From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report
Thanks to all who turned out on a cold and windy Saturday afternoon to march in favor of Paynes Prairie. About 300 people, including quite a few birders, gathered at First Magnitude Brewing, walked up Main Street, and spread out along the four corners of University and Main. Thanks, also, to those of you who called the members of the Subcommittee on Appropriations and urged them not to cut 51 jobs from the Park Service. This is all a lot of trouble and annoyance, I understand, but it seems to be the most effective way to keep our parks going until some perspective is restored to our state government (if it ever is). Our birding is largely dependent on the health of our State Park system, so these marches, letters, emails, petitions, and phone calls are crucially important.
Some nice birds have been seen in the past few days. A party of seven led by Chris Burney found a Henslow’s Sparrow and two Le Conte’s Sparrows in the field east of the Hague Dairy on the 27th. If you take the back way to the dairy, heading toward Alachua on US-441 and turning right onto County Road 25A right after the Deerhaven pond but before the Sunoco station, and then after a little less than a mile turning right onto NW 59th Drive, you’ll see the dairy on your left and a big open field on your right. The sparrows were in that field. It’s still dairy property, so please remember to sign in at the dairy office before you walk onto the field. The group also saw two Painted Buntings, a male and a female. All the birds seem to have been near the field’s edge, as Chris commented that they “flushed from field and perched in viney scrub.”
Even more exciting than the sparrows, Lloyd Davis photographed a drake Cinnamon Teal at La Chua on the 24th: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/24302381199/in/dateposted-public/ This is a species that has been recorded only three times previously in Alachua County: Dale Rice and Edward Mockford saw a drake at Lake Alice on March 8, 1953 (Lake Alice was really an excellent birding spot in the 50s; UF students should look up David O. Karraker’s Master’s thesis “The birds of Lake Alice” from 1953 in the Marston Science Library), one or two immatures were seen by many birders at the Dollar General retention pond from September 10th to the 18th or 20th, 2005 (photo), and one was seen by Adam Zions at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on November 24, 2013.
On the 26th Harrison Jones wrote, “I got what I believe to be a female Black-throated Blue in a large mixed-species flock in the parking lot at Sweetwater. The bird was foraging fairly high with the flock in the live oaks near where the pay station is located as you pull into the parking lot. Very nondescript with a marked dark cheek patch and the white wing patch.” As far as I can tell, this is only the ninth winter-season sighting for Black-throated Blue in Alachua County. If December sightings are assumed to involve lingering fall migrants, then it’s only the fourth winter record.
On the 24th Phil Laipis found some Rusty Blackbirds: “After the Dairy, I stopped at Walmart, and then Magnolia Parke to check for Rusty Blackbirds. I saw two in the SW corner of the swamp; probably more from the sounds. I had great looks at one, a female, but the camera was in the car, sigh. Saw them about 2:20, as I was giving up. Also, Red-headed Woodpecker and and two Hooded Mergansers in the E pond. Sedge Wrens and American Bittern at the Dairy, but no unexpected sparrows, except Vesper.”
My darling daughter made me this Christmas present, using a cutout of a generic shorebird with overlapping photos of Paynes Prairie behind it: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/24645607436/in/dateposted-public/ The text is from the final stanza of “Inversnaid” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite poets. The complete stanza could serve as a motto for the movement to protect Paynes Prairie and all State Parks: “What would the world be, once bereft / Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, / O let them be left, wildness and wet; / Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
I got a chuckle out of this Jonathan Mays photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmays/23699271853/
The ultralite-led Whooping Crane migrations have been terminated. This year’s will be the last: http://operationmigration.org/InTheField/2016/01/23/end-of-ultralight-guided-migration/ You can watch Joe Duff, co-founder and CEO of Operation Migration, discuss this on OM’s “Live Cam” tonight at 7:30: http://operationmigration.org/InTheField/2016/01/28/live-stream-presentation/