From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report
People are always asking me, “What’s your favorite bird?” This is the one day in the year when I can answer that question without a moment’s hesitation: my favorite bird is the one in the oven.
The UF Beef Unit goose found on the 27th and identified by Samuel Ewing as a Ross’s Goose appears to be … just what Samuel said it was, a Ross’s Goose. John Hintermister went to look at it on the 27th and Rob Norton saw it on the 28th (this morning), and both agree that it’s a Ross’s and that it shows no signs of being a hybrid. John Martin got a nice video of the bird on the 27th.
Speaking of waterfowl, Adam Zions counted 177 Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks at the Red Lobster Pond on the 23rd. They seem to congregate there in big numbers during the cold months – more than 500 a couple of years ago!
Mike Manetz had a Selasphorus hummingbird in his NW Gainesville yard on the 23rd. Several Ruby-throateds are still hanging around as well; Ron Robinson has two of them at his place in west Gainesville. He’s been in touch with Fred Dietrich, a hummingbird bander in Tallahassee, so if you’ve got a hummingbird in your yard and you’d like it identified and banded, let me know and I’ll pass the information along.
Upon hearing that John Killian had found a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on the 22nd, Kathy Malone grabbed her camera and ran right out to see it and take a few pictures, and it’s good that she did – when she returned on the following day it was gone. But one of her pictures was a definite keeper.
Pat Burns has had some good luck at Cedar Key lately. On the 27th she wrote to one of the listservs, “A Western Kingbird has been present since 11/17/13 in the vicinity of a cell tower on the right side of CR-347 approximately 4.2 miles north of SR- 24. I saw 8 Red Knots, 87 Marbled Godwits,7 Black Scoters plus hundreds of shorebirds, gulls & terns from the beach, Sanspit Park & the pier in downtown Cedar Key.”
I’ve linked to this video a couple of times before. It’s primitive and perhaps a bit juvenile, but I think it communicates the fun and cameraderie of birding very well in its two minutes. I especially enjoy the bit, from 0:31 to 0:36, in which a birder fails to produce a promised rarity for his friends and pays the price: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u-IONrDmUY
Hope that never happens to you. Happy Thanksgiving from the Alachua County birding report!