Birding Berrien and Beyond

Grading Hoaries

2012-02-01T16:08:00.001-08:00

I was kind of figuring that with the snow melted that redpolls wouldn't really come into feeders that much this year so I was pretty surprised when the 2nd redpoll that flew into the Sarett feeders the other day was this Hoary. A few years ago there were a couple hundred redpolls using the feeders and while I was able to pull out a Greenland/Greater Redpoll that year I never saw a Hoary. This one was pretty easy, the 2nd whitest female Hoary I've ever seen.

Here's another view of the nasal feathering giving it a stub-billed appearance as well as the well-feathered legs which may be a supporting character for Hoaries. The bird is very frosty and has a lot of white coming in along the sides of the scapulars. It has one line of fairly well- defined flank streaking with a couple other less well-defined streaks as well.

The rump was white.

As was the undertail; this bird had the whitest undertail coverts I've ever seen (though was difficult to capture shooting through the glass at Sarett).

Here's the (presumably adult female) Hoary with a male Common.

For a little while the quite white Hoary was joined by a second Hoary (the bird on the left)

The second bird was in that harder to judge probable first winter plumage. It had somewhat more prominent flank streaking, but still very white in the ground color. It had some warm creamy tones in the face which are also indicative of a first winter bird.

It had one streak in the undertail, I never got a photo of the rump aside from the side view below.

Here's the adult Hoary having a go at the youngster (check out her pantaloons). They seemed to associate with each other when the 2nd bird was present.

Per the Sibley grading system for redpolls, I'd give the whiter bird a 6 for undertail and rump and a 4 or 5 for side streaking for a grade of 16 or 17. The other bird I would give a 5 for undertail streaking, and 4 for flank and a 4 or 5 for a glimpse at the rump for a total of 13 or 14. The caveat is that the grading system was developed more to look at variation than to discriminate species.

Trees don't really need their bark do they?

2012-01-29T16:16:00.000-08:00

Last week I was in Riverview Park and noticed a lot of bark around some of the tree bases. I was thinking they must have some disease to have such diffuse loss of bark, but was quite wrong. I heard a Hairy Woodpecker and was walking towards its calls when I noticed 2 Pileated woodpeckers working much more quietly and closely. They were going to town on the treebark.

Check out the Imperial Woodpecker style re-curved crown that the camera froze the female in.

It looks like she has un-moulted primaries from last year, and might be a 1st winter bird depending on how bright the eye color is (my computer's monitor is still on the fritz, I can't tell).

The male seems to have all black primaries and some color to his eye; he's a full adult.

Here's what I mean by extensive scaling...

I'll be curious to see if the trees seem somewhat stunted in their leaf-out. You'd think Pileated's couldn't possibly have home ranges big enough to routinely kill large trees and not eat themselves out of house and home.

Here's the Hairy Woodpecker (a year bird) that set me in their direction to begin with.

Falling behind

2012-01-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a chance to get many decent pics of late between weather, work, and a mal-functioning computer monitor that adds red speckles to all the black and teal streaks through all the white. I'm definitely guessing at the post-processing tweaks of the images.

Here's the Hoodie, still hanging out with the New Buffalo yuck ducks.

This Black Scoter flew by the pier earlier in the month.

This possibly injured Lesser Scaup got me the closest to getting a good shot of the wing stretching exercises they do.

Last week I found 2 Trumpeter Swans on Paw Paw Lake during the snow. Normally they hit Paw Paw in December but the delayed ice-up pushed that off to January.

They didn't impress the coot though, another member of the NB yuck duck club.

I've got more pics of the immature Glaucous x Great Blackback that eventually I'll probably get up, but just didn't feel like a technical post.

bu-bu-bu-bu-bwaaaaaah

2012-01-13T13:11:00.000-08:00

A drake Hooded Merganser joined the yuck duck flock at New Buffalo the other day. It was by far the closest I've ever been to one. I started tossing bread scraps at them. I didn't see the merg actually take any bread, but it did charge after mallards that got too close to it.

In the 50 degree January day it was doing some courtship displays (though there was no female at the time). It would start by stretching its neck up and down a few times.

Then it would do one of two things, either flare its crest to the side giving it a Bufflehead-like cotton tuft

Here's the reverse angle of the lemon-pucker pose

or it would rear back and utter a descending low-pitched grunting belching vocalization that I can best describe as bu-bu-bu-bu-bwaaaaaah. Its body would rachet forward with each bu until it reached the horizontal neutral position in time for the drawn out bwaaaaaaaaah note.

The mallards and Canada geese were remarkably unimpressed, though he seemed pretty proud of himself.

One last view of its narrow Mohawk.

natural habitat redpolls

2012-01-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I think today was the first time I've ever seen redpolls perched away from a feeder. Certainly it's the first time in the Lower Peninsula. I suppose given that these birds were 75 yards away from Sarett's feeders these hardly count, but since they haven't been seen recently at the feeders I was happy to find them.

I watched a group of a dozen small birds flush siskin-like off the ground into cover but without the siskin trills. A super-slow advance confirmed they were indeed my first solid year bird of 2012, a bird I missed last year (and possibly the year before too).

One of the males (possibly the above bird) was quite pink below, but it didn't come far enough into the open for a good shot. This pic of a female turned out surprisingly well given how deep the shadow was that it was settled in.

GBBG x GLGU and ???

2011-12-29T16:54:00.000-08:00

We had a couple interesting gulls this morning at Tiscornia, starting with a presumed adult hybrid between Great black-back and Glaucous. It's not pictured in many books, but is in the Howell and Dunn Gulls book. Basically it's a GBBG but with a white trailing edge to the primaries. For whatever reason I don't have a great close pic of a flying adult GBBG (though 2 posts ago has a marginal one), but suffice it to say it shouldn't have a completely white trailing edge. Tim had this bird back in mid-November (and got vastly better shots then) as well as yesterday. It was the first time I'd seen it.

Also on the beach this morning was this bird.

The size, whitish primaries, and perhaps the bi-colored bill certainly indicate significant Glaucous heritage. I've never seen a Nelson's Gull (GLGU x HEGU) with this white of primaries, though admittedly that's what Sibley shows. (Howell and Dunn jive more with my experience, showing 8 photos of first year presumed GLGU x HEGU and none have white primaries, though one shot of a 2nd cycle does). The fine dark markings in the wing coverts on the perched bird are really reminiscent of a GBBG. The pic of first cycle GLGU x GBBG in Howell and Dunn, however, shows these to be much more extensive (though they make the caveat in most of their discussions of the hybrids that they can all be variable and run through the spectrum of adult appearances).

It flew by the end of the pier a couple times.

This was a very large gull which we thought might support GBBG x GLGU for this bird too, though Brandon Holden has a shot of a really big Nelson's as well. The blotchiness of the underparts is displayed by Glaucous (though usually not this diffusely) in 2nd cycle birds. Given that Nelson's (GLGU x HEGU) is more likely I wonder if this is actually a 2nd cycle Nelson's. It's really frustrating to not be able to solidly age it, but with GLGU starting with a bi-colored bill and skipping the dirty brown bill altogether it's hard to fall back on the bill. Perhaps Tim's shots will show the back a little better to see what feather ages might be there.

270.

2011-12-28T13:48:00.000-08:00

As recently as a few years ago Tim and I considered 270 to be a nearly untouchable number for yearbirds in one county. At that time the record was in the mid 260's and 260 had only been reached a couple times. Well, that year Tim went ahead and reached 270, and has gone over that (actually way over that) in each successive year. Last year I ended at 268. Today we re-found the goshawk he photographed yesterday which in addition to being a county lifer was 270 for the year. It flew past us at Sarett displaying the heavily marked underparts, stovepipe tail, really broad secondaries, thick chest, and flight style really different from Coops. He managed a few shots of it as it disappeared through the trees, I just watched with bins. Unfortunately I don't even have any file photos of actual Goshawks, so will just pull out a few shots of Red-morph Goshawks, which are better known as Coops.

Here's a juvie red-morph gos from Tiscornia from the digiscoping days. Note the minimal eye stripe, lean Cooper's body, straight tail banding (Goshawks have irregularly edged bands), and terminal white tail edge.

Another red-morph from the dunes.

This one has the "hangman hood" which they sometimes exhibit (as described by Pete Dunne in Hawks in Flight). Note how on the Coop the belly streaking is narrow giving it a white-bellied look. The dark splotches on a legit Gos really stand out. This bird has the classic "Flying cross" wing shape of a Coop (though the tail is spread a little taking away from the complete effect).

it's still Count-week

2011-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

I missed the CBC this year, having asked for the wrong day off 2 1/2 months ago when we had to put in our requests. That being said, from Tim's description of yesterday, I didn't miss much.

In fact, we added a handful birds today than didn't appear yesterday. Unfortunately we were up on the dune preparing to leave when the best flew by, a male Harlequin Duck. It flew past the end of the pier, landed, and was gone by the time we got out to the end.

A young Glaucous Gull did pass by, also a Count-week bird.

We were actually able to chum it in with some bread, the first time that's been successful with a Glaucous Gull

While we were fairly satisfied with the first pass it made by the pier no one was going to argue if it decided to go by a few more times...

Ideally I would have stopped the aperture down a notch when it got into the brightest of the sun, but couldn't really pull off the thumb-focus even if that had occurred to me.

We saw several ages of Great Black-backed Gull. Here's a montage of a neatly-plumaged first year bird that was flying with a 3rd or 4th winter bird.

The solid dark bill of the above bird contrasts with the patterned bill of the next bird, probably a 2nd cycle bird with somewhat more ragged upperparts.

Here's a better shot of the 3rd or 4th cycle bird, nearly adult, but with slightly paler browner mantle than an adult would have, and the ring-bill that a lot of gulls display a year or so before they get full adult appearance.

Finally a montage of a distant adult.

the power of purple

2011-12-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

It's come up once or twice before here that first year sandpipers that have spent their entire life in the Arctic seem to pay people about as much attention as they would a caribou. This Purple Sandpiper was no different. We were walking off the jetty at New Buffalo when this bird flew towards us and landed at our feet.

It would use its feet to brace itself from sliding right into the water. I bet they have proportionately longer feet and toes than a lot of the calidrids that are just running around on sand.

The bird flitted over to the other side of the jetty and the lighting got a lot harder to deal with.

It followed the same game plan though, and just foraged along the edges paying me no attention whatsoever.

In this un-cropped shot (like basically all of these), its walking past on the rock I'm hunkered down on.

In the last shot it's easy to see the difference between the winter scapulars and the un-molted wing coverts that won't be turned over until spring (assuming the bird figures a way out of Lake Michigan).

the right white birds

2011-12-06T17:57:00.000-08:00

Year birds at last; after about a 3 week lull where I couldn't add anything new, yesterday turned things around. Tim found a Snowy Owl at New Buffalo which was good enough to stick around for me.

Here you can see the bird over Hannah's left shoulder on the far breakwall. She enjoyed the "Castle," i.e. the big granite blocks that should help make her more likely to be enthused for future Purple Sandpiper/Harlequin Duck searches.

Iceland Gull is the last "easy" bird that I was still missing and as it happens we had two of them yesterday. First, an adult at New Buffalo

While at rest it conceivably could be blown off as a Herring Gull, in flight the vastly reduced primary coloration is a lot more apparent. I forget what percentage of Iceland gulls have somewhat dark eyes, but certainly the paleness of the primaries is well outside of Thayer's range.

Here's a juvenile that flew past Tiscornia in the morning (and landed briefly on the beach). As compared with the juvenile Thayer's gull, it's paler overall without the darker secondaries.

Finally a hint at what's on the Snowy's menus; a Ring-billed Gull that's reduced to wings and the shoulder/breastbone girdle.

A touch of color

2011-12-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

I was so surprised to see a kestrel in nice light the other day that I completely blew a great chance at a decent shot. I still had the camera on heavy overcast settings and even with a lot of post-processing the pic's still not great.

At least it's not a shot of a Snowy garbage bag or a Snowy 5 gallon bucket or a Snowy random-flag-in-a-field like I thought about leading with. The Snowy Owl irruption hasn't hit Berrien despite some intense looking by a number of people.

The all white birds at Tiscornia so far have been Glaucous gulls.

Here's a first cycle bird.

This bird is 2nd (or probably more likely) 3rd cycle given the ring-bill, and some retained cloudy coloring on the underparts:

Finally an adult, which wasn't very interested in the bread we tossed at the flock trying to chum it in.

A black scoter has been hanging out close to the piers at times as well, hopefully I can catch it in nicer light somewhere along the way.

the easy Thayer's plumages

2011-11-21T17:57:00.000-08:00

Got out on the boat for a half day today. It wasn't quite calm enough to be able to find a lot of loons on the water; we had considerably more success chumming in the gull flocks. One contained an adult Thayer's Gull. It made a number of circles around the boat.

They average neater shorter bills and more head smudging than the Herrings.

The eye in full sun in the photos is flecked smoky gray, though appeared dark in the field.

The bird stood out most as being a white-winged gull on the underside of the wings.

Here's the famous Venetian blind pattern to the upper primaries. Per the books Kumlien's and Kumlien's-Thayers integrades generally do not have a completely black leading edge to P9, and most lack any black on P5. This one has more black on the leading edge of P9 than our Thayer's gull at Tiscornia this winter.

Juvenile/first winter plumaged birds are the other most common age group to see. Here's a first cycle Thayer's with a first cycle Great Black-backed at Tiscornia from a week or so ago.

Note again the small bill, as well as the primaries much paler than a Herring would show.

Again, Thayer's is a whitewing from the underside.

The first cycle bird also shows a Venetian blind pattern to the primaries to some extent.

The darker secondary bar is a good mark to separate Thayers from a dark Kumlien's.

Now the trick will be to try to find a 2nd and 3rd cycle Thayer's.

Black-headed Gull

2011-11-14T11:14:00.001-08:00

A Black-headed Gull was a nice surprise at Tiscornia for Tim, Rhoda, Warren Whaley, and myself this morning. Tim and I had more expected Black-headed to appear on one of those days when Bonaparte's are moving in flocks or, better yet, foraging in large numbers along the pier. This morning however, Tim saw one Bonaparte's. I saw one Bonaparte's. And then this bird.

From above the bird has a Bonaparte's wing pattern with a leading white triangle. The black under-primaries, however, are unique.

Here's what the bird looked like as it appeared in my scope flying towards me.

I could pick up some slight reddish at the bill base, and the black ear spot seemed finer than a Bonaparte's would be, but flying head-on I couldn't convince myself of the black primaries. In hindsight, I could have called it out immediately; adult Bonaparte's don't have reddish at the bill base (I'm gonna say I was thinking of Franklin's since they can show a reddish bill base this time of year).

It flew in with a Ring-billed (which briefly harassed it). The only other Black-headed that I've seen was an over-wintering bird along the Chicago lakefront. That bird, also an adult, was hanging out with Ring-billed's, so maybe they're not as tightly associated with Bonaparte's as we thought. They're certainly closer in size than one might expect.

still alive

2011-11-10T15:34:00.001-08:00

I swung by the New Buffalo area a couple days ago. While quickly scanning through the gulls in the howling wind I fairly quickly picked up the hybrid dark-mantled gull that's been kicked around as a Chandeleur Gull, Great Black-back x Herring, or who knows what.

We haven't seen it at Tiscornia this year and thought he might have joined Hughie. He hadn't.

There's always some semi-odd gulls in the New Buffalo flock (though with 300 Herring Gulls, simple probability says that 1% of them will be outliers). This first fall bird (no longer a juvie with first winter back plumage) is a lot more white-headed than the average first year HEGU.

If this bird was on the other side of Lake Michigan I bet a whole bunch of people would be desperately gripping for a Euro Herring Gull, especially if you compare it to a recently arrived juvenile Herring Gull in fresh dark plumage presumably from the high arctic.

From my extensive experience in chucking a gull book in the air and seeing what page it falls open to randomly for ID quality assurance purposes, Euro Herring Gull supposedly has a much whiter rump among other points.

This one looks pretty normal.

an actually red-throated Red-throat

2011-11-04T19:28:00.001-07:00

Despite seeing triple digit numbers of Red-throated Loons every year, I'd never had a good look at one in breeding (or near-breeding) plumage. This bird appeared off the pier a few days ago (the same day as the Arctic Tern in fact). A few white feathers are starting to appear in the face, and the bird is moulting all of its primaries (it can't actually fly at present). Pyle states that Red-throated Loon does indeed moult all of its flight feathers prior to its pre-basic moult into winter plumage, usually in staging areas away from the breeding grounds.

This is the more traditional look to Red-throated Loons. This bird was actually calling, it sounded more like a Caspian Tern than a Common Loon.

This Common Loon flew past the pier at close range. I'd never noticed the vent strap before.

A couple White-winged Scotors also made a close pass that day.

Finally a montage of a flyby White-winged Crossbill in Warren Dunes. It was the second day in a row I'd gone up into the dunes hoping for Goshawk or Golden Eagle and gotten a different year bird (Tundra Swan the day before).

warm Arctic air

2011-10-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

South winds bring Arctic Terns, who knew? I spent the morning at Tiscornia; I'd been home about 20 minutes when Tim called that he had an Arctic Tern. It was nice to have the bird at Tiscornia, it never really felt right to only have the bird at Three Oaks.

Unlike the Sabine's I whiffed on chasing earlier in the fall, Tim had the bird at water's edge when I arrived.

The white secondaries showed nicely in the sun.

At rest, the key points to separate it from Commons are the shorter bill, shorter legs, and more extensive dark cap. That being said, it would take a good look to call an Arctic at rest by itself.

You can somewhat compare the leg length at least with the Common in the background.

This is a photo that probably hasn't been taken many times in Michigan, Arctic on the left, Common in the middle, and Forster's on the right.

The trailing edge of the underwing has only a minimal gray trailing edge. About twice as much of the feather is a darker gray in Common Tern.

Another view of those white secondaries and the generous hood...

Twice it gagged up some mucus, I'm not sure if this is a common behaviour in medium terns or not.Check out how the wind is blowing it back, not even touching the ground.

Assuming the MBRC searchable database is up-to-date, this is the 20th state record and the 6th county record. The most recent Michigan record was the Three Oaks bird.

distant Pomarine shots

2011-10-29T19:48:00.000-07:00

and I do mean distant.

This jaeger appeared in front of me at Tiscornia attacking a gull. It gave up its press fairly quickly and flew past us. In the scope it was obviously different from the typical Parasitic's we see. It had a cream-colored head, as well as darkly barred axillaries with white ground color, rather than the warm brown that Parasitic typically exhibits. The flanks were much paler than the axillaries; Parasitic's flanks are usually similarly toned to the axillaries.

I started shooting pics, missing it flare its blunt tail for Tim and had my settings all wrong to boot (the sun had just come out), and by the time I had them adjusted properly, the bird was to the light house.

This is a zoom of the above shot. You can get a sense of the dark bill tip on the zoomed in view. They say in Olsen and Larssen that if you can see the dark tip at over 200m then you likely have a Pomarine. The bird's at about 600 yards here. The double white wing flash on the underside is visible here. Parasitics can sometimes have a suggestion of this, but not generally as prominent as here.

Pomarine is supposed to be more belly heavy than Parasitic. It's hard to say for sure on these pics, and honestly half my shots of Parasitic look belly more than breast heavy. The bird is far enough away that the dark brown on whitish barring gets averaged out to just lighter brown in these images...

I doubt these pics are diagnostic, especially given that it's a lighter bird than most juvenile Pomarines are supposed to be. (Here's likely a similar bird from Brandon Holden's site photographed on Lake Ontario). It's easy to forget that a bird at 60x through the scope in nice light is still pretty far away. This is about the 30th jaeger that Tim's had this fall, and somewhere in low double digits for me.

Raptors of Tiscornia

2011-10-24T18:29:00.000-07:00

October brings falcons to Tiscornia. Some years first year Peregrines will hang out for a bit, others they pass through. This year they haven't been all that regular, but one cut past the gulls, circled and then came right over the overlook dune as it came in for another pass. Hard to tell how serious it was as it already has a full crop.

The gulls gave it the same respect they would give a jaeger, all taking off, though they settled down into the water once they'd proved they could fly, rather than balling up high in the air for full jaeger defense mode.

Merlins, on the other hand, have been hanging out, with a bird or two seen on nearly every trip. When they cut over the beach after a passerine struggling in off the lake the leading edge of the gull flock lifts off, but just as quickly settle down when they realize it's just a merlin.

A redtail landed on a gazebo roof to consume some small mammalian prey. It didn't take long adn I couldn't quite tell what it had snatched.

Finally a fungi I'd never seen before, something called an Elegant Stinkhorn apparently, growing beside my mailbox.

an adult Parasitic

2011-10-11T18:52:00.000-07:00

Today's pelagic didn't turn up any review list birds, but we did eventually run into a jaeger that Tim spotted on the water. We slowly worked up to it and it made a couple passes around the boat.

The easiest ID feature is the medium length pointed central tail feather; we get probably 5-10x as many juvies as adults at Tiscornia, it almost feels like cheating to get a close adult.

The marbled face, breast, and belly pattern are winter features.

The clean brown underwing marks it as an adult; per the Olsen and Larsson Jaeger book 2- and 3-year-old birds will retain at least some juvie feathers.

Similar to the dark marbling of the underparts, the upperparts shows some white edging.

One more view of the rich underwing.

Phalarope slam

2011-10-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

There's a handful of relatively rare birds I've never seen in Michigan, though that I certainly expect to encounter eventually. One of these is Red Phalarope. Tim and I found 2 individuals well off shore earlier this week in the boat.

The birds are first fall birds moulting into winter plumage. This one retains some of the buffy coloring to the throat and face.

There is a difference in the underwing whiteness reported between Red and Red-necked Phalarope with Red being whiter. To me the flight style of the noticeably heavier Red was more distinctive to my eyes at least.

Note that the above bird is moulting its entire tail.

The other individual retained a lot less buffy in the throat and has less black in the cap.

The bird didn't exactly land gracefully. Here it's rolled its body past 90 degrees as it dives for some prospective appearing foam.

It would land by bouncing its breast into the water and skidding to a stop a la the murrelet.

At one point the bird landed amidst some Bonaparte's Gulls and Common Terns that were resting on the water. One of the Terns chased/followed it about for quite a while through the air.

Here's the previous posts from this fall if you want to compare the body and bill shape to Red-necked Phalaropes and Wilson's Phalaropes

Crushing white-rumped sandpipers

2011-10-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

The recent powerful NW wind system washed up some vegetation on the beach and seems to have caught White-rumps in mid-migration. Before this week I'd never seen a White-rumped Sandpiper at Tiscornia; this week there's been two. They were pretty tame. Most of these photos are barely cropped.

Note the primaries that extend well past the tail and the bill which is much finer than a Dunlin's.

It does have a row of gray winter scapulars coming in amidst the rufous and pale-edged juvenile scapulars.

In spring the bit of pinkish-red at the base of the lower mandible can be a fairly unique mark, in this fall juvie it's limited to the basal couple millimeters of the cutting (tomial) edge of the lower mandible.

This bird is an adult which Tim picked out on the beach from the end of the pier (and note that this nice lighting is from the dune side).

It has slightly more of the pinkish base to the lower mandible but you had to look really hard in perfect light to see it.

You can see the very worn wing coverts and primaries which apparently won't be moulted until it arrives in South America or wherever they winter.

This was by far the latest I've seen an adult, but this isn't a bird I've seen many times. It was a year bird and one that I missed entirely last year.

Run Nelson, run

2011-09-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

If it's fall in Berrien, that means Ammodramid time. Usually we can find a LeConte's or two at Tiscornia, but hadn't yet encountered Nelson's there. Earlier in the month we flushed a short-tailed sparrow with the round wings of an Ammodramid, but that lacked the pale rump and bright back braces in flight that the LeConte's show. It also had more facial patterning than the blank face of a LeConte's in flight.

The bird would typically run away mouse-like and sometimes pause at the base of a tuft of dune grass. A lot of people want to look at the color of the crown stripe, but the gray nape is much easier to see in the field.

It wasn't super-confiding so all the pics were shot manual focused through grass. This Lapland Longspur was a lot more cooperative.

I had a few warblers in the backyard, Black-and-white's come through well before leaf-out in the spring so it was nice to photograph one with a green, rather than gray, background.

BT Greens are common, but fun birds none-the-less.

the rarest phalarope

2011-09-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

There are very few records of Wilson's Phalarope along the lakeshore; my understanding is that Whitefish and the Indiana group have about one each in the last 30 years. You can understand our confusion then, when a medium sized shorebird with dark wings and a white rump appeared in front of us before Tim put a name to it earlier in the week.

Based on the gray body but pale edged retained juvenile wing coverts it looks to be in first winter plumage.

Dave Pavlik spotted this Whimbrel that flew past calling yesterday. It was a year bird that I was expecting to miss at this point.

Remarkably two Baird's sandpipers today were also year birds; these are most common the last week of August, but somehow have been avoiding me. I didn't think I would miss them, but it would be embarassing to have done so.

Fall empids

2011-09-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

What am I? The above composite and the next pic are the same individual from a week or 2 ago.

Silent fall empids are their very own special can of worms. Michael O'Brien wrote one of the best Empidonax ID articles I've come across, focusing on fall birds here. When this bird popped up my immediate impression was Yellow-bellied; its eye ring is medium prominent and it seemd fairly greenish (the Willow/Alder complex should be browner and have less of an eyering and Least usually has a stronger eye ring and colder tones). It's shot at a pretty high ISO in deep shade so I think a lot of the color is lost. In the backlit shot below the throat (except the part blown out by the sun) blends inot the face which would be a good point for Yellow-bellied. The pics do seem to show a grayish collar/nape. O'Brien's article, though makes point that Yellow-bellied and Acadian (which I'm basically discounting based on location and timing) are greenish throughout the upperparts. If the photo's accurate then that might be a point for Least.

Yellow-bellied has a longer primary projection than the very short primaries of Least. The pics are equivocal, though I think the top composite suggests a length more consistent with Yellow-bellied. Of course if I'd remembered (or noted) the primary length and/or the collar detail instead of utilizing the usual spray-away-with-the-camera-shutter -ID-confirmation-method I'd maybe be more confident on the ID. Maybe next time.

I'm pretty sure this next bird is a Least though.

It has a short bill, short primaries, strong eyering, and cold dark plumage, all of which make me fairly certain that this one is a Least.

No such problem with a Wilson's Warbler.

2 rednecks

2011-09-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

and I'm not including Tim...

Two Red-necked Phalaropes showed up at Tiscornia a couple days ago. Both were juveniles.

One of the birds had a single symmetrical gray winter scapular coming in on each side.

It's hard with single still shots to give a feel for how actively they were feeding in really choppy water. You could certainly see how these are pelagic birds. They barely paid the waves any heed at all.

Note the wall of water reflecting off the pier in the foreground.

They would frequently arch their necks over the oncoming wave to pick at surface items on the other side.

The water's dropped out from underneath the foreground bird. Its leg is protruding in the foam. You could almost believe it's standing on shore. It's in 18 feet of water though.

Buff is a cool color

2011-09-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

North winds in the first week of September is the best time of year for Buff-breasted Sandpiper in Berrien.

This juvenile was fairly tame, running right past us lying prone on the beach.

I like this next shot showing the feather contours on the bird.

They tend to be very active feeders on the beach, moving much quicker than they seem to do on sod farms. They're also not quite as tied to the wet sand as are most of the shorebirds, though this one did spend most of its time there. Photographing buff-breasted's with the SLR is a lot easier than trying to digiscope them.

It was the anti-hudwit in terms of wing pattern, plain on top and white underneath.

In flight it was darkish overall when above the horizon, its long slender wings gave it a pretty unique shape that caught my eye as it flew in.

This was the 3rd time I've had a Buffy at Tiscornia. Keeping an eye out for passerines turned up the 2nd Yellow-bellied Flycatcher and the 2nd Great-crested Flycatcher that I've had here (and first time in fall for each).

oops

2011-09-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

So, in the Hudsonian Godwit post, I mentioned a flock of about a dozen willets that flew by as I was with the family. I saw with the naked eye a flock of shorebirds with wing patterns and bright white rumps. Something about them made me run for the camera. They were flying away by the time I got on them with the viewfinder.

With 500 good pics of the Hudwit it took a few days to really examine this first series of pics. As I got them cropped though, the trail bird here stood out to me. It really doesn't have a strong wing pattern and has the tail of a Hudsonian.

I sent the pic to Tim to see if the time stamp matched a time stamp of the featured bird on the beach to see if this was a second Hudsonian. We-ell, he quickly pointed out that "dude, they're all hudwits."

What are you going to do. Here's another comparison of the original Hudwit with the willets. Yes, the godwit does have a bit of a wing pattern, but it also has the white rump stand out a lot stronger with the black, rather than gray, tail.

Furthermore, while in some lighting and angles the flying away Hudwits have fairly strong wingstripes, the white doesn't extend onto the secondaries.

Here's what a Common Tern thinks of my ID skills...

right and wrong terns

2011-09-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

I don't think I have any group of pics that I've labeled and re-labeled than medium sized terns. I went back to the beach with the family again yesterday. There were 2 avocets and a turnstone in addition to the more usual stuff, but terns are starting to accumulate.

This Common Tern allowed a close approach and is still in pretty full breeding plumage though the bare parts colors are starting to fade.

This next one is well into the moult, with a white forehead and some darker gray in the carpal bar area. It obviously has lost a lot of color from the bill.

Finally a juvenile Forster's Tern; they're easy with the big black cheek patch. He's kind of overexposed, the Commons are easier to photograph with their grayer breasts.

There is still some dark in the wings of the juvie Forster's at least.

Finally, a Black-bellied Plover that did a fly-by as well.

everyone likes beach toys

2011-08-28T17:00:00.001-07:00

Even juvie Black Terns. These ones are resting on one of plastic tubings that kids use to beat each other with in the water (maybe that's just my kids).

Black Terns don't plunge into the water, this one is flaring up to dip down for some surface item. This behaviour can be pretty helpful on those usual occasions when they're flying past a mile out from Tiscornia.

From beneath the birds don't look that black, this is a montage of 2 of Tim's shots.

HUGO the Hudwit

2011-08-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

I took the family to Tiscornia in the afternoon, went swimming with the kids, built a sand castle, saw a dozen or so Willets fly by. All in all a very pleasant afternoon. And I just happened to take bins and the camera too. You know, just in case. Just in case I was scanning up the beach and noticed a scope on a tripod and Tim a little ways farther photographing something. Just to be safe I wandered up to make sure they were just willets. They were. Except for the slightly heavier browner one with the longer bill.

A moulting adult Hudsonian Godwit had settled in with 4 juvie Willets, probably only the 5th one I've ever seen and my first at Tiscornia.

Note the remnants of barred brick underparts and a few winter gray coverts in the wings matching the winter back.

It was pretty tame.

I managed to restrict myself to less than 500 frames.

I liked the contrast between the thick black legs of the godwit and the thinner greener legs of the young Willets.

The bird was pretty striking in flight too.

back to the beach

2011-08-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should title it "back to birding." I've had 2 major projects that are really eating up my free time, re-doing a deck and another more bird-related one that isn't yet producing results (give it a month). In the last few days though I started getting back to Tiscornia. Nothing really to write home about, but good to be out again.

This Willet was semi-cooperative.

It's a relatively worn adult.

It seemed like it had darker underwings than I remembered.

The juvie Semi Sandpipers are starting to appear in their crisp plumage, there should be Baird's in another week. You know it's good photo light when a 3-4 inch tall bird casts a shadow that leaves the frame.

You can somewhat get a sense of the semi-palmation of the lifted left foot here.

Like the Willet, the sanderlings are also worn adults well into body moult but not really starting in on the wings yet.

Continuing to flip-flop between adults and juvies, here's a composite of a young Cliff Swallow. It doesn't have much color in the throat or face at all, and the rump is white rather than tan.

Finally a Question Mark butterfly, common enough around my house, but I don't recall seeing one at Tiscornia before.

the Crossley Guide

2011-08-01T19:12:00.001-07:00

With the fall waterbird migration due to start accelerating hopefully my schedule will allow me to get out a little more. Now's probably a good time to squeeze in one more book review:

I have to admit, my first impression flipping through this book was "wow." There are a ton of high quality photos. My next thought was disappointment that the book only covered Eastern birds. As I flipped farther through, while the coverage map shows a Peterson-like definition of the Eastern U.S., the book really covers any place north of Arizona/New Mexico and east of the Rocky Mountains. Black Rosy-finch and Timberline Sparrow are probably the first Westerners to get dropped, though a lot of more western birds with regular vagrancy potential (e.g. Lewis's Woodpecker, Varied Thrush, etc) and even a good number of the Rio Grande rarities (e.g. Crimson-collared Grosbeak, Varied Bunting) are included as well. I think every bird on the Michigan checklist (including White-collared Swift!) is included.

The plates are photo essays of various images photo-shopped together. Here's the book fully opened to the teal (again don't take my photo of the photo as representative of the photo quality, this is to show the lay-out).

Crossley has attempted to depict the birds in usual postures in their habitat. My wife was particularly impressed by this, saying that this book would have been very helpful when she was starting out before she realized how tied down a bird was to its habitat. Some of these are really excellent, for example the Nelson's sparrow is in exactly one of the grasses we have found them in here in Berrien. Similarly the Common Goldeneye, Common Merg, and Bufflehead plate could just as easily have been taken at Tiscornia. The Phoebe plate could be a pic of my in-laws garden where they nest. Usually the backgrounds complement the pictures; there's some light-houses behind some and even a rainbow behind frozen Niagara for the Glaucous Gull. Occasionally the backgrounds can be distracting however (the phoebe plate for example has a random gentleman looking at the camera - unless that's the author's father I would have photo-shopped him out). I'm not sure I would have put the Ovenbird in a shady backyard or the Orchard Oriole in suburbia, but this may just reflect differences between New Jersey and Michigan, and for every plate where a person might quibble somewhat, there's many more that really look bang-on for habitat.

The descriptions are short but generally good, including some pearls on finding Saw-whets or fall Connecticuts that I've not seen published before. They tend to be informal (describing anis as having a "whacking" big bill) though sometimes a bit over the top (do I need to read that a Swallow-tailed Kite could fit in the movie Avatar?). I think my reviewer when I was writing ID features for MBNH would have objected to me saying that Indigo Buntings "lack any purple tones," or that Eastern Meadowlarks "rarely" form roadside flocks in winter. In my experience, Indigo Buntings in some lights can have purple head gloss and if the roadsides are the only areas that have some exposed grass, then that's where the meadowlarks will gather (and I've made efforts to photograph the spread tail on these to try to make sure I'm not missing Westerns).

The Photo-shopping is generally very good, though initially when I was looking at the plates it took a little getting used to seeing birds in focus in multiple focal planes. Crossley writes in his intro that he tries to show all or nearly all plumages of a bird and indeed, there is a transitional plumage of late summer/early fall Black Tern that I hadn't seen photos of before. That being said, this book won't replace Sibley since there are plumages that aren't covered well. For example, there's an excellent photo of a juvenile Gull-billed Tern that led me to look over to the next plate, Sandwich Tern, to see what its juvie looks like. There isn't one pictured. Similarly, for Little Gull, there's no juvenile illustrated, and only a couple very distant shots of a full adult. Granted, sub-adults are what we encounter most frequently at Tiscornia, but I have seen both full juvie and full adult there as well.

I think I would have taken a somewhat different tack for the flight shots of the ducks. They really blend into the background. Crossley explains that he feels this is how things appear in real life. I would disagree. You generally see ducks flying either against the sky, or against the water. They don't spend a ton of time flying at an altitude with trees directly behind them, and if they are, then they're close enough to see well. I would have put more of the duck flight shots wing-on with a cleaner background. I like what he's done with shorebird flight shots, frequently the flock shape is pictured; these generally jive well with my experience of them, though I don't usually see 5 sanderling lined up perfectly in a row. I would have included more pics of the grassland birds, especially the Ammodramid sparrows, flying away. Some of this may have to do with the fact that the overwhelming majority of the (10,000??!!) images in the book are the author's own, very few are the work of other photographers. Soliciting a few more photos of specific species could have been helpful, to my eyes the 3 images of Baird's Sparrow are of the same individual.

In the frontpiece is about 14 pages of thumbnail sized pics of the regularly occurring birds that indexes to the full plates. A lot of these pics could have stood to be brightened.

Overall, though, this is an excellent and fun book. It is likely too big to be a field guide though. I think Crossley also could have departed slightly more often than he does from phylogenetic order to put more similar species together. He already departs from phylogenetic order since the rarities are grouped 2 or 4 to a page rather than having a full plate. Why not then make other subtle tweaks like re-ordering the swans to put Tundra and Trumpeter facing each other, move the mergansers to allow the eiders to face each other, etc?

I think that the person who will most benefit from it is a birder who is past the beginning stages who wants to look at a book at night to improve his/her pattern recognition; having the habitats behind the bird will certainly help this process to put a bird into context. There is, though, something for everyone. I would, for example, ask that whichever of the bird committee members who objected to my description of a putative Ross's goose's bill base as "irregularly vertical" to describe the close-up of the bird in the lower left hand corner.

I certainly enjoy flipping through the pages and if Crossley can help inspire my kids to pick up the hobby this book will be a real coup. Five-year-old Hazel immediately wanted to color some of the birds on the page I was looking at (and it isn't even a really super-colorful page either), but here's her interpretation of the Connecticut Warbler (I drew the outline for her):

A challenge for photographers would be to flip through their folders and see how many birds they could put together a plate for, might be fun to try on some cold February night...

How photos can lie

2011-07-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

The old mantra for rare birds is "photograph it or forget it," something that anyone who submits birds to committees or seasonal compilers is reminded of over and over. That being said, photos don't always tell the whole story. The next photo (a montage of 2 pics of the same bird Tim sent me a while ago taken I think in April 2010) is a good example. Which loon do you think it is?

The shape is obviously wrong for Common Loon. Red-throated is very common in migration here. This bird is transitioning into more adult plumage which throws off the appearance, but the neck seems much shorter and thicker than Red-throats display. A Pacific? The hallmark of Pacific loon in flight is a thick black strap at the base of the wings extending into the stern. I don't have a flight shot of Pacific (that should change this fall), but here's an old shot of the Portage Lake bird from Washtenaw showing the effect:

The mystery bird isn't a Pacific Loon. Comparing the mystery bird with more traditionally plumaged Red-throats we see that these birds also appear shorter necked as well.

Here's a comparison montage

The top row is Tim's loon sandwiched between my two. Below them are Sibley's drawings of Pacific on the left and Red-throated on the right (used seeking permission). Note how Sibley depicts a much longer necked bird with Red-throated, longer necked than the pics show. Does that mean that the shape of the mystery bird does in fact support Pacific? (Or that Sibley's drawings are off?) The answer is no to both questions. I would guess based on this that Sibley based his illustrations on field sketches of the birds in flight. In real life, with the bird in motion, Red-throated loons appear longer-necked than they do in the photographs, as they're depicted by Sibley. While freeze-frame photos of birds in flight are some of the pics I'm proudest of, they don't necessarily reflect what the bird looks like in real life in motion.

A change of pace

2011-07-02T17:36:00.001-07:00

Presenting, a new feature to this blog, Book Reviews! In a new marketing device, Princeton Press is sending free copies of some of their books to bloggers with the agreement we'll review them. I'll leave it for you to decide if that has affected my objectivity. That being said, I think that Liguori's Hawks at a Distance is an excellent book.

The introduction is well done overall, I think that one of his primary points is to emphasize shape rather than exact plumage marks since he points out that it's easy to get hung up in minutiae and apply field marks to ages or color morphs to which they do not apply. One of the follow-up concepts is to spend more time watching the bird with bins and less time with the scope. In the introduction I would have been more specific in the photography sub-section about how settings need to be tweaked for photography of distant raptors. Specifically, an image needs to be over-exposed to avoid the camera's computer from reducing the image to a black dot on a pretty medium blue field. Doing this requires some combination of increasing the ISO, reducing shutter speed, and lowering the F stop (the trade-offs of these being increased graininess, possibly decreased clarity, and decreased depth of field respectively).

The species focused upon are migrants, generally those expected regularly (or at least annually) at Eastern hawkwatches. Therefore, the species with full accounts are the 3 accipiters; the common Eastern buteos plus regular rarities Swainson's and Ferruginous; Harrier; the 3 common falcons plus Prairie; as well as Osprey, the 2 eagles and the 2 vultures. Gyrfalcon, Mississippi Kite, and California Condor (!) are treated more briefly with even briefer discussions of Short-tailed Hawk, Zone-tailed Hawk, White-tailed Hawk, White-tailed and Hook-billed Kite, and Caracara. Personally I would have liked a little more info on Short-tailed Hawk. If you're going to include Zone-tailed Hawk and Condor I'm not sure why you wouldn't throw in a little bit on Black-hawks as well. Since this book focuses on birds encountered at hawkwatches, I probably would have added additional shots of Short-eared Owl (there's one along with 2 Hawk Owl shots).

There are no illustrations of perched hawks.

The full-frame eye-candy shots that lead each section range from decent to stunning. Ironically while an excellent shot of Red-shouldered is the cover bird, the Red-shouldered image that leads the species account is to me clearly the weakest of this format. I was disappointed when I reached the Gyrfalcon section to find it missing the lead-off portrait like the swooping immature Goshawk or dramatic young Swainson's that lead their respective accounts.

The (usually) one page section of prose describing each species is well written and is far closer to the conversational style of Pete Dunne in the classic "Hawks in Flight" than the highly dry, densely technical flavor of Wheeler's "Raptors." It comes pre-highlighted with key points in bold. I found it interesting that he bold-faces (on page 25) that "the underside plumage is often not useful in identifying distant juvenile accipiters." Dunne, in Hawks in Flight (page 72) italicizes that "if an immature accipiter appears white below, it can safely be called a Cooper's" in his section summarizing accipiter separation.

The meat and potatoes of this book follow the one page description with plates featuring (usually) 6 photos per page of distant hawks in flight. Here's one of the 6 photos on one of the gyrfalcon plates (please don't take these photos I took of the photos to be illustrative of the photo quality in the book, rather examples of the style) that caught my eye as familiar:

The same photo is used in Wheeler's "Raptors," cropped very differently (his book is laid out 4 photos to the page):

Ligouri emphasizes that he wants to show the photographs as you would see the birds in the field through binoculars so isn't showing close-up views. That being said, I would have cropped them in by at least 10-20%, but I tend to over-crop my photos. This was the only photo that stood out to me as looking familiar. Over 95% of the (~550) color photos are Ligouri's own. I haven't studied every species account, but did look over a couple of them fairly closely. I am not very familiar with Goshawk, having seen only about 4 birds flying by briefly so I studied those plates fairly closely. It does definitely give a sense of a different bird, with much broader secondaries than a Coop and a much shorter hand than a buteo; the proof will be this fall if one jumps out at me more quickly. The Red-tailed Hawk section is the longest (expectedly so with the number of subspecies). In this section there are 6 shots of Eastern, 23 of Western, 27 of Harlan's, 4 of Kriders, and 18 unidentified to subspecies. The number of un-ID'd birds goes along with a lot of the cautions in the text that a lot of distant birds need to be left as Redtails. Many of the un-ID'd photos make general points about the substantial effects of lighting, age, or both, on appearance.

The final section of the book contains montage plates of hawks cruising and soaring to and fro from different angles, here's the Swainson's plate, you can compare it to the Swainson's photos from this spring.

I like this section a lot, it allows close comparison of subtle differences in shape among age classes of a species and just a good gestault of the bird. I would have liked to have seen Mississippi Kite included as well though.

Overall, this is an excellent book. The technological improvements in photography and printing made since Hawks in Flight was written 20+years ago allows the photos of Liguori's Hawks at a Distance book to blow the doors off of those in Hawks in Flight (not that the classic isn't still a good read or that Sibley's illustrations aren't still superb). At about $20 with tax I think this book is well worth the money to someone looking to spend time at hawkwatches, or someone who has spent reasonable amounts of time, but would like to improve their ability to pull out one of the rarer species.

Want another opinion and some more info on the book? Here's what Cory Gregory wrote about the book.

because why not

2011-06-20T06:33:00.001-07:00

Jon recently found a Blue Grosbeak in Cass Co which I went over to look at this morning since it was about 20 minutes and 5 turns from my house. I've seen it once before in the state (not counting the probable flyby at Tiscornia this spring) but only a handful of other times. It seemed worth a couple hours even if it wasn't needed on any lists if for nothing else other than to get a look at the habitat and to get my ear in (and hey, they're not ugly).

I arrived before sunrise and had to wait awhile for it to get light out. I was mostly digi-scoping the bird since it didn't want to come very close to the road.

The bird would usually sing at the top of the shorter trees (the smaller 20 footers twice as high as the sumac) or at the mid to three-quarters height of the full size oaks etc that lined the railroad cut.

The two-tone bill always stands out to me in real life (including in flight) if the bird's in the sun.

Here's the habitat, looking SE down the tracks,

and looking NE:

Basically it looks like a lot of cut-over edges, a little lusher than the edges of the dune blow-outs, and more heavy on full size oaks behind the regenerating stuff than a lot of the woodlots around here, but otherwise didn't seem that specific to me. I always maintained when I lived in Washtenaw that County Farm Park looked pretty good for this species, and it looked a lot like the RR cut leaving the NE corner of the Dow Field in the Arb as well. I certainly see why the Boy Scout Campground at Warren Dunes turned up a bird for Andre last year.

Here's a sonogram of the bird. It was definitely grosbeak-pitched, but had more of a house or purple finch cadence. There were a couple orioles singing (including a probable Orchard) which could cause temporary confusion.

Here's a comparison sonogram I made of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak a few years ago:

The phrases of the Blue Grosbeak are shorter than the Rose-breasted's and are not as musical (remember the more horizontal the line on the sonogram, the longer the bird is holding one pitch, so the sweeter the song). The increased vertical aspects of the Blue Grosbeak give it the more finch like tones.

You mean there's stuff other than birds?

2011-06-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

About once a year Tim will see a deer just swim out into the lake; earlier this spring was the first time I'd seen the phenomenon. A white-tail came sprinting down the water's edge, made a circle around the beach, and eventually headed for Wisconsin. Tim got the rest of the story from a fisherman later in the week, it swam back in after a while but was afraid of the city crew cleaning the beach and ultimately drowned.
At the other end of the circle of life is this nursing mother raccoon from Warren Dunes.

This Woodland Jumping Mouse was a life mammal earlier this spring, note the two-toned coloration. The very long tail is partially hidden under a leaf. When I would walk outside with it there it would jump about a foot in the air,

which is probably not a bad startle response given the 4 foot Black Rat Snake that may finally be denting my chipmunk population. It was the biggest snake I've ever seen in Michigan.

Finally, a Tiscornia White-crowned that never quite fit into a narrative from the spring as well.

no, he's Laughing at you

2011-06-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

especially when you still need Franklin's for the year. This 2nd calendar year Laughing Gull flew by Tiscornia a few days ago and landed on Silver.
Franklin's is much more common in this appearance, every other Laughing Gull I've had over here was a full adult, though Tim photo'd a juvenile last summer/fall. ID points at rest include the longer bill, somewhat ratty hood (though not all Franklin's have the real nice clean half hood) and the un-moulted ratty wing feathers; Franklin's moults its wing feathers twice a year. As it lifts off, the spreadwing is just plain dark, Franklin's would have white-tipped feathers with sub-basal white bands by now as well.

In full flight as it went by initially, it stood out as being darker than the typical ring-billeds with the darker mantle and partial hood. Franklin's has a different flight style though, and is more narrow-winged, this bird was Laughing from the get-go.

I'll bet if I told you I had a flock of large brown birds with long necks on the beach in the first week of June you'd think I had a whimbrels, but no.

This morning I walked out the "easy prairie" blowout in Warren Dunes at daybreak hoping to hear Kip's Bob-white. It was pretty windy though. A couple of the Prairies tee'd up distantly.

Finally a few tom Turkeys came out into nice light along the entrance road.

On the way home I picked up a Grasshopper Sparrow, the last easy bird of the year. Everything else will require either dedicated searching, or considerable time investment along the lakeshore.

Drama on the home front

2011-06-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

All spring I've been occasionally thinking that I've been hearing a Yellow-throated Warbler, not a very common yard bird in Michigan, though not inconceivable given some large sycamores in the river bottom and large white pines in the neighborhood. However, every time I would think I'd hear it, a migrant Tennessee or Nashville Warbler or a local Indigo Bunting (one of whose songs trends down in pitch through most of the song) would walk all over it. However, the Tennessees and Nashvilles are now far to the north and the buntings are paired up and singing a lot less and not even I could ignore the persistent tew, tew, tew, te-ew, te-eww, tew-wi any longer. I digi-flipped the bird through the scope and this shot is a still from the video.
Later while I was again trying to track down the warbler I saw a bird feeding another in the tulip tree. One was this Chipping Sparrow, and not surprisingly,

the other was this cowbird, the only thing that my yard Chipping Sparrows ever seem to raise.

Later in the evening I found the cowbird on the sidewalk, I guess a casualty of the plate glass windows or something; it also showed the sheathed, still-developing, tail feathers that the Mourning Dove I found at Tiscornia displayed.

Finally while looking up at them in the Tulip Tree originally, I noticed my tree making tulips, something I haven't seen it do before.

tracking them down

2011-06-02T17:30:00.001-07:00

The one advantage of being about 10 birds behind where I could be is that it leaves some focused birding in June.

Dickcissels have a lot of different songs. I saw one distantly perched up that had a very clear song. This bird I hunted down in the back side of some brush since its song was so much buzzier I wasn't totally convinced it was a Dickcissel. Interestingly the clearer sounding bird was much paler, the buzzy one was a lot brighter. I'm not sure if the differences are due to age or if this is one of those species that tries to sound very different from its neighbor (as opposed to Indigo Bunting which mimic the bluest male in the neighborhood).

I didn't need Worm-eating for the year, but one of the 2 I heard in Warren Dunes perched up better than I've had them before and I wasn't going to turn it down.

Summer Tanager was a year bird.

The female was following the male around, the opposite of how I think of most birds. Perhaps he was demonstrating all the nest sites. Per Kaufmann's Lives of North American Birds though, only the female builds the nest so who knows. She was actually more vocal with pitty-tucks than he was.

Finally Spiderwort, another of the showier wildflowers at present...

Eye of the egrets

2011-05-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

The SE winds that produced 90 degree temperatures and flocks of waxwings streaming (south) past Tiscornia also brought an invasion of egrets into Berrien Co. Mindy found this group of a half dozen Cattle Egrets outside of Bridgeman. They were in a range of breeding affects, this one in the middle with some warm color to the lores and bill base as well as a fairly striking red rim around the iris.

This one has pretty fully hormonal bare parts coloration,

in contrast to this bird which has virtually none.

A few miles away, Jon discovered another group of Cattle Egrets, which was ultimately found to contain a Snowy Egret as well, a county lifer for me.

The Snowy is the bird on the left, as evidenced by the black (longer) bill and different shape. It brought me to 236 for the year, almost 10 birds less than last year at this time, though most of those are findable in June. Tim on the other hand is considerably ahead of his pace from last year, so clearly I have some work to do.

Connecti-not

2011-05-26T17:51:00.001-07:00

For a mostly obscured bird in crappy light I'm actually pretty proud of this pic that I managed sharp focus through all the underbrush of a female Mourning warbler. It's far easier to ID the pic of the bird frozen than the rapidly moving, mostly hidden blur that we're presented with in real life.
The eyering isn't quite strong enough and the underparts are also way to yellow for a Connecticut.

Another mark between Connecticut and Mourning is that the undertail coverts extend very far out on Connecticut and are more average in Mourning.

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher is probably the last passerine migrant to peak, and probably second only to Whimbrel as the latest migrant. Yellow-bellied's were actually pretty apparent at Floral earlier this week, we had them singing both the classic Peterson uprising chu-wee, as well as the very Least-like kibbick.

Here's Yellow-bellied's in a couple different lights.

I'm going to try one more crack at Connecticut tomorrow, but if I miss it then (and miss it I will), I'm probably going without one this year

California gull

2011-05-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to do a decently researched post, but given that Tim had the bird again this morning for about 10 minutes I figured I'd put up pics so people know what they're looking for if they decide to come for it.

Virtually all the young RB Gulls haver dark eyes so that doesn't really stand out, the mantle is only marginally darker in some lights.
The black on the bill is narrower than most of the RBGU's and there is some red proximal to the black. The legs are yellow-green, the difference in the sunlight is more apparent than it is in the above pic.

It really blends in at rest.

The broad black tailband is the most obvious character, virtually no 3rd calendar year Herring gull or equivalently plumaged Ring-billed gull will match this solidly black tail (obviously excepting the new r2's).

p1 is growing in with an adult feather so there's just a narrow grayish window in the inner primaries whereas Herrings have a big patch of paler inner primaries.

For what it's worth, every California Gull I'v seen at Tiscornia (all 2 of them) walks with this odd posture with the head cocked back and the bill pointed down. I don't think I've ever read about this behavioural character so I don't know if it's real or not.

Finally a wing-on flight montage.

For a post showing aging of California Gull see here.

just another Swainson's Hawk

2011-05-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

SE winds found Tim and me atop the dune again. This time we only had to wait 15 minutes for a first spring Swainson's Hawk. This one is a little darker than the Swainson's a couple weeks ago. This bird appeared late in a kettle of 3 Broadwings that couldn't quite slip past Tim. Again note the pointed wings (with 4 emarginated primaries) with dark flight feathers. It was a size bigger than the Broadwings it was with.

First spring Broadwings were the most common hawk today.

Most (if not all) were missing a few feathers in the wings and usually the tail too.

First spring Redtails were the other hawk moving in decent numbers. Some are faded quite pale,

though not as pale as last month's Kriders (I found the upperwing shots):

Unlike the Swainson's, this Peregrine was a year bird.

Just in case you're sick of practically black-and-white hawk shots, here's a female Parula, the first that we've had at Tiscornia.

Now if only I could find a Connecticut Warbler...

mid-migration warblers

2011-05-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

The 3rd week of May is classically the peak week for warblers in Michigan (probably a little earlier for us in Berrien). Canada is frequently a quite desired bird. They have both a slow and a fast song, it'd be interesting to see with a sonogram if there's much difference between the two other than speed.
We're not quite to the point where the migration is completely and utterly dominated by redstarts, though we're getting close.

Chestnut-sided is one of the more dominant songs (excepting redstart and to a lesser extent Tennessee)...

Magnolia is very common too, though it's plainer song is easier lost in the background.

I've never picked out the song of an Orange-crowned, whether because they tend towards silence of if it's just that I don't hear it I'm not sure. This one threw me off a little and is much brighter yellow beneath than most that I see.

There's still a surprising number of the early warblers like BT Green, Palm, and Yellow-rumped however.

We'll see what kind of excitement this weekend's warmer weather and the end of the current stalled out north winds bring...

Birdathon 2011

2011-05-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

Another year, another Birdathon in the books. For the first time in 4 years we didn't have a record. Three years ago we continued after the wrap up for a Berrien county Big Day record, 2 years ago we had first state record Fish Crow, and last year we tallied 170 during the Birdathon period. Yesterday, well, we saw birds.
The night was very rough, a combination of an early start date (there aren't Chats or Sedge Wrens on territory yet) and a cool temperature after a few days of finally warming (no Chucky), and windiness (no rails) led to a poor nightbird tally though we did finally hear a Sora and see a Moorhen in the afternoon. We also forgot to look at the doppler radar after bailing on Jones/True road for our south county starting areas and didn't realize that a rainstorm was bearing up out of the south with the north county clear. After spending 40 minutes of prime dawn to get north of the rain, we did get into a lot more passerines than I expected at Sarett and Brown. Brown especially had good numbers of warblers, including good looks at Blackpoll, Cape May, and the first two tanagers pictured here.

Note that this one has a Western Tanager style colored upper wingbar, a variant you see now and then.

Once the rain got back to us (raining out Prothonotory) we headed back south. Ceruleans were quite active at Lakeside road. Sometimes very light rain or mistiness can be good for seeing canopy birds as they get pushed lower and this first spring (?) male was foraging on the guardrail.

Of course since it was dark and misty, camera settings get pushed way past the optimal ones so the pics are pretty grainy, but I think this was the first keeper image of Cerulean that I've obtained since the 1990's back when I used an old film camera coupled to a telescope that was even older than I was.

Tiscornia produced as usual. We had both Common and Forster's Tern sitting side-by-side at the beach, a distant Common Loon resting out on the water, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet to make it unanimous, and this Laughing Gull.

One other team reported a Franklin's Gull at Tiscornia. It is certainly possible that both birds were present (we had Franklin's a year ago to the day and one was seen yesterday at New Buffalo), ID points on this photographed bird include the longer heavier bill, long legs, and lack of white primary spots or white between the black and the gray of the primaries in flight (here's more on the differences).

We saw this tanager at one of our final stops, more of a Peachy rather than a Scarlet Tanager. My impression was that it was a first spring bird whose coloration wasn't that intense. Sibley shows an "orange variant" bird, implying that full adult males could be colored similarly. I'm not sure which this is.

One final grainly low-light shot of a Black-billed Cuckoo, also at our final stop, always a nice bird to see (we had a Yellow-billed fly by as well).

We ended over 150, better than I expected after the night birding and the rainy start.

A nemesis no more

2011-05-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the week I was on my way to Tiscornia when the cell phone rang. It was Tim so I knew that it was going to either be very good or very bad. It was a little bit of both since he said he'd photographed a flyby Lark Sparrow, but that there were White Pelicans off the beach. Ten minutes later the pelicans were half way to Kloch and I had a decent walk to catch up to them. There were 14 of them, a bird I've been expecting to see the last 3 springs with some concerted effort along the rivermouth where fisherman always seem to report them, but unsuccessful until now.
This morning at Tiscornia there was a Mockingbird, a bird that I have missed in the county before, but one I've found 3 times so far this year.

Then I saw a Brown Thrasher carrying nesting material on the other end of the park,

and had to circle back to take a lousy pic of a Catbird to finish off the mimic photo-slam.

Just watch us only get the catbird on Birdathon.

I realized as I was driving south that I was pacing oriole flocks and pulled over into one of the bluffside parks along Lakeshore. There were actually more southbound birds here than there had been at Tiscornia; perhaps concentrated more by the bluff.

Eventually I got down to Floral where there was more activity around the scout campground than there was on most of the trail itself. The tanager caught my eye before I'd even gotten out of the car.

A fine April morning

2011-05-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

I walked some of Grande Mere SP yesterday. A few Northern Waterthrushes were tinking along the swampy edges along with a Rusty Blackbird.
Some of the classic April migrants were much in evidence, the April thrush, a Hermit,

and the classic April warbler, the Yellow-rumped.

Black-and-white Warbler frequently appears on the last day of April...

Wait a second, what's that you say? It's May? I would have predicted more leaves and territorial birds. I guess it explains the female Kentucky at Floral this morning though. I had to shoot through some brush so the pics aren't as sharp as I'd like.

A first state (ABA?) record Bearded Tit was along the trail too:

I don't see any reason to actually look up what a Bearded Tit looks like, surely the name is self-explanatory right? I didn't see where the chickadee took its nesting material.

Eye candy

2011-05-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

While the cool weather has kept migration somewhat slow, it's also definitely slowed the trees down. I think they're 2-3 weeks behind where they were last year. But, it's certainly allowed better looks than are frequently allowed of what warblers there are.

BT Blue is always a crowd favorite,
as is Kentucky. This one walked up fairly close to the trail to forage from the dirt exposed by a wind-uprooted tree.

Bluewings' beee-bzzzzzzz is one of the easier songs. This one allowed me to walk past it on the trail after it bathed to get the sun on the right side of me.

Hooded's are back, but the lack of a canopy has them pretty quiet. I think they're not totally sure that they actually have a territory worth setting up on.

Nashvilles are probably the dominant migrant song right now. This one showed off its reddish cap fairly effectively.

Finally, a Pine Warbler. This is the second time I've badly over-exposed a spring Pine in nice light and not been able to fully recover the image afterward...

Swainson's and Krider's Hawks

2011-04-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

After about 5 years of hawk-watching attempts in the dunes, we hit ideal winds with remarkable results. After a couple days of north winds shutting down migration during which the big low pressure tornado system in the southeast caused a lot of westerly winds. Last night it turned around out of the southeast pushing birds northward at last. SE winds push the raptors up against the lakeshore concentrating them.

We'd only been up in the dunes an hour when this bird appeared:
It's a first spring Swainson's Hawk.

The bird stuck out even with binoculars. We both were watching it in the scopes when Tim made sure I was on the bird. The long narrow wings with a darker trailing edge to the underwing made it a pretty good Swainson's candidate. If a person depended on plumage though, it likely could have been passed off as a young redtail as the upperparts were a plainish brown and it still has a mostly juvenile head and neck pattern lacking the contrasting face and breast band. An adult would also have even darker flight feathers (see the difference several photos farther down this post between adult and first spring Broadwing).

While Swainson's was very much on our radar, I never expected to see the next bird in Berrien. The first instant it appeared in the bins the all white head made me think Mississippi Kite. The next instant the buteo shape came out; Ferruginous was the next thought in my mind, but it clearly lacked the rufous thigh V. Tim put the name to what it had to be, a Krider's Hawk:

You'll have to take my word that the the un-photographed back was a grayish brown, the tail grayish with a whiter base. The entire head was white however. The upperparts of the flight feathers showed paler contrasting sections in some of the un-moulted sections. ID points are the white head, white tail, lack of a belly band, and in the underwing very pale pantagial bars (the dark feathers on the inner part of the leading edge of the wing) and pale commas. If I read the book correctly, Wheeler (2003) considers Krider's to be the light morph of the Eastern redtail. Sibley says that it's always outnumbered by "normal" light morph birds without attempting to define it with a trinomial. Ligouri and Sullivan (2010) propose that it once was a distinctive subspecies of Redtail that is getting swamped by coming back into contact by the other subspecies. As I read Wheeler, I see that his winter range map puts the bird into southern Illinois and eastern Kentucky, so perhaps this bird should not be as uncommon in Michigan as I would have expected. That being said, I see that the Krider's is a MBRC review bird, but I find no records in the searchable data-base. Maybe they're just not being submitted, or perhaps since they're just a subspecies/form they haven't been put into the database.

Next is a more typical red-tail, again a first-spring bird:

Broad-wings are the species most associated with high spring migration in many birders' minds. I only clicked off 26 though; I would have predicted a much higher count on the day with a Swainson's. They were all ones and twos however, 25mpg SE winds (with faster gusts) probably prevented thermals and kettles from forming.

The differences between the adult and first spring Broad-winged is similar to Swainson's, note that the young bird in the next pic has retained juvenile facial pattern and much more muted patterning to the wings and tail...

Sharp-shins were the dominant species. Tim clicked off over 150, though some certainly slipped past us. It looks like I managed to delete the best sharpie pic in the editing process...

And for those of you who would like to return to the more typical May fare, here's a Swamp Sparrow in decent light.

Works Cited:
Ligouri J and BL Sullivan. A study of Krider's Redtailed Hawk. Birding 42(2): 38-45. 2010.

Wheeler BK. Raptors of Eastern North America. Princeton University Press. 2003.

Bitter(n)...Sweet

2011-04-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

Tim picked out this Bittern at Lincoln Twp Beach Park this morning, easily the best bird I've had in the county this year. It's only the 2nd I've seen in the county (the previous one Andre's from April 30th a few years ago), and probably only about the 6th I've seen/heard in my life at all.
It was nice to have a bird that would sit still and let me play around with exposure settings.

The sun was a little high to be really ideal though.
This Tree Swallow at Three Oaks was showing off its iridescence, though it was pretty hard to really capture. I should have tried a little harder to get some more light on the face.

If I can get a few more shots of Common Terns I may have a medium-sized tern post in me, but Caspians at least are an easy ID...

Finally, after a Black-throated Green "sparrow" yesterday foraging on the ground, here's a White-throated "warbler" in the Forest Lawn canopy.

With Wilson's Phalaropes, a decent year bird yesterday, and American Bittern, a good year bird today, we'll see if we can keep the momentum going tomorrow with some actual migration winds forecasted.

Black-throated Green Sparrow?

2011-04-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

The weather is finally turning, yesterday's birding was essentially rained out so I did some of the office work I had hanging over my head. Today was overcast with a few sprinkles here and there and I could finally spend a full day outside.

This BT Green warbler was a first on a couple fronts. I think it's probably the first time I've seen one forage on the ground (though with the trees barely even budding perhaps the may-apples are the closest thing it could find to canopy). I know it's the first time I've ever had my first of the year BT Green as a seen-only bird; usually the zee-zee-zee-zoo-zee floats down from the treetops first.
White-throated sparrows, on the other hand, are abundantly seen in the undergrowth.

I've always had trouble with processing my ruby-crowned photos, they always seem oversharpened. Maybe I just need a better image to start with.

Off course it's spring, so more flower pics, I think my best ever of Wild Ginger:

Marsh Marigolds are peaking at Floral too.

I tried getting some reflection shots, this one would have been better had it not included the two blossoms in the entire swamp that are past their prime:

Easter finches

2011-04-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

I had my first of the year Purple Finch on the feeder on Saturday while we were getting ready for Easter festivities. I took a little time-out to stand on the back porch and fire a few frames. Most years I see Purple Finch on the feeder in late March. Either they were late this year, missed my feeder with the first wave of birds, or I just haven't had time to notice them.
For some reason the white in front of the eye always stands out more to me in photos than it does in real life.

Goldfinches continued the Easter egg-colored bird theme.

My schedule will finally relent some later this week, hopefully enough to allow somewhat more regular posts...

it must be spring ...

2011-04-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

I write as it was practically snowing on the way home from work this evening. I did finally get over for the wagtail a day ago, a really lousy digi-scoped video grab is at the end, until then it's the expected migrants and flora of mid-April... I caught this kinglet as it reached for a tiny insect presumably, though for all I know it's searching for tree plankton. This Fox Sparrow is from Tiscornia

There was a Hermit Thrush on the sidewalk as I walked into the house tonight. This one's from Floral though.

The requisite shots of some of my favorite spring wildflowers, bloodroot,

Trout lily,

and Dutchman's Breetches

Finally the Wagtail. Tim got a flight shot that I think is pretty supportive of it being an alba White Wagtail, rather than the lugens Black-backed subspecies, based on the flight drawings in Sibley, but I could be wrong. My pic, on the other hand, is only about half a step past the I-guess-that's-not-a-Gray-Jay level of identification.

Yellow Wagwings

2011-04-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time in my schedule to chase the White Wagtail, but we did see a heck of a lot of flickers a few mornings ago. A good overnight SE wind with a lot of movement on the radar led to a lot of bird's reverse migrating along the lakeshore the following morning, headlined by close to 400 flickers. With that many birds surely one will be close enough for a pic right??? It was harder than I thought since woodpeckers' undulating flight leads to a lot of time with their wings folded as evidenced in this montage:

Flickers are easy to ID on the wing, other birds are harder, with different field marks in flight than perched. Shape and proportion plays a big role, but calls can help, like with these pipits,

or the bzzz of this Blue-gray Gnatcatcher,

or the seeee of these waxwings.

Other times you just have to look for the odd bird out of the flock, which frequently is a cowbird (see the leftmost bird in this group)

Sometimes, though the bird will take pity on us and land in the tree under which we're standing...

How bluebirds invented email...

2011-04-02T16:57:00.000-07:00

... during the Civil War no less. OK, so this one is going to be a bit of a stretch. I haven't had occasion to do a SORA search lately, but in my first walk into the river bottom this spring, I ran into a couple bluebirds. They were fairly cooperative, working the same opening that held a couple phoebes and assorted robins, creepers, and kinglets. I was a little surprised to see that they were both males foraging calmly without any territorial disputes. I tried to look up in the literature when bluebirds pair-bond. There were a couple of gems that came up in the search, one from the Wilson Journal (Alsop 1971) describing how a family of bluebirds got entirely too mingled with a feeding flock. One of the juvies tried begging from a Great-crested Flycatcher which promptly copulated with it. There was another one (Gower, 1936) that describes how an author in the 1860's had termed the structural blue layer of feathers "email" of all things.

There's actually a fair amount of bluebird research that's been published from Michigan. Benedict Pinkowski wrote a number of articles and short notes from a study area in Macomb in the 1970's. He found that the initial nesting period where eggs were laid was from April 6 to May 15. I guess these two aren't horribly behind, especially given that it's been cold enough that not a lot of stuff is singing. A Depression-era article from Illinois (Musselman, 1939), described how generally the bluebirds would time their breeding such that their eggs would be hatched prior to the return of House Wrens since the wrens apparently will pierce the eggs to try to free up a cavity for their own use. Years with cold snaps forcing the bluebirds to re-lay would lead to much less breeding success since more nests would then be able to be destroyed by wrens. Both eBird and Jon's recent 10 year review show essentially identical bargraphs for House Wren, numbers increase rapidly in the last half of April until they're pretty much back in force by the beginning of May. I hadn't realized that House Wrens had such a negative effect on Bluebirds, but a Wisconsin study of 2600 nests (Radunzel et al, 1997), found that House Wrens accounted for about 40% of the total nest failures in bluebirds, the same precent of the total failures attributable to cats and House Sparrows combined! Interestingly their study also found that bluebirds preferred to nest in standard bluebird boxes, but had higher fledging rates in open topped boxes since wrens avoided these.

The cardinals on the other hand are fully territorial. This one briefly popped up to some soft pishing.

as did this Fox Sparrow, though I only managed to improve my view from completely obstructed to mostly obstructed.

Works cited:

Alsop, FJ. Great Crested Flycatcher Observed Copulating with an Immature Eastern Bluebird. Wilson Bulletin: 83 (3) Jul-Sep, 1971.

Gower, C. The cause of blue color as found in the bluebird (Sialia sialis) and the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata). Auk: 53(2) Apr-Jun 1936.

Pinkowski, BC. Annual productivity and its measurement in a multi-brooded passerine, the Eastern Bluebird. Auk 96(3) Jul-Sep, 1979.

Musselman, TE. The effect of cold snaps up ont the nesting of the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis sialis). JFO 10(1) Jan, 1939.

Wuepper, JT. The Birds of Berrien County Michigan 10 year Summary 2000-2009. Berrien Birding Club. 2011.

Radunzel LA, DM Muschitz, VM Bauldry, and P Arcese. A long-term study of the breeding success of Eastern Bluebirds by year and cavity type. JFO 68 (1) winter 1997.

Slow beginnings

2011-03-31T00:22:00.001-07:00

Between consistent north winds and limited free time I've fallen fairly behind on posting. Most of the birds at Tiscornia have been way out over the lake though this Common Loon came in closer than most. With the northerly winds at least as many birds are going south as north, at least close to the pier.

There have been a few mornings with nice morning light. The car worked well as a blind at a local pond for these ruddies. I'd like to get out in the kayak on one of the Grand Mere lakes though I don't know that there's going to be time.

It feels like there's been fewer Horned Grebes about the piers, but maybe it's just the north winds slowing things down. They range pretty much from close to winter to close to breeding. Some are in the potentially confusing intermediate state.

I'm not sure if they can be aged at this time of year. There are some head shape differences between sexes in the winter, but I'm not sure how reliable they are once they start getting plumes. Presumably there's differences in the migration timing between sexes and age groups. It feels like the birds' molt is farther advanced this year than last, but perhaps I'm seeing adults now and more slowly molting younger birds are still to come.

Great goose round-up

2011-03-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

There's been some decent year birds around lately though I haven't had a ton of time to write a lot about them. The goal for a Berrien year lister is always to find as much stuff out of the way in the spring so that a minimum of birding time can be spent away from Tiscornia in the fall when there's greater rarity potential (not that I didn't probably have a distant Black-tailed Gull a couple weeks ago).

It took an hour and a half of walking though the Sarett pines with my head cricked back before I found a Long-eared; owls and geese are among the earliest migrants though this bird could have wintered. This was at least my 4th trip into the pines this year though.
Speaking of geese, we've had some decent SW winds in the last few weeks which makes it a lot easier to find White-fronted and Ross's types.

Three Ross's types have been seen at a farm pond along Buffalo Road. Ross's are no longer a review bird in Michigan fortunately. I wrote a post a few years ago showing a range of birds and how they were viewed by the committee. I think these would be accepted if this was back then. What they actually are, may be another matter. Personally I think all eastern Ross's have at least some Snow in them given the massive population expansion Ross's underwent at a time when Snow Geese were moving into new areas both on the wintering grounds and in the arctic. That's not to say they're not Ross's Geese, I just believe that what a Ross's Goose is has changed. The other post reviews the literature I was able to pull off SORA regarding this.

I was somewhat lucky that I was delayed in being able to chase the Ross's Geese. Had I gone first thing in the morning I wouldn't have heard about these Cackling Geese in a holding pond in Sodus from another birder. There's another similarly sized group out of the frame. Note the vertical foreheads, stubby bills, and smaller size than the Canada Goose in the foreground. In life they were also slighly grayer than the Canada, but that doesn't come out that well in this distant backlit pic.

The other advantage of driving after these Cacklers was that a Mockingbird perched up in a fruit tree on the way back.

Finally a distant through-the-fence shot of 3 White-fronts at 3 Oaks.

Florida sunset

2011-03-10T17:58:00.001-08:00

I remember when I was a kid seeing large numbers of White Ibis fly into mangrove roosts at Ding Darling way back in the day, but have never been that close to a roost or rookery (I understand the Gatorland park is excellent in this regard). However, as we were leaving the Animal Kingdom Disney resort, large numbers of White Ibis started settling into the trees along a little stream. There were enough of them to draw oohs and aahs from the general tourists.

This view looks like a composite image, but is really 3 birds landing in tandem.

Squabbling would break out when birds would settle within billshot...

Others with more room were calmer.

A nice fill flash would have been nice by the end though.

Zoo birds

2011-03-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

We spent one day at Disney's Animal Kingdom, somewhat of a hybrid between a zoo and a theme park. It was very crowded and follow's the Magic kingdom layout of a central hub and a bunch of small areas radiating off from there leading to a lot of congestion.

I was hoping to show the kids spoonbills on the trip, and lacking a chance to get out and show them wild ones, at least got to show them some captive individuals.

I think the Scarlet Macaws were their favorite; they're featured prominently on one of the Dora cartoon episodes.

It's easy to see why they're valued as pets.

This is a Lesser Flamingo (from Africa I think).

They had a show where they flew different birds over a little amphitheater which was well received. This is a sub-adult King Vulture.

A Harris hawk skimmed just over the heads of the crowd.

They didn't fly this Spectacled Owl, but brought it out at the end for people to walk up and look at.

Finally a shot of a blue-and-gold macaw taking flight...

Florida raptors

2011-03-04T13:25:00.000-08:00

I fell behind on blogposts while in Florida. We're back now after the kids' maiden voyages to Disney and I at least have material for a few more after this.

I only had one morning of actual birding aside from carrying bins and camera into the themeparks. I was hoping to find snail kite, but no such luck. My first spot for it had a couple eagles that were fairly acclimated to people at the boat launch.

At times they would call actively when another eagle would go by, sounding a lot like overgrown Herring gulls. I like the "Harley-Davidson" pose of the bird on the left:

I probably stayed too long at that kite-less spot but I didn't want to leave until the light was fully on the eagles.

A Red-shouldered Hawk tee'd up nicely on the way to my next spot; the Florida morph (subspecies?) is paler than ours is.

I was always a little slow on the draw the two times Caracaras flew past.

Black vultures were very common, though not quite as abundant as the TV's.

This was as close as I came to a Snail Kite:

Piles of old Apple Snail shells had washed up out of the lake in places. They weren't quite the size of apples, but the larger ones were certainly the size of large plums.

Birding Disney

2011-02-27T18:42:00.000-08:00

Well, the annual February conference is in Orlando this year so the kids are getting their first Disney experience. I didn't run into a ton of birds, (no Daffy Duck doesn't count), but the ones that are around are pretty tame. Like forget-head-and-shoulders-let's-try-ibis-iridology tame.
I'm not used to having plenty of light and am a little rusty in terms of rapidly adjusting camera settings to not blow out whites, etc...

The first cycle birds are easier subjects with less bright bright white.

The kids were pretty excited to see the birds just a few feet away.

Some of the Great Egrets are starting to get their breeding bare parts,

while others are in pretty full breeding plumage. If I had more time there's an attraction called Gatorland that apparently has a ton of long-legged waders, we'll see how time plays out...

This mockingbird was in the hedgerow next to the motel in nice evening light.

I totally should have had sweet Palm Warbler shots, but just way over-exposed them with the camera still on end-of-the-pier-overcast settings.

Shrikes and racket-tailed doves

2011-02-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

It may not be a Brown Shrike, but at least it's in Berrien, only my 4th in 6 years.
Brad Anderson located this shrike in the Sawyer area in December and saw it again more recently on about his 8th pass back through the area since then. It took me 6 tries (what else are you going to do in February?), but I found it eventually. I was prepared to give it 10 tries since shrikes on their (large) winter territories are iffy propositions. Ironically Ginger found one a mile from her parents' house too (the 2nd pic is also the Sawyer bird).

I found this Mourning Dove freshly dead at Tiscornia, my guess is a casualty to a Cooper's Hawk given it looked like it crashed down out of the air.

From the underside, the outer tail feather is about the inverse of a Collared Dove's. I thought the smooth gradation from the white outer tail tips through gray, ultimately to the black inner tail feather was interesting. I was surprised when I turned the bird over and spread the tail:

The central tail feathers were just strong shafts with a racket at the end. Amazing how a fairly unique feature can be essentially invisible in life. I'm a little surprised the bird didn't get named for this feature a la Red-bellied Woodpecker or Ring-necked Duck given the appearance in the hand.

Better than nothing

2011-02-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

The St Joseph Rivermouth is nearly frozen over; about a dozen goldeneye kept a small hole open, but if it doesn't warm up, the entire area will soon be a brick of ice. Lacking a better idea I drove south to see if the reported Trumpeter Swan in Niles was around. I found 4 Mutes instead of 3 Mutes and a Trumpeter. I tried walking up river away from the congregation of waterfowl and after a bit 2 young Bald Eagles flew down river in reasonable light. The good thing about eagles is that they don't have to be that close to still be full-frame. I chose the far bird to photograph.

I walked back down river which was had more passerines than I had expected, likely finding the air temperature next to the 32 degree still open water a little better than the 5 degrees that the car thermostat was recording. This cardinal was probably my best image of that species.

Some blue jays started alarming for some reason and a decent number of birds flew in and up out of some still berried trees, including this flicker.

I was surpised to see a sapsucker, an uncommon winter resident. The photo is pretty distant and over-cropped, so stealing a page from Jerry Jourdan's book, I touched it with the watercolor tool on the editing program...

Don't chase gulls

2011-01-27T11:32:00.000-08:00

I don't have many rules for birding. In fact I think I only have one. It's fairly simple. Dont. Chase. Gulls. They move around widely. They hunker down for hours on end. They're just not a high-yield chase, if there's such a thing at all. Unless someone calls and says they're looking at the bird, don't do it.

Slaty-backed Gull is pretty high on my want list and one has been showing up off and on in the extreme western Indiana lakefront. It was re-seen yesterday and since I finally had a day off that actually didn't still have work obligations I decided to once again put the rule to the test.

I went.
Yes those are semi-frozen goose turds. An Indiana birder said he'd actually seen it about 10 minutes before I arrived and about 200 yards out, harkening memories of finally being able to chase the Ivory gull in Leamington Ontario a few years and crossing paths with the last birder to see the bird coming off the beach as I walked out. An eagle had put all the birds up and he'd lost the Slaty-back when a bunch of geese flushed in front of him. I'd seen the geese fly from about a quarter mile away on the walk out.

The gulls were resting on the ice about 500-1000 yards away, mostly hunkered down with their heads in their scapulars. Occasionally one would pop its head up. There were about 10 dark-mantled gulls, all that were ID-able were Great Black-backed.

The bird arrowed on the left was a clear GBBG. The arrowed bird on the right had a mantle a shade subtly lighter, was a size smaller and seemed to have more white of the tertial skirt and more prominent white spots to the primary tips. There's a good chance it was the bird. It rarely popped its head up and never stretched its wings. It once suddenly flew without warning along with all the birds around it and was hard to pick out after a wingbeat or two as it wasn't all that dark underneath, which would be consistent with what Sibley points out about Slaty-backed. It had pink legs so it wasn't a Lesser, but still conceivably could have been a small GBBG. At the distance it was impossible to really see the face pattern though I note in photos of this bird it has less of the black around the eye that some have. I had hoped that the predicted snow would coincide with a wind shift that might push the birds in. No such luck, I left when the snow cut visability in half.

The only salvagable moment was when this Kumlien's gull flew by. With my naked eye I thought it was Thayers with the dark eye and decent amount of dark in the wing, but the camera reveals gray not blackish coloration in the primaries with the dark stopping at p6, what Howell and Dunn show to be close to the maximal allowable colaration for a Kumlien's.

Those who think Kumlien's is a hybrid swarm will point out that it's interesting that the bird with the upper limit of pigmentation on the wings would have a Thayer's like dark eye. I forget what the literature says about whether the 10% or so Kumlien's Icelands that have dark eyes also tend towards more coloration in the primaries or not.

Crystalline Commons and a fishy Crow

2011-01-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

With my group's additional contract, I've been working more hours this month than I ever have so I haven't been getting out a whole lot.

The bitter cold that's set in had nicely frosted the riverbottom this morning and the backlit iced limbs motivated me to target some of the feeder birds given the nice backgrounds.

With most of the overlooks frozen over I took a drive past Forest Lawn landfill about a week ago. There weren't many gulls, but I was surprised to see a (silent) crow a size smaller than all the other ones in the flock since my assumption is that the Forest Lawn Fish Crows would draw back down the Mississippi like the Illinois ones do (or to the Atlantic coast if somehow they're colonists from western New York)

A closer look, though, showed a bird that wasn't very glossy, though the lighting wasn't good. The bill looked pretty normal too (though there's probably some overlap in the bill).

I held on the bird until it flew..

... which shows p9 to be about the same length as P5 giving it a broad winged look, below is a file montage of an American in flight with the same proportions.

That can be compared with my only spreadwing Fish Crow shot, note the appearance of much pointier wings given that p5 (and probably p6 too) is much shorter in the smaller species:

A bunch of Rex Ryans

2011-01-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

Turkeys, that is.
This flock has been in the northern Scottdale area and were getting blown about as they attempted to claw down to the corn stubble with feathers fluffed up for warmth.

I spent a few hours, mainly in the pines at Sarett, but some time below the nature center where this Tree Sparrow perched up.

In the dark overcast I had to shoot at half my normal shutter speed between heartbeats.

A brief bit of sun a few mornings ago at Tiscornia made for some nice light, but the birds were south of the piers and weren't really coming over for decent shots. These goldeneye weren't really at an ideal angle but they were the best I managed.

Thayer's flight shots at last

2011-01-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

Since the day I took my first shots with the camera at the end of the pier I've been looking forward to getting flight shots of an adult Thayer's. Tim had seen a Thayer's in the last day or so at Tiscornia and he again picked it up at rest on the South Pier. We walked out the North Pier to try to get some shots. Aided by a loaf of bread, the gulls obliged.
About 20% of Kumlien's Iceland Gulls will have a dark eye, but they shouldn't have as nearly black of wingtips as this bird has. There's a very tiny black mark on P5 which most Thayer's will have (though 20% lack) which Kumlien's generally lacks. From what I can tell in Howell and Dunn and Olsen and Larssen many Thayer's will show just very slightly more black along the leading edge of P9 that connects the black of the tip with the black of the remainder of the feather which this bird just just barely does. I can't tell if P10 is older than the other feathers or if it's maybe just a little more faded since it's the most exposed with the bird at rest.

Just as the bird made its closest approach it checked up and stalled, probably considering a piece of bread. I would have totally over-exposed it if it kept going into the light though anyway.

A female Long-tailed Duck would forage pretty close to the pier at times.

This was the first Surf Scoter I've seen in at least a month if my memory serves, maybe longer. It's certainly the first adult male in a while. I've seen a few adult male White-winged lately, but the Blacks have all been female or first winter male types.

And for the year list, the Western Grebe made another pass by the pier while we were up on the dune, but headed severaly hundred yards out subsequently.

New Year's Birding

2011-01-01T16:31:00.000-08:00

New Year's birding kicked off with a Coop mantling over some prey item in a neighborhood yard. I made a quick U-turn and its mate flew past as well.

Tiscornia was relatively quiet. This flock of pintail flew south.

The last couple of days have been warm with south winds, a couple years ago a large number of Pintail were observed going back north in such conditions at a similar time of year, these were probably correcting themselves.

This Pine Warbler has been hanging out in the Sarett pines with a group of chickadees for the winter so far.

A few years ago I had one in December which the seasonal compiler for North American Birds apparently found un-convincing. From a year-listing standpoint this was probably the best bird of the day.

This is probably the same Snow Goose we had on the CBC, again in the periphery of a large Canada flock in the Scottdale plains area.

A drake Hooded Merg was displaying for 4 females in the New Buffalo harbor.

It would sometimes chase away male Mallards. With the backlighting you can see how much of the head is feathers.

A black-and-white CBC

2010-12-19T18:41:00.000-08:00

Today was the Berrien Springs CBC which just barely includes Tiscornia Beach.

The Western Grebe continued. It hung around the end of the pier all day, finally allowing some decent pics. Remember, the bill is the most important ID feature. Clark's Grebe in any season has a bright yellow bill without the dusky dark edging on the upper and lower edges. Also note how low the dark coloration is below the eye.
This Long-tailed Duck was around yesterday too. It made a few passes around the pier,

getting on top of us fairly quickly each time. This was a snapped off shot with the focus kicking in on the 2nd frame, remarkably fast for a flight shot. Here's a female coming in for a landing...

Continuing the theme of black-and-white birds, here's the Western with a Horned Grebe. I shot some HD video with my wife's latest toy, a point-and-shoot type video camera that she got for the kids' Christmas program during which I had to work. The video is here.

This is a combo of birds that can't be common many places in the east:Red-throated Loons are write-up birds for Michigan CBC's, but they're common in southern Lake Michigan in winter. There were at least 8 swimming in the river outflow, joined here again by the grebe.

We had four Bald Eagles appear to the north, two of them continued past while two others circled back north. The eagles seem to universally cut behind the dunes rather than following the beach over the piers.

Finally, not the rarest of birds, but 3 Mute Swans that flew past yesterday made a nicely composed photo at least:

Just in case you're thinking about heading out the pier to try to see some of the birds up close, note the 2-4 inches of ice caking every surface...

Cooper Socks

2010-12-17T17:51:00.000-08:00

It was a black-and-white theme at Tiscornia this morning with both a drake Long-tailed Duck and the Western Grebe appearing at the end of the pier. The grebe didn't stay long. Up the beach a Glaucous Gull joined a Great Black-backed. The two heavyweights hung out somewhat, re-settling within feet of each other when the flock circled farther up the beach.

Some Great Black-backed's can have fairly dark eyes, vaguely recalling Western Gull. Just for the sake of argument, Western would typically show a very heavy gony angle, and less of a white tip at the ends of P9 and P10.

In the afternoon the kids didn't want to take a nap so I took them out to look for shrikes expecting them to quickly fall asleep in the back seats. As anyone who has gone looking for shrikes could predict, I didn't find one. I did however find this Red-shouldered Hawk.

Some Juncos and Tree Sparrows were flying out of the little thicket which brought questions from Hazel and I explained that the little birds were probably worried that it was a Cooper's Hawk. Hazel then asked what a Cooper Sock was. This led to about 10 minutes of high comedy for the girls as they decided they were wearing Cooper's and Red-shouldered Socks.

Closing the book on Tiscornia

2010-12-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

With this morning's lakewatch both Tim and I ran out of reasonably expectable year birds at Tiscornia, Tim with the flyby Harlequin Duck and for me a distant Western Grebe.
The grebe swam past out beyond the breakers. I tried walking down the pier to get within a quarter mile of it but made too slow of progress on the ice-covered pier to cut it off.

The beards of icycles hanging off the slack cables made a nice effect, but not one that bodes well for the workers to recover their scaffolding, though perhaps the sheets of ice will hold itself up to some extent.

We'll see what the rest of the month brings, any year birds at Tiscornia now will be pretty good birds since Western Grebe was my most "likely" remaining bird there and it's on the review list.

Prior posts on Western vs Clark's grebe ID are here and here.

Thayer's ID isn't so hard...

2010-11-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

... when you have an actual Thayer's Gull. It's when you have a Herring Gull with a few Thayer's features, or Thayer's - Kumlien's intergradish stuff (and everyone draws that line differently)that it's harder. I spent a couple hours at New Buffalo yesterday after several Thayer's have been seen with the recent gull influx. The gull flock was smaller than I was used to and the birds were more skittish. Honestly I was getting pretty frustrated. I saw a couple adult birds that were together in the water, dark-eyed, small-billed, and feeding with much more active surface-picking action than the Herring Gulls that I had hopes for, but the white primary tips didn't strike me as particularly large and they didn't show me their spread wing. Eventually though this juvenile bird appeared.

Here's the bird in flight.
At rest it has noticeably paler primaries than the Herrings (compare it with the the 1st cycle Herring behind it) and a relatively thin bill. Thayer's Gulls on average have less moult from juvenile into first winter plumage, note that the Herring is whiter headed and has a lot more marbled gray feathers in the back because of this process. The tertials are also a paler medium brown than the Herrings and have patterning limited to the edges (as opposed to Kumlien's Iceland which has much more markings internally).

Another view of the Thayer's in flight. Even as juveniles they exhibit the "venetian blind" pattern in the primaries of dark leading edges to the primaries and pale trailing edges. Note the contrasting secondary bar (which is more prominent in some lighting angles than others); Kumlien's Iceland Gull has much less darker coloration in the secondaries (or tail).

Here's a distant comparison of the underwing with a 1st cycle Herring Gull on the left. The Herring has much less white in the underwing (though in bright light can look quite white as well).

Finally here's a tricky exercise, can you find 5 species of gull in this average at best photo? (This is definitely an example of knowing what the photo shows already makes it easier to see).

Our Thayer's is the gull near the middle. A first cycle Herring is in the foreground on the left (and a few more Herrings are scattered through the mass of Ring-billed's). The Parasitic Jaeger looking thing facing left in the water on the left is a 1st cycle Lesser Black-backed (this is probably not ID-able based on this photo alone), and close to the right side of the pic in amongst the Ring-billeds is a larger-billed bird with a spangled back, a 1st cycle Great Black-backed.

I'm dreaming of a ...

2010-11-26T11:21:00.000-08:00

... purple thanksgiving.

Yesterday I went out in the late morning when Tim had a Western Grebe swim past the pier at Tiscornia. It was gone by the time I arrived, though on the way out a purple sandpiper flushed off the pier in front of me, a nice consolation prize. It flew across to the South Pier and then flew back over and hunkered down into one of the cracks in the pier which is probably how I walked right up to it without seeing it initially.

It was pretty tame.

This bird is a juvenile based on the pale edgings to the wing coverts. Many believe that Purples that try to overwinter in the Great Lakes fail and so seeing an adult here is extremely rare.

There were also some loons off the end of the pier relatively close. I initially took this Red-throated to be an adult with some delayed molt given how gray the head and neck is, but looking at the relatively subtle (rather than bright) speckling on the back appears to be a juvenile bird with more gray on the neck than they average.

This Common Loon is a lot paler than they average, either a light juvenile or a faded adult that maybe never attained breeding plumage. In the field the bill was almost yellow tinged, though that doesn't com out in the pictures (but did make a person look twice at it).

This is the more common appearance for Commons:

Here was an average wave at Tiscornia this morning in the Westerlies.

Hopefully their scaffolding is rated for a ton of ice...

Gulls migrate

2010-11-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

For whatever reason (most significantly the number of non-breeding loafers seen in McDonald's parking lots), birders don't really think a lot about gull migration. There's well known time-tables for things like warblers, shorebirds, and ducks, but last year we really started noticing some significant gull movements among Ring-billed and Herring Gull at the end of November and early into December. Today large numbers of Ring-billed's were pushing down the lakeshore, pushed up against the beach by strong westerly winds.

Three times we saw kittiwakes a few hundred yards in front of the Ring-billed pushes.
The first glaucous gulls of the year were also mixed into these pushes.

This Black-backed Gull looking thing was in one of the flocks. Through bins it looked like a young Greater, but there's a couple things a little off about the bird.

It has a fairly strongly bi-colored bill which Greaters don't usually show to this extent, has a very limited tailband, and to our eyes narrower-based wings than the average Greater as well.

It might be simply a crisply-billed slender female 2nd cycle Greater, but we suspected it probably had some Herring gull genes in it.

Finally 2 record shots of the other two kittiwakes, first a montage of the first juvenile of the day,

followed by a distant shot of an adult:

The bird is past the south pier in this shot, probably about half a mile away. The paler inner primaries and proximal outer primaries bleeding into the trailing edge of the secondaries stood out more that we expected it to, though it helped also that it was the 4th time in about 3 days seeing the flight style. Tim got on the bird long before I did and has pics that are probably a quarter mile closer.

The New Buffalo workout

2010-11-22T18:03:00.000-08:00

If anyone's looking for a novel upper body workout, I've got one for you. Walk the New Buffalo jetty, while carrying optics and a three-year-old. Four-year-old Hazel was enthralled by the prospects of clambering over the rocks, Hannah not so much. I was hoping for a Purple Sandpiper, but when a duck swam out at a rest point I was pretty happy with a bonus Harlequin Duck. I've never missed Harlequin Duck in Berrien, but this was a year bird.
This duck (the darker less-patterned female on the left) was at Tiscornia this morning.

It appears to be a female Mallard x Black Duck hybrid. Males are pretty easy to identify, but this is the first time I've had a good look at a presumed female.

The bill has the pattern of a mallard, with the so called melting chocolate icing effect, but it's muted by the ground color of the bill being a Black Duck's dappled olive rather than the orange of a mallard.

The cap is much more contrastingly dark than a female mallard's (you can compare it to the top photo). It almost had some vague greenish tones in the dark overcast.

The scapulars and side pocket have a suggestion of patterning to them, but nothing like the female Mallard's.

For what it's worth, here's the speculum. I've never had a digital camera yet that didn't way over-blue violets or purples in nature; this photo shows the color bluer than it was in life. I don't have any file photos of the extent of white in the speculum of Mallard's, but it's a heck of a lot more than a Black Duck would have.

Given that we've got a car in the shop hopefully Purple Sand (and even Thayer's Gull) will come to me at Tiscornia, I'm not sure how many trips to New Buffalo will be in the works for the next week or two.

Chucking rocks at Kittiwakes

2010-11-20T14:02:00.000-08:00

It's been a good fall for kittiwakes in Indiana; about 25 were seen at Miller beach 2 days ago. Tim had good numbers of Bonaparte's fly by Tiscornia yesterday, but no kittiwake, and we had about a hundred Bonaparte's in our first hour this morning. They petered out, however, and after another hour and a half we were ready to go. The lighthouse construction had dislodged a chunk of concrete from the pier and we decided to do the obvious thing, chuck it in the lake (lest someone trip on it) and try to photograph the splash. Well we turned one way, decided the light was better to the south, and Tim was in his wind-up when a tight flock of Bonaparte's bore down practically on top of us. The rock clattered back onto the pier as a juvenile Kittiwake led the flock, sporting a characteristic bold black M and black nape mark.
The much larger bird stuck to the periphery of the flock rather than getting caught in the congested pack of smaller Bonaparte's.

The underwing doesn't show the same degree of contrast, from this view it looks like a grotesquely overgrown Bonaparte's. In powered flight it had similar wingbeats to the Bonaparte's. My only other sort-of-recent experience with a kittiwake was 5 years ago, also at Tiscornia, with a bird loafing over the river water. In more relaxed flight that bird displayed more of a Ring-billed Gull class jizz.

This Common Loon was pretty close to the pier, the water breaking over it made a nice effect in this pic.

Birds in the wind

2010-11-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

A significant proportion of our birds in Berrien relate to the wind. Earlier in the day the wind had less of a south component than it's seemed to be mainly stuck with the last several days and so we spent some time hawk-watching. While there was no goshawk, a young Golden Eagle did over-fly us. The lighting was pretty tough and the pic doesn't do the golden nape justice. It was quite pronounced in the scope.

A couple days ago there was one day of strong west wind as a wide storm front went through the midwest. I only had an hour that day at Tiscornia but 10 Franklin's gulls flew by in that time.

These 2 pics show 8 of the ten. They're farther out than the Franklin's this spring, but the ID features are still pretty easy to see, half hooded birds with relatively dark mantles with white between the gray of the upperwing and the black primary tips. The next day the winds turned around to the SE they've been stuck on and no more Franklins.

I went out and bought a couple more thistle socks earlier today since Siskens seem more common this year than in the last few years and a better than average redpoll year is forecasted. These 2 were on the seed that had been out all summer...

Not thayer's gulls

2010-11-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

This isn't a cave swallow either. Short-eared owls are moving through. Two flew over the beach at New Buffalo this afternoon.
I spent most of my time scoping the gull flock, there were probably 3000 gulls on the beach. I had 5 Lesser Black-backed's but nothing terribly exciting.

Some of the fresher juvie Herrings are thinner and darker-billed than most of the birds. In fresher plumage they also have the suggestion of pale tips to the primaries and so a person could think Thayer's. This bird was photographed last week, but it or one like it was present today.

The spreadwing with extensive dark on both the leading and trailing edges of the primaries argues pretty well for Herring though.

This bird flew past and had significantly reduced black in the wings, probably close in total amount to what a Thayer's would show, however, the black doesn't extend that far up the leading edge of the primaries the way a Thayer's would. The bill, eye, and head streaking show this bird to be in that 1% of Herrings mentioned by Sibley with much reduced black in the wing. Here's a file photo comparison of the amount of black usually seen in Herring Gull wings.

More fun with Merlins

2010-11-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

I've fallen a little behind on this blog, these photos are of a Merlin from last week. The big SW gales that brought the cave swallows blew down one of the snags the Merlins commonly used and knocked out half of the other main perch, so this bird wound up a little lower than they have been.

Here's a caption contest...

Obvious ones include:

1. Merlin power!

2. We fly the bird upside down

3. Waiter, do you have any more Swamp Sparrows? (we watched it beeline out over the lake to hook behind an incoming passerine, it swooped up and snatched it just like the previous bird did to the kinglet but this one didn't allow an escape. It carried the prey back, decapitated and ate it (we recovered the Swampie's head after the merlin flew off).

Another flight montage...

And the view if you were underneath that snag:

maybe it is a Chandeleur Gull

2010-10-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

I've been pooh-poohing this bird for at least 4 years now as having any Kelp Gull genes, believing Greater Black-backed to be the dark-mantled parent. Yesterday (a year to the day that I last featured it in a Tiscornia blog), the bird re-appeared at Tiscornia so Tim and I walked down after a bit to get some shots. It flew back and forth a few times so these are my first decent spread wing shots.

The bird, as usual, is in wing moult, with P7-10 retained from last year, P6 growing out, and P1-5 fresh. I think no more than a couple of secondaries are moulted, and obviously it's missing some inner rectrices as well. Note that on the outer retained primaries, the white tips of the feathers are essentially worn off.

Having pulled back up the Dittman and Cardiff paper describing the Herring x Kelp gull pairings in Louisiana's offshore Chandeleur Islands, the wing pattern does turn out to be pretty good for Chandeleur gull. Here's their description feather-for-feather with my feelings on this bird:

P10: black with a large square white mirror - yes, though maybe I wouldn't describe this bird's mirror as large

P9,8: black outer web and somewhat paler inner web - yes

P7: black outer web extending nearly to the base - yes

P6: black outer web extending partially up the feather, with the inner web dark gray and with a black subterminal band with a white tip - all those features present but this bird has a white pearl/crescent proximal to the subterminal band in addition

P5: dark gray with a black subterminal spot/bar, with a proximal white crescent above on the inner web and a large white tip - yes almost exactly, though a tiny amount of white in the pearl/crescent area is on the outer web too

P4-1: dark gray with a large white tip - this bird also has a small black subterminal band on the outer web of P4 and P3
Our bird has a little more white where Slaty-back has its "string of pearls" with some extra white on P6 and P5 for their description of a classic F1 Chandeleur gull, but overall that's pretty close, and a little more black spotting in P3 and P4, though Herrings certainly can be somewhat variable in how many of those feathers have black spotting too.

The 2nd flight shot does show the grey/green/yellow leg color which I still say sometimes looks pinkish in the webs in some lighting though Tim says I'm crazy (or need new glasses). Or both.

One of my biggest concerns about this bird in the past is that it does seem a little bigger than most Herring gulls, though in some of my pics it seems like it's longer but maybe leaner too. Since Kelp Gulls are smaller than Herring's I thought that would be a bit of a deal breaker, but perhaps not. Dittman and Cardiff say that Chandeleur gulls look about the same size as Herring gulls which the pics perhaps suggest.

Here's another of Tim's pics showing the size comparison as well.

So I guess the bottom line is that perhaps I am coming around to think of this as a Chandeleur Gull.

Just in case flight shots of black and white wings are giving you headaches, these Snow Buntings that swirled around us yesterday as well may be a bit of a relief on the eyes.

Cave swallows

2010-10-27T09:55:00.001-07:00

According to my spreadsheets, today is the 100th day this year I've visited Tiscornia, and it was a pretty exciting visit. Fall low pressure systems commonly pull Cave Swallows out of their post breeding dispersal from the plains well into the midwest, and we weren't surprised that the current powerful one is producing them. We thought our best chance might be after the winds settle somewhat later in the week. I had 3 appear in front of me not long after I arrived, on me as naked eye birds before I was ready. All I could see were buffy throats that bled into the breast through bins. About an hour later 2 more birds appeared. These 2 we picked up well to the north and tracked them as they came past. I knew after experiments earlier this summer that you have to manual focus swallows as they're too small and fast for the autofocus, but I didn't listen so my pics are poor at best. I think the left bird is identifiable. Tim manual focused and got sharp images. It was somewhat of a strange day. Cave swallows are more typically November birds in Michigan. This Short-eared Owl was the only real typical October bird.
The rest of the migration felt like September. The bulk of the ducks were teal and dabblers; blue-winged's usually peak around Labor Day but they were the most common duck today. We also had 10 shorebird species including things like Baird's that's usually much earlier. A golden plover was my 3rd yearbird of the morning.

I'd like to know what the trail high duck is behind this group of redhead and canvasback.

Surf scoter would be more likely than harlequin duck, but the bird's size in comparison to the redheads makes me think twice.

I only had to wait for one wave to make a big crash in front of the lighthouse. Any amount of effort probably would have netted a pic with the spray above the level of the lighthouse.
Let's just say it was windy.

A birds gotta eat

2010-10-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

The kinglet may have escaped the other day. This Winter Wren didn't.

A couple of the last few times I've been to Tiscornia the Merlin has been sitting up in its snag eating a passerine. I drove around this morning to use the car as a blind so that I could get some pics in the early morning light. The headless passerine appears to be a small brown bird with a short tail and some barring to the wings/flanks, I thought house wren initially but Tim pointed out Winter would be far more likely and looking at the pics full size on the computer I agree.
Falcons tend to pluck their prey...

... the feathers flew off in the stiff West breeze.

Sometimes it didn't have it anchored in its feet quite strongly enough, tugging it out of its own grip. It seemed odd to watch a raptor holding prey in its mouth.

I think this is probably a juvenile male based on the dorsal view (which I should have put up instead of this last photo) showing a bluish tinge to the upper back and that the tail bands on the upper tail are grayish, but per Pyle not all are age- and sex-able in fall. Wheeler wasn't terribly helpful in discriminating either.

Most years peregrines are much more likely to hang around Tiscornia, but this year they haven't been; perhaps that's why the merlin is sticking. The one-legged Piping Plover that's been hanging out a township to the south after originally being found in New Buffalo had better not come back any farther north...

Catch and release

2010-10-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

When I arrived at Tiscornia this morning the wind and water were so (almost disconcertingly) calm that you could hear the whuff of airflow through the feathers of a banking merlin. It made a couple sallies out over the lake and I locked on to it as it circled after a small passerine.
After a few circles and misses, it banked its wings and cut off its quarry, snatching it without the feather-scattering impact that Coops have when they ambush the feeders.

The merlin latched onto its prey with both feet, steadying it to deliver a the final blow

but dropped the bird as it apparently tried to re-position it and the quarry escaped...

The merlin flew back to its snag and the passerine flew straight for the first tree it could find, the one I was standing under at our overlook point, a Golden-crowned Kinglet.

The bird remained perched on the branch for the better part of 30 minutes, re-gathering its wits before disappearing over the edge of the dune, having somehow escaped me having to title this post Requiem for a Kinglet.

The winds had picked up and about 2500 ducks flew past over the ensuing 3 hours or so, most of them scaup, before a long storm front halted migration, though not before Tim spotted my long-awaited Tiscornia life Bald Eagle.

I'd seen an eagle once from the brick road into the park, but never from the park itself.

The right men's sparrows

2010-10-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

That's right. Plural. All hail Berrien (if not the Victors). Good thing I spent the second half of the Sparty game in a sparrow field we've been checking.

The evening light brought out some of the warm dark tones of Nelson's Sparrows, even if they're not quite as bright as they are in May.
I don't think this picture has been taken too many times in Michigan (I know Tim has done it before), two Nelson's in the same frame.

After a quiet morning at Tiscornia we walked another field that's been productive over the years, and had at least 3 LeConte's, much paler buffier birds.

We were surprised to have one of the LeConte's fly up into some of the brush as well as disappearing into denser grass in places as well.

As for the locations, we-ell, I'm not really at liberty to divulge... ...sorry.

The wrong man's sparrow

2010-10-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

It's October in Berrien, which means it's time to look for eponymonic ammodramids, LeConte's and Nelson's. This afternoon I walked a little weedy patch close my house during nappytime.

Lincoln's sparrow, with a warmly washed finely streaked breast, could vaguely suggest a LeConte's as it hikes itself up a weedstem, though not once you look at the face (or when it flies away).
The Lincoln's were fairly responsive to pished imitations of their call notes.

This not so Indigo Bunting was also not the sparrow I was looking for,

nor are the Yellow-rumps that are now dominating warbler migration.

A Cooper's flew in, took a shot at one of the sparrows and it was time to go.

Butterflies of Virginia

2010-09-29T00:23:00.000-07:00

We spent the weekend visiting in-laws near Virginia Beach. The birding was so-so, limited time coupled with bad lighting when I did get out meant that I didn't come away with bloggable images. Besides, one Royal Tern post per year is probably sufficient.

The butterflies in the woodlot behind Brent's house, though, were somewhat more cooperative than the Pine Warbler or Carolina Chickadees. Some of these butterflies can also be found in Michigan, though they were all pretty new to me.

These monarchs are actually from Tiscornia.

I always hope to find hairstreak butterflies, but end up seeing a lot of tailed blues in Michigan. The only other hairstreak I've seen was in Arizona, also a Gray Hairstreak.

Common Wood-nymphs in the south have a distinctive yellow patch to the leading edge of the wing.

This Pearly-eye has me somewhat puzzled.

Per Kaufman and Brock, I was in the range of Southern Pearly-eye, and this one does have yellow antennae like Southern should have, but the wings look much better for Northern Pearly-eye: perhaps an intergrade?

This is a Gemmed Satyr, a somewhat subtle species that I thought had worn off some of the hindwing, but that's just the way they're patterned.

Now we move onto skippers, I've probably got some of these ID's wrong, but here's my guesses, there may be some addendums in the future...

I'm going to go Clouded Skipper on this one. I have a dorsal view which isn't as nice a pic that I think makes Little Glassywing less likely (but still probably possible).

This one might be a Dun Skipper, but conceivably could be a faded version of whatever the above one really is.

I'm fairly confident this last one is a Sachem skipper.

Maybe some day I'll find a Seaside Sparrow, but it certainly wasn't this last trip.