Tag: Western Kingbird

Western Kingbird at La Chua

Posted on by Rex Rowan

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

Sidney Wade writes that she found a Western Kingbird at La Chua on Sunday morning: “It flew from the trees across from the (mid)-boardwalk, then settled in a bare shrub to the west of the boardwalk. We got a good look at it through the scope–gray head, yellow belly, black tail, white outer tail feathers. Then he flew away.”

Yesterday’s field trip along La Chua found about 60 species, but we didn’t see a Western Kingbird. Our best included the resident Vermilion Flycatcher, at least three Sedge Wrens, a wintering Purple Gallinule, three American Bitterns, a Redhead (that turned up in a photo viewed after the field trip), and a Horned Grebe at very close range.

Swainson’s Hawk still there!

Posted on by Rex Rowan

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

Josh Watson saw the Swainson’s Hawk at SW 95th Avenue at 7:45 this morning (the 23rd): “Saw him this morning perched above the barn structure. Saw the light belly with the dark patches in the higher part of the chest. It was just to the left of the barn structure, posted up in the crown of the tree. I did have two cars drive past, one of which paused awkwardly long at the intersection back on to 41. Awkwardly long….” Remember to follow Adam Zions’s example: smile and wave ingratiatingly. You don’t want to end up here in the Christmas Day edition of the Sun.

In other western Alachua County birding news, my daughter and I went out to SW 250th Street north of Watermelon Pond on the 21st and relocated the Western Kingbird that Lloyd Davis had found earlier in the day. It was on a telephone line.

If I don’t send out another birding report until after the 1st, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

You are what you eat

Posted on by Rex Rowan

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!

Whoops!

Posted on by Rex Rowan
For the first time since spring of 2011 there’s a Whooping Crane at Paynes Prairie. On the 27th John Killian and Andy Kratter each reported seeing it from the La Chua observation platform, and on the 28th John Hintermister, Steve Nesbitt, Mike Manetz, and Jonathan Mays saw it again.

John Killian also saw the resident female Vermilion Flycatcher and “maybe 600-800 Sandhill Cranes flying from the northwest,” while Hintermister and friends recorded 20 Mallards (rare around here), 100 Soras, and a Merlin.

On the 27th Mike Manetz found a Western Kingbird at Palm Point, “in the largest deciduous tree on the left (with forked trunk, yellowing leaves, looks like some kind of elm?) before you get to the point.” To me Palm Point seems like an odd place for a kingbird, but this isn’t the first one seen there: John Hintermister found a Western there on 13 December 1996, and Gray Kingbirds were there on 29-30 September 1994 and 5 September 2001.

Felicia Lee and Glenn Price reported two Red-breasted Nuthatches at their feeder on the 27th.

Loons are still migrating. Michael Drummond and I saw a flock of 20 going southwest over Balu Forest on the 28th.

On the 21st a Gainesville birder who wishes to remain anonymous heard what sounded to him like a Red Crossbill’s flight call. It’s not impossible; the museum has specimens collected near Cedar Key in 1908. Other birds to watch out for this fall and winter: Purple Finch, Dark-eyed Junco (one has already appeared at a feeder in town), and Brewer’s Blackbird (three were in Apalachicola last weekend).

The online Alachua County checklist was compiled in 1997. It lists 315 species of birds. As of November 2012, that number should be 355. Obviously an update is long overdue. Revision of the various early and late dates will take me a while, since they’re scattered through old emails on my computer. So last weekend I compiled a simple taxonomic list, in current AOU order, of all the birds recorded in Alachua County up to the present day, including those that no longer exist (Passenger Pigeon, Carolina Parakeet), those that still exist elsewhere though local populations have disappeared (Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Florida Scrub-Jay, White-breasted Nuthatch), and a few that were probably escapes (Southern Lapwing, Blue-crowned Parakeet, etc.). Some of you may want to print it out, others will want to bookmark it, several will want to ignore it entirely. I’d suggest beginning and intermediate birders at least give it a once-over. Taxonomic relationships can be enlightening. Some birders don’t realize that Blue Jays are crows, that swifts are the nearest relatives of hummingbirds, or that rails are first cousins of coots and gallinules and second cousins of Limpkins and cranes. Anyways, take a gander (bird pun!). Please notify me if I’ve left anything out:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wy7QYUrwRDc2zo0m15fjP0RwMC2FPoqgLYYkrlEAN8s/edit (Documentary photos of many of the rarer birds on the list can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30736692@N00/sets/72157594281975202/ )