When I go birding with Mike Manetz and Jonathan Mays, I feel like a not-too-smart seven year old who just can’t keep up – who can’t see anything they’re looking at, can’t hear anything they’re hearing, and who needs to have each bird pointed out to him. The words most often out of my mouth on these trips are, “Um … where are you seeing this? Could you point, please?”
That’s the way it was this morning, at the Tuscawilla Prairie. We arrived at 6:30 and stood under a starry sky as mosquitoes feasted on us, waiting for the first dim light that would send the American Woodcocks flying off the Prairie, back to the woodland thickets where they’d spend the daylight hours. At 7:00 Jonathan called Mike’s attention to a woodcock flying over – Mike’s 250th bird in Alachua County in 2012. Another one flew over five minutes later, which only Jonathan saw. I missed them both.
But it was a great morning. The mosquitoes dispersed after the sun came up, and we were left with blue skies and temperatures in the high 60s. We splashed around the trails in our rubber boots and saw 54 species of birds. A few migrant and summer species were still around – an American Redstart, a Blue Grosbeak, a Summer Tanager, a couple of dozen Indigo Buntings, fifteen or twenty Barn Swallows – but the winter birds had taken possession of the place: House, Marsh, and Sedge Wrens, Swamp, Savannah, and Song Sparrows, Palm and Orange-crowned Warblers, Eastern Phoebes, and our first American Robin of the fall (though Anne Kendall had one in her NW Gainesville yard on the 19th). There was one nice surprise. Jonathan heard a soft chuck-chuck sound that he recognized as a Yellow-breasted Chat, and we coaxed the bird into view for a few seconds. I think that’s the first chat I’ve ever seen outside of nesting season.
Here’s a picture from this morning’s trip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/8117478536/in/photostream
Mike found a good bird at the Hague Dairy on the 22nd: “There were about 450 cowbirds at the dairy this morning, and among them a Bronzed. I spent three hours squinting into the sun and chasing this flock back and forth between barns, behind the barns, and around to the driveway and back again. When they all flew and landed on a roof in horrible light I was about to give up. I turned around and saw about 20 cowbirds on a wire behind me in good light and there he was … larger than the other cowbirds around him, all black, including head, with much larger bill than the Brown-headeds. The eye showed dirty reddish. I watched it for about three minutes before it flew off to join the larger flock.” John Hintermister couldn’t find it this morning, but it may still be around.
Greg Hart of Alachua had a Red-breasted Nuthatch in his yard on the 21st, and the two in John Killian’s yard have been present now for four days.
Another irruptive species, Pine Siskin, may be headed this way too. New York birder Shaibal Mitra did a count of siskins flying over Long Island on the 20th and tallied 20,275 of them in five and a half hours. (Thanks to Pat Burns for forwarding that report.)
An adult male Rufous Hummingbird visited Bob Wallace’s farm south of Alachua on the 21st.
I was late in learning about the deaths of two distinguished members of Gainesville’s birding community. Dr. John William “Bill” Hardy was the Curator of Birds at the Florida Museum of Natural History from 1973 to 1995. He was also the founder of ARA Records, which produced the first collection of Florida bird vocalizations, “Sounds of Florida’s Birds.” That’s how I learned bird songs in the late 1980s, by popping the cassette version into the tape player whenever I had a sink full of dishes to wash. Here’s Hardy’s obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/gainesville/obituary.aspx?n=john-william-hardy&pid=160278607&fhid=6683#fbLoggedOut
Dr. Frank Mead was a founding member of the Alachua Audubon Society, and was the organization’s official photographer for many years. In March 1955, five years before Alachua Audubon came into existence, he photographed the county’s first-ever Black-headed Grosbeak, which showed up a few blocks east of the UF campus. Here’s Frank’s obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/gainesville/obituary.aspx?n=frank-waldreth-mead&pid=160454312&fhid=6683#fbLoggedOut