birds : Philadelphia Vireo in the backyard

I just spotted a new life bird, a Philadelphia Vireo, moving through the trees in my backyard, a gift of both the fall migration and the weather being cool enough for me to open the blinds while I sit at the computer. It stayed long enough for me to make it outside with both the binoculars and the book and confirm the identification; two windowpanes and a screen introduce a fair amount of uncertainty into these things.

I had just the other day been trying to determine if I had the oomph for any kind of birding, as it’s something I’ve missed this summer what with the heat and the not being able to walk very well and barely being able to open my eyes in the early hours which are ideal for birding. Now that the migration’s on, though, I could probably make it to the lake around 4pm at least once and just see what’s around. Or, I could continue to just look out the window and let the birds come to me!

birds : Philadelphia Vireo in the backyard

birds : new life birds at Greenbelt Park

After being woken up early this morning, we decided to make the most of it and go for a birding walk (something we haven’t done in months). We first headed to Lake Artemesia, and kept on driving when we saw a park ranger directing people into the lot and a big sign announcing a fishing event. Bazillions of people fishing with their kids does not for good songbird sighting make. Since it was cool, windy, and early in the season, we opted to give Greenbelt Park another try. We’d heard that it was nice, but were too scared to get out of the car when we were greeted with a huge BEWARE OF LARGE NUMBERS OF TICKS AND CHIGGERS sign at the entrance. The sign was off when we arrived at 8am this morning, which is probably a good thing; when we left around 10am it was again advising people to be alert for ticks (which is a warning we expect in this part of the country). After making a loop of the park, we located the open picnic and parking area and headed off on the Azalea Trail, a 1.1 mile loop (whereon we did not actually see any azaleas, although some of the understory shrubs might have been ones that had already bloomed, it was hard to tell at a distance).

The first bird we spotted was a Yellow-rumped Warbler, quickly followed by a pair of Eastern Towhees. I’ve only seen them a few times before, and it was a new bird for my partner. Further down the trail we then broke our necks craning up into the very tall trees to eventually locate and identify a Red-eyed Vireo, worth the trouble as a new life bird. It was also a bird we were able to confirm via its song, which allowed us to not feel the need to break our necks a second time when we heard (and eventually did spot) another one a few minutes later. The other exciting find was an Ovenbird in the scrub, a songbird that forages on the ground and looks like a very small thrush. After some time of tracking it through the brambly undergrowth, it obligingly hopped up onto a higher branch so that we could get a nice long look at it. Once back at the parking lot, we saw Barn Swallows and a couple of butterflies: an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a Red-Spotted Purple (which reminds me that I saw a Mourning Cloak in our town park about a month ago now).

Overall, it was a pleasant trip and the ring road meant that joggers were generally keeping off the hiking trail. As a note for next time, in the interest of keeping ourselves as tick-free as possible, we’ll probably bail from the trail at the end and walk back to the car from the road to avoid having to hike across the playing field (where the Azalea Trail terminates).

birds : new life birds at Greenbelt Park

birds : holiday visit to Lake Artemesia

After a completely gray and rainy Sunday, we took advantage of the beautiful clear weather to walk around Lake Artemesia. I can’t remember the last time I was up there; they’ve completely repaved and widened the path around the lake, and have removed at least one tree the roots of which were growing up through the pavement. Since so many people have the day off for Martin Luther King Day, the parking lot was full and the paths were busy with families, kids and adults walking dogs or on bikes.

The lake was partially frozen, so the usual winter residents were a bit crowded into only two areas of open water. We saw huge numbers of Canada Geese, a couple of pairs of Mallards, a decent flock of Ring-necked Ducks, a dozen or so Ruddy Ducks, about that many American Coots, and loads of Ring-billed Gulls on the lake, both in the water and on the ice. The big excitement was the sighting of a pair of Black Scoters, which marked my first new life birds of the year. There were hardly any other birds active at noon, but we did see a chickadee, a White-throated Sparrow, and a Song Sparrow along the paths and a smallish Red-tailed Hawk circled overhead as we were leaving.

birds : holiday visit to Lake Artemesia

birds : Acadia National Park

During our week in Acadia, we saw (or heard) about fifty birds. I had this idea that we would be finding warblers everywhere we turned, however, they seem to have mostly migrated by now. We did see a number of new species of warblers and other birds, enabling me to add about a dozen new birds to my lifelist (the electronic version of which I plan to update this weekend). This is meant to simply be a tally, as I’ll write at greater length about the efforts we undertook to find them on each day we were there.

Without further ado, the birds we saw in and around Acadia are: Common Loon, Double-Crested Cormorant, Great Blue Heron, American Black Duck, Mallard, Common Eider, Lesser Yellowlegs, Spotted Sandpiper, White-Rumped Sandpiper, Herring Gull, Great Black-Backed Gull, Black Guillemot, Turkey Vulture, Osprey, Bald Eagle, Northern Harrier, Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Broad-Winged Hawk, Red-Tailed Hawk, American Kestrel, Merlin, Peregrine Falcon, Rock Dove, Mourning Dove, Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, Belted Kingfisher, Eastern Wood-Peewee, Blue Jay, American Crow, Black-Capped Chickadee, Red-Breasted Nuthatch, Golden-Crowned Kinglet, Hermit Thrush, American Robin, Gray Catbird, Cedar Waxwing, Northern Parula, Magnolia Warbler, Yellow-Rumped Warbler, Black-Throated Green Warbler, Bay-Breasted Warbler, Black-and-White Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Canada Warbler, Song Sparrow, White-Throated Sparrow, Dark-Eyed Junco, White-Winged Crossbill, Pine Siskin, and American Goldfinch.

In addition to these, we also heard a Ruffed Grouse and a Common Raven, and saw on the drive home European Starlings and Wild Turkeys. Also, I am not totally sure about the Bay-Breasted Warbler, as I identified them in fall plumage.

birds : Acadia National Park

vacation : new life birds on Hilton Head

When we planned our trip to Hilton Head, I researched the refuges in the area and decided to stick with Pinckney Island NWR. It is close to the island, just over the bridge on the way to the mainland, and it promised miles of walking trails. Once we arrived in the area, I have to admit that the alligators put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for going hiking around in the marshes. I was nearly content to have spotted a Yellow-throated Warbler for the first time just across the street from our rental, in addition to Brown Thrasher, House Finch, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Blue Jay, American Crow, Common Grackle, Boat-tailed Grackle, Northern Mockingbird, Eastern Bluebird, Tufted Titmouse, Green Heron, Great Blue Heron, Downy Woodpecker, Mourning Dove, Rock Dove, and Carolina Chickadee just in the residential area where we were staying. In the end I manned up, and we went ahead with the plan and spent a productive Wednesday afternoon at the refuge, spotting several new life birds and revisiting some old favorites.

Just inside the refuge, there was a flock of migrating Whimbrels, with a Black-bellied Plover, a couple of Dunlins, and some Semi-Palmated Plovers mixed in. There was also a larger gray bird that was either a Willet or a Red Knot in winter plumage; having seen both of these birds before we chose not to spend all day squinting through our under-powered binoculars to make a firm identification. Shorebirds are the most frustrating to identify with the binoculars we have; they’re typically farther away with less distinctive coloring than woodland birds, so we’ve learned to do our best and then move on. Once inside on the paths we saw old friends—Northern Cardinal, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Carolina Wren, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher—but none of the tanagers that were rumored to be around. On the mudflats we saw our next new bird, a flock of White Ibis with brown-backed young. Further along, at the aptly named Ibis Pond, we found herons of all shapes and sizes, those we’d seen before (Great Blue Heron, Green Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Black-crowned Night Heron) and two lovely new additions: Little Blue Heron, Tri-colored Heron, and an adult male Anhinga (we later saw a female near our house). The Little Blue Heron wasn’t exactly the first sighting; we’d seen a young one the day before along the lagoons where we were staying, and I probably saw one during our trip to Chincoteague five years ago. Nonetheless, this was the first up close and confirmed sighting of an adult bird for me, and it was fun to watch it fly back and forth bringing bits of grass and twigs for a nest.

After hanging out at Ibis Pond for a while, we hiked a loop around what was advertised as Osprey Pond and Wood Stork Island, highly motivated to get a sight of the uncommon and elusive Wood Stork. We never did. What we did catch sight of, though, were gazillions of mosquitoes and a few alligators; the latter sighting led us to conclude that Pied-billed Grebes must not be very tasty, because on two occasions they were the only bird in the water near the enormous prehistoric reptile. During this trek we saw more Eastern Bluebirds, several Great-crested Flycatchers, an Eastern Phoebe, Red-winged Blackbirds, Brown-headed Cowbirds, the aforementioned Grebes, and a pair of Common Moorhens, but nary a stork. Nor an Osprey for that matter, but we had the excessive good fortune to have an Osprey nest in a palm tree behind the house next door, complete with young that plaintively cried out each morning as its parents harried it from the nest and into the air. Having booked it out the woods at the refuge and left the grass paths behind, we made another circuit of Ibis Pond in the hopes of finding a Wood Stork but only saw a couple more alligators, which apparently aid the nesting birds by eating predators like raccoons should they attempt to go for the nest. Or so the sign near the bench where we collapsed in a haze of citronella spray informed us. On the way out of the refuge, we did manage to see a male Painted Bunting at close range, which cheered our spirits greatly; they nest on the refuge and we’d been unable to flush one on the way in. I consider six new life birds to be a successful excursion, and I left happy; having to bark at some mating raccoons to get them off the path was just icing on the cake.

Overall, Hilton Head was a great place for wildlife sightings. In the lagoons around our housing development we saw several kinds of very large turtles, one of which we had to rescue from the middle of a road—Carolina Diamondback Terrapins, Eastern Mud Turtles, probably Chicken Turtles, and possibly Common Musk Turtles (I believe I saw the distinctive two lines on the head, but they dislike brackish water). We had Green Anoles around the house, and my partner startled a Five-lined Skink out of the bathroom when we visited Daufuskie Island on Thursday. During the boat ride over, we also spotted a couple of new birds—Royal Tern and what we are pretty sure was a White Pelican—and some familiar ones (Brown Pelican, Double-crested Cormorant, Least Tern, Forster’s Tern, Laughing Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Barn Swallow and Tree Swallow) in addition to several groups of Bottlenose Dolphins. We saw a whole flock of Black Vultures along the side of a road, with their white hands. Add to these the starfish, crabs, clams, and keyhole urchins we saw on the beach, plus the dead armadillos on the side of I-95 and the mystery snake we saw the heron eating behind our house, and it was quite the wildlife-filled vacation.

vacation : new life birds on Hilton Head