A second reminder: If you’ve taken some nice photos of birds and/or birders during The June Challenge, please email them to Becky Enneis at raenneis@yahoo.com for the slide show she’s assembling for the June Challenge party (which, by the way, will be held at 6 p.m. on Friday, July 1st).
In the last birding report I requested information on some hard-to-find birds:
Short-tailed Hawk: Pete Hosner reported a dark morph immature at the northeast corner of Bivens Arm lake on the 15th; and on the 19th a boatload o’ birders exploring Newnans Lake, namely Debbie Segal, Bob Knight, and John Hintermister, saw a dark morph being chased by Red-winged Blackbirds over the mouth of Prairie Creek (they didn’t see the Herring Gull that John Middleton photographed there on the 9th).
Cooper’s Hawk: Jonathan Mays recommended the Depot Park area, though he acknowledged that it was hit or miss. One was seen by several birders at Watermelon Pond on the 18th.
Pied-billed Grebe: Earlier in the month I checked the retention pond at the intersection of NE 35th Avenue and NE 4th Street (despite the address, it’s on 35th two blocks WEST of Main Street, at the SW corner of the intersection), but I found nothing. However on the 16th Ron Robinson called to tell me he was looking at a grebe in that very pond, so I went out and saw it. Then Will Sexton tried for it on the 17th and missed it, and I couldn’t find it on the 19th. Was it just passing through, does it hide in the willows lining the pond, or was it killed by one of the feral cats that a morally confused citizen is feeding there? Anyway, a few other places were suggested as well. Two were at Lake Lochloosa: Peter Polshek recommended the Burnt Island fishing pier area at the Lochloosa Conservation Area, while Jonathan Mays recommended the public boat ramp in the little community of Lochloosa on the east shore of the lake. John Dickinson said that he and Mike Manetz had seen several from the La Chua observation platform on the 14th. And on the 17th Danny Shehee sent me a photo of one that he’d taken in the canal at the southeast corner of Sweetwater Wetlands Park.
No reports of Gray Catbird, Wood Thrush, Hairy Woodpecker, Broad-winged Hawk, or Belted Kingfisher, but there are still eleven days left in The June Challenge. You can never tell what you’ll find if you go out. This morning Diane Reed went looking for June Challenge birds at Six-Mile Landing north of St. Augustine and found a Hudsonian Godwit! As the song says, it could happen to you. But only if you go out.
Our June 18th Burrowing Owl field trip was a great success. Thirty-seven birders turned out to see the owls. Michael Drummond and land manager Stephen Montgomery of the county’s Environmental Protection Department escorted us to the edge of the field in which most of the owls have their burrows. I was manning the gate by SW 250th Street, so I didn’t get to count the birds, but I heard that 10-11 were seen. There are two other nests not visible from where we were standing. Afterward several of us found some Orchard Orioles – an adult male, a first-year male, a female, and at least two recent fledglings – along 250th a little to the north. Then we walked into the Watermelon Pond Wildlife and Environmental Area and got a nice look at a singing Bachman’s Sparrow, not to mention Eastern Meadowlarks, an Eastern Kingbird, some American Kestrels, and (for a lucky few) a Northern Bobwhite. A small remainder of the group ended the morning at the Newberry Cemetery, where we found two Northern Flickers, one of them gorging on wild cherries. Marvin Smith of Valdosta, who with his friend Robert Emond made a two-hour drive to join us, sent me the photos of two owls and the male Orchard Oriole below. Thanks to Marvin for the photos, and thanks to Michael and Stephen for coordinating this annual visit to a restricted parcel of county-owned land. (It’s restricted, by the way, not only for the owls’ protection, but because cattle are allowed to graze the property to keep the grass short for the owls, and arrangements have to be made for the cattle to be moved into other fields for the duration of the field trip.)
I missed the best sighting of the day. I arrived in Newberry half an hour early and started down SW 250th Street. I was carefully watching the telephone lines and surrounding landscape for birds as I drove along. Ron Robinson was in his car a couple of hundred yards behind me, and as we passed Horseshoe Pond he saw a big Striped Skunk emerge from the vegetation on the east side of the road and cross over to the west side, behind my car but in front of his. I wasn’t looking in my rear-view mirror, so I missed it. I’ve only seen skunks twice in my life, and both looks were less than ideal, so I was very sorry to hear from Ron that I’d missed this one. We went back in hope of relocating it, but saw only its tracks.
Know what a congregation of Stingrays is called? Click the link to find out. (Thanks to Donny Griffin for sending this to me.) https://www.facebook.com/tampabaynews/videos/10154197536390409/
Speaking of stingrays, we saw a lot of them when we did the bird surveys at Seahorse Key, Snake Key, and North Key on the 10th. The Brown Pelicans, Double-crested Cormorants, and wading birds have not returned to Seahorse Key. Though decoys were set out in hopes of luring them back, they didn’t work, and all the nesting is on Snake Key, just as it was last year. Roseate Spoonbills and Reddish Egrets are nesting there, and probably 200 or so Magnificent Frigatebirds were roosting, but the day’s only really unusual find was a Prairie Warbler singing in the mangroves at North Key, far north of the usual nesting area for that subspecies.