“The Messenger,” an important documentary on the conservation of songbirds, will be screened at The Hipp at 7:15 p.m. on Friday, February 12th. Make plans to see it. Here’s the web site, with a trailer: http://songbirdsos.com/ And here’s a five-minute segment of the film in which a researcher nets a Hooded Warbler that had been fitted out with a geolocator one year previously, removes the geolocator, and is able to see where the bird has spent the winter: http://songbirdsos.com/portfolio/bridget-stutchbury-retrieves-hooded-warbler/ It’s an amazing, amazing thing.
The Sandhill Cranes just got here – most arrived after January 1st and one southbound flock was seen as late as the 25th – but they’re already starting north again. On yesterday’s walk at Sweetwater Wetlands Park someone told me they’d seen northbound flocks this past weekend. Yesterday I saw a V-flock of 27 birds headed north over my NE Gainesville house at about lunchtime, and also yesterday, Steve Zoellner reported that he “saw and heard several flocks trying to group up and gain altitude (succeeding?) to head out.”
This morning Adam Kent heard his first singing Brown Thrasher of the spring. I heard my first Northern Mockingbird singing in Folkston, Georgia, two days ago; I haven’t heard one in Gainesville yet.
The three Pine Siskins that visited my feeders on Tuesday morning were one-day wonders. Almost one-hour wonders, because I didn’t see them again after late morning.
Mike Manetz found a Wilson’s Warbler in a blackberry tangle along the power line cut off Sparrow Alley this morning. That’s the fifth of the winter, I think, the others being at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens (Christmas Bird Count), Chapmans Pond (most recent report January 11th) and up to two at Cones Dike (most recent report January 31st).
This year I hope to finish a book on the birds of Alachua County considered from a historical perspective. Periodically I’ll use this birding report to ask questions about one species or another. For instance, where are the Rock Pigeon populations in Alachua County? I know there’s one at the Hague Dairy, I know there’s one at the UF Beef Teaching Unit (which may involve the same set of birds we see at the UF Vet School and around the VA Hospital), I know there’s one around the intersection of US-301 and State Road 24 in Waldo and another at I-75 and US-441 in Alachua. Where else? I’d be grateful for any information you can send me. Interestingly – to me, anyway – Rock Pigeon is a bird for which the county has no historical data at all. No one knows when it got here. Lists of the county’s breeding birds published in 1888, 1913, and 1936 did not mention it, and Christmas Bird Count data are useless because in 1950 Audubon Field Notes editor John W. Aldrich decreed that Rock Pigeons should not be counted on CBCs: “It is impossible to determine whether certain birds are wild or domestic, and since the distribution and abundance of this species is of so little interest to amateur and professional ornithologists, the best solution seems to be to ignore the Rock Dove completely in future counts.” Consequently they didn’t show up on the Gainesville CBC until this policy was discontinued in 1974. The earliest specimen in the museum is dated simply “1950”; the second-earliest are three dated simply “1952.” Pierce Brodkorb noted that he collected several “domestic” individuals – from the UF campus? from a farm? from a pet shop? – in 1954. So they were evidently in the county by the 50s and 60s. But where are they now, that’s what I want to know. If you know of a population somewhere in Alachua County, please send me an email. Thanks.
And remember to put “The Messenger” on your calendar!