Author: Rex Rowan

In case you missed it: On Saturday morning – tomorrow – we’ll do another June Challenge field trip for those who had to work on the 1st. Meet at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve at 6 a.m. in hopes of seeing Chuck-will’s-widow and Common Nighthawk. Then we’ll follow pretty much the same itinerary as on the 1st, but we’ll try to get through it more rapidly. 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.

Last year Mike Manetz wrote, “Whoever said ‘no news is good news’ has never done The June Challenge.”

So, as Paul Harvey used to say, Stand by for news!

This morning I spent an hour and a half at Cellon Creek Boulevard (pronounced SEE-lun, by the way). I go there every year during The June Challenge, because it’s fairly easy to find several uncommon breeding birds along this half-mile of paved road: Eastern Kingbird, Eastern Meadowlark, American Kestrel, Purple Martin, Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Eurasian Collared-Dove, and European Starling. In the past it’s been reliable for Northern Bobwhite, Common Ground-Dove, and Loggerhead Shrike as well, but none of those were present this morning. I’d seen Loggerhead Shrikes there as recently as March 25th, but they seem to be vanishing from all their old haunts. Other birds today included Red-tailed Hawk, Eastern Bluebird, Common Grackle, and Brown Thrasher. To get there, take US-441 from Gainesville toward Alachua. Four and a half miles beyond the intersection of 441 and NW 43rd Street, turn left onto Cellon Creek Boulevard and park at the end of the road, near the power station. Here’s a map.

La Chua’s semi-resident Whooping Crane, last eBirded on April 14th, reappeared off the observation tower on May 31st and was photographed by Tyler Carney. His photograph, taken about 8 p.m., also showed a drake Mallard in the background. Mike Manetz walked out La Chua on the morning of the 2nd, but the crane wasn’t there. Mike thinks it may be likelier in the evening.

Mike also checked out Paynes Prairie’s US-441 observation boardwalk this morning in hope of seeing a King Rail, but he had no luck. I stopped by this afternoon and was likewise disappointed. My consolation prize was an excellent view of a Round-tailed Muskrat that has a dome-shaped nest on the south side of the boardwalk less than twenty feet from the wall. It was halfway out of the nest entrance, gorging itself on pennywort and primrosewillow.

On the 1st Linda Hensley saw two White-winged Doves on the wires in front of the Econo Lodge on Tower Road near Newberry Road. That’s a good area for Eurasian Collared-Dove and Barn Swallow as well.

The American White Pelican and Roseate Spoonbills at Newnans Lake were last eBirded on the 27th. Mike Manetz and I went looking for them on the 1st and I went back on the 2nd, but they seem to be gone. Some birds are just like that, contrary and uncooperative. Last year a Snail Kite visited Sweetwater Wetlands Park for a few days at the end of May. It was still there on the 31st, but when hopeful June Challengers showed up on the next day it was gone. Bad attitude, is what that was.

Mark your calendar: We’ve arranged a field trip to see Alachua County’s only (known) Burrowing Owls on Saturday, June 10th. We’ll meet at 7:30 a.m. at the gate to the property, where we’ll be admitted by Alachua County Environmental Protection Department personnel. More details will be forthcoming next week, but for now just put it on your calendar: 7:30 a.m., Saturday, June 10th.

A quick run-down of the first day of The June Challenge:

Early arrivals at the Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve parking corral this morning got a nice treat: not only did they see Common Nighthawks – which those of us who arrived at 6:15 missed altogether – but they saw one or two Chuck-will’s-widows hunting over the mowed area south of the corral.

Otherwise Longleaf provided a slow start to the day. We spent an hour and a half there, wa-a-a-ay too long, most of it trying to track down a Bachman’s Sparrow. As generally happens, when we finally located one, it was less than a hundred yards from the parking corral, a fledgling giving a strange call that no one in our group had ever heard before. We also managed to find a little flock of Brown-headed Nuthatches where the White Loop meets the White-Red Connector.

Our next stop was Owens-Illinois Park in Windsor, where Mike Manetz – the first one to the lakefront – pointed out a Spotted Sandpiper on the muddy edge of the boat channel. A Laughing Gull was briefly seen by a few birders, and Brad Hall, scanning with his spotting scope, picked out a Bald Eagle perched in a snag on the far side of the lake.

It was pretty late by the time we got to La Chua, so we restricted ourselves to Sparrow Alley, where we heard two Yellow-breasted Chats singing, and saw one of them way down where the Alley makes a big bend to the right.

At Sweetwater Wetlands Park we found two American Coots and a small flock of Northern Rough-winged Swallows.

Afterward, most of the crowd went home, but Danny Shehee and Bob Carroll and I went over to Tumblin’ Creek Park, where Lloyd Davis had heard a Gray Catbird singing earlier that morning. We found it still singing there, in the jungly wetland at the north end of the park.

That was it for this morning, but this evening Mike Manetz and I walked north from Palm Point and found a Gadwall that’s missing the flight feathers on its left wing. It’s been there for about a month and a half. Matt Bruce first noted it on April 14th. It’s apparently a drake, though its plumage is presently female type, so I’m guessing its in eclipse – but it still has flight feathers on the right wing, so I think it lost the feathers on the left wing traumatically rather than through molt. We also saw another Spotted Sandpiper, a Black-necked Stilt, and a few Black-crowned Night-Herons.

I ended up with 58 species on my June Challenge list.

If you missed this morning’s field trip, come out and join us on Saturday. We’ll do exactly the same thing, hopefully with more success. Meet at 6 a.m. (in hopes of seeing the Chuck-will’s-widow!) at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve.

And now for something completely different: Here’s Nathan Pieplow, author of the newly-published Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Eastern North America, talking about his book.

CORRECTION: One paragraph of yesterday’s email said I’d be at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve on Wednesday to lead a June Challenge field trip. That’s wrong – obviously I meant Thursday, June 1st, at 6:15 a.m. See you then.

I did some scouting this morning, starting at 6:07 a.m. at Longleaf. The nighthawks were cooperative, but the Bachman’s Sparrows were not. I made a stop at Powers Park to scope the lake from the fishing pier, but didn’t see anything unusual – no shorebirds, no spoonbills – so I think we’ll skip that on the 1st and just go straight from Windsor to La Chua. I found a singing Yellow-breasted Chat where Sparrow Alley bends right just past the “ani field,” and a very surprising congregation of 19 Purple Martins on the power lines. Anyone know where they came from?

Beth Senn, who lives south of the Kanapaha Prairie, photographed a Rose-breasted Grosbeak at her feeder on May 19th, by one week a new late record for Alachua County: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/34538599320/in/datetaken-public/

Barbara Woodmansee, who lives in the same general area as Beth, spotted an American Redstart at her birdbath on the evening of the 26th. Redstarts often dawdle on their way north; there are eight or ten June records from Alachua County.

Here’s something for you county listers. I’m always curious to know what other birders have seen in Alachua County that I haven’t, and vice-versa. For instance. Mike Manetz has seen four species I haven’t: Red Knot, Broad-billed Hummingbird, Olive-sided Flycatcher, and Warbling Vireo. I’ve seen five species Mike hasn’t: American Oystercatcher, Pomarine Jaeger, Philadelphia Vireo, Connecticut Warbler, and Black-throated Gray Warbler. If you want to compare your Alachua County list with those of other birders, go to this page, type your name into the cell in Row 1, and then start putting 1’s next to every species you’ve seen in the county. The checklist will automatically tally them for you. Here’s the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sVSSm0cEbsRkpGOMGvSlKMrvQp2KJ78iXJeU5kidyY4/edit?usp=sharing

A bear! Adam Zions wrote on the 26th, “Thought you’d be interested in this observation I had last night (well technically early this morning) while Gina and I were coming back from a concert in Orlando. At 1:12 a.m. we were driving towards home along Archer Road and were coming up right by Kanapaha Botanical Gardens (KBG) and lo and behold an adult black bear ran across Archer and north up the easternmost road of the mobile home park which is directly adjacent to KBG. Gina didn’t see it run across Archer and didn’t believe me, so I pulled back around and onto the mobile home park road I’d seen it run up, and sure enough we saw it a couple hundred feet ahead as it climbed the short chain link fence and over into the KBG property.” I’ve heard that the population center for Black Bears in Alachua County is the swampland north of Lake Alto, so this was probably from somewhere else – Goethe State Forest, maybe? They’re usually pretty harmless, and will flee at the sight of a human being. But not always: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsCqmotxyME

Did anyone lose a pair of prescription glasses at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve? Deena Mickelson found them along the Red Loop on the 25th. Let me know if you lost them and I’ll pass your contact information along to her. She also found a Hairy Woodpecker along the Red Loop on the 25th – “in the woods on the southern side of the service road, just before the red trail divides in two directions” – but it will be much, much easier to recover your glasses than to see the woodpecker. Deena took a camp chair along with her, set it up, and just waited the bird out. Not a bad strategy. Something to keep in mind for … The June Challenge! (Did I mention that it begins on the 1st? Maybe I did.)

The 14th Annual June Challenge begins on Thursday. 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 they can from June 1st to June 30th. It has expanded a bit since 2004, when Becky Enneis came up with the idea. That first year fewer than ten birders participated. Last year 42 Alachua County birders submitted lists, there were 64 additional submissions from 23 other Florida counties, and out-of-state birders sent three more, one each from Maine, Kansas, and Kentucky.

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.)
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. 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 and non-countable species are on your list (“ABA” is American Birding Association). 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 and domestic Graylag-type geese at the Duck Pond, for instance, would be on the “uncountable” part of your list, while wild-plumaged Mallards and Muscovy Ducks at Red Lobster and Home Depot Ponds would be on the countable part. If you have any questions about a specific bird, ask me.
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.
5. EMAIL YOUR LIST TO ME BY MIDNIGHT ON FRIDAY, JUNE 30TH. There will then be a June Challenge party at TJC creator Becky Enneis’s house in Alachua, probably on July 8th, 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 Thursday 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 either La Chua or Sweetwater Wetlands Park ($4 admission for La Chua, $5 for Sweetwater). 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. (If you want an idea of what such a morning would be like, I described 2015’s “jump start” in a Gainesville Sun blog here: http://fieldguide.blogs.gainesville.com/347/the-june-challenge/ )

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; 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 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 14th Annual June Challenge. Good luck to all!

Matt Bruce saw a Least Tern at Chapmans Pond on the 23rd. They’re probably annual here in late spring and early summer, but on the rare occasions when someone spots one it’s usually on the big lakes rather than small bodies of water like Chapmans.

A visiting birder named Jeffrey Bailey photographed a late Yellow-rumped Warbler at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on May 16th. See his checklist (with the photo) here: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36909374 There’s only one later record for the county.

I went out to Powers Park and Gum Root Swamp this evening to see if the rain had changed things at Newnans Lake. The mud flats all appear to be underwater, but there’s still a wide grassy shore – though it may be too soggy to walk on. At Gum Root Swamp I went down to the first bridge to see if Hatchet Creek had risen significantly – if so, the water level in the lake could be expected to rise a lot more – but it was merely a trickle. That may change after today’s rains. Lloyd Davis was out there at first light this morning, walking east from Powers Park toward Prairie Creek and beyond, and at that point there was still enough shoreline to accommodate 8 White-rumped Sandpipers, 46 Semipalmated Sandpipers, a Semipalmated Plover, and a Spotted Sandpiper.

The June Challenge begins next Thursday. I’ll send out another reminder before then, but let me repeat one point: Don’t keep your June Challenge list in eBird! You definitely DO want to include heard birds in your eBird checklists, but you CAN’T count heard birds in The June Challenge. We’ve got some paper checklists if you want one, and there’s a nice computerized checklist that Phil Laipis created in Excel, which I’ll attach to my next email.

Short-tailed Hawks haven’t been reported lately. The season’s first was seen near Prairie Creek on March 31st, there were several sightings during the second half of April, and three were extensively studied and photographed over Powers Park on April 30th. Since then, however, eBird doesn’t show a single sighting.

Also among the missing:

Cedar Waxwings, usually the last wintering birds to leave us, seem to be gone. There were only seven local reports during the first week in May, and three since. They were last reported on the 15th, when Alicia Johansen saw a flock of 12 at Sweetwater Wetlands Park and Darrell Hartman saw another flock at a blueberry farm near Lake Alto. This was not a big winter for waxwings; that’s two winters in a row with low numbers.

I haven’t seen a Bobolink report in a few days. There was a small flock hanging around the eastern shore of Newnans Lake in the middle of the month – we counted 48 on the 12th and 23 on the 15th – but Lloyd Davis reported only 1 on the 20th, and there’s been nothing since then.

Our Paynes Prairie Whooping Crane stayed with us for almost exactly a year. First noted near Bolen Bluff on April 21, 2016, she was last seen near the Visitor Center on April 14th by Sarasota birder Keith Pochy. I expect she’ll be back, though. She’s visited the Prairie almost annually since 2009.

On the 15th, while searching unsuccessfully for the Sandwich Tern and Common Tern that Lloyd Davis had found the day before, Mike Manetz, Debbie Segal, and I came across a color-flagged Semipalmated Sandpiper at Newnans Lake. Mike got a photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/34368934180/in/dateposted-public/  There’s a “Florida Banded Bird Resightings” Facebook page, and Mike posted the photo there. After some confusion about the flag color – it looked yellow to us, but she insisted that it was “dirty white” – Louise Laurin of the Canadian Wildlife Service informed Mike that it had been banded on July 28, 2016, on the southwest coast of James Bay, Ontario. There’s a lot of shorebird research going on there, and you can see the landscape and some of the birds and researchers at this web site: http://www.jeaniron.ca/2016/JB16/p1.htm  Though the bird has carried the flag for ten months, it obviously found it irritating. In this video – and I apologize for the quality, it was a handheld point-and-shoot on high zoom – you can see it repeatedly stretching and flicking its left leg: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/34295357700/in/dateposted-public/

Though surprising, it was not quite as exciting as the flagged Semipalmated Sandpiper that Rob Norton found at Orange Lake in 2011. Greg Stephens photographed it on 29 July – https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/6015517732/in/album-72157622617268857/ – and after making some inquiries Rob received a photo of the same bird taken immediately after the flag had been applied on the north shore of Alaska on 25 June, only 34 days previously – https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/6032618881/in/album-72157622617268857/

There are still a good number of sandpipers along the eastern shore of Newnans Lake, most of them north of Prairie Creek. Though I’d advise rubber boots, the walking is fairly easy (see a photo from the 15th here). The indefatigable, irrepressible, irreplaceable Lloyd Davis made the walk on the 19th and tallied 4 Black-necked Stilts, 2 Semipalmated Plovers, 2 Killdeer, 7 White-rumped Sandpipers, and 53 Semipalmated Sandpipers, not to mention 2 Roseate Spoonbills.

Inspired by the song of the Wood Thrush, Gainesville’s own Zach Neece has written a really lovely composition for clarinet and piano called “Eternal Morning.” The title is from Thoreau, who noted that the Wood Thrush “is the only bird whose note affects me like music. It lifts and exhilarates me. It is inspiring. It changes all hours to an eternal morning.” And Zach notes that performance of the piece “starts with the house lights dimmed to simulate a dawn chorus”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV-i3lIqYuc&feature=youtu.be

A reminder in case you don’t know about the County Rare Birds web site: It allows you to look up the recent sightings that eBird’s filters have interpreted as rare for any county in North America. In some cases these won’t really be rarities, just birds that trip the numerical filters, but in most cases they’re good birds. The best way to understand what the web site has to offer is to click on the link. Once you’re at the site, use the “Search Your Location” function in the left sidebar to find Alachua County. When the list of rarities comes up, you can click on the location to see a Google Map showing where each bird was seen (usually just a park location), and you can click on the eBird checklist (an 8-digit number preceded by S) for more details on the sighting, including photos if available. Here’s the link: http://countyrarebirds.com/

Summer is about a month away, on June 21st. Hmm, June, June. Is there anything else that happens in June? Seems like there might be….

This morning Kim Chaney sent me a very weird report from Sweetwater Wetlands Park. A Great Blue Heron apparently killed two other Great Blue Herons. A visitor alerted her to it. He’d seen one Great Blue “holding a second Great Blue under the water by the neck and standing on its body. He said that the second one was still alive because he could see it kicking. The visitor said the victor was all puffed up, then flew to the other side of the boardwalk. He had a photo of the one holding the other by the neck.” Bob Carroll, Becky Enneis, and I once saw a Great Blue trying to eat a Pied-billed Grebe at Lake Sampson in Bradford County. It carried the grebe around in its bill like a football for 45 minutes. And I know of two instances of a Great Blue eating a Least Bittern (one photographed here). But all those were for the sake of food. I can’t explain a Great Blue actually killing another Great Blue – and not once but twice! Bizarre.

This morning Lloyd Davis walked east from Powers Park (toward Prairie Creek and then beyond) and found a Sandwich Tern (only the 8th occurrence for Alachua County), a Common Tern, 3 Laughing Gulls, and a late-record Bufflehead. The low water is starting to attract bigger birds too: he had 45 American White Pelicans, 19 Great Egrets, and 18 Wood Storks. Still a lot of shorebirds too, including White-rumped and Stilt Sandpipers and Semipalmated Plovers. The Ruddy Turnstone that Lloyd found on the 12th was not seen again after that date.

This morning (May 12th) Lloyd Davis found Alachua County’s 8th-ever Ruddy Turnstone walking along the eastern shore of Newnans Lake about halfway between the Windsor boat ramp and Prairie Creek. He got a superb photo.

Also this morning, Mike Manetz found a Swainson’s Thrush and a singing American Redstart at San Felasco Hammock. Historically, that’s only the 17th spring record for Swainson’s Thrush in Alachua County – but the third since May 5th!

It’s finally here, and man does it look good: https://www.amazon.com/Peterson-Sounds-Eastern-America-Guides/dp/0547905580/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494525209&sr=8-1&keywords=9780547905587 If you’ve ever wanted to be Mike Manetz, now’s your chance. I notice that Tom Webber of the Florida Museum of Natural History received special thanks on the acknowledgments pages.

Last year’s spring migration peaked April 15-23, which struck me as a little early. This year there were two peaks. The first came at about the time I’d expect, April 23-28, and under normal circumstances the warbler migration would have been largely finished after that. But this year a powerful front blew through on May 4/5, pushing a number of migrants eastward and bringing us a second peak that ran from May 5-8. This later peak included four species that we don’t often see in spring: Swainson’s Thrush, Bay-breasted Warbler, Yellow Warbler, and Black-throated Green Warbler. With the help of eBird and a few observers who emailed me directly I compiled a spreadsheet showing the dates and numbers of selected migrant passerines that came through Alachua County between April 15th and May 11th, and you can look at it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-AfPcnNxCF_F4G_F1JRNzgK8xJrUXth2DHd7yL_gqhw/edit?usp=sharing (Note the last two columns on the right, one showing the total number of individual migrants reported on a given day, and the other showing the number of species reported.)

At this point it’s likely that passerine migration is over, BUT … of the nine reports of Connecticut Warbler from Alachua County, six came on May 11th or later – in fact, three came after May 20th.

Steve Hofstetter has discovered that his NW Gainesville backyard is a birding hotspot. On the 7th he saw a male Bay-breasted Warbler there: “As it worked its way through a live oak, I was able to watch it for about 20 seconds. I could clearly make out the rusty sides, throat and cap. It made for a strong contract with the cream-colored nape. I could also make out the dark band through the eyes and strong white wing bars. Compared to what they look like in the fall, the contrast in colors make for a beautiful-looking bird and an easy ID. The color of the nape reminded me of a Bobolink.” On the following day he had another unusual visitor, a male Black-throated Green Warbler. As he was admiring it, he made his third remarkable observation in two days: “During this time I kept hearing this loud rattling chip note. I finally found the bird, it was a young Brown-headed Cowbird being fed by a Carolina Chickadee. It was a sad sight and no baby chickadees were anywhere to be found. Cowbirds usually parasitize open-nest species, but on occasion they lay in cavities (i.e., bluebirds, House Wrens, and chickadees). I think it is the first time I’ve seen one being raised by a chickadee. I heard this cowbird calling for over two hours with only temporary breaks (probably when it was being fed). I felt sorry for the chickadee.” I think this is the first such observation for Alachua County.

On the evening of the 7th Mike Manetz and I walked out Hatchet Creek – no longer a creek, but a series of puddles – to the north end of Newnans Lake. Once we got there and started walking east along the lakeshore we found a lot of weedy shallows but not much in the way of mud flats. There were only six shorebirds: 2 Leasts, 2 Lesser Yellowlegs, and 2 Spotted Sandpipers. Two days later Mike and I made another try, walking north from Palm Point along a narrow (sometimes nonexistent) beach almost to the old crew team dock at the end of East University Avenue. We didn’t do much better this time: we saw 22 Lesser Yellowlegs and 4 Spotted Sandpipers. Lloyd Davis had better luck on the 10th, making the long walk south from the Windsor boat ramp to Prairie Creek: he saw 13 White-rumped Sandpipers, 18 Stilt Sandpipers, 12 Spotted Sandpipers, 1 Long-billed Dowitcher (down from a high of 440 on April 21st), 20 Least Sandpipers, 20 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 5 Lesser Yellowlegs, 1 Killdeer, and 2 Black-necked Stilts. So thanks to Lloyd you know where to go, and thanks to me and Mike you know where not to go.

The Alachua Audubon field trip to Jacksonville on May 6th coincided with 50-degree temperatures and 30 mph winds. Consequently we had an uncomfortable and unproductive morning. However we tallied six species of swallows streaming north along the dunes, and Erin Kalinowski spotted a Common Eider sitting on the sand at the mouth of the St. Johns River, which Glenn Price was able to photograph as it was flying away: https://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/33792798553/in/dateposted-public/ On the same day in another part of Jacksonville, Kevin Dailey saw a flock of Eastern Kingbirds flying north over the St. Johns River, remarkably late for such a large migratory flock, but of a piece with the swallow flight we’d witnessed along the coast, all birds that had been pushed east by the front.

This Saturday morning, county biologist Michael Drummond will lead a walk at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve. Details here: https://alachuaaudubon.org/event/longleaf-flatwoods-reserve-clep/?instance_id=671

Laura Gaudette saw a Brown Pelican at the north end of Newnans Lake on the afternoon of the 5th.

Spring-migrant passerines have been pretty sparse, but on the 5th Debbie Segal saw a Cape May Warbler and a rare-in-spring Swainson’s Thrush at Bolen Bluff; on the 5th Ryan Terrill saw a Blackpoll Warbler and 2 American Redstarts on the UF campus; and on the 4th Martin and Holly Bern saw a Rose-breasted Grosbeak at Newnans Lake State Forest on the trail east of State Road 26 (officially called the Lake Pithlachocco Trailhead). On the 2nd Bob Carroll and I also walked the Lake Pithlachocco Trail, seeing 4 American Redstarts, 1 Cape May Warbler, 1 Black-throated Blue Warbler, and 1 Ovenbird, but I’m linking to my eBird checklist mainly so you can see the photo of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird that Bob found building a nest: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36483807

On the afternoon of the 4th Mike Manetz and I checked out the Newnans Lake shorebird situation in advance of the rain (which caught us ten minutes before we got back to the car). Starting at the Windsor boat ramp we walked south about two and a half miles through knee-high grass and weeds, which will probably be waist high by next week. We were hoping for something really exciting, but our best birds were a flock of 31 breeding-plumage Stilt Sandpipers, a Semipalmated Plover, and a White-rumped Sandpiper. Lloyd Davis, walking east from Powers Park on the 5th, did a smidge better, with 38 Stilt Sandpipers and 2 White-rumpeds. Though Least Sandpipers are still common – I counted 112 – other species are present only in single and low double digits: 12 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 4 Long-billed Dowitchers, 1 Solitary Sandpiper, 1 Greater Yellowlegs, and 11 Lesser Yellowlegs. Or possibly they’ve moved to the north end of the lake. Has anyone walked in from Gum Root Swamp recently?

Speaking of shorebirds, Linda Hensley and her cousin Polly Wimberly reported seeing the Ruff from Powers Park on the 3rd. That was the first report since the 27th, another reason to think that shorebirds may be congregating somewhere besides the southeastern shore of the lake.

Sunday’s field trip to Powers Park and Palm Point put quality over quantity. We didn’t see a single migrant warbler, possibly because it was another extremely windy day and possibly because they’re just not here. But we did see three Short-tailed Hawks rise up out of the trees along the shoreline between Powers and Lakeshore Drive and drift in our direction until we got close looks at two of them, one hanging up there so still that we were able to put him in the scope as if he were perched. At Palm Point we saw the grisly sight of Black Vultures eating another Black Vulture who was still alive (!). On a more cheerful note, we also saw a pair of Laughing Gulls fly over the road, the nest of a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, and yet another Short-tailed Hawk (probably one of the three from Powers) hanging in the air until we’d ogled him to our hearts’ content.

For the past two or three summers, American Robins have nested in Geoff Parks’s NE Gainesville neighborhood. This year he hadn’t noticed a robin since April 5th, and he assumed that the breeding pair had left and wouldn’t be back. But on the evening of the 5th, “to my surprise, as I was heading down 6th Terrace from 23rd Avenue, one was singing loud and clear to the east.”

Tom Webber reports that the American Kestrel nest across the street from the Gainesville Police Department seems to have failed: “I last saw the male on 24 April, the female on 28 April. I’ve checked ten times since the 28th.”

Debora Greger forwarded this article about Europe’s first-ever Red-winged Blackbird. In Florida we ignore them as best we can. In Scotland they charter airplanes to get a look at one: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/01/birdwatchers-flock-orkney-catch-glimpse-american-red-winged-blackbird?CMP=share_btn_link