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Do you remember listening to American Top 40 as a kid? Sure you do! To celebrate our 100th post, we decided to count down FSB’s All-Time Most Popular Posts—with a video!
Yes, believe it or not, this is FatherSonBirding’s 100th post! Since we seem to be evolving toward a video world, Braden and I agreed that a video post would be a fun way to celebrate our last four years of birding and blogging. Just don’t get used to it! Videos take a lot more effort than regular blogging and, frankly, making videos eats into our birding time!
A few notes about the Top 5. They may not be technically correct since for some of our early posts, we may not have been gathering statistics on views. Also, we had not yet switched to a Payola scheme by which people pay us to make sure that certain posts are more popular. Just kidding! About the Payola, that is. I’ll always be curious just how many views our first post, A Quest for Snowy Owls (published March 13, 2018) has really received!
Also, below are some quick links to the posts mentioned in this blog. They are NOT IN ORDER of popularity so there’s no opportunity for cheating here! You’ll just have to watch the video to find out WHAT IS NUMBER ONE! Also, I have misspelled “Maclay Flat” as “McClay Flats” and other permutations. You’ll just have to forgive me!
Thank you for following our birding adventures. We appreciate you and hope this winter brings you plenty of birding adventures of your own!
Links to Blogs mentioned in the video (not in order of popularity):
One thing that surprised me about the birds in Maine is that while many of the state’s breeding birds are different from Montana’s (obviously—did you read the warbler post?), many of Maine’s year-round and winter birds are the same since Bangor, Maine and Missoula, Montana are at very similar latitudes. This means that I can chase birds like Northern Shrike and Snow Bunting in both states, and I will be doing so given that I’ll be spending a portion of my winters in both states over the next four years! Many of the nemeses I had in Montana also carry over, including one that I just happened into while checking my eBird alerts last week.
If you read my dad’s and my blogs last fall, you know that we worked our butts off to get shorebirds in western Montana. While we did find quite a few, our lists still contained a massive hole by the end of shorebird season: American Golden-Plover. We went to the place that they were most frequently-reported in the state (Pablo National Wildlife Refuge) at least four times, just missing the birds by a few days each time. Ironically, I already had seen the other two species of golden-plovers: Pacific (which I got in Hawaii) and European (which I got in Iceland), despite living within the range of American. So when an American showed up on a mudflat less than an hour from the University of Maine, I began talking to everyone I knew that had a car. I convinced Hayden and Nick, two sophomores and fellow nature-lovers I’d gotten to know during the past few months, to make the trip to Sebasticook Lake with me, and that Saturday we got up early and headed west.
Okay, this isn’t an American Black Duck—but maybe it should be! Have you ever seen a Mallard with such a black head?We’re thinking some kind of hybrid, but feel free to weigh in!
Once we arrived at the lake we started pulling off at every possible point to scan the water and shoreline for shorebirds, waterfowl or anything else that happened to show up. After all, my Maine list is still fairly short, so many common species would still be new for me within the state. In one bay we found a pretty large flock of ducks including some Northern Shovelers that should’ve been much further south and seven American Black Ducks, which were lifers for me!
A few stops later, we found ourselves staring at a massive field of half-frozen mud. The plover had been reported here, along with several dozen Snow Buntings, which I would never pass up the chance to see. Lacking a spotting scope, the three of us just began walking across the mudflat towards the south end. While I scanned the area for shorebirds, Hayden and Nick marvelled over the freshwater mussels and snails that had been exposed by the lake’s receding water. The two boys were Marine Science majors, and in the absence of birds, they taught me a whole lot about freshwater and marine ecosystems. After getting to the other side of the mudflat without seeing anything other than the usual suspects (Ring-billed Gull, Great Blue Heron, Bald Eagle, Double-crested Cormorant), we turned around and began the trudge back to the car. However, upon turning around both me and Nick spotted a small bird lift off on the opposite shore from us. After finding it in my binoculars I concluded that it was definitely a shorebird, but much too far away to distinguish anything else. We saw where it landed though, and began walking, slightly more quickly than before, in that direction.
I had to chase American Golden-Plovers from one end of the country to the other, but finally found one!
About fifteen minutes later we got there. All three of us began scanning the mudflats, but finding the bird seemed a bit hopeless. For one, it was a small brown bird hiding amongst a large brown background. And secondly, it easily could have flown away during our trek to where I’d last seen it land. In a last attempt, I played some American Golden-Plover calls on my phone. Suddenly, me and Hayden spotted movement about twenty yards in front of me. I raised my binoculars and there it was: my number one nemesis bird for the last year! The bird was sporting a nice golden-brown nonbreeding plumage and foraging around a log embedded in lake muck, and gave me the impression of a very dainty Black-bellied Plover, which is, taxonomically, basically what it is! I stood in place for at least twenty minutes, firing off photos and admiring the bird that we’d somehow just found. At one point I turned around to see that two more birders had set up their scope behind us and were watching it! It also took at least ten minutes to discover it, but at some point a Pectoral Sandpiper (another late migrant) had joined the plover and was foraging alongside it, although I didn’t pay this second bird very much attention. Eventually I could detect Hayden and Nick getting bored, so I said goodbye to the plover, briefly introduced myself to the other birders (who turned out to be graduate students at the University of Maine!), then we headed out. After a few more spots to try for Snow Buntings, which we did not find, we headed back to campus.
Hey, where did that Pectoral Sandpiper come from? It was a nice bonus to discover it next to the the AMGP!
A few days later, me and Hayden found ourselves in a car with those two grad students we’d met at the American Golden-Plover stakeout! I’d gotten in contact with Liam Berigan after hearing that he and Meredith Lewis were going down to Rockland, Maine to chase the Barnacle Goose (either a Code 3 or 4 for the ABA) that had shown up at an elementary school the week before. We decided to carpool, and were now spending our Veteran’s Day driving down the coastal Highway One for the goose. Once in Rockland, we rolled up to the school and immediately spotted the rarity—one that at least fifty people had chased throughout the week—feeding in a field with a few dozen Canada Geese. The goose was smaller than the Canadas, with a much cooler color template and a tiny black visor. Despite the fact that I’d seen the species before in Svalbard and Iceland, I still ogled at it alongside Hayden, Meredith and Liam, for all of whom it was a lifer. It was one of the easiest chases I’d ever participated in.
Now that’s one good-lookin’ goose—and an ABA rarity to boot! Let’s honk for Barnacle Geese!
We hit a coffee shop in Rockland to celebrate, then headed to the coast, which was about a hundred yards away, to look for sea ducks. We found a pair of Surf Scoters and several Black Guillemots in the harbor, then scoped a raft of Common Eider and not one, not two but seven Common Loons from the Owl’s Head Lighthouse. On the way back to campus, we stopped at a lake to try and get Ruddy Duck for Meredith and Liam’s year lists. We missed the ducks but saw a large number of coots, which was unusual so far north in Maine, plus two Bonaparte’s Gulls and a Mallard with a deformed head!
Riding on last week’s high, I decided to hit the Cornfield Loop this morning. After the warblers had left the state, the hotspot’s numbers had fallen dramatically, so I hadn’t been in several weeks. However, this morning started off with a lone Bohemian Waxwing perched atop a tree in the Littlefield Garden, one of the first seen in the state this fall! In the marsh I had a late flyover American Pipit, another state bird for me, and the walk concluded with a cloud of Snow Buntings lifting off the western side of the field, making their bubbly calls as they flew over my dorm and out of sight! Despite the fact that Snow Buntings are more common in Maine than in Montana, they lifted my spirits and continue to enforce that fact that birding doesn’t slow down in winter. I’m excited to see what’s next!
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My recent trip to Texas offered so many rich avian experiences, I am hard-pressed to blog about them all, but one I simply must add is my first—and entirely accidental—visit to a HawkWatch site. It all began when my friend Jeanette Larson, author of the wonderful book Hummingbirds: Facts and Folklore from the Americas, suggested I bird a place I’d never heard of: Hazel Bazemore park just west of Corpus Christi. Waking up the morning after my last HummerBird Celebration event, I threw my stuff in the rental car and headed through Corpus Christi, experiencing a delay of half an hour when I encountered a shorebird-rich target area at a place called Indian Point!
Arriving at Hazel Bazemore, an unassuming park in the suburbs, I spied two people with binoculars and spotting scopes and stopped to ask them where the best places to bird might be. They suggested a couple of spots and let slip that they were there to observe migrating raptors at a platform just across from where we stood. “You can come over and hang out,” they offered, but since they weren’t set up yet, I decided to explore the rest of the park. I’m glad I did as I saw several each Couch’s Kingbirds, Baltimore Orioles, and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, one of Braden’s and my favorite birds. Little did they prepare me for the main event!
Braden and I have no doubt that the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher should be the Texas State Bird, but instead, their neighbor Oklahoma stole the prize designation!
Looping back to the HawkWatch platform, I watched fascinated as the official observers picked out migrating birds from incredible distances including individual Mississippi Kites, Northern Harriers, Swainson’s Hawks, and more. Just between you and me, I have no idea how they could ID most of them, but assume that thousands of hours staring into the sky had ingrained a mastery of subtle visual and behavioral clues that betrayed each species. A few, such as a Crested Caracara, did fly close enough for me to confirm, but for most, I just had to take their word for it.
Considering I’d just seen my Lifer Broad-winged Hawk two days before, this kettle of hundreds of Broad-wingeds pretty much gob-smacked me. Can you find the token Turkey Vulture?
Suddenly, one of the observers shouted, “Big group of Broad-winged Hawks!” I, and several other visitors followed the direction of their scopes and, at first, I saw only clouds and blue sky. Then, I saw them—hundreds of black specks moving toward us! The hawks, accompanied by Turkey Vulture escorts, streamed directly overhead at a height of perhaps three or four thousand feet (I forgot to ask), making me forget everything except this magnificent show above me. They weren’t the last group either, as ten minutes later, another large group streamed by on the invisible river of air overhead. The second group did one better and also began circling, or “kettling”, above us, forming about as magnificent a spectacle as one can imagine. In between the two groups, a formation of about fifty Anhingas migrated by—something I didn’t even know they did, while off in the distance, more than one hundred White Pelicans also circled.
Before this trip, I didn’t even realize that Anhingas migrated. To see a large group fly overhead was nothing short of astonishing!
As if that weren’t enough, I also picked up my Lifer Bronzed Cowbird and ABA Lifer Buff-bellied Hummingbird at feeders next to the platform, both thanks to the keen eyes of a fellow birder who had come to join the bird spectacular. This was all enough to make me more interested in HawkWatch International activities. The organization runs or oversees dozens of sites throughout the world for scientific research purposes, including some sites in my home state of Montana, but I have never been to any. Going forward, this is something I need to change!
In a remarkably fun coincidence, as Braden was immersing himself in Life Birds migrating through Maine, I happened to be observing migrating songbirds in Texas following my recent trip to the HummerBird Celebration in Fulton-Rockport. For the trip, I had a number of goals, including shorebirds and raptors, but seeing migrating warblers perched at the top of my list.
Departing Rockport after HummerBird, I immediately headed to what has become a second home for us while in Texas: Winnie. Winnie is not a lot to write home about, a small town dominated by fast food joints, gas stations, hotels, and donut shops. So why go? Simple. It is surrounded by incredible birding including High Island, the Bolivar Peninsula, Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, and my first destination upon waking the next morning: Sabine Woods.
Because it takes more effort to reach, Sabine Woods is less visited than High Island, but it can offer up a delicious smorgasbord of birding during migration seasons.
Birders usually flock to coastal Texas in April or May during the height of spring migration. This being fall, my expectations were tempered as I drove east to the vast petrochemical complex of Port Arthur and then south toward Sabine Woods, a tiny preserve owned by the Texas Ornithological Society. Only one other car was parked outside of the entrance and I soon met its owners, a nice birder couple from Austin. They, too, had just started birding, and while we chatted, we saw both Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and a Black-and-White Warbler, boosting my hopes for a productive morning.
Less shy than most warblers, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers delight Braden and me wherever we find them!
Setting off on my own, the woods seemed quiet except for some Blue Jays calling and the scuffling of hundreds of toads hopping through the dead leaves. After about a hundred yards, however, I suddenly saw a flash of yellow land on a branch and raised my binoculars. Prothonotary Warbler! I smiled because this was the first eastern warbler Braden and I ever saw together during our Big Year back in 2016. As I continued to walk, however, the birds were few and far between. I ended up at a marshier area in the back of the preserve and through some hard birding managed to find a Common Yellowthroat and, with the help of Merlin’s Sound ID, an Acadian Flycatcher. It wasn’t until I ran into Howard Davis, a volunteer from Golden Triangle Audubon, that my luck really began to change. He showed me one of the three drips on the property and, sure enough, I discovered a trio of warblers there: Black-and-White, Wilson’s, and Northern Parula. Still, these were all birds I had seen several times before, and I wanted something new. Something unusual!
Drips—artificial water sources for birds—are a photographer’s friend, especially when it comes to photographing tiny, fast-moving warblers such as this Black-and-White.
At another drip, Howard and a second birder pointed out the first great score of the day: my Lifer Painted Buntings! Sure, they happened to be females and/or juveniles, so I didn’t get to see the glorious breeding plumage of a male, but I was elated even as I headed off alone again, doubtful I’d see anything more. Then, near where I’d seen the Common Yellowthroat, I spotted another flash of yellow. I got my binoculars up just in time to focus on my first ever Canada Warbler—the thin necklace around the throat a giveaway for the ID! Walking farther, my luck continued as I got a great look at my first Hooded Warbler since 2016.
By this time I’d been birding hard for three-and-a-half hours, so I sat under a tree near the entrance to review my final eBird list and enjoy the Blue-gray Gnatcatchers that frequented the clearing. As I sat there, though, I spotted something large and gray in a nearby tree. At first I thought it might be a jay or dove. As I stared at its partially-concealed form, however, my previous study paid off and a bolt of recognition split my skull: Yellow-billed Cuckoo! It was a great way to wrap up an inspiring session. Braden and I had unsuccessfully searched for cuckoos many times in Montana and Texas without success. Suddenly, to have one appear right in front of me, well, I felt I had earned it!
My Lifer Yellow-billed Cuckoo was totally absent from my radar—and put a delightful exclamation mark on a productive morning of Fall birding.
Note: Only days before my visit, a group of birders had counted twenty species of warblers in Sabine Woods. Such sightings and our own experiences are really changing Braden’s and my opinions of fall birding. While we used to pretty much write off the fall, it has now become one of our favorite birding seasons, whether in Maine, Texas, or Montana.
Believe it or not, I just returned from my first actual birding festival in two years—and it was worth the wait! I was invited to speak at the 33rdannual HummerBird Celebration in Rockport-Fulton, Texas last year when, for covid—not corvid—reasons, organizers were forced to cancel the event. Even as I flew down this year, however, I had little idea what the celebration would be like. I was in for a treat.
One advantage of having mainly one kind of hummingbird in a region is that it greatly simplifies the almost impossible task of distinguishing female Ruby-throated from female Black-chinned hummingbirds!
The festival is organized by dedicated staff and volunteers at the Rockport-Fulton Chamber of Commerce and the event, as its name suggests, celebrates hummingbirds. “Wait a minute,” some of you may be asking, “aren’t there only three or four species of hummingbirds in eastern Texas in the fall?” Correct. But the event doesn’t focus only on diversity. It celebrates raw numbers, mainly of one species: Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. The entire community joins in, and one of the coolest things about HummerBird is the self-guided tour of houses full of feeders and backyard habitats where participants are encouraged to feast their eyes on a plethora of Ruby-throateds. The festival, though, offers much more.
One of my duties as a speaker was to co-lead a four-hour field trip of 40 birders out to Fennessey Ranch, a working ranch that also focuses on conservation and research. After struggling a bit to find the place, we split into two groups and began “hay rides” around the property, looking for as many birds as we could find. Coming from Montana, I discovered that almost every species was a Year Bird for me, but Braden has coached me well over the years, and together with my co-leader, ranch naturalist Sally Crofutt, we identified almost everything we heard and saw. They included some real surprises, including my Lifer Broad-winged Hawk, migrating Anhingas (I didn’t even realize they migrated!), and my find of the day—only my second-ever Blue Grosbeak.
Green Jay was our Fennessey group’s Most Wanted Bird, and this fellow obligingly complied with our wishes!
But the celebration offered much, much more, including:
a fabulous Hummer Mall packed with all kinds of bird-related vendors and demonstrations
a host of interesting speakers
great birding all along the area’s waterfront
One great thing about HummerBird is that terrific birding surrounded us. I found this cooperative Crested Caracara—along with numerous other species—along the shore just down from my hotel.
Speaking of speakers, I spoke to two enthusiastic audiences about Braden’s and my 2016 Big Year and other adventures, and before one of my talks I had the pleasure of listening to Dawn Hewitt, editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest. She gave wonderful hints on learning bird calls—something I would use almost immediately. I was surprised how well-attended the entire celebration turned out to be, and I headed back north feeling full of positive bird vibes as I prepared to spend a couple of days birding High Island and the Bolivar Peninsula—the subject of my next post(s)!
