This Saturday is Alachua Audubon’s Backyard Birding Tour, which will allow you to explore six Gainesville yards that have been highly successful at attracting birds. Get some ideas for your own place! It’s all self-guided. Audubon members, including me, will be present at each place to point birds out, and the homeowners will be on hand to answer any practical questions. Here are the details: https://alachuaaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/yard-tour.pdf
Although a very few Northern Parulas spend the winter with us, arriving residents usually show up and start singing at some point between February 20th and March 1st. They’re on schedule this year, with four birds reported between the 18th and the 21st, including a singing male that Scott Robinson found at San Felasco Hammock on the 19th – and then TEN were reported on the 22nd. So they’re here. Usually Yellow-throated Warblers begin singing at the same time as Northern Parulas, but this year they started early: Adam and Gina Kent heard one at their place in SE Gainesville on February 3rd and 15th, Andy Kratter heard another near his home in SE Gainesville (a couple of miles south of Adam and Gina) on the 8th, and Alex Lamoreaux heard a third at Powers Park on the 15th. I’ve always wondered whether the Yellow-throated Warblers that nest here are the same ones that winter here, and this suggests that they might be.
There have been three sightings of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks in Alachua County this winter. One has been visiting Karen Brown’s NW Gainesville feeder since December 26th (still present February 22nd). Andy Kratter saw one at his place in SE Gainesville on February 20th and 21st. And Bubba Scales saw one at his birdbath in SE Gainesville on February 21st. There’s a possibility that the latter two sightings could involve the same bird, since Bubba lives about a mile WSW of Andy. This is about two months too early for the grosbeaks’ spring migration.
County Commissioner Mike Byerly got an excellent photo of our winter-resident Peregrine Falcon on the afternoon of the 13th: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/32062203704/in/dateposted-public/ I’d forgotten that he has a degree in zoology and did grad work in ecology, qualities I like to see in a County Commissioner! This Peregrine is a banded bird, and in addition to the metal USFWS band it wears a blue (or green) band on the other leg. Dalcio Dacol reported it to the Bird Banding Lab, but their database turned up nothing. The falcon was most recently seen on the 20th by Lloyd Davis.
If you were to ask the dogwoods, it’s spring. After a trip to La Chua on the 21st I’m inclined to agree. Wild plums, wild cherries, and sugarberries were leafing out, and any number of early spring wildflowers were in bloom. And lots of alligators were basking along the banks of the canal – I stopped counting at 125. In other parts of the state, Swallow-tailed Kites are showing up, so our first of the year should be along in the next week or so. And keep your eyes open for Short-tailed Hawks as well; they usually arrive on North Florida nesting grounds at about this time (though they haven’t actually been confirmed nesting in Alachua County yet).
Loonacy will be starting in three weeks. If you don’t know what Loonacy is, here are some details: http://fieldguide.blogs.gainesville.com/62/loon-migration-over-gainesville/
There are quite a number of proposals – and proposals is all they are, they haven’t been adopted – coming before the AOU Checklist Committee this year. Split Yellow-rumped Warbler into three species, split Willet into two, change the name of Ring-necked Duck to Ring-billed Duck, it’s a long list. The American Birding Association’s blog explains the proposals in two posts: Part One and Part Two.
A genealogically-minded cousin recently sent me a web page about a member of the Cellon family (pronounced SEE-lun), for whom San Felasco’s Cellon Creek is named. John Cellon was a Frenchman who established a 100-acre nursery “ten miles north of Gainesville” in the late 1830s. He lived there until his death in 1881 and was among the first to grow oranges in peninsular Florida. His son George moved to Dade County in 1900 and set up a nursery of his own, where he was the first person in North America to cultivate avocados and mangos. (The genealogical connection, in the unlikely event that you’re wondering, is that a sister of George’s married a Chesser, a distant cousin of mine.)
Remember the Backyard Birding Tour this Saturday!