Forum Birdwatching 2012

[GeeMack]

I saw this Great Egret this morning along the Illinois River in central Illinois, USA...

These Great Egrets breed in our area in the summer, but spend the winter in Mexico and Central and South America. The similar sized Great Blue Heron is more common here, and as long as there is open water for fishing, they'll stay year round.

 

[GeeMack]

Juvenile male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, central Illinois, USA...

The adult males are heading south already, but the females and juveniles will stay around this area for as long as a couple more months.

 

[sphenisc]

Stilt Sandpiper: Northumberland, UK, the 28th in Britain since 1950. I took lousy pictures not worth posting.

 

[dasmiller]

Juvenile male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, central Illinois, USA...

That's a heckuva picture!

 

[RedIbis]

Is that a Rose-breasted Grossbeak, NoahFence?

Yes, that is a Rose-breased Grosbeak in Noah's pic.

I spent a month in W. North Carolina this summer and got six lifers: Red Crossbill, Ruffed Grouse, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Winter Wren, Broad-winged Hawk, and Canada Warbler.

Looking forward to a productive fall migration here in W. Florida.

BTW, to those asking about Tanagers and Orioles, they passed through W. Florida in the spring in very abundant numbers, both Scarlet and Summer Tanager, Baltimore and Orchard Orioles. The spring was particularly good this year for migrants.

 

[The Shrike]

. . . using the Birds Of Pennsylvania Field Guide by Stan Tekiela, are correct.

Tekeila has developed this niche for making nature guides that depict some of the species that live in certain arbitrarily defined geographic areas. People buy them because they're cheap and have pretty pictures, but they're really not useful as field guides.

I'm going to play my professional ornithologist's and 35-year birder's card to recommend what I think is hands-down the best field guide for beginning birders: James Coe's Eastern Birds: A Guide to Field Identification of North American Species (http://www.amazon.com/Eastern-Birds-Identification-American-Species/dp/030713671X). (There is a companion Western Guide that would be appropriate for folks from the front range of the Rockies to the west, but I haven't used that one.)

Coe's artwork is superb, and the thing that I think helps the most is the way he presents species in an appropriate habitat context. The text is also good; the maps are lousy but they give you a general idea of distributions. This guide is small, cheap, and useful. I often keep multiple copies on hand to give to the budding birders I meet.

Go with Coe! If you get more serious about your birding (and you will if you use this guide!) then you can graduate to Sibley's.

Note: I am not James Coe. I just discovered this guide a few years ago and think it's remarkably underrated. It's a brilliant field guide that somehow has not benefited from the marketing campaigns devoted to other guides.

 

[dasmiller]

This post isn't so much about birdwatching as it is about bird-trying-not-to-step-on.

There's a Rock Dove on my patio, and it's behaving very oddly. I don't know if it's suffered some brain injury (stroke, parasite?) or been poisoned or . . .

It's fluttering around on the ground, because it sometimes panics and tries to fly, but it can't. It has a bizarre habit of rotating its head 180 deg and then (seemingly) trying to rub the top of its head on the ground. At first I thought it was trying to attack me, but now I think that it sometimes tries to flee, but it can't control its direction very well so it winds up circling back very quickly. I've tried not to disturb it because I suspect it's injuring itself more when it tries to fly. The wings appear to be working just fine.

The bird, looking more-or-less normal (except that it's sitting on my lawn at night, and letting me get close enough to take this picture *without* a telephoto lens)

Looking at me oddly (this is not the twist-its-head-around trick)

Trying to fly away:

doing the head-twist (putting them in the spoiler box because I find these image more disturbing than some of the wasp pictures that I've been chided for not putting in a spoiler box):

It does the head-twist thing very quickly, and the conditions were already photographically challenging, so they aren't very sharp.


Has anyone encountered this sort of thing before? Is there anything I can do for it? I'm not optimistic about its chances of surviving the night in my backyard in that condition, but I doubt that it's going to recover regardless of how much nursing it gets. And I'm a little hesitant to spend a lot of time trying to rescue a member of (yet another) invasive species.

 

[jasonpatterson]

I've found birds that crashed into windows that behaved in similarly bizarre ways, though not the head twisting. It's also possible that it's a sick bird that you really don't want to touch. If it were in my yard I'd go the route of a quick and painless death for it.

 

[GeeMack]

Has anyone encountered this sort of thing before? Is there anything I can do for it? I'm not optimistic about its chances of surviving the night in my backyard in that condition, but I doubt that it's going to recover regardless of how much nursing it gets. And I'm a little hesitant to spend a lot of time trying to rescue a member of (yet another) invasive species.

I've seen a few sick ones acting weird. It could be that, but it looks more like it crashed into something, or maybe it was attacked and escaped with injuries. I found a Mourning Dove outside a few weeks ago that could walk perfectly well, but when it tried to fly it never could get past flopping around. Being it's just a Rock Dove, I'd probably be pretty quick to euthanize.

 

[GeeMack]

In Central Illinois, USA, our Ruby Throated Hummingbirds are fattening up for their long trip south. They're providing some pretty good opportunities to get nice photos even with just a 300mm lens.

 

[dasmiller]

I've seen a few sick ones acting weird. It could be that, but it looks more like it crashed into something, or maybe it was attacked and escaped with injuries.

re attacked & injuries:
On the one hand, it's missing a few feathers from its back, which fits the 'attack' theory very nicely.
On the other hand, everything seems to be working. The wings seem to be good, the tail works find, it's not limping . . . I dunno.

If I were to guess, I'd guess that it's lost its sense of balance. Maybe it flew into a window and banged its head? I know very little of bird physiology.

I found a Mourning Dove outside a few weeks ago that could walk perfectly well, but when it tried to fly it never could get past flopping around. Being it's just a Rock Dove, I'd probably be pretty quick to euthanize.

I left it to its own devices the first night, and was a little surprised to find it still alive in the morning. Especially since I checked on it once around midnight and when I flipped on the patio light, there was a cat seated about 5 meters away, watching the dove. The cat fled when it saw me.

So the next day, I tossed it some cracked corn and put a dish of water near it. It definitely eats the corn. It even seems to be recovering some; it's able to climb a bit without falling off, which is an improvement.

As of this morning, it was still there. I'm no longer sufficiently convinced that its death is imminent, so I wouldn't feel right about euthanizing it now (though I was pretty close the night I found it). I suspect that one of these days I'll come home and it'll be gone, and I'll never know if it flew off, or if a hawk got it, or whatever.

 

[dasmiller]

In Central Illinois, USA, our Ruby Throated Hummingbirds are fattening up for their long trip south. They're providing some pretty good opportunities to get nice photos even with just a 300mm lens.

Another impressive shot!

 

[dasmiller]

I suspect that one of these days I'll come home and it'll be gone, and I'll never know if it flew off, or if a hawk got it, or whatever.

Right on schedule.

When I got home from work today, I went out to check on the bird and can't find it anywhere. No suspicious cloud of feathers, either.

I believe that if a cat got it, there would be feathers. But it's possible that a hawk carried it off, or that it simply flew away. Or bumbled its way over the fence and met the neighbor's dog.

Moving on . . .

 

[PetersCreek]

I've been meaning to post in this thread for a while now but I haven't done much more birding than what fell my way while doing other things.
Here's my 2012 list so far:

• American Robin (Turdus migratorius)
• Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
• Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon)
• Black-billed Magpie (Pica pica)
• Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
• Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla)
• Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)
• Common Loon (Gavia immer)
• Common Murre (Uria aalge)
• Common Raven (Corvus corax)
• Common Redpoll (Acanthis flammea)
• Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)
• Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
• Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens)
• Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus)
• Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus)
• Herring Gull (Larus argentatus)
• Horned Puffin (Fratercula corniculata)
• Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
• Merlin (Falco columbarius)
• Pigeon Guillemot (Cepphus columba)
• Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis)
• Red-necked Grebe (Podiceps grisegena)
• Rock Pigeon (Columba livia)
• Steller's Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri)
• Tufted Puffin (Fratercula cirrhata)
• Varied Thrush (Ixoreus naevius)
• Wilson's Warbler (Wilsonia pusilla)
• Yellow-rumped Warbler (Dendroica coronata)

We had another Steller's Jay show up at the house this year but he didn't hang around long. Still, he was some combination of bold and/or experienced because he took right to eating peanuts from my hand. Here are a couple of videos:

Another Steller's Jay
I'm Just Here For the Peanuts

A new bird for my life list was the Merlin that showed up in our neighborhood 2 or 3 weeks ago. He flew over the house keening a few times, then settled somewhere around the neighbor's house up the mountain from us where he keened it up for a bit more before moving on.

I had a close encounter with a bald eagle a couple of weekends ago. I was on a small lake in the Mat-Su valley, flyfishing in my float tube, where I had caught and released a small trout. It must have been hooked deeper than I thought because I saw him a few minutes later, struggling belly up at the surface not too far from me. Before I could retrieve it, a couple of seagulls started trying (unsuccessfully) to do something with it. A minute later, they took off in a snit as a bald eagle descended from my left, circled behind me and to my right, and snatched the trout from the water, about 20-25 feet from me. All this, much too quick to get my cell phone out of my pocket for a picture, unfortunately.

 

[Kotatsu]

Hi everyone,

As I think I mentioned earlier, I have moved from Sweden to Salt Lake City (although I have no internet at home yet, mainly due to the exasperating inefficiency of Comcast...). Haven't had much time to birdwatch yet, but have got 11 new species so far:

Spotted Sandpiper Actitis macularia
Scrub Jay Aphelocome californica
California Quail Callipepla california
Pine Siskin Carduelis pinus
Lesser Goldfinch Carduelis psaltria
American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos
American Kestrel Falco sparverius
Black-billed Magpie Pica hudsonia
Western Tanager Piranga ludoviciana
Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher Polioptila caerulea

In total, my US list is at 46 species, I think. Hopefully, I will go with my new boss and some others to Antelope Island when the shorebird migration starts, and there's been some talk of joining a bird banding group in Red Butte Canyon (we need North American lice!), so I'm hoping to get above 1000 bird species before I leave Utah (less than 120 left!).

Cheers,
Leo

 

[dasmiller]

Made it back down to Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach, CA, today. In my mind, this will forever be the 'day of the raptors' because I got some of my best raptor pics ever.

In that vein:

Juvie red-tailed hawk (on Flickr)


Osprey, guarding its dinner


Juvenile Northern goshawk flyover

and, not a raptor but a hunter nonetheless:

Reddish Egret, on the prowl, as usual

It's conceivable that I've misidentified the goshawk and the red-tailed hawk. Frankly, I'd be delighted if it's anything but a red-tailed hawk, 'cause pretty much anything else would be less common.

I'll try to put together the full bird list in a few days.

 

[GeeMack]

[...] and, not a raptor but a hunter nonetheless:
[qimg]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8297/7835758988_00cf2666c2_c.jpg[/qimg]
Reddish Egret, on the prowl, as usual.

I love those heron/egret birds. A few days ago we were walking along the Illinois River here and saw a few Great Blue Herons, a couple of Great Egrets, and a Little Green Heron. The Black Crowned Night Heron is supposed to be in our area, too, but I've only seen them in Florida.

 

[JeanFromBNA]

Dasmiller, wonderful pictures of raptors and fishers.

 

[GeeMack]

I love those heron/egret birds. A few days ago we were walking along the Illinois River here and saw a few Great Blue Herons, a couple of Great Egrets, and a Little Green Heron. The Black Crowned Night Heron is supposed to be in our area, too, but I've only seen them in Florida.

We went to the Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge early this morning. It's an extraordinary area comprised of several thousand acres of reclaimed Illinois River floodplain. For almost a century it had been used as agricultural land. Levees were built and pumps were in constant use to keep it arable. Just less than 20 years ago the Nature Conservancy began acquiring the land, and only 5 years ago the pumps were turned off and the land began to revert to marshes and shallow lakes. Already it has become a premiere stop-over for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds.

Now we can go just an hour from home and see birds we would never have seen just a decade ago. The Osprey above spent several minutes hovering and soaring overhead and gave us a really good look even if not the greatest photograph. And finally we did see the Black Crowned Night Heron... right here in central Illinois, USA!

 

[dasmiller]

Went to Ballona Creek yesterday morning. There's just not a lot there this time of year, and even at the best of times, I rarely get really good pictures there.

I think I counted 15 species, not including a few passing gulls. But that 15 does include crows, mourning doves, mallards, a starling, and other not-terribly-noteworthy birds.

But there was a white-tailed kite flying around, and while it wasn't close enough for great pictures, it was close enough for 'maybe' pictures. This is only the 2nd time I've seen a kite, and the previous time was much farther away and I had to identify it from the picture once I got home.

So not-quite-a-first for me, but close.