From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report
Well, I’m back. Did you miss me? Well, not me exactly, the birding report. What’s that you say? WHAT birding report? Sigh. I type my fingers to the bone and this is what I get.
Do you have an active bluebird box that could accept two 10-day-old bluebird chicks? Larissa at Florida Wildlife Care writes that they’re in “great shape. Their mother and 3 siblings were killed by ‘invasive’ birds. Dad fed them once and left. I need a foster family.” If you can help, please let me know.
Anyway, I was in Maine and Maritime Canada from the 27th through the 10th, and that’s why I haven’t been annoying you. I got eight life birds – Atlantic Puffin, Common Murre, Black Guillemot, Arctic Tern, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Black-backed Woodpecker, and Boreal Chickadee – and saw several other species that I rarely see, like Canada and Nashville Warblers, Purple Finch, Evening Grosbeak, and Common Raven. But it was a family vacation, not a birding trip, so I missed many more birds than I saw. I’ve posted 22 photos of my trip to Machias Seal Island for close-range looks at puffins, murres, and razorbills, and you can see them starting here (click the > symbol to the right of the photo to progress to the next one): https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/14303781884/in/set-72157644943663673
I was on Prince Edward Island on the 1st, so Bob Carroll generously stood in for me and kicked off The June Challenge with a field trip to Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve, Powers Park, and the La Chua Trail. I was going to summarize the group’s discoveries, but Bob wrote it all up very nicely for us in a well-illustrated blog entry (assist from photographer Stuart Kaye): http://bobsgonebirding.blogspot.com/2014/06/june-challenge-kickoff.html
One of the June Challenge’s best discoveries so far was a really late Sora photographed by Erika Simons on the 3rd: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/14395078861/ There’s only one later report, from the Summer Bird Count of June 5, 1971. That bird and this one are the only two June sightings of Sora in the county’s history; the latest otherwise was a bird that I saw at Lake Alice on May 11, 2000.
Another interesting June sighting was a bird that sounds very much like a Wurdemann’s Heron (Great Blue Heron x Great White Heron) that Felicia Lee reported from the Cones Dike Trail near the Paynes Prairie Visitor Center on the 1st. She writes, “Its back/wings were a normal shade of blue-gray, but its head, breast, and neck were entirely white, except for the black head plume.” There’s one previous report of a Wurdemann’s Heron in Alachua County, a bird seen by Steve Nesbitt at the Kanapaha Prairie on 19 June 1988.
If you need Northern Flicker for the June Challenge – it can be tough to get – Frank Goodwin saw two males at Morningside Nature Center on the 7th, along “the trail that winds through the woods between the parking lot and University Avenue, near the ‘Butterfly Loop’ that runs alongside the paved entrance road, just before it turns east toward the parking lot. Both birds then flew west, toward the birding blind, which is precisely the spot I last saw them (back in early April).”
This Saturday morning you’ll have an opportunity to see Alachua County’s only known Burrowing Owls (and add them to your June Challenge lists!). At 6:30 a.m. we’ll meet at the Watermelon Pond County Park (Note: NOT the Wildlife and Environmental Area) and Susie Hetrick of the Environmental Protection Department will lead us to the new county property where the owls are. Susie wants to know how many are coming, to be sure that she can accommodate everyone, so let me know if you’ll be there and I’ll pass it along to her. To get to the county park, drive south 2.9 miles from the traffic light in Newberry (on US-41/27). Turn right (west) on SW 46th Avenue and go 1.2 mile to SW 250th Street. Turn left (south) on 250th, a bumpy dirt road, and follow it 3.7 miles to the one-acre county park at the end. At that hour we should see some Common Nighthawks as well.
The final event of Alachua Audubon’s 2013-14 year will take place next Wednesday evening at the Millhopper Branch Library. Gina Kent of Avian Research and Conservation will describe different methods of tracking wild birds, including satellite telemetry, and the unexpected details that these methods have revealed about the travels of birds.
FWC is asking birders to report sightings of American Kestrel, Painted Bunting, and Burrowing Owl. For more information, or to report a sighting, click here.
“The Birdlife and Natural History of Cuba’s Zapata Swamp” will be the subject of a presentation by wildlife photographer Ernesto Reyes Mourino at Alachua Conservation Trust next Thursday, June 19th.
Remember those bluebirds. Ten days old. They need a home. Let me know if you can help them out.