From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report
We’ve got only two or three more weeks of neotropical birds like warblers, tanagers, cuckoos, thrushes, and buntings. Then, beginning around October 15th or 20th – about the time the first Yellow-rumped Warbler shows up – the transients will disappear and we’ll start looking for winter arrivals like sparrows, ducks, and the occasional western stray like Yellow-headed Blackbird and Dickcissel.
We’re already seeing changes of a more subtle kind. Veeries predominated in September, but now they’ll begin to give way to other thrushes: on the 29th Michael Drummond heard “many, many Swainson’s calling in the predawn hours this morning.” Early fall warblers like Cerulean, Louisiana Waterthrush, and Kentucky and Prothonotary Warblers are well south of us now, or soon will be, but Magnolia and Tennessee will become more abundant, and we’ll start to see Black-throated Greens and Bay-breasteds. A few Scarlet Tanagers have already been reported, and Keith Collingwood saw the season’s first Rose-breasted Grosbeak in his Melrose yard on the 29th. Anyway, we’ve got about two weeks of the fall migration left, three if we’re lucky.
A few winter birds are already here: on the 28th Bryan Tarbox saw one Marsh Wren at Bolen Bluff while John Anderson saw another at the US-441 observation deck; Adam Kent, Craig Faulhaber, and Ryan Butryn found the season’s first Eastern Phoebe at San Felasco Hammock (Progress Center entrance) on the 29th, as well as a Cliff Swallow and a female Painted Bunting; and on the 2nd Samuel Ewing photographed the fall’s first sparrow, a Savannah, by four days a new early record for Alachua County.
A few miscellaneous reports from the past week:
On the 25th Dean and Samuel Ewing birded Ring Park, and Samuel got a nice video of a female Black-throated Blue Warbler eating beautyberries.
On the 26th Mike Manetz and Jonathan Mays (who are to normal ears what the Hubble Space Telescope is to binoculars) walked the Cones Dike Trail in search of flycatchers and were rewarded with one calling Alder, two Empidonax that were either Alders or Willows but would not identify themselves by vocalizing, and one Least, which was photographed by Jonathan. They also tallied a dozen warbler species, including an amazing 55 Common Yellowthroats.
On the 29th Geoff Parks noticed that both Indigo Buntings and Painted Buntings were feeding on the coral bristlegrass in his NE Gainesville back yard. Does that give you any ideas? It should.
On the 30th Matt and Erin Kalinowski spotted a Merlin along the La Chua Trail.
On the 2nd Mike Manetz walked the Moonshine Creek Trail at San Felasco Hammock and saw 6 Swainson’s Thrushes, 5 Veeries, 5 Wood Thrushes, and 3 Gray-cheeked Thrushes. He saw only six warbler species, but that included 22 Ovenbirds.
According to the annual “winter finch forecast” published by Ron Pittaway of the Ontario Field Ornithologists, we won’t be seeing many irruptive birds this year – no Pine Siskins, no Purple Finches, no Red-breasted Nuthatches – because they’ve got plenty of chow up north: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/wf1314/
North Carolina biologists put a tracking device on an American Oystercatcher that had nested in the Cape Fear region, and over the course of five days in mid-September it migrated to Florida, crossing the northern peninsula from Amelia Island to Cedar Key (passing right over High Springs along the way). An American Oystercatcher appeared at Newnans Lake on September 18, 2000, the morning after Hurricane Gordon blew ashore at Cedar Key. We always assumed that the bird had been blown inland from the Gulf Coast, but the linked story suggests that it might well have been a migrating bird forced down by the storm.
Two or three people shared this video with me, which shows the bizarrely complicated structure of a hummingbird’s tongue: http://player.vimeo.com/video/68897592
Brush up on your fall wildflowers.
Remember that we’ve scheduled double field trips each of the next three weekends so you can take advantage of fall migration. This weekend we’ll be birding Powers Park and Palm Point/Lakeshore Drive with Barbara Shea on Saturday, then heading over to St. Augustine with John Hintermister on Sunday to look for Peregrine Falcons. Field trip schedule here.
Earlier this week Mike Manetz and I compiled the final results of Alachua County’s fall migration count held on September 21st. I think our birders set a new county record for numbers of individual warblers. I compared the numbers from our first fall migration count (1995) with those from this year. We had more warbler species that first year, 26, against 24 this year, but the count of individual warblers was higher this year by about 300. Two or three species always make up the bulk of what’s recorded: in 1995, Common Yellowthroat and Northern Parula accounted for 41% of all the warblers seen, while this year the same two species plus Ovenbird accounted for 51%. This year Common Yellowthroats alone made up 22% of our total. I put the 1995 vs. 2013 comparison in a table here. And the complete results:
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck 22
Wood Duck 42
Mottled Duck 13
Blue-winged Teal 8
Northern Bobwhite 7
Wild Turkey 12
Pied-billed Grebe 30
Wood Stork 11
Double-crested Cormorant 60
Anhinga 65
American Bittern 3
Great Blue Heron 40
Great Egret 95
Snowy Egret 35
Little Blue Heron 100
Tricolored Heron 22
Cattle Egret 501
Green Heron 23
White Ibis 164
Glossy Ibis 104
Black Vulture 225
Turkey Vulture 260
Osprey 6
Bald Eagle 30
Northern Harrier 3
Cooper’s Hawk 6
Red-shouldered Hawk 89
Broad-winged Hawk 1
Red-tailed Hawk 7
King Rail 2
Sora 5
Common Gallinule 40
Limpkin 6
Sandhill Crane 25
Killdeer 9
Spotted Sandpiper 2
Greater Yellowlegs 1
Lesser Yellowlegs 2
Least Sandpiper 12
Pectoral Sandpiper 15
Rock Pigeon 19
Eurasian Collared-Dove 7
White-winged Dove 8
Mourning Dove 204
Common Ground-Dove 14
Yellow-billed Cuckoo 10
Black-billed Cuckoo 1
Eastern Screech-Owl 3
Great Horned Owl 8
Barred Owl 28
Whip-poor-will 3
Chimney Swift 79
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 12
Belted Kingfisher 17
Red-headed Woodpecker 29
Red-bellied Woodpecker 251
Downy Woodpecker 172
Northern Flicker 1
Pileated Woodpecker 109
Merlin 3
American Kestrel 10
Eastern Wood-Pewee 12
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher 1
Acadian Flycatcher 74
Alder Flycatcher 2
Empidonax, sp. 19
Great Crested Flycatcher 1
Loggerhead Shrike 9
White-eyed Vireo 741
Yellow-throated Vireo 16
Red-eyed Vireo 297
Blue Jay 293
American Crow 310
Fish Crow 81
crow, sp. 7
Purple Martin 10
Tree Swallow 1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow 3
Barn Swallow 187
Carolina Chickadee 193
Tufted Titmouse 350
House Wren 1
Carolina Wren 466
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 360
Eastern Bluebird 49
Veery 63
Swainson’s Thrush 4
Gray Catbird 19
Brown Thrasher 49
Northern Mockingbird 103
European Starling 34
Ovenbird 137
Worm-eating Warbler 12
Louisiana Waterthrush 1
Northern Waterthrush 54
Golden-winged Warbler 2
Blue-winged Warbler 5
Black-and-white Warbler 29
Prothonotary Warbler 2
Tennessee Warbler 2
Kentucky Warbler 3
Common Yellowthroat 238
Hooded Warbler 27
American Redstart 86
Northern Parula 175
Magnolia Warbler 6
Blackburnian Warbler 3
Yellow Warbler 59
Chestnut-sided Warbler 13
Black-throated Blue Warbler 2
Palm Warbler 27
Pine Warbler 61
Yellow-throated Warbler 77
Prairie Warbler 61
Yellow-breasted Chat 1
Eastern Towhee 80
Bachman’s Sparrow 1
Summer Tanager 45
Scarlet Tanager 1
Northern Cardinal 698
Blue Grosbeak 38
Indigo Bunting 41
Painted Bunting 1
Bobolink 2
Red-winged Blackbird 370
Eastern Meadowlark 3
Common Grackle 144
Boat-tailed Grackle 315
Brown-headed Cowbird 135
Baltimore Oriole 2
House Finch 26
House Sparrow 34