a client and then take of to go birding. I need a few species that I missed on earlier trips. The weather did not cooperate. I didn't even take my big camera once I learned of the 100% chance of rain each day. I went out to the park near our hotel anyway to see what was around. You can see how dreary it was. What you can't see is how soaked I was. So soaked that I had to use the hotel laundry to dry my coat and pants.

Here is a close-up of Juncos that flocked around me on my walk. They didn't seem to mind the rain.

Juncos

These trips are sponsored by Microsoft so that we can talk about some of their donations. We work closely with a small group of people there including James. Here he is showing me his photo of the Resplendant Quetzal from his trip to Costa Rica. I could just scream. The RQ is our nemesis bird - the bird that we most want to see in Central America but haven't been able to locate on multiple trips. Look at that shot! Amazing.

Resplendent James

We headed to San Francisco on Thursday and decided to stay in the city due to the forecast of rain. It didn't rain so Sam and I headed out to Coit Tower to see if we could find some birds. I call this photo "Red-tailed Hawk". Can you see the bird high above the tower? That was the only bird around. We climbed the tower and had awesome views of the San Francisco bay and city.

We took a boat ride out to Alcatraz to tour the old prison. Fun trip. Here is a shot of the island with Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. No birds to mention here either.

Alcatraz

 The funniest thing about going out west is their obsession with crossing the street. Honestly, I've never seen anything like it. If the signal is red, nobody crosses the street. Even if there isn't a car in sight. They all just stand there until the light turns green. What is wrong with these people. I tell them all the same thing - I've been crossing the street by myself since I was 4 years old. My mother taught me how to look both ways before crossing. It's a successful strategy. I haven't been run over yet. Sam and I went to a little town called Kirkland which is near Seattle to have dinner. Now these people take street crossing safety to a whole new level. They make you carry a flag with an image of a person carrying a flag when crossing the street. I swear, I can't make this up. Here is Sam safely crossing the street.

Street crossing flag

Glad to be home where I can cross the street like a grown up.

Famous Birders Can Be Nice Guys Too

This week, the guest speaker at the DVOC meeting was a world famous birder and author - Alvaro Jaramillo. He has written field guides, has a tour company, runs pelagic trips in California and has many other accomplishments. The club announced that he would be giving a talk about gulls this Thursday. It drew a crowd. His talk was informative and fun even though the topic of gulls can be daunting for most normal birders.

As always, the club members headed to Cherry Street Tavern after the meeting. Alvaro joined us to continue the discussion and get to know some of the members better.

Fun Times at Cherry Street Tavern

Alvaro was also enlisted to give a talk at the Wyncote Audubon's annual dinner on Saturday night so he was gracious enough to co-lead a field trip with George Armistead and Martin Selzer to Heinz NWR this morning. Once again, he drew a crowd of over 40 participants.

There weren't many interesting birds - mainly basic ducks and a few songbirds.

White-breasted Nuthatch

White-throated Sparrow

Best bird for of the day for me was Fox Sparrow.

Fox Sparrow

Anyway, Alvaro is a super nice guy that gave the Delaware Valley alot of his time and knowledge.

A Break from Travel

Over the past 2 years I have been traveling occasionally for work. You have read about some of the trips including California here in the US and England, Scotland and Wales as well as Singapore and Malaysia. Those trips involved a lot of planning and allowed for some extra time for birding. This round of work trips involves one day here and one day there. Mostly on the east coast so it doesn't make sense to stay overnight and the timing is terrible for birding anyway. Chicago and Dallas, New York, Boston and Washington DC in November is not what I would call begging for birding.  

I have been traveling so often that I signed up for TSA Pre-Check so that I can keep my shoes on and put my laptop through the X-RAY without taking it out of the bag. You would think that people with this designation are savvy travelers who know the rules. Well, not always. I was in Lexington Kentucky the week of the Breeder's Cup for 2 nights. Just enough time to find a few bottles of Bourbon for gifts. I don't drink the stuff myself but I have friends who do. I spent $200 on 3 bottles of Bourbon that you can only buy in Kentucky. I dutifully packed the fragile bottles in my carry-on luggage so that they would be delivered in tact. 

Off I went to the TSA Pre-Check security checkpoint where the agent asked if I had any liquids in my bags. Why, yes. Yes I did have liquids in my bag so I proceeded to take the bottles out one at a time and place them into the bin to be put through the X-RAY. The female TSA agent that was working the machine asked if I knew about the 3 ounce liquid rule. Why yes. Yes I did know about the rule. That's why I took the bottles out of my bag. Duh, did she think I was stupid? Why yes. Yes she did think I was stupid and with good reason. You see, 3 ounces is much smaller than the 3, count em' three 750 ml bottles of Bourbon that were going through the X-RAY. What a moron. They promptly escorted me out of security and back to the ticket counter where I had to put the bottles into checked luggage and hope for the best. I don't know what I was thinking. I had it in my mind that the 3 ounce rule applied only to toothpaste and shampoo. I'm an idiot. 

This idiot caught a break over the weekend and seized the day with Harvey to go birding along upper Delaware Bay. The New Jersey birding community was a buzz with reports of Franklin's Gulls on Friday but I was in Boston and by Sunday I was still tired and interested more in spending a relaxing day with Harvey and Peanut birding to see what we could see rather than chasing a seagull.  We started at East Point Lighthouse and did really well while exploring the road and trails. Peanut flushed a Pheasant which was unexpected. We ended up with 40 species in 2 hours. 

No photos from that spot but we did manage to snap a few when we got to our second stop - Heislerville. This is a Wildlife Management Area with a few bid water impoundments. We found shorebirds including this flock of Dunlin. Look hard and you will find a single Black-bellied Plover flying with the group. 

Dunlin

 We also found 2 Western Willets in the water. All of "our" Willets which we call Eastern Willets are gone by October. Western Willets show up occassionally on their way to Florida for the winter. This one was picking the legs off of a crab.

Western Willet with Crab

On our way back to the parking area we drove past a plowed field and scanned for birds. We spotted about 30 American Pipits. Can you see 2 of them in this photo? They blend in really well.

Pipits

The most unexpected thing that we found was a butterfly in November. This is Variegated Frittalary.

Butterfly

You'll have to ask me about what else happened. I dare not put it in writing. 

Di and Her Eagles

Di had a pretty good weekend. She completed her second half-marathon on Saturday morning AND she made a great time - crossing that finish line in under 2 hours and 45 minutes. I walked along with her for 8 of the 13.1 miles for "support".

Today, I recuperated by sitting in a car with Harvey while driving around Brigantine looking for birds but mostly struck out. I headed back up the AC Expressway at noon, over the Walt Whitman Bridge and onto the Schuylkill (this becomes significant soon) so that I could get back home to caulk the tub - oh joy.  I was just about at 30th St when Di texted me this - "That blob is a bald eagle. Gazebo at Lemon Hill" along with this photo:

iPhone photo - Bald Eagle

That photo is taken with an iPhone so imagine how close Di had to be to the eagle.  This is the second time that Di has sent me an iPhone photo of an eagle at Lemon Hill. The first was a few years ago. She is so lucky. I walk the dog here almost every day for 8 years and have only seen 2 eagles - flying over the river, never perched.

I told you that 30th St would become significant. You can see, Lemon Hill from the Schuylkill Expressway. It is above the boat houses which are about 1/2 mile past 30th St. I was sitting still in traffic at the time but started to move again so I texted back - "so is this" along with this photo:

You can see the Eagle if you look really hard at the tops of the trees.  Don't worry, the traffic was moving so slowly that there was no danger. I didn't look at the phone, I just held my thumb on the shutter button and snapped about 8 photos.

Of course, I had to get a better look. I have been hoping for this situation for years - a photo of a Bald Eagle in the city. It only took me 5 minutes to exit the Schuylkill at Girard and make my way to the gazebo at Lemon Hill where I found Di, Barbara and Sammy waiting for me. I snuck up to the gazebo with my Canon 7D with 400mm lens and snapped about a billion photos. The lighting was terrible but I managed to get a few good ones including this head shot.

Bald Eagle - Lemon Hill Philadelphia

Check out the dark pigment spot on the eagle's eye. It is supposed to be all pale yellow. Cool.  The holy grail of photos still eludes me - a photo of an eagle with the city sky line in the background. Some day, some day.

Congrats to Di for a stellar weekend.

Close Encounters

Birding hasn't been phenomenal lately but the migrating birds are finally showing up in dribs and drabs. The good news is that the birds that are coming through are allowing close approach - even when Peanut is with me. A few photos from the past week starting with the new local dog walking spot. This place is great because it is filled with weeds like goldenrod. I caught 2 different species picking through the weeds for bugs last week. I showed you Yellow-rumped Warbler in the last post. Here is Palm Warbler in almost the same place.

Palm Warbler

Here is Swamp Sparrow looking at me from the bushes.

I did manage to get down to Cape May yesterday. The bad new is that I totally missed the really "good" day which was Thursday, AND I missed a few rare birds too. The good news is that I had close encounters with a few warblers by the lighthouse. This Black-throated Green Warbler flitted around in the cedar trees and even dropped onto the grass for a minute.

Black-throated Green Warbler

Ruby-crowned Kinglets are literally everywhere this week. If I counted every one that I saw this week, I would be in the hundreds.They are usually in perpetual motion which makes photos difficult. Here is one that actually sat still for a minute.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

A Pine Warbler really put on a show staying very close to the path and picking bugs out of the cedar trees.

Pine Warbler

 Pine Warbler gets a bug!

Pine Warbler with bug

It was a pretty picture with the late day lighting, all of the berries on the cedar and the nice dark background. Of course, the bug didn't think so. Zoom in if you want to see the bug in detail.

Pine Warbler with bug