Squirrel Discovers Bird Feeder

OK, it was just a matter of time once I put up the new bird feeder last month.  This afternoon I watched a squirrel finally figure out how to get to the feeder.  Bummer!

Snow Bunting Migration

Snow Bunting at Spruce Run Recreation Area near Clinton, NJ (13 Feb 2012).  Digiscoped with Canon PwerShot SD780 IS Digital Elph and Bausch & Lomb Discoverer scope.

On Saturday, I saw a lone Snow Bunting on the roof of a utility building at Spruce Run.  Today what seems to be the same bird was with six Horned Larks in the parking lot at the boat launch area.  There were a few of both species around in November, but as far as I know, not seen since.  My guess is they are moving around again now, heading north.  They are a late fall and early spring migrant, so looks like migration is underway!

Otherwise a cold and breezy day without a lot of birds.  I managed my 20 Bird MDR by driving around Spruce Run and hitting Demott Pond in Clinton.  No surprises.  The Hooded Mergansers that were hanging out at Demott Pond have mostly disappeared, one lone female was there today.  I've got a few birds coming into my feeders, so may see a few more birds today, but as of mid-afternoon I've seen 23 species for the day.

Goose from Greenland in NJ

A couple weeks ago I saw a Canada Goose with a yellow neck collar in Flemington, NJ.  I submitted the sighting to the bird banding lab, and today I got this great note about the bird I saw:

GC6 was indeed a goose that we banded in Greenland, part of a project to mark Greenland White-fronted and Canada Geese in west Greenland in the summers of 2008 and 2009, and your observations are of great interest because as you will see, this individual was reported from Connecticut last winter, but to date we have had no reports of its whereabouts this winter, nor have we had any news from the breeding areas in subsequent years, so we are delighted with your resighting!

The goose was first captured and banded on a lake simply known as Lake C to the catching team (very few lakes in this area have Greenlandic names) which is at 67°06’26.6"N 50°28’38.4"N in an area known as Isunngua, immediately north of the airport at Kangerlussuaq in west Greenland. This has been a study area for our investigations on and off over many years. On that occasion, it was banded with a yellow collar, a yellow tarsus band bearing the same engraved comnbination and a metal Copenhagen Zoological Museum leg band. It was an adult male captured on 15 July 2007, part of a catch of 10 adults and 23 juveniles.

Very cool!  So keep your eyes out for geese with colored bands around their necks, and if you see one, try to see the letters or numbers on the band and report them to the banding lab!  There's sure to be a cool story behind that bird!

New Jersey Ross's Goose

This morning I got a text with a report of an immature Ross's Goose on Good Springs Road north of Asbury in Warren County, 20 minutes from my home.  I zipped over there and found the Senchers on the side of the road next to a pond covered with over 2,500 Snow Goose.  The young bird had flown, but they had just seen an adult Ross's Goose.  A few minutes later we relocated it on the far side of the pond.  Then it disappeared in among all the Snow Geese.  Five minutes later we refound it on our side of the pond.  We watched it and got some photos for a few minutes, then it disappeared again.  We looked for it for almost an hour without being able to relocate it.  Very frustrating, since when you get a good look at it, the bird is obviously smaller and distinct--but scanning the flock, it was somehow able to hide.  Anyway, here's the flock.  See if you can find the bird.

Can you see the bird now?

Here it is from the center of the shot above.

All photos shot with my HTC Incredible phone camera, the closeups are digibined through my Zeiss 7x42s.

Cape May Pelagic Trip

Keep on scanning, keep on scanning...there are Dovekie everywhere!

 Early Saturday morning, operating on only an hour and a half of sleep, I drove three hours down to Cape May to participate in a See Life Paulagics birding trip.  Great trip, with about 35 participants.  We went out over 35 miles off Cape May and saw lots of great birds, including 1000+ Dovekie, 18 Atlantic Puffin, 15 Razorbill, 4 Common Murre, 3 Northern Fulmar, and 2 Black-legged Kittiwake, as well as hundreds of Northern Gannet, and a constant stream of Great Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls feasting on chum off the back of the boat.

Dovekie partially eaten by a Great Black-backed Gull.

Note the Northern Fulmar at bottom left.  Not everyday you get a picture of one through a  camera phone :-)

Atlantic Puffin captured with an HTC Incredible Android phone and Zeiss 7x42 binocular.

Dovekies were everywhere out beyond 15 miles offshore.  At literally any time I could scan the ocean on my side of the boat and see 4-5 Dovekies in the water or flying by.  Much tougher to find Atlantic Puffin on the water as they rarely flew, and Razorbills were tough to see on the water--all but one I saw were in flight.

Dovekies must be a major food source for gulls out this far, we saw Herring Gulls, Great Black-backed Gulls, and a Northern Fulmar eating Dovekies on the water.  We scared one gull of a Dovekie and scooped it up for a museum specimen.

Long trip (12 hours) on very smooth seas (thank goodness!).  I only saw 16 species out on the ocean, but fortunately there was a little bit of light as we pulled into the harbor, so I got to see another dozen species or so, including Purple Sandpiper, Ruddy Turnstone, Great Cormorant, and Long-tailed Duck.

So, if Dovekie is still a mythical bird for you, time to get out on one of these winter pelagics, lately they've found that Dovekie is by far the most common species once you get out far enough.

More of my own photos are on Facebook.

January 2012 Birding Status Report

In 2012 I'm committed to several birding goals, including getting my 20 Bird Minimum Daily Requirement as well as posting at least one eBird checklist every day. I'll give a quick report each month of how I did with those goals and the resultant highlights for the month.

In January I got my 20 Bird MDR every day! There were three days where I didn't get 20, but I was able to do a Makeup Birding Day the following day and see at least twice as many birds as I missed the day before. I averaged 27 birds a day, with a high of 48 on my busiest birding day and a low of 11 on my lowest day. I have a provision for doing a Birding Shabbat and skipping at least one day a week to let the birding brain rest--but instead of taking real breaks I chose to make up those days when I only incidentally saw a few birds in the yard or on my way to church. That may have left me a little frazzled and suffering from some slight Bostick Syndrome, so first lesson learned this year is I need to take some real Birding Shabbat days to rest up. Also, I drove a total of 1168 miles for birding last month--I'd like to drop that down a bit.

 As far as eBird checklists, I submitted at least one for each day and ended up submitting a total of 84 checklists this month (average 2.7 per day), so pretty good! I saw 97 species in January--not bad for mostly birding a couple of local patches (mostly Spruce Run-20 visits, Assiscong Marsh-8 visits, and Demott Pond-20 visits). I'd like to do better than that in February and do some more exploring to see new places and some additional birds.

I am also dedicated to filling a few more holes in my ABA list this year. In January I saw two new birds for my North American list (Common Chaffinch and Razorbill), which is as many new ABA species as I got all last year. So, more chases and some strategic trips for me this year will be nice. Easiest bird I still need for my ABA list is Dovekie, so we'll see if I can knock that one off here soon :-)

Best local birds that I was able to see by birding every day this month were locally rare (trigger eBird notices) Greater White-fronted Goose, Cackling Goose, Brant, Common Teal, Iceland Gull, Red-breasted Merganser, Snowy Owl, Red-headed Woodpecker, and Common Chaffinch. There is some question about whether the Common Chaffinch that spent a month at some backyard feeders a few miles from my home here in NJ is a wild bird or escaped cage bird. Since I've seen these guys in the UK, Germany, Denmark, and New Zealand, I don't really care :-)

I saw a lot more birds this month than I would have without taking the eBird challenge and being dedicated to my 20 Bird MDR. Life is good!

What the Robin Knows

I was excited this morning to see an advance reading copy of Jon Young's new What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World.  A few years ago I had the great pleasure of reviewing Jon's earlier Advanced Bird Language CD set, and made me much more aware of what was going on in the world around me, changing how I walk through the woods and look for birds, and see the world through their eyes.  This new book expands on that series with additional information, stories, visuals, and a companion CD of important bird and animal sounds.

I plan on spending a good bit of time with this book over the next few months, and look forward to providing a more thorough review and to discussing the book at greater length.  But more importantly, I'm excited about the greater understanding and enjoyment of nature that I always get from Jon Young's way of interacting with birds and animals.

For additional insight into what is in store for us all in this new book (available May 2012), here's a bit more from Jon.

Hanging with my HOMEs

For birders, HOMEs (pronounced ho-mees) are Hooded Mergansers.  I've got some HOMEs I've been seeing regularly at Demott Pond, a small nearby pond that I visit whenever I'm in the area or need a few more birds to get my 20 species minimum daily requirement.  For the past month and a half, I've had anywhere from two to six of these HOMEs on the pond, where they patrol the area, males flashing their striking black and white crests, females flexing their auburn tresses.  They dive for small fish and other aquatic goodies, and at any one moment several may be floating on the pond, while others are swimming through the murky waters below.  I love seeing these guys, ever since I spotted my first pair on a small pond near Canby, Oregon while on a bicycle ride as a kid (26 March 1983, to be exact).  Never can get enough of hanging with my HOMEs!

Occupy Chaffinch

As I pulled up to the Common Chaffinch stakeout in Union Township, NJ this morning, the cul-de-sac was filled with cars.  I knew it was going to be exciting!

Up the hill, where the birders were gathered waiting on a porch for the bird to come in to a feeder, I thought I could hear the following chant::

What do we want?  Chaffinch!
When do we want it?  NOW!
What do we want?  Chaffinch!
When do we want it?  NOW!

Holy cow, I thought what the heck is going on?  Usually, stake outs are quiet places were nervous birders are afraid to even whisper, in fear of scaring away their quarry.

I quickly dashed up the hill to the house, but all was quiet.  Nobody admitted to having heard the chant.  Maybe it was just the wind?

The Common Chaffinch had just flown a few moments earlier, so I waited with 20 other birders for 25 minutes, hoping it would show up again.  The feeding station was empty.  I started hearing some White-throated Sparrows off to one side, so I walked to the edge of the covered porch and started scanning.  I saw a bird fly past quickly with white on the outter tail feathers, but I didn't think it was a junco.  Within a minute the Chaffinch came down from where I was searching and landed in a tree, then dropped down to the ground under the feeders where we all got good looks.  I didn't stay long, maybe a minute tops, before flying off.  Then a couple minutes later it was back for a few seconds.

In the hustle and bustle of the 20 birder scramble, I managed to capture 16 seconds of frustratingly blurry video through my binoculars.

It flew just as a few other birders arrived, including my friend Patrick.  So I stuck around until it showed up again an hour later, enjoying the hushed and somber crowd.  I apologize to anyone we may have annoyed with our hushed but animated talking while waiting.  I'm not one for somber when there are good birds around :-)

What do we want?  Rarities!
When do we want them?  Now!


In fact, it was such a fun morning that afterwards I headed over to Merrill Creek to get another look at the Snowy Owl that has been hanging out there since early November.  It was sitting on the same rock where I last left it nearly two months ago.  A Tundra Swan, Bald Eagles, and Common Goldeneye rounded out the morning.

New Jersey Common Chaffinch

This morning in the wind and subfreezing temperatures I was able to get a short look at the Common Chaffinch coming to a feeder in Union Township, NJ.  The bird was coming in every half hour or so to the seed under the feeder.  It was only visible for a few minutes when I was there, and I only managed these poor blurry photos through my binoculars with my Android phone camera.  Better photos are online here.  Bird location map is here.  Viewing instructions from the homeowner are on Jerseybirds here and here.  Special thanks to the homeowners for making this bird viewing available.  Please be respectful of these viewing guidelines, which include no weekend visits.

Kumlien's Gull

Here an apparent adult Kumlien's (Iceland) Gull that I photographed at Spruce Run Reservoir, Hunterdon, NJ on December 28.  Note especially the small gray primary tips.  Currently considered a subspecies of Iceland Gull, who knows, maybe it will be considered its own species someday.

Cute Baby Duck?

When is a baby duck not a baby duck?  In this case, the small duck in this picture is not a baby Mallard, but a Call Duck, a small domestic variety of Mallard. It waddled up to my car the other day with the full-sized Mallards at one of my local ponds in Clinton, NJ.  Note also the interesting plumage, without the dark brown chest of a wild drake Mallard.

eBird One a Day Challenge

In addition to staying in good birding shape by making sure I get my 20 Bird Minimum Daily Requirement, this year I'm also going to take the eBird One a Day Challenge--and will make sure to enter at least one eBird checklist for each day of the year.  I'd like to invite everyone else to do the same!  BTW, this year I'm also going to dig out all my old trip lists from outside the U.S. and enter them into eBird so I can finally figure out what my World List looks like.

So far, two days into 2012, I've submitted 7 eBird checklists.  As far as the 20 Bird MDR goes, yesterday I took a Birding Shabbat, which I usually do on Sundays.  However, I did incidentally see 15 species on my way to church and back, so today I did a Makeup Birding Day and found 35 species to make up for the 5 I missed yesterday.

Best Birds of 2011

2011 started a bit slow for me, and I only had four trips that required air travel--2 weeks and 2000 miles driving the entire coast of Texas in May, a conference in Ohio, a quick family wedding trip to Oregon, and a conference in New Zealand in December.  Since I didn't enter all my Texas trip sightings into eBird (ooops!), I'm not sure exactly how many birds I saw this year (that's why you have to enter everything you see into eBird!).  eBird has my total as 250, so I probably saw something over 400.  Not a huge number.  But having moved to NJ this fall, I've already wracked up 127 species in my new home county, and 67 species in my new yard in the past three months.  So some fun birding at home, nearby, and on some good trips this year.

That said, here were my best birds of 2011

10) Gray-hooded Gull.  I got to chase this unexpected vagrant on Coney Island with my kids.  One of only two new birds for my North American bird list this year.

9)  Wrybill--a cool New Zealand shorebird with a bill that bends to the side.  I was able to get distant looks at three of these on muflats out near the Auckland Airport.

8)  Tui--one of the more common native New Zealand land birds, seemingly doing fairly well even in city parks and yards.  Think of a crow-like bird with white chest tufts and a iridescent lacey shawl.  Very loud and cool.  And New Zealand even has a ketchup named after it--Tuimato Sauce!

7) White-faced Storm Petrel--Still haven't seen this one out in the Atlantic off the East Coast, but when I was in New Zealand I got to see over 500 of them out in the Hauraki Gulf.  Very cool sea bird that skips across the waves.  Hopefully this summer I can connect with one on a pelagic trip here in North America.

6) Kokako--I hadn't even heard of this rare bird before preparing for my New Zealand trip.  Turns out they are extremely endangered, and only maybe 1500 are probably left.  I was able to see a handful of these gray crow-sized birds with blue wattles on Tiritiri Matangi Island across the harbor from Auckland.

5) Little (Blue) Penguin--My first penguins!  I saw two of these birds huddled in a specially made penguin nesting burrow on Tiritiri Matangi Island.

4) Pink-footed Goose--after chasing this one a few times over the years, I finally got one on one of my old stomping grounds in Bucks County, PA.  Thanks to August Mirabella for finding the bird and the internet for getting the word out quickly so I could drop everything and get this bird!  My only other new ABA bird for the year.

3) Brown Kiwi--I didn't see this bird in the wild, but did get video of one in the Auckland Zoo.  I have to go back down to New Zealand to see these guys (and their two or four other related kiwi species, depending on which expert you believe).

2) New Zealand Storm Petrel--last observed in 1850 and thought extinct, a few of these birds were rediscovered in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland in 2003.  We were able to see at least 3 of them on a pelagic trip there on December 10.  It was worth getting seasick for!

1) Takahe--There are less than 300 of these large flightless New Zealand rails alive in the world.  I saw Greg the famous tame Takahe on Tiritiri Matangi island, but also several more of his more wild cousins there as well.

Honorable mentions--Snowy Owl with my kids, White-collared Seedeaters on the banks of the Rio Grande in Laredo, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in the Piney Woods of Texas, displaying Buff-breasted Sandpipers on the Texas coast.  Too many to mention, really.

So, while I may not have seen a huge number of birds this year, but I am grateful for all I did see, and there were some great ones.  What were your best birds of 2011?

Here's to an awesome year of birds and birding in 2012!

Yard Birds Update

This past week as I was driving home I saw a Great Blue Heron in my neighbor's pond.  Pulling into my driveway, I walked down to the far corner of my yard and I could barely see the heron standing on the side of the pond.  Bingo!  In three months of living in our new house in New Jersey, the heron was the 67th species for my yard list.  That ties the number of species I was able to see in five years of living in our row home in Perkasie, PA.  Ah the joys of exurban living!

Birdaoke?

What the heck is birdaoke?  Find out at my post For those about to bird, we salute you! over at Birding is Fun!

Jinx Birds at Birding is Fun!

I have a new post up at Birding is Fun about jinx birds.  Check it out and share your own jinx bird stories!

Pine Run Pink-footed Goose

Can you find the rare goose in this shot?  Me neither!

Fortunately I was on my computer this afternoon at 2:30 when word went out about a Pink-footed Goose found by August Mirabella at Pine Run Reservoir, one of my old stomping grounds an hour away over in Bucks County, PA.  Dashing to the car I was there by 3:30, where I met August and Ron French, who had the bird in the scope.  Over the next hour up to a dozen birders rushed over to see the bird, which spent the whole time floating out in the middle of the small reservoir with over 800 Canada Geese.  Having chased and missed this rare European goose several times over the years, it was great to finally see one in North America!

At over 100 yards distance in the fading light, I was lucky to get these poor shots through my scope.  Just happy to have been there!

I won't inflict you with the shaky and blurry video shot through my scope, though it was nice to see the bird flap a couple of times and do some bill dipping.

More photos from others:
August Mirabella's photos

Hunterdon County Brant

After chasing and missing Brant at Spruce Run for the past two weeks, I finally ran into one this morning at nearby DeMott Pond in Clinton.  The young bird was there all day yesterday, and still there when I checked late this morning, and tame enough to walk up and take a picture of with my phone camera.  Other new arrivals and good birds for me this morning were Red-throated Loon and first of season Fox Sparrow and Hooded Mergansers at Spruce Run.  At home, a singing male House Finch was a new bird for the yard.