Tag: Alder Flycatcher

It’s the birding news! Right in your inbox! Is that cool or what?

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

Because he delights in putting the working man down, Bob Carroll is starting a monthly weekday-morning bird walk for retirees and other persons of leisure, beginning this week: “Will you please let people know about our Thursday Bird Walk coming up this week? We’ll meet at 8:00 AM at Bolen Bluff and spend a few hours searching for what I’m sure will be a migrant fallout. Afterwards, some of us will go to Blue Highway Pizza in Micanopy. Anyone planning on going to lunch should let me know so I can contact the restaurant and warn them about what’s going to happen to their lovely little place. They can email me at gatorbob23@yahoo.com or text me at (352) 2813616.”

An official Paynes Prairie announcement: “La Chua Trail [including Sparrow Alley] will be closed September 26th through October 9th for culvert removal and restoration. Heavy Equipment will be operated in the area. Visitors are requested to call the Paynes Prairie Ranger Station at (352) 466-3397 to verify that the trail has reopened prior to visiting.” You want to be careful around Heavy Equipment.

In warbler news, Mike Manetz had the fall’s only Golden-winged Warbler at Poe Springs on the 12th – we weren’t able to relocate it on the field trip – and Adam Kent spotted a Cerulean Warbler in his SE Gainesville yard on the 15th.

A dark-morph Short-tailed Hawk spending the summer around La Chua has been seen twice lately, on the 10th by Adam Zions and on the 14th by the lucky birders who saw the Gray Kingbird (not relocated, alas).

Those lucky birders also saw an Alder Flycatcher. I have now tried for those Alders on Sparrow Alley four times, plus Cones Dike once and Barr Hammock once. I’ve seen flycatchers fitting that general description each time, but without a vocalization they’re essentially unidentifiable, and either they clam up when I’m around or else I’ve gone deaf. It’s making me peevish.

Adam Zions saw both a Bank Swallow and a Cliff Swallow over La Chua on the 13th. Both are tough birds to get in Alachua County, yet when you see one it’s not that unusual to see the other.

In a recent birding report I mentioned the Common Nighthawk migration, as witnessed by local birders on the 7th, 8th, and 9th. On the 10th the Florida Keys Hawkwatch counted 4,275 nighthawks passing over, and captured several dozen on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVAgKjc39u4 I notice that they have a more regular flight style in migration; from a distance I might mistake them for Laughing Gulls.

Here’s something unexpected, to me anyway. I know that hawks and falcons prey on migrant birds, but I didn’t know that gulls do it too: http://www.anythinglarus.com/2014/09/ring-billeds-preying-on-migrating.html

Remember: Mangrove Cuckoo presentation at the Millhopper Library on Wednesday night at 6:30, fall migration count on Saturday, Cedar Key boat trip on Sunday. Details here (click on the + symbol for more information): https://alachuaaudubon.org/classes-field-trips/

Don’t look behind you, Summer, those are Fall’s footsteps you hear!

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

Up to four fall-migrant Alder Flycatchers have been sighted along Sparrow Alley recently, mostly around “the dip.” That’s the low area in the trail about a hundred yards past the powerlines – the low area that often turns into a puddle of water, though it’s currently dry. Here’s a picture of Andy Kratter and Matt O’Sullivan birding just on the far side of the dip on the 5th – https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/14974401200/in/photostream/ – and here’s a slightly different view just to give you some visual context – https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/14974314939/in/photostream/ – and I’m showing you these photos because that’s where you need to go, because that’s where most of the Alders are sighted. That’s where Mike Manetz found one on the 31st, where John Hintermister, Phil Laipis, and Matt O’Sullivan found four on the 2nd (Matt got a photo), and where a visiting Central Florida birder saw two on the 3rd. On the 5th, Andy and Matt and I saw two probable Alders in the horse pasture immediately north of the dip, but I never got a very good look or heard any vocalizations, so I just wrote them off as “Empidonax sp.” It was my third unsuccessful attempt to see an Alder Flycatcher in the past week – or rather, to hear one. In each case I saw at least one Empidonax flycatcher, but I never heard the characteristic “pip!” that identifies it as an Alder (click here, and scroll down till you get to “Calls,” then click on the first one, the “Pip call”). Maybe I haven’t mentioned this yet, but Alder Flycatcher is normally a very rare bird in Alachua County. In 2012 we had two, and last year we had several at La Chua, Cones Dike, and Levy Lake from late August to late September, but we shouldn’t assume that they’ll always be this common. Enjoy their presence while you can. (That is, if you can get them to say “pip.”)

Samuel Ewing photographed the fall’s first Veery in his yard on the 3rd: https://www.flickr.com/photos/121511542@N02/14941925498/ Veeries normally arrive in numbers during the first week of September. They seem to especially favor the deep deciduous woods of San Felasco Hammock, but like most migrants they can show up just about anywhere. Samuel has also seen and (before dawn) heard Bobolinks flying over his NW Gainesville home, one as early as the 29th, probably the earliest-ever for Alachua County, and he saw seven or eight fly over on the 4th.

But what about the warblers, you ask, what about the warblers? Blue-winged Warblers seem fairly common so far this fall; eBird shows at least eight, maybe more, since August 25th, most recently along Sparrow Alley, at Bolen Bluff, and along San Felasco’s Moonshine Creek Trail. No Blackburnians or Golden-wingeds yet. About half a dozen Kentucky Warblers have been reported since July 31st, the most recent at Ring Park and the Moonshine Creek Trail. Two Ceruleans have been reported, as mentioned in previous birding reports, but none since the 24th; normally their passage extends through September, rarely into October. The first Chestnut-sided Warblers were seen on the 3rd, one by Charlene Leonard along Sparrow Alley and one by Matt O’Sullivan at Loblolly Woods. Finally, Jonathan Mays saw the county’s earliest-ever Palm Warbler near Prairie Creek on the 4th. His eBird writeup reads, “Early; observed at least one and possibly a second just east of the fishing bridge. Heard chip then saw two similar-sized birds working at eye level through vegetation. One was viewed well, including yellow vent, dingy breast and sides, and pumping tail.” This beat the existing early record by four days.

On the 5th Geoff Parks saw a Short-tailed Hawk over Green Acres Park, tucked away in the neighborhood across Newberry Road from the Royal Park Theater. He wrote, “All-dark smallish buteo with faintly barred tail; flight feathers slightly lighter in color than rest of underwings, with faint barring; lightish patch at base of primaries was noticeably the palest portion of the underwing. Circled over just above the treetops, giving good views.” How many Short-tailed Hawks does that make this year? Looking over the thirteen observations reported to eBird since January 1st, I think there have been a minimum of five birds. When you consider the history of the species in Alachua County, that’s a little bit mind-boggling. The county’s first record was a bird shot in 1927. The second wasn’t reported until 1993, one of five sightings in the 1990s. There were seven more between 2000 and 2005. And now they’re seen a few times each year, usually between late February and mid-October, and there’s circumstantial evidence to suggest that they’re nesting here. Quite a change.

The feral cat issue raised its head again in the August 20th Gainesville Sun. You can remind yourself of what free-roaming cats are capable of by watching National Geographic’s “The Secret Life of Cats” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkWuLoHdF2s Warning: Do not read the comments unless you want your opinion of humanity to descend to a point from which it will never be lifted again.

Lake County is holding its third annual Wings and Wildflowers Festival in a month. You can see a list of their field trips, speakers, and events at http://wingsandwildflowers.com/

Have you looked at our birders’ photo gallery lately? Why not? We’re all so pretty! https://alachuaaudubon.org/meet-the-birders/ (Click photos to enlarge.) All Alachua County birders should send me a picture so I can add it to the gallery.

Alder Flycatchers, Lawrence’s Warbler at Sparrow Alley

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

Mike Manetz walked Sparrow Alley this morning after Jennifer Donsky told him that she’d found an Alder Flycatcher there. Mike relocated Jennifer’s bird and saw a second one as well. The first was south of the trail near the watery dip beyond the powerlines, and the second was in a small grove of persimmons just a couple hundred feet in from the trail’s beginning, where an Alder lingered for nearly a month at this time last year. Both were identified by their “pip!” call notes. If last weekend’s Barr Hammock bird was also an Alder, that makes three in the county at once. It’s bizarre: we never had an Alder Flycatcher here until 2010, and now they’re so abundant that the county will soon commence spraying empidonacide to control them….(No, not really.) Mike also saw two Blue-winged Warblers on his walk, and even more surprising than the Alders, a Lawrence’s Warbler, a hybrid of Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warbler that has been recorded in Alachua County only three times before, most recently in 1990. Here’s what a Lawrence’s looks like: https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7419/9124553719_b120308131_z.jpg

Debbie Segal made arrangements with GRU to offer a special Sheet Flow Restoration Project field trip for Alachua Audubon volunteers on the 30th. It was a very productive morning, and the group saw some nice things: a flock of four Roseate Spoonbills, a Great White Heron wandering from the Florida Keys, a mixed flock of Barn and Bank Swallows swarming over one of the cells, and eleven species of shorebirds, including some uncommon species – Pectoral and Stilt Sandpipers and Semipalmated Plover – and some that are locally quite rare – Western Sandpiper and Short-billed Dowitcher. Hopefully the Sheet Flow Restoration Project will continue to attract birds once the vegetation has stabilized in all three cells.

One hundred years ago tomorrow, September 1, 1914, the last Passenger Pigeon in the world, a 29-year-old female named Martha, tumbled from her perch in the Cincinnati Zoo, and the most abundant bird in the history of Planet Earth went extinct. John Fitzpatrick of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has written about the event, and what it means to us today, in a New York Times editorial. But the closest we’ll ever come to seeing a live Passenger Pigeon is reading John James Audubon’s 1831 description of a flock settling in to feed: “As soon as the Pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to alight, they fly round in circles, reviewing the country below. During their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they form exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds come simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass of rich deep purple. Then they pass lower, over the woods, and for a moment are lost among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen gliding aloft. They now alight, but the next moment, as if suddenly alarmed, they take to wing, producing by the flappings of their wings a noise like the roar of distant thunder, and sweep through the forests to see if danger is near. Hunger, however, soon brings them to the ground. When alighted, they are seen industriously throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the fallen mast. The rear ranks are continually rising, passing over the main-body, and alighting in front, in such rapid succession, that the whole flock seems still on wing.”

Possible Alder Flycatcher at Barr Hammock

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

This morning’s walk at Barr Hammock was largely birdless, but we did find what may have been an Alder Flycatcher. We’re not positive – it didn’t call – but it was not too far from where Mike Manetz, Adam Zions, and I found one a year ago tomorrow, on the north fork of the trail maybe a quarter of a mile out. Matt O’Sullivan got a picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/118053703@N02/15021189862/  Alder Flycatcher had never been identified in this county prior to 2010, but if this is an Alder, we’ve had them three falls in a row now. That’s weird.

The Cerulean Warbler that Matt found at Bolen Bluff on the 21st remained until at least yesterday, but several birders spent all of this morning scouring its usual haunts without finding it. However John Martin spent this morning at San Felasco Hammock’s Moonshine Creek Trail (on the south side of Millhopper Road), and there he found another Cerulean: “Found along Moonshine Creek Trail, south leg of loop which passes through upland dominated by oak, hickory, sweetgum. Foraging with small flock containing Northern Parulas, American Redstarts, and Red-eyed Vireos.”

Geoff Parks wrote this morning with some exciting news: “This morning as I sat on my patio, I saw two robins fly into the top of a pine where there’s a mass of fruiting Virginia creeper. One was an adult; the other only perched in view briefly, but I confirmed that it had the paler, spotted breast of a juvenile. They flew away together, and were accompanied by a third that I hadn’t seen previously. Since they didn’t stay long, I wasn’t able to get a photo, but I’ll keep trying.” That’s the first confirmed breeding of American Robin in the history of Alachua County.

The beginning of the end; plus, final migration count results

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

We’ve got only two or three more weeks of neotropical birds like warblers, tanagers, cuckoos, thrushes, and buntings. Then, beginning around October 15th or 20th – about the time the first Yellow-rumped Warbler shows up – the transients will disappear and we’ll start looking for winter arrivals like sparrows, ducks, and the occasional western stray like Yellow-headed Blackbird and Dickcissel.

We’re already seeing changes of a more subtle kind. Veeries predominated in September, but now they’ll begin to give way to other thrushes: on the 29th Michael Drummond heard “many, many Swainson’s calling in the predawn hours this morning.” Early fall warblers like Cerulean, Louisiana Waterthrush, and Kentucky and Prothonotary Warblers are well south of us now, or soon will be, but Magnolia and Tennessee will become more abundant, and we’ll start to see Black-throated Greens and Bay-breasteds. A few Scarlet Tanagers have already been reported, and Keith Collingwood saw the season’s first Rose-breasted Grosbeak in his Melrose yard on the 29th. Anyway, we’ve got about two weeks of the fall migration left, three if we’re lucky.

A few winter birds are already here: on the 28th Bryan Tarbox saw one Marsh Wren at Bolen Bluff while John Anderson saw another at the US-441 observation deck; Adam Kent, Craig Faulhaber, and Ryan Butryn found the season’s first Eastern Phoebe at San Felasco Hammock (Progress Center entrance) on the 29th, as well as a Cliff Swallow and a female Painted Bunting; and on the 2nd Samuel Ewing photographed the fall’s first sparrow, a Savannah, by four days a new early record for Alachua County.

A few miscellaneous reports from the past week:

On the 25th Dean and Samuel Ewing birded Ring Park, and Samuel got a nice video of a female Black-throated Blue Warbler eating beautyberries.

On the 26th Mike Manetz and Jonathan Mays (who are to normal ears what the Hubble Space Telescope is to binoculars) walked the Cones Dike Trail in search of flycatchers and were rewarded with one calling Alder, two Empidonax that were either Alders or Willows but would not identify themselves by vocalizing, and one Least, which was photographed by Jonathan. They also tallied a dozen warbler species, including an amazing 55 Common Yellowthroats.

On the 29th Geoff Parks noticed that both Indigo Buntings and Painted Buntings were feeding on the coral bristlegrass in his NE Gainesville back yard. Does that give you any ideas? It should.

On the 30th Matt and Erin Kalinowski spotted a Merlin along the La Chua Trail.

On the 2nd Mike Manetz walked the Moonshine Creek Trail at San Felasco Hammock and saw 6 Swainson’s Thrushes, 5 Veeries, 5 Wood Thrushes, and 3 Gray-cheeked Thrushes. He saw only six warbler species, but that included 22 Ovenbirds.

According to the annual “winter finch forecast” published by Ron Pittaway of the Ontario Field Ornithologists, we won’t be seeing many irruptive birds this year – no Pine Siskins, no Purple Finches, no Red-breasted Nuthatches – because they’ve got plenty of chow up north: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/wf1314/

North Carolina biologists put a tracking device on an American Oystercatcher that had nested in the Cape Fear region, and over the course of five days in mid-September it migrated to Florida, crossing the northern peninsula from Amelia Island to Cedar Key (passing right over High Springs along the way). An American Oystercatcher appeared at Newnans Lake on September 18, 2000, the morning after Hurricane Gordon blew ashore at Cedar Key. We always assumed that the bird had been blown inland from the Gulf Coast, but the linked story suggests that it might well have been a migrating bird forced down by the storm.

Two or three people shared this video with me, which shows the bizarrely complicated structure of a hummingbird’s tongue: http://player.vimeo.com/video/68897592

Brush up on your fall wildflowers.

Remember that we’ve scheduled double field trips each of the next three weekends so you can take advantage of fall migration. This weekend we’ll be birding Powers Park and Palm Point/Lakeshore Drive with Barbara Shea on Saturday, then heading over to St. Augustine with John Hintermister on Sunday to look for Peregrine Falcons. Field trip schedule here.

Earlier this week Mike Manetz and I compiled the final results of Alachua County’s fall migration count held on September 21st. I think our birders set a new county record for numbers of individual warblers. I compared the numbers from our first fall migration count (1995) with those from this year. We had more warbler species that first year, 26, against 24 this year, but the count of individual warblers was higher this year by about 300. Two or three species always make up the bulk of what’s recorded: in 1995, Common Yellowthroat and Northern Parula accounted for 41% of all the warblers seen, while this year the same two species plus Ovenbird accounted for 51%. This year Common Yellowthroats alone made up 22% of our total. I put the 1995 vs. 2013 comparison in a table here. And the complete results:

Black-bellied Whistling-Duck  22
Wood Duck  42
Mottled Duck  13
Blue-winged Teal  8
Northern Bobwhite  7
Wild Turkey  12
Pied-billed Grebe  30
Wood Stork  11
Double-crested Cormorant  60
Anhinga  65
American Bittern  3
Great Blue Heron  40
Great Egret  95
Snowy Egret  35
Little Blue Heron  100
Tricolored Heron  22
Cattle Egret  501
Green Heron  23
White Ibis  164
Glossy Ibis  104
Black Vulture  225
Turkey Vulture  260
Osprey  6
Bald Eagle  30
Northern Harrier  3
Cooper’s Hawk  6
Red-shouldered Hawk  89
Broad-winged Hawk  1
Red-tailed Hawk  7
King Rail  2
Sora  5
Common Gallinule  40
Limpkin  6
Sandhill Crane  25
Killdeer  9
Spotted Sandpiper  2
Greater Yellowlegs  1
Lesser Yellowlegs  2
Least Sandpiper  12
Pectoral Sandpiper  15
Rock Pigeon  19
Eurasian Collared-Dove  7
White-winged Dove  8
Mourning Dove  204
Common Ground-Dove  14
Yellow-billed Cuckoo  10
Black-billed Cuckoo  1
Eastern Screech-Owl  3
Great Horned Owl  8
Barred Owl  28
Whip-poor-will  3
Chimney Swift  79
Ruby-throated Hummingbird  12
Belted Kingfisher  17
Red-headed Woodpecker  29
Red-bellied Woodpecker  251
Downy Woodpecker  172
Northern Flicker  1
Pileated Woodpecker  109
Merlin  3
American Kestrel  10
Eastern Wood-Pewee  12
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher  1
Acadian Flycatcher  74
Alder Flycatcher  2
Empidonax, sp.  19
Great Crested Flycatcher  1
Loggerhead Shrike  9
White-eyed Vireo  741
Yellow-throated Vireo  16
Red-eyed Vireo  297
Blue Jay  293
American Crow  310
Fish Crow  81
crow, sp.  7
Purple Martin  10
Tree Swallow  1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow  3
Barn Swallow  187
Carolina Chickadee  193
Tufted Titmouse  350
House Wren  1
Carolina Wren  466
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  360
Eastern Bluebird  49
Veery  63
Swainson’s Thrush  4
Gray Catbird  19
Brown Thrasher  49
Northern Mockingbird  103
European Starling  34
Ovenbird  137
Worm-eating Warbler  12
Louisiana Waterthrush  1
Northern Waterthrush  54
Golden-winged Warbler  2
Blue-winged Warbler  5
Black-and-white Warbler  29
Prothonotary Warbler  2
Tennessee Warbler  2
Kentucky Warbler  3
Common Yellowthroat  238
Hooded Warbler  27
American Redstart  86
Northern Parula  175
Magnolia Warbler  6
Blackburnian Warbler  3
Yellow Warbler  59
Chestnut-sided Warbler  13
Black-throated Blue Warbler  2
Palm Warbler  27
Pine Warbler  61
Yellow-throated Warbler  77
Prairie Warbler  61
Yellow-breasted Chat  1
Eastern Towhee  80
Bachman’s Sparrow  1
Summer Tanager  45
Scarlet Tanager  1
Northern Cardinal  698
Blue Grosbeak  38
Indigo Bunting  41
Painted Bunting  1
Bobolink  2
Red-winged Blackbird  370
Eastern Meadowlark  3
Common Grackle  144
Boat-tailed Grackle  315
Brown-headed Cowbird  135
Baltimore Oriole  2
House Finch  26
House Sparrow  34

Preliminary results of the fall migration count

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

First day of fall! Now the nights start getting longer and the days start getting shorter and the birds start getting more abundant!

I haven’t received all the results from Saturday’s fall migration count, but I can tell you that every single White-eyed Vireo presently in existence showed up in Alachua County to be tallied. My team got 60; the NW County team reported 116. The two best birds of the day were a Black-billed Cuckoo seen by the Levy Lake team, and a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher seen by the Bolen Bluff team. The cuckoo was about three miles out, beyond the point where the right (north) fork of the loop trail turns south. The flycatcher was not quite so far away: taking the left fork of the Bolen Bluff Trail, walk until you’re about 75 yards shy of the open grassy area where the two forks come together. The bird was there, on the wooded slope below the trail. Several of us went looking for it this morning, but although we found four calling Acadian Flycatchers in the general area, plus two other silent Empidonax flycatchers, none of them matched Andy Kratter’s description of the bird (“yellow underparts, brightest on the throat, shortish tailed, big headed, relatively short primary extension, quite different from the elongate slender cresty look of the other Acadian we saw today”). Other highlights of the count included two Merlins at O’Leno State Park and one at Paynes Prairie, two Alder Flycatchers, a Broad-winged Hawk, and a Yellow-breasted Chat at La Chua, American Bitterns at Newnans Lake and La Chua, Golden-winged Warblers at Gum Root Swamp and San Felasco Progress Center, a Tree Swallow and a Bachman’s Sparrow on the south side of the Prairie, and a Bobolink and a first-of-the-season House Wren in the rural northwestern part of the county. At least 24 species of warblers were found. Once I’ve compiled the reports, I’ll post the final results.

Mike Manetz and I birded the nature trail at Poe Springs Park on Friday. We saw no tanagers or cuckoos, and found only eight warbler species, but they included one Kentucky, one “Brewster’s” (a Blue-winged x Golden-winged hybrid, so not really a species), and a nice male Canada. All three were within a few yards of each other along the first part of the trail, where it overlooks a dry cypress swamp.  However I didn’t see any of them listed on Mike’s migration-count results.

Thanks to all of you who helped me keep track of the kites’ departure this year. The last Mississippi Kites of the season were three seen over the La Chua Trail on September 2nd by Dean, Benjamin, and Samuel Ewing, and the last Swallow-tailed was one seen over US-301 near Island Grove on September 1st by Travis Blunden. Both species will spend the winter in Brazil and return to the area next March (Swallow-tailed) and April (Mississippi).

Adam Zions reminds us that birds aren’t the only things you can see in trees. He was birding Bolen Bluff on the 20th and came across this bobcat loafing in a live oak.

On the other hand, Jonathan Mays reminds us that we should occasionally look down.

Adam Kent asked me to post the following announcement on behalf of the Florida Ornithological Society:
For the first time ever, expert sea-watchers reveal how to identify waterbirds at a distance! To hear more about this fascinating challenge, come to the Florida Ornithological Society (FOS) meeting this October 12th hear author Cameron Cox talk about his groundbreaking Peterson Reference Guide to Seawatching: Eastern Waterbirds in Flight. While hawk watching has been popular for years, similar bird ID techniques are also useful to identify waterbirds, sometimes at very long distances. Not just for people who bird on the coast, this presentation will help you identify waterbirds in any context, even flying over your own backyard!
What: FOS Fall meeting
When: October 11-13, 2013
Where: Hilton St. Petersburg – Carillon Park
Click here for more info about the meeting.

Students at the University of Florida are helping Alachua Audubon with its next backyard-birding tour by designing and distributing a survey about the yard tour (which they call a “birding event”) and social media. It would help Alachua Audubon if you were to take the survey, which is only twelve questions long and should take only one or two minutes. The designers of the survey write, “We are working on increasing the involvement and participation of the Alachua County Audubon Society. We have constructed this survey to gather your feedback on specific concerns we have that will aid us in our final recommendation. All of your information will be kept confidential and this survey is taken anonymously. We appreciate your feedback. Please take two minutes out of your day and complete this survey to help us better serve you”: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WWNFTVV

The Alder Flycatcher abides; plus Short-tailed Hawk and a plethora of other sightings (that’s right, a plethora).

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

The Crane gave the wrong dates for the Florida Native Plant Sale at Morningside Nature Center. The sale covers two days, only the second of which is open to the general public: Friday, September 27th, 4:30-6:30 p.m. is exclusively for members of the Florida Native Plant Society and Friends of Nature Parks (BUT! you can join when you get there), while Saturday, September 28th, 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. is open to everyone.

Today’s Alachua Audubon field trip to San Felasco Hammock went well, according to trip leader Steve Hofstetter: “We had a beautiful morning with 28 people coming out and enjoying the park. We did the Moonshine Creek Trail and split up into two groups around the loop. There were lots of vireos (22 White-eyed, 14 Red-eyed, 2 Yellow-throated), Veeries (8), Ovenbirds (11), and Northern Parulas (19), but other than that the diversity of species was low. My group did get a great view of a Chestnut-sided Warbler and the other group heard a Louisiana Waterthrush.” Remember that there’s a field trip to Barr Hammock tomorrow (Sunday the 15th). Michael Drummond will lead.

Jonathan Mays and I took a leisurely walk around San Felasco’s Cellon Creek Loop on the 13th. We found 60 species of birds, including 11 warbler species, but they weren’t our best finds; a pair of Cliff Swallows twice circled past us at low altitude while we were scanning Lee Pond, and as we were watching a couple of Red-tailed Hawks soaring up on a thermal, a dark-morph Short-tailed Hawk dived into our field of view and made a couple passes at the Red-taileds. That’s only the second Short-tailed ever recorded at San Felasco. The first was seen by John DeLuca almost exactly six years ago, on September 15, 2007.

On the 12th Lloyd Davis relocated and photographed the Alder Flycatcher that’s been hanging around Sparrow Alley since August 27th.

Samuel Ewing found the season’s first Blackburnian Warbler in his NW Gainesville yard on the 10th. For those of you keeping score at home, I think that’s the 20th warbler species recorded in Alachua County this fall; several others have been reported in the four days since then. Samuel got another seasonal first this morning, when he found a Swainson’s Thrush in his yard: “The thrush landed in a tree and when I put my binocs up I realized it wasn’t a Veery. I’ve been seeing Veeries almost everyday and this wasn’t like one. It had larger, much darker spots on the breast. I also could clearly see the buffy lores. It flew off before I could get a picture. I got excellent looks at Veeries a few minutes later and they were much different. This wasn’t near as reddish either.” And Lloyd Davis got yet another first-of-the-fall when he found three Wilson’s Snipe along the Cones Dike Trail on the 13th.

Adam Kent pointed out four Bobolinks to me at the Levy Lake loop trail this morning. Migrating Bobolinks have been heard since the 4th by birders listening for their distinctive calls passing overhead at night, but I think these were the first to have been seen.

On the 10th I was surprised to find a Great White Heron at Watermelon Pond not far south of the county park.

Also on the 10th, Dave Steadman, Curator of Birds at the museum, wrote, “This morning I saw a female Selasphorus in my yard at close range (10 ft). The bird was gone by the time I grabbed my binocs, but I’m confident to call it a female ‘Rufous/Allen’s.’  If anyone is interested, birders are welcome to stop by [send me an email if you want his address]. The fire bushes in the front yard have been getting lots of attention from a male and female Ruby-throated for many weeks, but today is the only time that I’ve seen a Selasphorus.”

If you’re lucky enough to have a sugarberry tree in your yard, watch for the signs of Asian woolly hackberry aphid. Warblers love them. Ron Robinson has an infested tree in his back yard, and over the last week he’s seen several warbler species feasting on the aphids, including Prairie, Chestnut-sided, and Blackburnian.

Sharon Kuchinski’s second-graders and their “Song of the Whooping Crane” dance merited an article in the Gainesville Sun on September 10th. The dance was created as an entry for the Rachel Carson Sense of Wonder Contest. They need your vote in order to win the contest, however. You can vote here.

If you’ve always wanted to spend your days at Archbold Biological Station, living the romantic life of a research assistant and working with Red-cockaded Woodpeckers and Florida Grasshopper Sparrows – and who are you kidding, of course you have – here’s your chance.

A lively migration; plus, a new Facebook page for Alachua County birders!

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

I’ve been emailing these birding reports out for something like fifteen years. But email is giving way to more rapid (and concise!) methods of communication like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. It’s possible now to post a brief message or photo to one of these sites while you’re standing in the woods looking at a bird, so that the communication of your discovery follows instantly on the discovery itself. Bob Wallace has been asking me for years to ditch the birding report and set up a listserv. His concern was that a birder would find a rare bird and email me about it, but that I’d be out on Paynes Prairie and wouldn’t see the email until I got home; and thanks to the delay in reporting, the bird would fly away before Bob got to add it to his life list. He was right, of course. It could happen. But, I thought, not often enough to worry about it. Plus I enjoyed writing the birding reports, and I also felt that it was helpful (especially for beginners) to have someone filtering and interpreting all the information: this is rare, this is early, this is an unusually high number.

On Saturday morning Bob wrote again, this time urging me to start a Facebook page for Alachua County birders: “Since virtually everyone now has a FB presence, and since it is almost instantaneous since everyone has it on their phone, it sure would better for rapid dissemination of sightings and information to have everyone post their sightings to FB. Sure there would be some junk, and bad IDs, but like the Florida Birding FB page, the rarities show up there now long before they make it to the email lists.” True enough. But as someone whose favorite book title is Neil Postman’s Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, I’m not the one to do it. Bob threatened to set up the Facebook page if I didn’t. I didn’t, and he did. Here it is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/561382673923139/

You have to join the group, if you want to read the posts, and of course you have to be on Facebook to begin with.

Since I’m not on Facebook, I won’t see what’s posted there. So please continue to notify me of any interesting sightings – as well as posting them to Facebook, of course. If that turns out to be too onerous for the majority of birders, and my supply of birding news dries up, then the Alachua County birding report will ride gracefully into the sunset, not the first project to be rendered obsolete by new technology and not the last.

At this late date it occurs to me that the birding report may actually have inhibited the development of a local birding community. Perhaps direct exchange with other local birders – instead of communicating through me – will create a greater camaraderie. It’ll be interesting to see if it works out that way. Anyway, good luck to Bob and the Alachua County Birding Facebook page.

Now where were we?

Mornings have been beautiful lately, and people have been reporting good numbers of birds. This may turn out to be a great fall migration. On the 3rd Mike Manetz walked the Bolen Bluff Trail and found eleven warbler species, including a Golden-winged Warbler, two Kentucky Warblers, and 34 (!) Yellow Warblers. That number was bested by Jonathan Mays and Adam Zions on the 7th: they had 41 (!!!) Yellow Warblers and eleven additional warbler species, including one Kentucky.

I hadn’t heard of anyone seeing an Alder Flycatcher since the 3rd, and had actually discouraged a birder from driving up from Orlando because I thought he’d be wasting his time, but today Lloyd Davis relocated one of the birds lingering at Sparrow Alley. He also checked Sweetwater Dike to see if the male Painted Bunting was still at the bend in the trail just before the lone cypress, and it was.

Before sunrise on the morning of the 4th, Mike Manetz walked out the door of his NW Gainesville home and listened for the calls of passing migrants: “Heard several Bobolinks going over. Also one Veery. At first light 5 Common Nighthawks went streaming by. Multiple warblers were chipping in the yard.” Later that morning Bob Wallace walked his property in Alachua and found evidence of the same migratory movement: a Veery, 20 Red-eyed Vireos, and six warbler species including two Worm-eating Warblers. Likewise on the morning of the 6th Samuel Ewing got up early and conducted a pre-dawn migrant count at his NW Gainesville home. He heard at least two Bobolinks and 15+ Veeries. A little later that morning Jerry Krummrich saw evidence of the same flight at Alligator Lake in Lake City: “The trails in the woods were full of Veeries this morning as well as many Red-eyed Vireos, sometimes as many as 7-8 per tree.” On the same morning John Hintermister, Steve Nesbitt, and Jim Brady walked three miles at San Felasco Hammock (north side of Millhopper Road) and saw similar numbers of Red-eyed Vireos – their final count was 126 (“may be the largest number of Red-eyed Vireos I have ever seen in one place in one day,” noted John) – as well as four Veeries and eight warbler species, including two Blue-wingeds.

The migration of Common Nighthawks peaks in early September. On the 7th, writes Scott Bishop, “I took an out of town guest to see the bat house at Lake Alice. About fifteen minutes before sunset a flock of about a dozen Common Nighthawks appeared in a feeding frenzy over the bat house field. They continued all through the bat exodus.”

You’d expect Europeans to spend all their time sitting around in cafes being sophisticated and urbane and making jokes about Americans, but instead a huge number of them seem to prefer snuffing birds, including lots of little ones like buntings, flycatchers, and redstarts. The Committee Against Bird Slaughter is fighting the good fight by dismantling traps, taking down perching sticks that have been daubed with glue, and exposing illegal hunters, but they face a lot of resistance. If you’ve got a strong stomach, here’s their web site: http://www.komitee.de/en/homepage

The entire Alachua Audubon 2013-14 field trip schedule is now online in printable form: https://alachuaaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/AAS-Yearbook-2013-2014.pdf

You know how you’re always wishing there was a seed and suet sale going on somewhere? Hey, you’re in luck! Wild Birds Unlimited is having one right now: http://gainesville.wbu.com/

More birds than you can shake a stick at, if you were inclined to shake a stick at birds

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

I’m in the process of posting the new Alachua Audubon field trip schedule on line. It’s rather slow going, because I have to create an individual page for each trip, but I like the new web site’s format. If you look at the Classes & Field Trips page, you’ll see the next ten events listed – https://alachuaaudubon.org/classes-field-trips/ – with the date, destination (or program location), and meeting time. If you click on the “+” sign associated with a given field trip, you’ll get a description of the trip; and if you then click on “Read more,” you’ll see a map of the meeting location as well as contact information for the trip leader in case you have a question.

However, this is an instance of the reality not quite living up to the ideal, because the map doesn’t invariably agree with the coordinates I enter for it. For instance, the coordinates to the Levy Lake Loop parking area, as provided by Google Earth, take you to a Marion County prison when entered into the web site. Or at least they did before I got a different set of coordinates. And sometimes WordPress (the web site software) simply won’t accept the address. The meeting place for our Barr Hammock field trip is the Valero gas station at 101 NW Highway 441, Micanopy, FL 32667, but no matter how many times I try to enter it, WordPress deletes the street address and reduces it to “U.S. 441, Micanopy, 32667, USA,” and places the marker about a mile and a half south of the Valero station. WordPress gets it right more often than wrong, but … please use the written directions to the meeting place. Here’s an example of what it looks like when everything works properly: https://alachuaaudubon.org/ai1ec_event/road-to-nowhere-hagens-cove/?instance_id=127 (Well, everything works right on our site. The link to Hagens Cove misspells Steinhatchee twice.)

If you’ve got Labor Day off, you might want to spend part of it birding. The migrants are moving through in big numbers, and San Felasco Hammock sounds like the place to be. More on that presently.

On the 27th, responding to Mike Manetz’s report of two Alder Flycatchers at the La Chua Trail, Jonathan Mays and Adam Zions visited La Chua and found three Alder Flycatchers. Two were where Mike had seen them, along Sparrow Alley near the barn, and the third was along Sweetwater Dike. Adam made a short video in which a hidden Alder can be heard calling repeatedly. Dalcio Dacol relocated the Sweetwater Dike bird on the 30th, just where La Chua meets Sweetwater, and on the 1st John Martin relocated and photographed the two birds at Sparrow Alley. At least these are presumed to be the same birds discovered on the 27th; neither Dalcio nor John heard them calling.

On the 28th, Bob Simons, Dotty Robbins, and Jim Swarr went looking for the Alders along Sparrow Alley and saw a dark-morph Short-tailed Hawk, no doubt the same one spotted there by Glenn Israel on the 24th.

(If you decide to look for the Alders and/or the Short-tailed, and then to walk the rest of the way out La Chua, be aware that the approach to the observation tower is under a few inches of water. Thanks to Jonathan Mays for the photo.)

On the 29th Mike Manetz and Tina Greenberg found the fall’s first Golden-winged Warbler along Lakeshore Drive near Palm Point.

There was a big influx of migrants on the 31st. Jonathan and Ellen Mays found the season’s first Chestnut-sided Warbler along the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail, then went home and found an extraordinarily early Scarlet Tanager. Mike Manetz went to San Felasco’s Progress Park entrance (off US-441 near Alachua) and tallied twelve warbler species – the best of which were 5 Ovenbirds, a Blue-winged, and a Kentucky – and then picked a Bank Swallow out of a flock of Barn Swallows and Chimney Swifts.

The next day, Jonathan and Ellen Mays and Adam Zions walked San Felasco’s Moonshine Creek and Creek Sink Trails (i.e., the whole system south of Millhopper Road), and they also tallied twelve warbler species, including 12 Ovenbirds, 3 Worm-eating Warblers, a Louisiana Waterthrush, a Chestnut-sided, a Kentucky, and not one but two Golden-wingeds, a male and a female.

I looked at the 12 warbler species seen by Mike and the 12 seen by Jonathan, Ellen, and Adam, and it looks like there are a total of seventeen species of warblers fluttering around out there. So grab your binoculars! Go get ’em! Besides, it’s time for the first Veery to show up, and someone needs to find the first one, it might as well be you, right?

Swallow-tailed and (especially) Mississippi Kites are still being reported. Greg Stephens had one Swallow-tailed and three Mississippis circling over his Jonesville yard simultaneously on the 31st. Please keep those reports coming!

Second-grade students taught by local birder Sharon Kuchinski are finalists in the Rachel Carson Sense of Wonder Contest, and they need your votes in order to win. You can see their entry, and cast your vote, here: http://www.expressionsacademy.org/about/spotlight-items/213-sense-of-wonder-contest

The fun never ends

Posted on by Rex Rowan

From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report

Jonathan Mays reported an Empidonax flycatcher along the La Chua Trail’s Sparrow Alley earlier today. He couldn’t stay – he had a conference to attend – but before leaving he contacted Mike Manetz to pass the word. Mike showed up with his recording equipment and was amazed to find two – count ’em, two – Alder Flycatchers calling and even singing. He phoned me and I was there in twenty minutes. I heard both birds calling but got only a quick look at one of them. The question that’s on every long-time Alachua County birder’s mind is, “Have Alders been coming through here all along?” We had two last September, and as many as six this year, but prior to 2010 they were almost unknown in this area, with a bare handful of “Traill’s” Flycatcher (Alder or Willow, not positively identifiable as either) reports scattered through the decades. Anyway, if you want to look for these birds, they’ve been seen along the first bit of Sparrow Alley, always within a hundred yards of the barn. Listen for the pip! call.

By the way, Jonathan got out to Levy Lake on Sunday afternoon, relocated the Alder Flycatcher on the south dike, and got a photo.

Adult male Rufous Hummingbirds often spend the entire fall and winter in a single neighborhood. Ruth Palenik and Greg Hart have hosted Rufouses (Rufi?) in their respective back yards in the past, and it’s normal for them to arrive during the last week of August. Ron Robinson saw an adult male Rufous at his feeder at the west end of Gainesville on the 26th. Will it spend the entire winter? Ron has his fingers crossed so tight he’s cutting off his circulation.

Speaking of early arrivals, Tom Hoctor looked out his NW Gainesville window on the 26th and saw a Baltimore Oriole at his feeding station. That ties the early record for Alachua County.

Lloyd Davis relocated the male Painted Bunting along La Chua’s Sweetwater Dike this morning, “where the trail starts to bend north near the lone cypress tree.”

Swallow migration is peaking now, so keep your eyes open. I was doing a bird survey at the Kanapaha Prairie this morning and there were something like 70 to 100 swallows zooming around, mostly Barn Swallows but including at least 10 Bank Swallows and a Cliff Swallow.

I also saw a Mississippi Kite there, the first I’ve seen in a while. I’d be interested in any sightings over the next month, so if you see one, please let me know. Several local birders notified me of Swallow-tailed Kite sightings after I commented that none had been reported since the 11th – Matt and Erin Kalinowski saw one at Paynes Prairie on the 16th, Buck Snelson and Margaret Flagg saw one over 441 near Williston Road on the 18th, Matthew Neilson saw two over Tower Road on the 23rd and John Martin saw one near the airport on the same day – and I’m grateful for all such reports, for both Swallow-taileds and Mississippis. It’s interesting to know when they leave.

Helen Warren just emailed: “Susan Bottcher our city commissioner just announced on Facebook that in response to the public outcry, Nathan Collier has withdrawn his offer to buy the Loblolly property.”