Author: Rex Rowan

Here’s what a birder’s life is like:

After hearing from Jonathan Mays about the Caspian Tern, I ran down to Palm Point and sat for an hour with my spotting scope. Although it was beautifully quiet, there was no tern of any description. I went home. A couple of hours later I got a call from Jonathan. He and Peter Polshek were at Palm Point, looking at the Caspian Tern. So I drove back to Palm Point and spent about an hour and a half with Jonathan and Peter, and the Caspian never showed up again.

I’d been planning to go to La Chua at about 6:30 this evening, but I’d spent too much time NOT seeing the Caspian, so when I got back in my car at 7:15 I headed home and ate dinner instead of birding at La Chua. So of course I got this email from Jonathan a little while ago:

“Good evening on La Chua! Rained on my hike out but got to the platform to find Charlene Leonard and Will Sexton already there and having already nailed down some good stuff. They’d spotted the 2 Roseate Spoonbills and an adult Yellow-crowned Night Heron and I was able to get some photos. They also had a nice flock of shorebirds (48+ total, not counting Black-necked Stilts or Killdeer) pinned down for me, though they didn’t stay pinned for long. The rain picked up but I risked taking the camera out anyway … haven’t sorted through the images yet but we had minimum counts of 31 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 3 Least Sandpipers, 2 Lesser Yellowlegs, 1 Greater Yellowlegs, and 1 Dunlin. Our Dunlin was still mostly basic plumage and showed no black in the belly, or at least we didn’t see any, so perhaps a different bird than the one you all had last night? There were another 10-12 peeps that didn’t stay put and I never got to sort through them with the scope. Probably mostly (all) more Semipalmateds. Amazing.

“Just before leaving, Charlene spotted the Whooping Crane way the heck out on the opposite side of the lake. We walked back post-sunset and heard, then saw, a Barn Owl flying out west of the trail towards the 441 observation platform. About 5 minutes later we heard then saw a second come off the boardwalk railing. I got photos of the first, and maybe the second. We joked about seeing 2 Barns when we were really hunting you-all’s Great Horneds from the previous evening. Right about then we spotted another owl farther down on the railing … but larger and with ear tufts.”

Jonathan will be posting his photos from today, including a fantastic flight photo of the Caspian Tern, on his Flickr site, so have a look: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmays/

Jonathan Mays called at 1:00 to report a Caspian Tern at Newnans Lake. I had just driven away to run an errand (hint: it’s National Donut Day) when he called, and my wife only remembered now that he’d called. So get out there if you can.

Thanks to Stephen Montgomery, Michael Drummond, and Sandra Vardaman of the county’s Environmental Protection Department, we’re tentatively planning to see the Burrowing Owls at Watermelon Pond on June 18th this year, with a backup date of June 25th. Mark your calendar. I should add, for the benefit of photographers, that we view the owls from the fence line overlooking the field they nest in, so we’re not generally very close to them and top-quality photos probably won’t be possible unless one of the birds is sitting up on a nearby fencepost.

Yesterday evening Mike Manetz, Matt O’Sullivan, Peter Polshek, Cindy Boyd, and I walked out La Chua in hopes of seeing the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron and Roseate Spoonbill that Jonathan Mays had spotted on the evening of the 1st. We missed the night-heron, but we saw two spoonbills, the semi-resident Whooping Crane, and an Eastern Kingbird that’s been hanging around La Chua. We also saw a flight of 14 shorebirds, 13 of which were identical pale-gray “peeps,” probably Semipalmated Sandpipers. But the 14th, which flew apart from the main flock, was maybe half again larger, with a stocky build, a medium-long drooping bill, distinct white wing stripes, and legs that did not extend out beyond the tip of the tail. Matt caught a glimpse of a black belly patch. We all concluded that it was a Dunlin. I had just assured someone one or two days previously that Dunlins are never seen summering in Florida, and this one is nearly two months later than the latest spring-migrant Dunlin ever recorded in Alachua County. This is only the 23rd instance of Dunlin occurring in the county, and those seen after January 1st almost invariably leave in February or March; there’s only one April record. So this was a pretty big deal. Just before we got run off by a rainstorm, a flock of peeps – possibly the same ones – landed on the muddy margins of Alachua Lake, but we couldn’t find the larger bird among them. On the walk back to the cars, we spotted between two and four Great Horned Owls near the boardwalk. It might be worth going back out there at 6:30 this evening.

There were 26 of us in the Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve parking corral at 6:15. As we waited politely for everyone to finish signing their names to the release form, we could hear a Bachman’s Sparrow, one of our two target birds for this location, singing out beyond the informational sign. I thought, “Ha! So much for this being the unlucky *13th* June Challenge!” But of course by the time we walked through the gate the bird had fallen silent and would not respond to a taped song. It was the only one we heard while we were there, possibly because the property had been burned in mid-February and the vegetation is not yet profuse enough to offer good shelter for nesting. Or maybe because it was the 13th June Challenge. Our other target species for Longleaf was Common Nighthawk, and it was likewise elusive. Two or three were spotted by a couple of sharp-eyed birders, but all were distant and hard to locate in the light fog. We did manage to lure in three or four Brown-headed Nuthatches, which partly made up for our difficulty with the sparrow and the nighthawk.

From Longleaf we drove to the Windsor boat ramp to scope Newnans Lake. Again we missed one of our targets, Bald Eagle, but we found the other, Laughing Gull. We also saw a Least Bittern and a pair of Wood Ducks fly by. Our best birds of the morning, however, went unidentified: a flight of eight terns too far off to ID. They were probably Forster’s, but no details were visible apart from the all-white body and characteristic hunting style of splashing into the water.

We’d spent too much time at Longleaf, so we drove past Powers Park and went straight to Palm Point. We could have driven past that, too, because the only bird we added to our list was Yellow-throated Warbler. We did get better looks at the Laughing Gulls, however.

Our next stop – and the last stop for the sane ones among us – was the La Chua Trail. We missed Blue Grosbeak, Orchard Oriole, and Yellow-breasted Chat. A pair of Tree Swallows and two drake Blue-winged Teal had been lingering in the vicinity, but we didn’t see them. A Roseate Spoonbill had also been seen, but only a few of us noticed it as it flew west from Alachua Lake. We learned that Frank Goodwin had photographed a female Hooded Merganser (photo) at Gator Point (the last bend in the trail before the observation platform), but the glare was pretty bad by then and we were unable to relocate it. However when we got to the observation platform we did see some late shorebirds: a Lesser Yellowlegs and half a dozen peeps. It was late enough in the day that heat distortion made the peeps difficult to identify. I felt confident that one of them was a Semipalmated Sandpiper, but I couldn’t say anything beyond that. Peter Polshek thought that some of the peeps were larger than the others, but we were unable to come to an agreement on their ID. We had one remarkable sighting out there: a Black-crowned Night-Heron snatched a downy young Common Gallinule and gulped it down. I had no idea they did that.

The sane people went home at this point, but four insane people went on to Sweetwater Wetlands Park in hope that the Snail Kite was still around. The sightings board in the restroom area didn’t mention any Snail Kite being seen, but it did mention a Bobolink. (Does anyone know who saw that? It’s the second-latest ever seen in the county.) We spent an hour and a half looking for the Bobolink and the kite, but left with nothing added to our June Challenge lists but Limpkin.

This morning I was at Sweetwater Wetlands Park a little after it opened at seven. I walked the boardwalk in hope of seeing yesterday’s Bobolink, but no luck. I scanned Cell 2 in hope of seeing the Snail Kite. No luck again. So I headed to La Chua and was on the trail by eight. I scoped Alachua Lake from Gator Point in hope of seeing yesterday’s Hooded Merganser. My luck did not change. But things got a little better when I reached the observation platform. The Lesser Yellowlegs and three of the peeps were still there, and with the morning light and the absence of heat distortion I was able to see that Peter had been right, that two of the birds were Semipalmated Sandpipers but one of them was a Least. The two Blue-winged Teal were visible, unlike yesterday. I scanned for the Whooping Crane without success, but I did see 19 bison! Jonathan Mays came along and told me that he’d seen the Roseate Spoonbill the previous evening not very far from the platform, and a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron near Gator Point. We walked back together, seeing a late Tree Swallow flying with a Barn Swallow as we neared the barn, and then walking down Sparrow Alley to the powerline cut, along which we heard two Yellow-breasted Chats singing (and saw one). The chats were on the left, perched in a 15-foot cherry tree at the point where the large oak trees stop and the growth is mainly blackberry.

I’m heading back out to La Chua this evening with Mike Manetz in hope of seeing the Roseate Spoonbill and Yellow-crowned Night-Heron.

The Snail Kite was reported again this morning by Kathleen Coates of Tallahassee and Kathy Brown of Maryland. As will be obvious to those who’ve seen this bird or photographs of it, the subject line of my last birding report was incorrect. I assumed that the Snail Kite that visited us in March had returned, but the March bird was an adult male, while this one appears to be a female that’s at least a year old (it has a reddish iris, and immature birds of both sexes have a brown iris). So this is the county’s fifth ever. They’re getting to be a nuisance, aren’t they?

I made an inquiry about the Whooping Crane with the blue band that’s been hanging around Paynes Prairie since at least April 21st. Tim Dellinger of FWC replied: “The individual you saw is one of ~12 remaining birds in the Florida non-migratory population. This crane is a female and was hatched in Lake County in 2006 by captive reared cranes that had been released in central Florida in the 1990s. Since releases and research have stopped, the FWC monitors Whooping Cranes opportunistically and greatly appreciates sightings from the public.” Tim added that she is one of only three or four surviving individuals produced by a wild pair in Florida: “Yes indeed, a true Florida Whooping Crane. There’s another wild female that hangs out near Lake Kissimmee part of the year and Lake Okeechobee the other part; she was hatched in 2004. In 2009, a female fledged from a Lake Toho nest to the pasture behind the Lake Wales Cemetery, but we haven’t seen her in a while and she may be dead. Another crane fledged last year from Lake County and she is now in northern Marion County. Among all the Florida-fledged birds (around 14 over the years) all but a couple have been female. One Lake County pair continues to breed when conditions are right, they have produced at least one chick over the past few years and some have survived to fledging. Unfortunately since there are so few birds remaining they are often on their own or hanging out with Sandhills and most do not survive long. As a side note, I flew over the Lake Toho area this week and saw the mother of the bird you reported. She is 17 years old and now paired with a 16 year old male. Both have been productive in the past with other mates and hopefully they will produce a chick in the future. The oldest bird alive in the Florida non-migratory population was among the first released and she is 23 years old, hanging out on a ranch in Polk County.”

Birders don’t always pay close attention to nesting herons, egrets, or ibises, partly because we don’t want to disturb rookeries and partly because it’s very difficult to simultaneously make identifications and estimate numbers as the birds fly in and out. Maybe that’s why I can’t find any record of Glossy Ibises nesting in Alachua County more recently than a note written by the museum’s then-curator of birds, Oliver Austin, Jr., in 1967, “After a long absence the species appeared in the Lake Alice heronry in 1936, and Charles E. Doe collected 11 sets of eggs between April 23, and May 27. It last nested at Lake Alice in 1958, when five pairs were present. Some thirty pairs nested on Payne’s Prairie west of route 441 in April, 1965.” Nothing in the 51 years since then. Until, maybe, this year. On the 20th Mike Manetz wrote, “I was out at La Chua today and saw a Glossy Ibis carrying nesting material … appeared to be a stick or woody vine. I viewed it from just south of Old Sweetwater [the trail’s hairpin turn] and watched until it disappeared roughly in the direction of Sweetwater Wetlands.” On the 26th Mike was back at La Chua and again saw a Glossy carrying nesting material. There appears to be a very populous wading-bird rookery east of Sweetwater. Is anyone at FWC or Paynes Prairie monitoring it using Special Wildlife Observation Techniques™?

An Eastern Kingbird has been hanging around the La Chua observation platform for about a week. First noted by Adam and Gina Kent on May 24th, it’s been there ever since, calling, chasing other birds and being chased in turn. Typically Eastern Kingbirds are upland birds, so its odd to see one out in the middle of a freshwater marsh.

The 13th Annual June Challenge begins on Wednesday. The June Challenge, for those new to Alachua County birding, is a friendly competition in which individual contestants try to see as many species of birds in Alachua County as possible from June 1st to June 30th. Last year 46 Alachua County birders submitted lists, as did other birders from 23 other counties, mainly in Florida but including counties in Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and New York.

The ultimate purpose of the Challenge is to inspire birders to keep going through the heat of June – to have fun, to get out in the fresh air and sunshine and to see some beautiful birds – but there are other reasons to do it. In addition to the 100 or so breeding birds we expect here, very late spring migrants and very early fall migrants have been found in June, as have coastal strays like Sandwich Tern and Willet and unexpected wanderers like Fulvous Whistling-Duck, Reddish Egret, and Snail Kite. So there are discoveries to make – and not all of them are birds; June mornings can be beautiful and lively, full of butterflies and wildflowers, and much milder in temperature than you’d expect.

As with all contests, there are rules:

1. All birds must be seen within the boundaries of Alachua County between June 1st and June 30th. (You non-Alachua birders are challenged to participate within your own counties.)
   Each bird on your list must have been seen, not merely heard.
2. The question of whether this bird or that bird is “countable” toward your total has created some confusion. Any free-flying bird is countable for the purposes of the Challenge, but keep track of how many ABA-countable (“ABA” is American Birding Association, and here’s the list of countable species) and non-countable species are on your list. Report them in this format: Total number of species seen followed by parentheses containing (number that are ABA countable / number that are not), e.g., 115 (112 / 3). The Black Swans at the Duck Pond, for instance, would be on the “uncountable” part of your list. If you have any questions about a specific bird, ask me.
3. You’re competing with other Alachua County birders to see who can amass the longest individual list – BUT send me an email if you find something good so that I can alert the other contestants and they can go out and look for it. It is, after all, a friendly competition.
4. EMAIL YOUR LIST TO ME BY MIDNIGHT ON THURSDAY, JUNE 30TH. There will then be a June Challenge party at TJC creator Becky Enneis’s house in Alachua, at which a remarkably handsome trophy and other prizes will be given out.

To help you keep track of your sightings, I’ve attached an automatic checklist that Phil Laipis created several years ago. Type in the date you saw each species in the row headed “First Seen,” using the format “6/1” for June 1st, “6/2” for June 2nd, etc., and the checklist will automatically add everything up for you (you can also use “1” or “x”). If you don’t have Excel, or you prefer keeping track on a paper copy, we’ve got some card-stock trifold checklists that you can use. Just send me your mailing address and I’ll drop one in the mailbox for you.

You can do the Challenge on your own, of course, but I’ll be at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve at 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday to jump start it with Common Nighthawk and Bachman’s Sparrow, and you’re welcome to join me, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced birder. From Longleaf we’ll go to Newnans Lake and then La Chua ($4 admission for La Chua), where Mike Manetz tells me the low water levels have attracted some shorebirds. You should be home by lunchtime with 40-50 species on that checklist! Directions to Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve: From Gainesville, take State Road 20 (Hawthorne Road) east. Measuring from Waldo Road, at 4.4 miles you’ll pass Powers Park, and shortly thereafter you’ll cross the bridge over Prairie Creek. Three and a half miles after that, turn right onto County Road 325 and proceed 2.3 miles to the Longleaf parking lot on the right.

Anyway, if you win, you get The June Challenge trophy, two and a half feet tall and lovingly crafted from the finest wood-like material. Your name and your accomplishment will be engraved in the purest imitation gold and affixed to the trophy, a memorial that will last throughout all eternity, or until someone drops it onto a hard surface. You keep the trophy at your house for a year, contemplating the evidence of your great superiority to all other birders, and then the following June you either win again or you sadly pass the trophy on to the next June Challenge champion and sink back into the common mass of birderdom.

Hints for new Challengers: Bird as much as you can during the first few days and last few days of the month, to get late spring and early fall migrants. Check the big lakes repeatedly (especially Newnans and Lochloosa) for coastal strays like gulls, terns, and pelicans. Check your email inbox to learn what other people are seeing and for tips on where to go. I apologize in advance for the many birding reports you’ll get in early June…

Please join us for The 13th Annual June Challenge. Good luck to all!

Just now (8:36) got this email from Dalcio Dacol: “Rex, Snail Kite at SWP now, south side cell 2!”

You know what to do.

It’s late May, isn’t it? Just about a week from June. What happens in June? Something. Can’t remember. I’m sure it will come to me.

On behalf of a Cuban bird researcher, Gina Kent asks, “Do you know someone with a house/condo/apartment/room available in July for a Cuban family that has just recently moved to Florida? Ariam Jimenez is a colleague and friend, the recent head chair of the biology department at the University of Havana (specialty in bird research) and he and his wife and 4-year-old son are in the process of getting work status to stay here in Florida. We would love to help them settle into Gainesville with a ‘head start’ living situation while they get their feet on the ground. It would be very helpful if there were a place that needed house sitting. Even just one month would be a great help to this wonderful, professional, and responsible family.” You can reach Gina at ginakent@arcinst.org

Mike Manetz saw the season’s first Roseate Spoonbill flying over Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the 20th. There were two subsequent sightings on the 21st, possibly involving the same bird, one at La Chua by Adam Zions and one at Bivens Arm lake by Adam and Gina Kent.

Tom Wronski had a spectacular visitor to his back yard overlooking the south rim of the Prairie on May 21st: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/26875790060/in/dateposted-public/

Something to watch for: Cliff Swallows – which are common everywhere in the United States but the southeast – have slowly been establishing themselves as a breeding species in Florida, both south of us and in the Panhandle. There are currently two to four nests under the State Road 50 bridge over the St. Johns River on the Orange/Brevard county line, and at Lake Seminole in Gadsden County (about 35 miles northwest of Tallahassee), Andy Wraithmell has reported, “at least 21 active nests this year up from at least 9 active nests in 2015.” Won’t be long before they show up here. Maybe they’re here already!

Back in 1995 our local backyard guru Ron Robinson almost got himself a TV show called “Backyard Birding with Ron Robinson.” It never came to pass, but Ron recently had the VHS of the promotional trailer digitized, and you can see it (featuring Ron in his mid-40s) on YouTube. You’ll have to endure a minute-and-a-half intro with a Kenny Loggins soundtrack, or you can just advance to 1:30. Those of you who have taken the community education birding class may recognize Kathy Haines in the red plaid blouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNdZuJnDFh8

The American Ornithologists’ Union Check-list Committee will release revisions to its Check-list of North American Birds this summer (probably in July), and some changes have been proposed, for instance lumping Hoary and Common Redpolls and Caribbean and American Coots, but recognizing a new scrub-jay and a new meadowlark and splitting Leach’s Storm-Petrel into three species. Plus various other forms of taxonomic tomfoolery. If you’d like to look them over – keeping in mind that these are just proposals and haven’t been accepted yet – here you go. Each begins with a summary of the proposals and then, as you scroll down, each proposal is described in detail.
http://checklist.aou.org/assets/proposals/PDF/2016-A.pdf
http://checklist.aou.org/assets/proposals/PDF/2016-B.pdf
http://checklist.aou.org/assets/proposals/PDF/2016-C.pdf

As you may have read in Sunday’s Gainesville Sun (link to article), the Department of Transportation is planning a new highway that may ultimately extend as a toll road from Tampa to Jacksonville through northern Marion and east Putnam and Clay Counties. Here’s the project website: http://www.i75relief.com/ Joyce King of Santa Fe Audubon writes that the map which I’ve attached to this email, “shows where the extension of the ‘purple swath’ on the [web site’s] map will go. From Highway 326 just north of Ocala east through Putnam County on Highway 315, north to Highway 21 north of Keystone Heights, to join the First Coast Expressway at Middleburg. This route will not show on any map – it’s our prediction based on the inevitable extension of the purple swath to join with the First Coast Expressway in Middleburg. A new task force will be appointed to work on the extension into Putnam and Clay Counties (we think).” And here’s the page that shows where you can attend meetings to give input (note that meetings will be held in Gainesville on June 7th, Ocala on June 8th, and Lecanto on June 9th): http://www.i75relief.com/meetings.html

Friday the 13th is supposed to be unlucky, but…

Mike Manetz found two Gull-billed Terns at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the evening of the 13th. He wrote, “Both were adult birds in fresh plumage: upperwings clean pale blue-gray, tail slightly forked. Full black cap; bill all black, relatively short and blunt. Pair was flying in low circles over holding pond, seen well in scope.” This is either the seventh or the ninth occurrence of this species in Alachua County, depending on whether you believe David Johnston’s Christmas Bird Count sightings from 1966 and 1973 (I’m inclined not to). Mike found the terns while making a “forced march” around all three cells in search of shorebirds. He succeeded in finding 2 Semipalmated Sandpipers, as well as a Least and a Spotted, plus 35 Bobolinks.

The spring migration has been winding down for a couple of weeks, though American Redstarts are still passing through. But the thing about migration, the thing that makes it exciting, is this: You Never Know. Something unexpected could turn up at any time. Adam and Gina Kent were birdwatching from their SE Gainesville porch on the morning of the 13th when they saw a Blackburnian Warbler, only the third ever spotted here in spring migration. Adam got a picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/26395968153/in/dateposted-public/

The Gull-billeds and the Blackburnian weren’t the only good birds seen on Friday the 13th. Jonathan Mays was southbound on US-441 at a little after nine when he saw a dark-form Short-tailed Hawk kettling with Turkey Vultures near Lake Wauberg. And Trina Anderson photographed a breeding-plumage Stilt Sandpiper along the La Chua Trail. She also saw 7 Semipalmated Sandpipers, a Greater Yellowlegs, 2 Spotted Sandpipers, 3 Black-necked Stilts, and 3 King Rails.

Imagine how much more Mike and Adam and Gina and Jonathan and Trina would have seen if it hadn’t been Friday the 13th!

A lot of female birders (not all) don’t like birding alone. It occurs to me that Barbara Muschlitz had a standing field trip for women, mostly birding friends of hers, who would meet on each Wednesday morning, confirming time and place by email ahead of time. It would be fairly easy to set up one or more Facebook groups where friends could do something like this, meeting once or twice weekly, and arranging time and place through Facebook. If you’d like to get out more, but don’t want to go by yourself, give it a try. If you’re like me – so far behind the curve that you can’t even see the curve anymore – and you’re not on Facebook, then you’ll have to use a paleolithic method of communication like email or telephone. But I’m sure arrangements can be made even under such primitive conditions.

Ron Robinson called my attention to an odd sight at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the 6th. Two very young Common Gallinule chicks were following a parent bird around, begging, and it was pecking at them irritably, even seizing them in its bill and holding them underwater. Steve Nesbitt told me once that some birds are habitually good parents who successfully raise chicks to independence year after year, while others are poor parents whose young perish more often than not. I’m not betting any money on this bird.

Our paltry migration seems to be winding down. I’ve always thought that Gainesville’s spring migration peaks in the last few days of April, but a look at eBird reveals that this year the largest variety and numbers (relatively speaking) passed through much earlier, during the nine days of April 15-23. The high point was April 16th, when the cumulative total of migrants reported to eBird included 3 Cape May Warblers, a Blackpoll Warbler, 4 American Redstarts, 16 Black-throated Blue Warblers, 11 Worm-eating Warblers, 1 Louisiana Waterthrush, 8 Northern Waterthrushes, and 4 Prairie Warblers. Only three Rose-breasted Grosbeaks were reported this spring, and all occurred during the same April 15-23 window.

Interestingly, a handful of unusual backyard birds departed during that same nine-day span. A Hermit Thrush that visited Rich Lewis’s NW Gainesville feeder almost daily beginning about February 10th, dining on chopped suet and bark butter, was last seen on April 20th. A White-crowned Sparrow that Ron Robinson first noticed at his west Gainesville feeder on March 21st left on April 21st. The Western Tanager that returned for a third year to Jack and Mary Lynch’s High Springs back yard on March 2nd was last seen on April 20th (same as last year), and the one that Sarah Raynierson first noticed at her SW Gainesville home around March 15th was last seen on April 17th.

There are still some migrants around. American Redstarts are still fairly common; eBird shows 6 reported on the 30th and another 6 on the 1st. The only two Scarlet Tanagers found in the county were fairly late: Adam Kent saw one in NW Gainesville on the 28th and Jonathan Mays saw one in SE Gainesville on the 1st. Bobolinks, whose passage normally peaks a little after most migrants’, showed high counts of 290 by Dean, Ben, and Sam Ewing on the 27th, 350 by Caroline Poli on the 28th, and 220 by Cindy Boyd on the 29th, all at Sweetwater Wetlands Park.

Jonathan Mays found six species of shorebirds at Sweetwater on the 30th, though the numbers were less than impressive: 2 Semipalmated Plovers, 2 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 2 Spotted Sandpipers, 1 Least Sandpiper, 1 Greater Yellowlegs, and 1 Killdeer. Shorebirds are usually fairly late migrants, though – their tundra breeding grounds are still frozen, so they’re in no particular hurry – and we may see more of them during the next two weeks. In fact, White-rumped Sandpipers often don’t make their first appearance until May.

Andy Kratter’s loon-migration watch posted its smallest total ever, with a final count of 395 loons. Andy comments, “I think that the warm winter may have kept some birds from reaching the Gulf, as was true for ducks, etc.” His second-lowest total was 507 in 2009; the highest he’s recorded was 895 in 2014. The median passage date this year was April 4th, a little late; the average is March 30th.

The Vaux’s Swifts seem to be gone. eBird clearly shows how interest in these birds waned as time went by: in December, birders submitted 92 Vaux’s-related checklists, in January they submitted 57, in February 22, and in March only 6. The last positive sighting at Dauer Hall came on the evening of March 21st, when Ben Ewing estimated 10 Vaux’s calling among a larger group of Chimney Swifts. There were only two later attempts to see the birds: Wendy Meehan and Bonnie Jenks reported three swifts whose “vocalizing sounded different…faster, high pitched,” on April 10th, and on the 15th Graham Williams looked for them but found that he couldn’t hear anything over the construction noise! Afterward there were two sightings at Sweetwater Wetlands Park, three birds reported on April 6th by Dean, Sam, and Ben Ewing, “foraging over cell one with Tree Swallows, identified by distinctive vocalizations,” and three reported by Danny Rohan on April 21st that “vocalized very clearly.”

Cedar Waxwings are still around in small numbers. They arrived early this winter, with several flocks reported in November, but their numbers struck me as low all season long. Most sightings involved flocks of fewer than 100 birds, and the few really large counts (500-1000) were restricted to January.

Charlie Pedersen, biologist at Goethe State Forest, writes, “Two Red-cockaded Woodpecker clusters on Goethe State Forest near the Great Florida Birding Trail site are nesting now. I’d prefer people didn’t visit until they hatch, but from the weekend of May 7th on it should be fine; that is after predicted hatch day. You can tell the nest trees because they are wrapped in tin foil. The clusters are #67 on Beehive Road by the metal interpretive sign and Boo-boo Cluster on the the corner of North Gasline Road and Beehive Road. If folks have questions they can look on the Great Florida Birding Trail web site or call the Goethe State Forest office at (352) 465-8585.” Charlie thoughtfully provided this illustrated driving tour for those who might wish to visit: “This Great Florida Birding Trail sign is located at 29.160528 North and -82.598953 West on Goethe State Forest’s North Gasline Road. If you stand next to the sign and turn west you will see this adorable forked tree handsomely wrapped in tin foil. That is the nest tree for the Boo-boo Cluster. If you hop back in your car and follow that Birding Trail sign, you will go down Bee Hive Road until you come to this interpretive sign where you will find the #67 Cluster nest tree.”

There are still a few Alachua Audubon field trips this spring: Loblolly Woods with Sam Ewing on the 7th, Sweetwater Wetlands Park with Debbie Segal on the 8th, Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve with Michael Drummond on the 14th, and a Breeding Bird Atlas trip with Adam Kent on the 15th; and then on June 1st I’ll lead the June Challenge kickoff. That’ll be it until September. The field trip schedule may be perused here: https://alachuaaudubon.org/classes-field-trips/

The Wednesday Wetlands Walks at Sweetwater Wetlands Park will continue every Wednesday through the end of May. Just show up at 8:30 and join us. May 2nd was the first anniversary of the park’s opening, by the way.

Bob Carroll invites you to Stick It To The Workin’ Man by attending his Third Thursday Birding Club, which will be meeting this month on the *FIRST* Thursday: “Our final Third Thursday for the season will be a Breeding Bird Atlas field trip/demonstration led by Adam Kent. We’ll meet at 7:30 on Thursday morning, May 5th, in the southwest corner of the Target parking lot at Archer Road and I-75. Adam says, ‘We will learn about atlasing and look for evidence of breeding birds. It’s a fun way to get a new perspective on birding.’ Adam says we should be finished and back in town by 11:00. We will then go to Peach Valley for a late breakfast/early lunch. Please let me know if you’re coming. I’d like to give Adam an idea of how large the group will be.” Contact Bob at gatorbob23@yahoo.com

This is a beautiful drone video showing aerial photography of the La Chua Trail: https://vimeo.com/163424320

There’s a great “birder photo” on this blog post, but I’m not sure I’d ever show it to a non-birder. The post tells of a Swainson’s Warbler found in Manhattan’s Central Park a few days ago, and the photo shows a bunch of birders sprawled on the walkway, trying to see it inside a hedge (third photo down): http://welshbirder.blogspot.com/2016/04/swainsons-warbler-in-central-park.html

I always like looking at bird eyes, as you know if you’ve gone on my field trips. White Ibis have baby-blue eyes, the eyes of Double-crested Cormorants are azure, the eyes of American Coots are ruby red. Here’s the blood-red eye of a Eurasian Collared-Dove, posted by the bird banders at Skokholm Island, off the coast of Wales. I enjoyed scrolling through the bird photos on their Twitter page: https://twitter.com/SkokholmIsland

Mike Manetz called at about 9:15 this morning from the Bolen Bluff observation platform. He and Frank and Irina Goodwin were looking at a Whooping Crane northwest of the tower. Frank got a photo that shows a blue (and white?) band on the bird’s left leg: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/25957033733/in/dateposted-public/ This is the first Whooper in Gainesville since one that lingered along the La Chua Trail last June and July.

Mike visited Palm Point and Lakeshore Drive on the 20th and found a Cape May Warbler and a Blackpoll Warbler, two species that we can expect to see only during spring migration, as well as an Ovenbird, two Northern Waterthrushes, and a Worm-eating Warbler. A couple of Bonaparte’s Gulls were lingering on the lake. Bobolinks are being seen at Sweetwater Wetlands Park in small numbers – Chris Hooker tallied 31 on the 20th – but should become more numerous later in the month. Listen for its song, which Roger Tory Peterson evocatively described as “ecstatic and bubbling.”

Frank Goodwin photographed a female Red-breasted Merganser at Sweetwater on the afternoon of the 18th: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/26285768580/in/dateposted-public/ It was gone by the next morning, when Mike Manetz overcame a cold long enough to trudge out to where it had been seen:

Summer birds are showing up. There are plenty of Purple Gallinules and Least Bitterns at Sweetwater; John Hintermister found 22 gallinules and 14 bitterns on the 20th. Indigo Buntings, Blue Grosbeaks, Orchard Orioles, and Yellow-billed Cuckoos are being reported all over the county. Felicia Lee had the spring’s first Acadian Flycatcher at San Felasco on the 17th, and three days later Caroline Poli counted four. Barbara Shea had the county’s first Eastern Wood-Pewee of the spring at San Felasco on the 20th. I’m still not seeing a big jump in Mississippi Kite numbers, but my heart gladdened to see one circling over my NE Gainesville neighborhood on the 20th.

Geoff Parks has noticed a singing American Robin in his NE Gainesville neighborhood since early April. If it nests, this will be the third or fourth year in a row that robins have nested in Gainesville.

Speaking of nesting birds, I’ve had mockingbird and chickadee fledglings in my yard for the past few days.

I got one response to my question about starlings in the last birding report, so I’ll try a different species. How about the one shown in the photo above? Eurasian Collared-Dove is a West Asian species introduced to North America in 1974, when a large number of birds escaped from a private home in the Bahamas during an attempted burglary. Within a few years they made it to South Florida and began working their way north. Alachua County’s first was probably the “Streptopelia, sp.” seen by Rob Norton near the intersection of 441 and Williston Road on the December 16, 1990 Christmas Bird Count. However the species wasn’t positively confirmed in the county until John Hintermister saw one standing in the middle of County Road 235 just north of Alachua on March 30, 1992 (which I have no trouble remembering because my darling daughter Sarah was born on the same day). Rare at first – you had to drive out to the town of Alachua to see them in the mid-90s – their numbers suddenly ballooned in the late 90s. Here’s a paragraph from the March 1998 issue of my old newsletter, The Alachua County Birder: “Until Matt Williams reported 39 Eurasian Collared-Doves roosting in one of the Beef Teaching Unit buildings during the CBC, I’d thought there were probably about 20 in the entire county. So in February I telephoned Christina Romagosa, who is studying the dove’s expansion throughout the United States, and asked how many there were, to her knowledge, in our area. After confessing that she’d been as taken aback by Matt’s report as I was (‘had a cow,’ was, I think, the technical phrase she used), having never seen more than 13 together at once (at Butler Plaza), she estimated 50 to 60 for the Gainesville area, and 70 to 100 for the county as a whole.” They were a fairly common and widespread bird for a while, but not any more. Sightings at the Hague Dairy, formerly one of their strongholds, have been occasional at best during the past five years (no double digits since 2010), and sightings anywhere in the county are usually restricted to ones and twos. The only recent exceptions to this were the 21 birds that Adam and Gina Kent found south of downtown Gainesville on the 20 December 2015 CBC and the 64 counted by John Martin at the Beef Teaching Unit on the 15 December 2013 CBC. Does anyone know of any other concentrations of this species in the county, or was their population boom followed by an equally-quick decline?