Snail Kite nest confirmed! and the Burrowing Owl trip

The presence of at least four Snail Kites at Paynes Prairie and Sweetwater Wetlands Park since early April has prompted speculation as to whether they’re nesting here. Today Paynes Prairie biologist Keith Morin sent out this announcement: “Brian Jeffery, wildlife biologist from the University of Florida, inquired about surveying the Prairie and obtained a Florida Park Service permit. The City of Gainesville Nature Operations Division facilitated airboat launch at Sweetwater Wetlands Park. On Friday, I assisted Brian and MS student Alexis Cardas on a Snail Kite survey covering about 2500 acres of the flooded prairie basin. We saw at least 8 individual birds (unbanded) and finally found one nest! The nest had three young that were approximately 19-21 days old. It was determined that these nestlings were old enough to band; this is the first nest and first banded birds originating from our park and well north of the species’ normal range. We will return in a week to ten days to check back on these fledglings. We are very excited!” A banded adult male has also been photographed on the Prairie, though no one has yet been able to read the alphanumeric code on the band, so that makes 9 individual adults plus the three chicks. This is only the second nesting record in Alachua County history – the first was 99 years ago!

Sunday morning’s Burrowing Owl field trip attracted about 60 participants. I had expected more, given the heavy publicity, but maybe some people stayed home due to the weather forecast. Luckily, the rain held off. Less luckily, the owls spent the first part of the morning barely peering out of their burrows, so that we often couldn’t tell if we were looking at the top of an owl’s head or a cow patty. A large percentage of the crowd left after half an hour or so, which was unfortunate, because later in the morning the owls emerged from their burrows and stood out where we could see them. One of them even flew. We counted ten owls in the field, both adults and young, and county biologist Andi Christman, the land manager for this tract, told me that she was aware of nine active nest burrows scattered across the property, including other fields than this one. (Photos below by Jerry Pruitt.)

Mike Manetz and I had driven out to Watermelon Pond together, and after seeing the owls we stuck around like almost everyone else and birded along SW 250th Street. There was a Common Nighthawk perched in a pine, Eastern Bluebirds on the wires, Red-headed Woodpeckers in the snags, Eastern Meadowlarks in the fields, and a pair of Orchard Orioles in the oaks along the road. Our last stop was the boat ramp at the south end of 250th, but it was birdless, so we headed back. We’d only gotten a hundred yards or so when we encountered a three-foot Florida Pine Snake crossing the road. We jumped out of the car, Mike grabbed his camera, I grabbed the snake, and we got a few photos before sending it on its way. This was only the third Florida Pine Snake I’d seen in the wild during my 61 years. Two of the three have come from Watermelon Pond.

On the way back into town Mike and I stopped at the Home Depot Pond to see the Ring-billed Gull and the Pied-billed Grebe. Alas, the gull was lying dead in the grass. Bob Simons had tossed it there earlier in the morning after finding it on the road, a traffic casualty. The grebe was still alive, though. Mike spotted it swimming out from a willow tree on the back side of the pond toward the right, and we watched as it gave an extended call. The call, the plumage, and the posture (including expanded throat) were just as you see them in the first ten seconds of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVPAXlH7vHw

On their way home from Watermelon Pond, Debbie Segal, John Hintermister, and Barbara Shea stopped at the Canterbury Equestrian Center on the eastern edge of Newberry: “We were doing a drive-through to look for White-winged Doves or Eurasian Collared-Doves when we spotted a soaring raptor that was on the north side of the showgrounds. When it banked, I saw a wide white tail band. It was a Broad-winged Hawk. It then tucked its wings and streamed southward, right over us. We could clearly see the white underwings with a dark trailing edge to the wings and the broad white tail band.” This is less than two miles northeast of where Jason O’Connor reported two Broad-wingeds on April 11th.

Saturday morning’s June Challenge field trip followed the same route as Friday’s – Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve, the Windsor boat ramp, Sweetwater Wetlands Park – but the birds were quieter and less cooperative. We saw about the same species as Friday’s trip, though we missed a few. Two nice surprises, though: a Spotted Sandpiper at the far end of Sweetwater Wetlands Park (thanks to Brad Hall and Howard Adams for the tip), and a Common Loon first seen in flight over Newnans Lake, which then landed on the water so that we could get a distant but identifiable look through our spotting scopes.

A Gray Catbird has been singing at the north end of Tumblin’ Creek Park, just as it did last year and the year before. Tumblin’ Creek Park is located on SW 6th Street at Depot Road, just south of the retention pond. Remember that the parking area is a one-way drive, with the entrance at the south and the exit at the north.

Snail Kite nest confirmed! and the Burrowing Owl trip

The presence of at least four Snail Kites at Paynes Prairie and Sweetwater Wetlands Park since early April has prompted speculation as to whether they’re nesting here. Today Paynes Prairie biologist Keith Morin sent out this announcement: “Brian Jeffery, wildlife biologist from the University of Florida, inquired about surveying the Prairie and obtained a Florida Park Service permit. The City of Gainesville Nature Operations Division facilitated airboat launch at Sweetwater Wetlands Park. On Friday, I assisted Brian and MS student Alexis Cardas on a Snail Kite survey covering about 2500 acres of the flooded prairie basin. We saw at least 8 individual birds (unbanded) and finally found one nest! The nest had three young that were approximately 19-21 days old. It was determined that these nestlings were old enough to band; this is the first nest and first banded birds originating from our park and well north of the species’ normal range. We will return in a week to ten days to check back on these fledglings. We are very excited!” A banded adult male has also been photographed on the Prairie, though no one has yet been able to read the alphanumeric code on the band, so that makes 9 individual adults plus the three chicks. This is only the second nesting record in Alachua County history – the first was 99 years ago!

Sunday morning’s Burrowing Owl field trip attracted about 60 participants. I had expected more, given the heavy publicity, but maybe some people stayed home due to the weather forecast. Luckily, the rain held off. Less luckily, the owls spent the first part of the morning barely peering out of their burrows, so that we often couldn’t tell if we were looking at the top of an owl’s head or a cow patty. A large percentage of the crowd left after half an hour or so, which was unfortunate, because later in the morning the owls emerged from their burrows and stood out where we could see them. One of them even flew. We counted ten owls in the field, both adults and young, and county biologist Andi Christman, the land manager for this tract, told me that she was aware of nine active nest burrows scattered across the property, including other fields than this one. (Photos below by Jerry Pruitt.)

 

 

 

Mike Manetz and I had driven out to Watermelon Pond together, and after seeing the owls we stuck around like almost everyone else and birded along SW 250th Street. There was a Common Nighthawk perched in a pine, Eastern Bluebirds on the wires, Red-headed Woodpeckers in the snags, Eastern Meadowlarks in the fields, and a pair of Orchard Orioles in the oaks along the road. Our last stop was the boat ramp at the south end of 250th, but it was birdless, so we headed back. We’d only gotten a hundred yards or so when we encountered a three-foot Florida Pine Snake crossing the road. We jumped out of the car, Mike grabbed his camera, I grabbed the snake, and we got a few photos before sending it on its way. This was only the third Florida Pine Snake I’d seen in the wild during my 61 years. Two of the three have come from Watermelon Pond.

On the way back into town Mike and I stopped at the Home Depot Pond to see the Ring-billed Gull and the Pied-billed Grebe. Alas, the gull was lying dead in the grass. Bob Simons had tossed it there earlier in the morning after finding it on the road, a traffic casualty. The grebe was still alive, though. Mike spotted it swimming out from a willow tree on the back side of the pond toward the right, and we watched as it gave an extended call. The call, the plumage, and the posture (including expanded throat) were just as you see them in the first ten seconds of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVPAXlH7vHw

On their way home from Watermelon Pond, Debbie Segal, John Hintermister, and Barbara Shea stopped at the Canterbury Equestrian Center on the eastern edge of Newberry: “We were doing a drive-through to look for White-winged Doves or Eurasian Collared-Doves when we spotted a soaring raptor that was on the north side of the showgrounds. When it banked, I saw a wide white tail band. It was a Broad-winged Hawk. It then tucked its wings and streamed southward, right over us. We could clearly see the white underwings with a dark trailing edge to the wings and the broad white tail band.” This is less than two miles northeast of where Jason O’Connor reported two Broad-wingeds on April 11th.

Saturday morning’s June Challenge field trip followed the same route as Friday’s – Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve, the Windsor boat ramp, Sweetwater Wetlands Park – but the birds were quieter and less cooperative. We saw about the same species as Friday’s trip, though we missed a few. Two nice surprises, though: a Spotted Sandpiper at the far end of Sweetwater Wetlands Park (thanks to Brad Hall and Howard Adams for the tip), and a Common Loon first seen in flight over Newnans Lake, which then landed on the water so that we could get a distant but identifiable look through our spotting scopes.

A Gray Catbird has been singing at the north end of Tumblin’ Creek Park, just as it did last year and the year before. Tumblin’ Creek Park is located on SW 6th Street at Depot Road, just south of the retention pond. Remember that the parking area is a one-way drive, with the entrance at the south and the exit at the north.

Aaaaaaand they’re off! (But they were a little off to begin with, weren’t they?)

The first day of The June Challenge went pretty well, with more surprises than I’d have expected.

The kick-off field trip started at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve at 6:15 and we got our target birds – Common Nighthawk, Bachman’s Sparrow, and Brown-headed Nuthatch – in about an hour. (Tina Greenberg was there before six and had a couple of Chuck-will’s-widows fly over as well, so I think I’ll arrive early for tomorrow morning’s field trip.) Then we went on to the Windsor boat ramp, where we whiffed on our two target birds, Bald Eagle and Laughing Gull, but our consolation prizes were great looks at Prothonotary and Yellow-throated Warblers, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Red-eyed Vireo, and Summer Tanager, plus our first surprise of the morning, a late-migrating Spotted Sandpiper flying down the boat channel. We went on to Sweetwater Wetlands Park, where we saw all the expected species, a few semi-expected species like Snail Kites (four of them), American Coot, and Roseate Spoonbill, and our second surprise of the day, a late Bobolink spotted by Debbie Segal, only the second June record for that species in Alachua County. We ended the day at noon with about 60 birds on our lists.

Park Ranger Danny Rohan came walking up while we were ogling the Bobolink and got to see it. He told us to keep an eye out for a Laughing Gull that had been hanging around, which we were never able to find, and he mentioned that the spoonbill numbers had been as high as 17 recently. While he was talking to us, he got a call from Geoff Parks, who was at the creek inflow near the sedimentation pond. Geoff had seen at least one Tree Swallow mixed in with the Northern Rough-winged Swallows there, so we executed a quick march – but only Bob Carroll, way back at the end of the line, was fortunate enough to see it fly over.

Yesterday Jennifer Donsky found a Ring-billed Gull at the Home Depot Pond, so after finishing up at Sweetwater, Barbara Shea and I drove over there, and sure enough the gull was sitting on the grassy slope leading down to the water’s edge. As near as I can tell, it has exactly one primary feather left on its right wing, none on its left wing, and no tail to speak of, so although it can fly a little it’s probably not going anywhere and may not survive very long. Barbara got a documentary photo, since there are only two or three previous June records for the county: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/40692387640/in/dateposted-public/

Another surprise today was a Least Tern, discovered at Depot Park by Erin Kalinowski at lunchtime. It’s the second Least this week: Felicia Lee saw one at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on May 26th.

Yesterday James Roland saw a Brown Pelican in the retention pond at Townsend, north of Glen Springs Road at NW 23rd Terrace. It was just taunting us; it refused to stick around for the Challenge. I cruised by three hours later and the pond was pelicanless.

Do you need Yellow-breasted Chat or Pied-billed Grebe for your June Challenge list? Mike Manetz suggests Bolen Bluff for the chat. He saw one there on the 15th, “singing from dead sweetgums at the base of the slope, as you look to the east.” And Brad Hall called to report a grebe at Home Depot Pond today, which he noticed (but Barbara and I missed) while looking at the Ring-billed Gull.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but may I knock your socks off? On May 28th Ian Davies and five others went birding in the dunes of Quebec’s Tadoussac Bird Observatory, along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. They started in the rain at 5:45 a.m. Nine hours and 41 minutes later they quit, having recorded 108 species of birds, of which 24 were warblers. Socks still secure? I’m not surprised, but hold on to them now, because the number of individual warblers they recorded was 721,620. As Ian wrote, “Today was the greatest birding day of my life.” He’s still young, but I feel confident that he will never have a better one. Luckily for us, he’s an eBird administrator, which means that he posted an eBird checklist with the details, and it’s illustrated with 44 photos and two videos. Check it out here, and be sure to read Ian’s introductory comments, which made me giddy: https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S46116491 (Thanks to Gainesville birder Min Zhao for forwarding this to me.)

The June Challenge! and the Burrowing Owl field trip!

(For one month only, I’m reviving the Alachua County birding reports. “Why? Oh God, why?” you ask, burying your face in your hands. For The 15th Annual June Challenge, that’s why. News and updates pertaining to next year’s Challenge and any future Challenges will be posted on the Alachua Audubon Society Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AlachuaAudubon/ But this will be a transitional year, in which news and updates will appear both on Facebook and in your inbox. So consider this fair warning: no birding reports next year, just Facebook. Go there instead. No, I don’t like it either. Sorry.)

So anyway, the Challenge begins on Friday, June 1st. As always I’ll be at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve at 6:15 a.m. to jump start it with Common Nighthawk and (hopefully) 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 to Sweetwater Wetlands Park ($5 admission for Sweetwater). You should be home by lunchtime with 40-50 species on your 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.

If you’re otherwise occupied on the 1st and can’t join me, I’ll be in exactly the same place at 6:15 a.m. on Saturday the 2nd, and we’ll do it all over again.

On the 3rd we’ll make our annual visit to the Burrowing Owls at Watermelon Pond, courtesy of Alachua County’s Parks and Conservation Lands Department and county biologists Andi Christman and Michael Drummond. We’ll meet at the gate to the Burrowing Owl field at 7:30 a.m. To get there, go west on State Road 26 (Newberry Road) to the town of Newberry. When you come to the stop light where 26 intersects US-41, turn left onto 41 and proceed 2.9 miles to SW 46th Avenue. Turn right onto 46th and go 1.2 mile to SW 250th Street, which is a dirt road. Turn left onto 250th and go 3.0 miles to the gate. Park as best you can on the roadside. We’ll then walk half a mile to the viewing area. The preceding mileages are right for my car but should probably be considered approximate for yours. I’ve made a map if you’re confused about any of this, which allows you to zoom in for detail or zoom out for perspective: https://drive.google.com/open?id=170-j_s4JUwiLEg3b100Cq_S1yUw&usp=sharing

You probably remember, but here are the rules. There’s been one change:

  1.  All birds must be seen within the boundaries of Alachua County between June 1st and June 30th. (Non-Alachua birders are challenged to participate within your own counties.)
  2.  Each bird on your list must have been SEEN. Heard-only birds do not count; you’ve got to actually see those Chuck-will’s-widows and Eastern Screech-Owls. Consequently, don’t trust eBird with your June Challenge list, since it lists heard birds the same as seen ones.
  3.  You are free to put Muscovy Ducks, retention-pond Mallards, and Whooping Cranes on your list, but no other exotic or domestic birds this year.
  4.  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. If you got a photo, send that as well so that I can share it with everybody else.
  5.  EMAIL YOUR LIST TO ME BY MIDNIGHT ON SATURDAY, JUNE 30TH. There will then be a June Challenge party at TJC creator Becky Enneis’s house in Alachua, probably on July 1st.

To help you keep track of your sightings, I’ve attached an automatic Excel 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 trifold checklists that you can use. Just send me your mailing address and I’ll drop one in the mailbox for you.

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; eight migrant warblers and twelve migrant shorebirds have been recorded here in June, mostly at the beginning of the month. Check the big lakes repeatedly (especially Newnans and Lochloosa) for coastal strays like gulls, terns, and pelicans. Check your email inbox or the AAS Facebook page 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 15th Annual June Challenge. Good luck to all!

OH YES, I’M THE GREAT PRETENDER

Hey birders: click on the following link, press the play button, and have a listen.

https://www.xeno-canto.org/403847

Great Crested Flycatcher, right? Wrong. It’s a pitch-perfect imitation of four Great Crested “wheep!” calls in a row … by a White-eyed Vireo. Over the years there have been several surprisingly early reports of Great Cresteds that were heard but not seen. I wonder how many of them were White-eyed Vireos – which also regularly mimic Summer Tanagers, Eastern Towhees, and several other species. Thanks to Frank Goodwin for sharing this (unedited) recording, made along the main drive at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park on February 25th.

Photo of White-eyed Vireo by Christopher Janus, taken along the La Chua Trail on February 17, 2018. Used with permission.

Image may contain: bird and outdoor

NEW Birding Trails

The Santa Fe River Preserve, which the Alachua Conservation Trust opened to the public in November, is a 900-acre parcel of forest and pasture on State Road 121 just south of the Union County line. There are two trails, the 1.5-mile South Trail (4.5 miles north of LaCrosse) and the 0.75-mile North Trail (5.4 miles north of LaCrosse). Both show promise as birding spots – each trail has its own eBird Hotspot – or just as places where you can take a peaceful walk.

Farewell to the Alachua County birding report

All good things must come to an end. But so must all mediocre things. This birding report, for instance. I can’t remember exactly when I started it, but I’ve being sending it out for over fifteen years. Lately it’s been superseded by the “Alachua County Birding” Facebook page and eBird’s various “alerts.” I’ve noticed that many solicitations and questions posed here have gone unanswered (though mailed out to over 550 addresses!). I’ve had birders who are on my mailing list ask me questions which I’d answered a few days previously in a birding report. More to the point, only a few people pass along their unusual sightings to me anymore; I have to get most of my information from eBird. All of this suggests to me that the reports are not much read anymore. I suspect that this is because most of us have moved from desktop computers to smartphones, and the birding report is too long to read on a smartphone – it’s still written for a person relaxing in front of a monitor with a cup of coffee. But it’s the nature of contemporary society to move on from one communications platform to another, and it makes no sense to complain. It was fun while it lasted, and I’m surprised that it lasted more than fifteen years.

Plus, I’m 60 years old, and if my brain holds out – a pretty big if, as it happens – I’ve got only 10 or 20 years to accomplish some of the other things I wanted to do in my life. I’ve got a whole house full of books to read and some other stuff I’d like to do as well. The internet just gets in the way. So I’m discontinuing the Alachua County birding reports. If you want to keep up with the local sightings, take advantage of eBird alerts or the “Alachua County Birding” Facebook page. If you don’t want to join Facebook under your own name, then come up with a fake name like Harry Dogsbotham (maybe something a bit more plausible) and use it solely for checking the birding pages on Facebook (but if you want to join the “Alachua County Birding” Facebook page using a fake name, let Mike Manetz or Bob Carroll know what you’re doing via private email). And don’t forget to join the Alachua Audubon Facebook page for program meetings and field trips (like next year’s Burrowing Owl field trip).

My thanks to you all for many years of support and conversation.

Results of The June Challenge

Deep, deep in the labyrinthine recesses of the Alachua Audubon Society web site are some rarely-visited pages. One of the most interesting and useful – or so we thought when we created it – is “Meet the Birders of Alachua County,” which displays a photographic gallery of birders you might meet on the trail. “Who was that long-haired hippie?” you might think, and looking through the photos – which can be enlarged by clicking on them – you’d say, “Aha! It was Andy Kratter!” Or, “Who was that fellow with the noble beard, the beard of a prophet?” And you’d look at the “Meet the Birders” page and say, “So THAT’S Bob Simons!” See how useful that can be? However Alachua County has many more birders than photos in the gallery. So if you’re not in there, please send me a recognizable photo of yourself, with or without binoculars, and I’ll add it to the page.

The bicentennial of the birth of Henry David Thoreau is coming up on July 12th. I stole a rock from Walden Pond in 1980, so I’ll take that out and contemplate it. You should do something too, to commemorate the birth of the man who wrote, “I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.” One thing I especially like about Thoreau is his emphasis on knowing your own local patch: “Give me the old familiar walk, post office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We’ll go nutting once more. We’ll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it in the winter evenings. Theaters and all other sightseeing are puppet-shows in comparison. I will take another walk to the Cliff, another row on the river, another skate on the meadow, be out in the first snow, and associate with the winter birds. Here I am at home. In the bare and bleached crust of the earth I recognize my friend.” A great American naturalist. A great American, period.

Mike Manetz won the Fourteenth Annual June Challenge with a total of 117 species, none of them non-countable exotics. Lloyd Davis and Anne Casella tied with 112 ABA-countable species, but Lloyd broke the tie and earned second place by finding four exotics in addition to his ABA-countable birds. Mike, Lloyd, and Anne all saw remarkably high percentages of the 121 species seen in Alachua County during June. In 2012, I won the Challenge by seeing 90% of the total number of species recorded. By comparison, Lloyd and Anne saw 92.6% and Mike saw an amazing 96.7%. Great performances all! In the under-16 category, Nora Parks-Church won first place with 71 species, Maddy Knight won second place with 65 species, and Owen Parks-Church won third place with 63 species. All 44 of this year’s participants should give themselves a pat on the back for a job well done. Photos below show Lloyd Davis receiving his award and Mike Manetz receiving the trophy at the June Challenge party that Becky Enneis hosted on July 8th. Special thanks to Danny Shehee for being the official photographer. The final results are below the pictures, and the count of all the bird species seen in Alachua County during June is at the bottom.

 

Mike Manetz 117/0
Lloyd Davis 112/4
Anne Casella 112/0
Danny Shehee 111/4
Chris Cattau 110/3
Howard Adams 109/3
Brad Hall 108/3
Rex Rowan 108/0
Craig Parenteau 106/0
Deena Mickelson 103/3
Cindy Boyd 101/3
Tina Greenberg 101/3
Barbara Shea 101/3
Jennifer Donsky 100/0
John Hintermister 95/0
Austin Gregg 94/0
Debbie Segal 92/1
Conrad Burkholder 92/0
Bob Knight 85/1
Colleen Cowdery 83/0
Pratibha Singh 82/0
Erin Kalinowski 79/0
Bob Carroll 77/0
Trina Anderson 76/0Geoff Parks 75/0
Glenn Israel 73/0
Danny Rohan 72/1
Linda Holt 72/0
Nora Parks-Church 71/0
Adam Zions 71/0
Barbara Woodmansee 70/0
Bob Simons 66/0
Tom Wronski 66/0
Maddy Knight 65/0
Becky Enneis 64/0
Owen Parks-Church 63/0
Sue Pulsipher 58/0
Scott Knight 54/0
John Martin 48/0
Emily Schwartz 48/0
Erika Simons 43/0
Will Sexton 37/0 (Will specifies that he saw 37 species in June WITHOUT doing a June Challenge)
Debbie Spiceland 37/0
Cayley Buckner 20/0

Scott Flamand writes, “I am never in the same area for all of June. So I have yet to do the Challenge. This year I made up my own. It is a multi-state challenge. The rule was that I had to see every bird from inside my car. I traveled 4986 miles across ten states. My numbers were 146/1. There were a few nice birds like Varied Bunting, Mexican Jay, White-headed Woodpecker, Williamson’s Sapsucker, Arizona Woodpecker, Red-breasted Sapsucker, and Acorn Woodpecker. My one non-ABA bird was a Black-throated Magpie-Jay south of San Diego, where there’s a small population descended from escaped pets. I also picked up a lifer, but not from my car (a Rose-throated Becard).”

Alachua County’s June Challengers found 121 species during the month, or 126 counting the exotics. They included rare breeders like Broad-winged Hawk, Short-tailed Hawk, Hairy Woodpecker, and Gray Catbird, semi-regular visitors like Whooping Crane, Brown Pelican, and American White Pelican, and a few late and early migrants like Blue-winged Teal, Spotted Sandpiper, Louisiana Waterthrush, and American Redstart. Only a handful of really unexpected birds were seen, an injured Gadwall at Newnans Lake, a drake Ring-necked Duck stranded for some reason at Barr Hammock, and an adult male Painted Bunting singing at the La Chua Trail one afternoon. Here’s the complete list in the new and even-more-confusing American Ornithological Society order, with asterisks marking the exotics:

Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
*Swan Goose
*Greylag Goose
*Black Swan
Muscovy Duck
Wood Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Gadwall
Mallard
Mottled Duck
Ring-necked Duck
*Helmeted Guineafowl
Northern Bobwhite
*Indian Peafowl
Wild Turkey
Pied-billed Grebe
Rock Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Common Ground-Dove
White-winged Dove
Mourning Dove
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Common Nighthawk
Chuck-will’s-widow
Chimney Swift
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
King Rail
Purple Gallinule
Common Gallinule
American Coot
Limpkin
Sandhill Crane
Whooping Crane
Black-necked Stilt
Spotted Sandpiper
Laughing Gull
Wood Stork
Double-crested Cormorant
Anhinga
American White Pelican
Brown Pelican
Least Bittern
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Cattle Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron
White Ibis
Glossy Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Swallow-tailed Kite
Mississippi Kite
Bald Eagle
Cooper’s Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Broad-winged hawk
Short-tailed Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Barn Owl
Eastern Screech-Owl
Great Horned Owl
Barred Owl
Burrowing Owl
Belted Kingfisher
Red-headed Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Pileated Woodpecker
American Kestrel
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Acadian Flycatcher
Great Crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
Loggerhead Shrike
White-eyed Vireo
Yellow-throated Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Fish Crow
Purple Martin
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Barn Swallow
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Brown-headed Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Eastern Bluebird
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
Brown Thrasher
European Starling
House Sparrow
House Finch
Eastern Towhee
Bachman’s Sparrow
Yellow-breasted Chat
Eastern Meadowlark
Orchard Oriole
Red-winged Blackbird
Brown-headed Cowbird
Common Grackle
Boat-tailed Grackle
Louisiana Waterthrush
Prothonotary Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler
American Redstart
Northern Parula
Pine Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Summer Tanager
Northern Cardinal
Blue Grosbeak
Indigo Bunting
Painted Bunting

Oriole vs. hummingbird question, correction to Birds and Brew schedule

This is sort of hard for me to grasp, but there are people who would like to keep orioles away from their hummingbird feeders. Can anyone offer advice on how to do that? Secondary question: what’s the best oriole feeder out there?

As soon as I sent out the birding report announcing the Birds and Brew gatherings, we realized there was a conflict with Bob Carroll’s Third Thursday field trips. So we’re changing Birds and Brew to every FIRST Thursday of the month. Our initial meeting will be Thursday, August 3rd, at 7 p.m. A map showing the location of First Magnitude Brewing is here, and the brewery’s “Visiting Us” page, with parking information, is here. Please join us. I’ve heard that all the cool kids will be there.

In other High Society news, the June Challenge party will take place on Saturday evening (that’s tomorrow) at 6 p.m. Details in first paragraph here: https://alachuaaudubon.org/2017/07/01/well-thats-that/

If you’ve got any good bird photos that you’d like to share, Alachua Audubon has a “Birding Photos” Flickr page that welcomes your contributions: https://www.flickr.com/groups/3599086@N23/pool/with/34779629775/ (Click on the link to see Erika Simons’s amazing photo of a Great Blue Heron with a young alligator dangling from its bill!)

A few other things that I noticed about the new AOU … sorry, AOS checklist upon further examination:
– Blue-winged Teal, Cinnamon Teal, and Northern Shoveler have seceded from the genus Anas, perhaps because they didn’t like the sound of it, and have gone into the genus Spatula. Traitors! (But ha ha! Spatula!)
– Gadwall, Eurasian Wigeon, and American Wigeon have also jumped ship from Anas and been recruited into the genus Mareca. Turncoats!
– The family Emberizidae used to be huge, containing New World warblers, tanagers, grosbeaks, buntings, sparrows, longspurs, and blackbirds, as well as Old World buntings. Over the years one group and then another have left the warm embrace of the Emberizidae and formed families of their own, until only the New World sparrows and Old World buntings remained. This checklist creates a new family, Passerellidae, for New World sparrows (including towhees and juncos), leaving only the Old World buntings – which are on the North American list only because they occasionally stray to the Aleutian Islands – as the last remaining members of Emberizidae. Good bye, emberizids! It was fun saying “emberizids” while it lasted!
– The sequence has been reshuffled almost as drastically as last year. The tail end of the North American bird list, as found in field guides, checklists, et cetera, formerly followed this order: warblers, tanagers (including grosbeaks and buntings), sparrows (including longspurs), blackbirds, and finches. Now it goes like this: finches, longspurs, sparrows, Yellow-breasted Chat, blackbirds, warblers, and tanagers (including grosbeaks and buntings). And the sequence of blackbirds is, as my Army son would say, ALL jacked up, what with the new division into five subfamilies.
– You can see the Alachua County bird list in its new sequence and with all the taxonomic appurtenances here.

So … what about those hummingbird / oriole questions? Any ideas?

First Black-and-white Warblers, AOU lumps and splits

On the 3rd Eric Amundson found the fall’s first Black-and-white Warblers, two of them, along the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail where it crosses County Road 234 in Rochelle. These are among the earliest ever for Alachua County. Except for 2013, when Black-and-whites showed up in three widely-separated locations in late June, the earliest ever recorded here were found on July 7th – one in 2001, one in 2002, and one in 2003.

Alachua Audubon is sponsoring a new birding program, tentatively called “Birds and Brew.” The first Birds and Brew will be held on Thursday, July 20th, at 7 p.m. We’ll meet at First Magnitude Brewery (1220 SE Veitch Street), stroll to Depot Park to look for birds, and return to First Mag for a cold brew and good conversation. Birds and Brew will be a monthly (3rd Thursday evening) event. All birding skill levels are welcome; enthusiasm is what matters! Bring your binoculars and a thirst for good craft beer (but if you forget your binoculars, stop by anyway, because we’ll have some to loan out). Thanks to Adam Kent and Christine Denny for the idea and to Michael Brock, Mike Manetz, and Adam for working out the details.

Something else for your calendar: on Thursday, July 27th, Adam and Gina Kent will tell us about their recent trip to southern Africa. “The talk will focus on birds, but will also touch on other interesting aspects of the region such as mammals and fascinating landscapes. Learn about a diversity of natural communities including emblematic tropical woodland, the desert-like karoo, and fynbos, a shrubby heathland that looks more like something out of a Mediterranean garden than one’s typical vision of Africa.” Time, place, and other details here: https://alachuaaudubon.org/event/wildlife-and-landscapes-of-south-africa/?instance_id=670

The American Ornithologists’ Union is preparing to release its annual Check-list Supplement, but the results are already on line. You can view them here (click on “View Comments” for votes and discussion on each proposal), but I’ve listed some of the more interesting ones below:

– The proposal to change the name of Ring-necked Duck to Ring-billed Duck failed – unanimously. Look at the View Comments page to learn why.
– The proposal to split Willet into two species failed. The vote was 5-5. Andy Kratter, a member of the committee, tells me that proposals need the approval of 75% of the committee to pass.
– Thayer’s Gull no longer exists as a separate species, having been lumped into Iceland Gull by unanimous decision.
– The proposal to split Bell’s Vireo into two species (eastern and western) failed, though the vote was 5-5.
– A large-billed Red Crossbill resident in the South Hills of Cassia County, Idaho, has been split from other Red Crossbills by a vote of 8-2. It’s now a separate species called Cassia Crossbill (Loxia sinesciuris).
– The proposal to lump Common Redpoll and Hoary Redpoll into a single species failed, though the vote was 5-5.
– The proposal to split Yellow-rumped Warbler into three species (eastern Myrtle, western Audubon’s, and Central American Goldman’s) failed, though the vote was 5-5.
– Yellow-breasted Chat is no longer classified as one of the wood-warblers (family Parulidae). It has been given its very own family, Icteriidae (similar to Icteridae, the blackbird family, but note the extra i).
– Le Conte’s Sparrow and Thrasher are now LeConte’s Sparrow and Thrasher, with no space between Le and Conte’s (one committee member writes facetiously, “YES. I look forward to deleting that extra space henceforth”).

Speaking of lumping and name-changing, last year the AOU (which was founded in 1883) was lumped with the Cooper Ornithological Society (founded in 1893), and the new entity is now known as the American Ornithological Society. Goodbye AOU, hello AOS.

Don’t forget the June Challenge party, coming up on Saturday, July 8th, at 6 p.m. Map here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1p7B11MuC4CM9N3eTT7sx1HFWyIs&usp=sharing Winners will be announced and a good time will be had by all. Beer, soft drinks, and grilled hot dogs will be provided by our host, Becky Enneis, but please bring something extraordinarily delicious to share.