Tag: Hooded Warbler

The June Challenge – Day 5 update

Posted on by Rex Rowan

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

This morning Anne Kendall found a Ring-billed Gull and five Laughing Gulls on the dock at Powers Park, putting the icing on a successful birding trip. She started at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve at 6 a.m., finding a Common Nighthawk and then spotting a Chuck-will’s-widow, always a tough bird to see. She then went on to the River Styx bridge on County Road 346, where she found a Prothonotary Warbler and a Black-crowned Night-Heron. Her next stop was the Windsor boat ramp, where she saw a Limpkin and a pair of Wood Ducks. And then on to Powers Park and the Ring-billed Gull. All of this in about two and a half hours. I think this is the county’s second June record for Ring-billed Gull. Anne sent me a few photos, and I’ve posted two.

Mike Manetz emailed this morning to ask if I wanted to go to Palm Point and find out whether Lloyd Davis’s Tree Swallow was still hanging around. I did, of course, and met him there at 7:15. No Tree Swallow, but the way you bird Palm Point is to stand there and wait for something to fly by, so that’s what we did. After about an hour we noticed a couple small whitish birds flying along the far shore, past the Windsor boat ramp. So we performed The Newnans Lake Shuffle, the little dance in which birders on the west side of the lake move to the east side, while the birds on the east side move to the west side. We never did get a decent look at them, but Mike saw them dive into the water, so they were terns, probably Forster’s Terns. We also saw a duck preening on the water which we couldn’t quite agree on, probably a Lesser Scaup. We didn’t see Anne’s Limpkin, but we did see a dozen or so Laughing Gulls, 15 American White Pelicans, three half-grown Wild Turkeys, a Least Bittern flying past the outlet of the boat channel, and an adult Bald Eagle.

Howard Adams and Barbara Mollison walked La Chua this morning. Many of the birds seen on Saturday are still around, including Roseate Spoonbills and Blue-winged Teal.

Also this morning, Barbara Shea went looking for June Challenge birds at San Felasco Hammock’s Millhopper Road entrance. Across the street from the parking lot she turned right and continued straight, and managed to find an Acadian Flycatcher. There was a Hooded Warbler in there too, but she couldn’t get it to show itself. She had a nice consolation prize, an Eastern Diamondback.

A couple people wrote to tell me that they’d checked the Red Lobster Pond on the 3rd but hadn’t found the Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks. So if you’re still looking for those, Debbie Segal has seen them at the Hague Dairy, and Anne Kendall at Powers Park.

This weekend Judy Bryan found a very late Cedar Waxwing, a single bird, at the south end of Lake Lochloosa.

Ron Robinson had an American Redstart visit his west Gainesville property on the 1st and 2nd.

We had a few cameras on our June 1st field trip. We twice saw a Fish Crow, identified by call, flying with an egg in its bill, pursued by Red-winged Blackbirds. I assumed it was making repeated depredations on the same Red-wing nest. But Miguel Palaviccini’s wonderful photo shows that the egg in the crow’s bill is round and unmarked, not like a Red-wing’s egg at all, as well as being too big for a Red-wing, and reveals that the crow had found the nest of a turtle. Further down the trail, in the canal leading up to the observation platform, a young King Rail hopped out of the weeds and remained in the open long enough for everyone to get a good look. John Martin got a nice video.

Looking at John’s YouTube collection, I find this footage of a singing Yellow-breasted Chat taken at La Chua in late April, and I’m reminded that, although we missed chats on the 1st, Adam Zions found one along Sparrow Alley on the morning of the 2nd. Barbara Mollison also saw one this morning.

The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology is putting out a massively comprehensive collection of North American bird sounds which they’re calling “The Master Set” and selling for $49.99. A selection of these, merely huge rather than ginormous, is called “The Essential Set” and it currently goes for $12.99. Read all about it: http://earbirding.com/blog/archives/4458

Birds you can’t see

Posted on by Rex Rowan

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

The biggest birding news this week is also the most frustrating. Since the 5th a Buff-bellied Hummingbird has been coming to a feeder south of Williston (in Levy County), but the homeowner hasn’t yet responded to requests to allow the birding public in to see it. She may refuse, or she may delay long enough that the bird leaves for its nesting grounds in Texas and Mexico. This is at least the second record for Levy County; one was in Cedar Key on 23-24 October 2000. Here’s a photo.

Pat Burns got a photo of a locally-rare Willet in the pond beside the Lowe’s in Alachua on the 5th. Willets are normally saltwater birds, and it’s pretty unusual to find one inland. Alas, when Mike Manetz went looking for it on the 6th, the bird had flown.

The Groove-billed Ani was seen again on the 6th by Larry Gridley, a birder from Albany, Georgia: “I got to Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park at 0800. I found it at 0935 in the blackberry thicket were it has been reported before. I stumbled up on it as it was sunning itself in a blackberry thicket on the edge of the trail. You can see his wings flared a little and neck feathers ruffled. After about 30 minutes  warming up it flew to a small tree then to some more blackberry thickets where it was chasing bugs.” Larry posted some photos of the ani here. He also saw two Yellow-breasted Chats in the same location. The ani was seen again on the 7th by Tallahassee birder Robert Bowman.

Cedar Key has been pretty lively over the past week or so. On the 6th John Hintermister saw a Scarlet Tanager, a Cape May Warbler, a Tennessee Warbler, seven Prothonotary Warblers, six Prairies, four Hoodeds, an American Redstart, a Louisiana Waterthrush, and seven (!) Red-breasted Nuthatches. On the 1st the Ewings found a Swainson’s Warbler at the museum, and on the 6th Pat Burns found two more at an undisclosed location.

John Killian found the spring’s first Worm-eating Warbler along the Moonshine Creek Trail at San Felasco on April 2nd, by one day the earliest ever recorded in the county. Felicia Lee, Barbara Shea, and Elizabeth Martin found another along Bolen Bluff on the 7th. Prairie Warblers and American Redstarts are being reported almost daily.

The first Hooded Warblers of the spring were reported by Caleb Gordon at Loblolly Woods on the 26th and by Ryan Butryn at the FWC Wildlife Lab (near the intersection of 441 and Williston Road) on the 27th. Several have been seen since then.

Northern Rough-winged Swallows usually show up during the second week in March. This year they were late, or we noticed them late: Lloyd Davis found the first of the spring at Cellon Creek Boulevard on the 22nd. Conrad Burkholder had a lovely experience in the same spot on the 30th: “The Northern Rough-winged Swallows were numerous, with about a dozen birds flying around some large parked truck trailers, very low to the ground. I stood still while the swallows swirled in the air around me. They were flying very acrobatically and low to the ground, about 2 to 10 feet. I observed some of the swallows going in and out of the underside of one of the trailers. I also observed them picking up what appeared to be nesting material. I believe they may be nesting in the underside of the trailers.”

Laughing Gulls are mostly a warm-weather phenomenon in Alachua County. This has always mystified me. Why would they come inland during spring and summer, when they should be staying close to their nests on the coast? Anyway, the first of the spring were seen on the 1st, when Samuel and Benjamin Ewing saw one flying over their neighborhood near Watermelon Pond and Andy Kratter saw three going over Pine Grove Cemetery.

There were three separate sightings of Mississippi Kites on March 29th, but there have been none reported to me (or to eBird) since then. Swallow-tailed Kites seem to be here in pretty good numbers, relatively speaking, and I’m told by a researcher that a pair is nesting within the Gainesville city limits.

There are plenty of winter birds still around. A few highlights: While doing a loon watch at Pine Grove Cemetery on the 7th, Andy Kratter saw an Eastern Phoebe, the latest ever recorded in Alachua County. Andy’s sighting broke a record that had stood since Frank Chapman saw one on April 4, 1887 – a span of 126 years! Mike Manetz heard a Whip-poor-will singing in his NW Gainesville neighborhood on the 1st. That’s not a record, but it’s pretty late nonetheless. Ryan Butryn saw a Wilson’s Warbler at the FWC Wildlife Lab on the 27th.

Birder and poet Sidney Wade invites the local birding community to join her as she reads from her sixth book of poetry, Straits & Narrows, at the downtown library on Thursday, April 11th, at 7:30 p.m. She assures me, “There will be bird poems.”

Mike Manetz writes, “Last year’s Alachua Audubon trip to Costa Rica was so much fun we decided to do it again! Thirty species of hummingbirds, twenty species of flycatchers, dozens of wrens and tanagers, plus toucans, antwrens, antvireos, woodcreepers, and all the rainforest flora and fauna you can absorb. If you have not experienced the excitement of birding in the tropics this is a great place to start! Please join us for a balanced look at some wonderful tropical birds and inspiring efforts to conserve the habitats the birds depend on. A portion of the proceeds of this trip will go to Alachua Audubon.” Thirty species of hummingbirds?! You can look over the itinerary, and some of the mind-boggling birds and scenery you can expect to see, at http://birdsandconservation.weebly.com/  Check it out, if only to see that classic photo at the bottom of the main page of Mike lounging in a hammock.

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, this is a very long birding report

Posted on by Rex Rowan

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

Samuel and Caleb Ewing had the best bird of the week on the 26th. Samuel writes, “Today Caleb and I walked to an area of Watermelon Pond that’s quite close to us. We got some Blue-winged and Green-winged Teal, 19 Long-billed Dowitchers, a Least Sandpiper, quite a few Tree and Barn Swallows, and one Cliff Swallow! While scanning swallows I spotted one with a squared-off tail and it soon came close enough to see the buffy rump, blue back, and white forehead. I was able to get some poor photos.” This is only the county’s second March sighting of a Cliff Swallow, and believe it or not it’s the first documented occurrence of the species in Alachua County history; no previous photo or specimen has ever been obtained. Here’s Samuel’s photo.

Speaking of photos, Greg Stephens got a great shot of a Peregrine Falcon at La Chua on the 21st. The Peregrine that’s been seen at the Prairie since early January was an immature bird, brown with a streaky breast, and this one’s an adult, so we’ve had two Peregrines at the Prairie in March.

Still speaking of photos – we’ve got an embarrassment of riches, so sue me – Kathy Malone got two spectacular pictures of a Le Conte’s Sparrow at Levy Prairie Loop on the 25th. This was her fourth attempt at photographing this bird, and the effort really paid off.

On the 25th Jonathan Mays saw two White-faced Ibis in non-breeding plumage from the La Chua observation platform. Since there’s also a breeding-plumage bird out there, it looks like we’ve got three White-faced Ibis at Paynes Prairie – at least. Jonathan also spotted three Whooping Cranes, one of whom flew in to provide a photo op.

The season’s first Chimney Swifts have arrived. Jonathan Mays and Ellen Robertson saw the spring’s first at La Chua Trail on the 23rd, Samuel Ewing saw four on the UF campus on the 25th, and on the following day Geoff Parks wrote, “I was downtown this morning at about 10:30 and there was a mass of what I’d estimate to be 90-100 flying around the vicinity of the Seagle building.”

The first Indigo Buntings have checked in as well, one at Keith Collingwood’s place in Melrose, and one at Ron Robinson’s at the west end of Gainesville, both on the 25th.

Ivor Kincaide reports that 50 Purple Martins showed up at the Alachua Conservation Trust’s martin house in Rochelle on the 26th.

The spring’s first major flight of Common Loons occurred on the morning of the 25th, when Andy Kratter counted 58 going over Pine Grove Cemetery between 8:11 and 8:48. Remember that March is the best time to look through migrating Commons for a Red-throated.

There have been no reports of Hooded Warblers in Alachua County yet, but they’re a March migrant, along with Prothonotary, Swainson’s, and Kentucky Warblers and Louisiana Waterthrush. Bob Carroll and friends saw a Hooded along the River Trail at Lower Suwannee NWR on the 21st, and Pat Burns saw three at Cedar Key on the 24th.

Want to know the names of a few common spring wildflowers? Well here you go: http://earthteachme.blogspot.com/2013/03/rain-day.html