I have been super busy birding here in Florida and helping Anna Fasoli with her Crested Caracara surveys so I dont really have much time to post. All of the photos I have taken so far can be seen at a Picasa Web Album I created for the trip at this link so I hope those can hold everyone over till I have more time to write proper posts about the cool things I have been seeing. I flew into Miami on December 28th, but plane delays didn’t get me there till dark so Anna and I spent the next day birding around Miami. I picked up Lesser Black-backed Gull, Common Myna, Monk Parakeet, Mitred Parakeet, and Snail Kite as lifers! Other highlights from birding around Miami were a dark morph Short-tailed Hawk I spotted soaring over A. D.
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N. Lycoming CBC This year I decided to try a new Christmas Bird Count, one much further north that had a chance of producing interesting birds such as Rough-legged Hawks, Lapland Longspurs and Northern Shrikes. The CBC that fit this bill and worked for my schedule was the Northern Lycoming CBC. We started owling at 5:30am and focused on two roads that held lots of hemlocks. Our first couple stops produced a Great Horned Owl and several Eastern Screech-owls but it wasn’t until it was almost light that we finally managed to get a saw-whet to respond in a nice hemlock stand. The next birds we picked up were Golden-crowned Kinglet, Dark-eyed Junco and White-breasted Nuthatch. We then drove down to the Lycoming Creek to look for any ducks since there is not much open water in the count circle.
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I love it. It’s that time of year again when I reset my year list and every single species is just waiting to get back on. It might also be the part of birding that most confuses the non-birders around us. They say, “But you just saw a Cooper’s Hawk yesterday, why are you so excited about seeing it again?”, or “Did you seriously just cheer when you saw that House Sparrow?” Well, what can I say. You either get it or you don’t. So I had about an hour this evening to dig up any species I could find to start up my year list. I picked up Ring-necked Duck, Redhead and Northern Shoveler at the Duck Pond and American Tree Sparrows, Northern Mockingbird and lots of robins at the PSU Retention Pond.
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Here are some feeder birds to start out the New Year. Look for some great posts this year, starting with posts by each of us on our highlights of 2010 as well as more app and book reviews.
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I ran out to Bald Eagle State Park today to do some birding and hopefully find the shrikes that have been reported in the park. Most people have been able to find the shrike that is hanging around the park entrance and the campground area although it covers a lot of area and can be tricky to find, especially with all the mockingbirds around. Up until today, the shrike at the Upper Green’s Run area of Bald Eagle had only been reported once. Northern Mockingbird- not a shrike but I was ordered by Justine to put in a good picture to compensate for the terrible quality of the shrike photos. Please lower your expectations for the shrike photos.
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There is a new field guide app on the market and boy, is it great. It is nice seeing the competition heat up in the iPad/iPhone bird field guide market and really take advantage of the devices and their interface. One nice bonus about the Peterson app is that it is universal, meaning one purchase is fully compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad. I thought that some screen shots would be the only thing to do the app justice so click through the gallery below and read the comments below each screenshot. I’ll have my final thoughts below the gallery. *Note: screen shots are all from v. 1.0 of the app. There have been some nice UI updates since then which I will try to post about soon.
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Maybe you remember the adult intermediate-morph Rough-legged Hawk photos that Alex posted earlier this month? There is currently a thread in the North American Birders Forum discussing that bird, with raptor experts Vic Berardi and Jerry Liguori both chiming in on the age/sex/morph of the bird. Rough-legged Hawk photo by Alex Here’s what Liguori had to say about Alex’s bird- Since there is a cline from light to dark in Rough-legged plumages (and several other buteos), labeling every bird specifically is sometimes a matter of opinion. There are no absolute parameters that define light, dark, and intermediate, although most Rough-leggeds are clearly light or dark morph. The bird is an adult male, they are the only age/sex that shows this extensive mottling throughout the underside (the defined dark tail tip and terminal band on the remiges are clear adult traits as well).
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The Northern Shrike has finally been found at Bald Eagle State Park! I had been searching all over for it at the park for about the last two months but apparently not hard enough. There is an extensive amount of shrubby habitat that looks suitable for the shrike so we shall see how easy it is to relocate over the winter. With directions from Nick and Jack, we headed to the West Launch area and parked where West Launch Rd is closed off before walking down to the launch area. We didn’t find the shrike at first and it wasn’t actually until I was on my way out that I spotted a larger black and white bird in a distant shrub. Five minutes of scanning later, I turned around and it perched in a tree top not far from me.
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WARNING: The following photos may be disturbing to some viewers! My friend Cory Ritter sent me the following photos. His mother was behind their house near the Rainbow Flowage in Oneida County, Wisconsin and came across an adult Bald Eagle sitting on the ground feeding from something. They were right near a nest that has been in use for the past few years by various eagle couples. The adult eagle flew up to a stump, where she was able to take a few photos. The adult eagle refused to fly away, even when they approached very close. Then she went over to see what the eagle was feeding on. The eagle’s prey turned out to be another eagle! They sent the photos to me for verification and I really couldnt believe it, but sure enough the dead bird looks to be a juvenile Bald Eagle.
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I started off 2010 terribly sick and I didn’t leave the house for a few days. Once I got better, Anna Fasoli and I drove down to Blackwater NWR in Maryland to officially start off our 2010 birding year. We picked up 60 species in one day. On Febuary 24th, I drove down to Herndon, Virginia to see the Varied Thrush that had been hanging around for about a month. In March, Anna was finishing up a job she had down on the Gulf Coast, so I flew down to Florida, and her and I birded the Pinellas County area and then drove back to Pennsylvania over the course of a week. I added 91 species to my year list by the end of the Florida trip and was sitting nicely at 185 year birds by March 13th.
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