From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report
Thoreau called it “the royal month of August,” and he was right. The stupendous clouds, the heat, the lushness of the greenery – and of course the birds. June and July begin migration with a trickle, but August opens up the floodgates. Shorebirds peak this month, and warblers, swallows, flycatchers, and other passerines will be on the move.
Speaking of warblers, Frank and Irina Goodwin saw two Yellow Warblers at La Chua on the 30th, the very day I sent out the last birding report – in which I complained that no one had seen any Yellow Warblers. On the 31st, John Hintermister found a very early Kentucky Warbler along the nature trail at Poe Springs Park, while Samuel Ewing had a Louisiana Waterthrush at Loblolly. And today Barbara Woodmansee hosted an American Redstart in the backyard water feature that she and her husband had just finished building; that’s only the second of the fall. Four days, four migrant warblers. That’s more like it.
On June 21st, the summer solstice, we enjoyed 14 hours and 3 minutes of daylight. Today we’ll have 30 minutes less. Birds are still singing, but only occasionally. I still hear Northern Cardinals every day, but Great Crested Flycatchers, Brown Thrashers, and Carolina Chickadees, though still around, aren’t singing much.
I watched a very enjoyable online documentary this morning called “Counting on Birds,” in which the host goes along on Christmas Bird Counts in New Hampshire, Maine, and Ecuador, as well as the “Cuba Bird Survey.” I most enjoyed the the first twenty minutes, which take place in New Hampshire. The host does get the history of the Christmas Bird Count a little bit wrong. It didn’t “start out as a killing game.” The “side hunts” that Frank Chapman cited when he proposed the Christmas census in Bird-Lore magazine had mostly faded into the past by 1900, so there was no need for him to put an end to them, as the host declares he did. You can read Chapman’s original CBC proposal – its brevity so out of proportion to its significance – here. And you can watch “Counting on Birds” here: http://video.nhptv.org/video/2365128454/
Speaking of the Cuba Bird Survey, Daytona Beach’s Halifax River Audubon Society will be participating this year, from December 1-12. The trip will cost about $5,000 with air fare. For more details click here (download it for better graphics).
The Ewing family just returned from a sixteen-state summer vacation during which, Samuel informs me, he got 48 life birds. He posted a very nice gallery of photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/121511542@N02/
We’re beginning to fill in the field trip schedule on the Alachua Audubon web site. We’re up to early November at this point, so feel free to take a look and start putting anything that interests you on your calendar: https://alachuaaudubon.org/classes-field-trips/