Alert: the hackers are back. We’ve had a number of suspicious sign ups recently so if you really have subscribed in the last three months, please shoot Sneed a confirmation email at collard@bigsky.net and I will make sure that you stay subscribed. Meanwhile, feel free to share this post with all the wonderful birders in your lives. Thanks!
If you are an avid fan of FatherSonBirding—and let’s face
it, who isn’t?—you’ll know that Braden and I recently had an adventure of a
lifetime in Israel and Jordan. Over the next few posts, we’d like to share that
adventure, starting with ordinary neighborhood birding, and what any casual
visitor might expect to see in Israel in January.
The Hooded Crow not only was our first Israeli bird, it was one that would provide constant entertainment and companionship throughout our trip.
Before flying to the Holy Land, Braden and I had already
learned the value of studying up on birds of a new area, so when our flight
touched down in Tel Aviv at 2 a.m., we hit the ground running. Well, sort of.
First, we got on a train and traveled to our friends’ house in the pleasant
coastal town of Binyamina. As soon as we’d showered and eaten breakfast, our
hosts’ 14-year-old son, Noam, led us out on a tour of the neighborhood.
Now, I have to preface this by saying that Israel is the only place I know where if you go out birding, you not only have a chance of encountering some amazing historic site, you are almost guaranteed it. Only a block from his house, Noam led us to a remarkable Ottoman well that was 400-plus years old. Braden and I would have been more in awe if we weren’t already mesmerized by the variety of birds we were seeing! Our first Israeli bird? Hooded Crow, a handsome and charismatic corvid that would become a regular companion on our trip. This was soon followed by other delights including Great Tits, White-spectacled Bulbuls, Graceful Prinias, and Common Chiffchaffs, none of which we really expected to see! The most “crowd-pleasing?” The Palestinian Sunbird, an analog to American hummingbirds. We saw several, in fact, hovering to slurp up the nectar of some bright red flowers.
The Middle East’s “hummingbird”, the Palestinian Sunbird. The convergence of both habits and appearance of these guys with our own hummers is remarkable.
Once we passed the Ottoman well, we headed out to open farmland where we encountered a totally different suite of birds, starting with the same Rose-ringed Parakeets we’d seen in Amsterdam literally hours before (see our post “Layover Birding in Amsterdam”). Here we also encountered a charming little flycatcher called the European Stonechat—another frequent companion for our next two weeks. In the distance, we saw our first Black-winged Kite and Common Buzzard—Europe’s “Red-tailed Hawk.” Near a pond, we spotted several Glossy Ibis in flight and then came the punctuation of our first birding experience: a flight of four Great White Pelicans that flew right over us.
Besides having a great name, the European Stonechat is a great behavioral study as it behaves very similarly to American flycatchers.
Our first bird list totaled a satisfying twenty-one species, many of which we wouldn’t have recognized if we hadn’t done our homework ahead of time. Best of all, there was much, much more to come! Stay tuned . . .
The appearance of pelicans overhead both floored and delighted us!
Hey Everyone! Well, the hackers are back. We’ve had a number of suspicious sign ups recently so if you really have subscribed in the last three months, please shoot Sneed a confirmation email at collard@bigsky.net and I will make sure that you stay subscribed. Meanwhile, feel free to share this post with all the wonderful birders in your lives. Thanks!
On Tuesday, February 4th, my dad woke me up at 7 o’clock, a
restful relief from the 4:45 wake-up time I’d adapted to being on the Hellgate
High School Swim Team. Despite an increasingly significant school workload, I’d
decided (with parental permission, of course) to take my birthday off and head
north to bird with my dad. Aside from the obvious perks of birding places like
Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge and Flathead Lake, we had several goals in
mind. A few days earlier, an Ivory Gull, an incredibly rare arctic species, had
been sighted at Blue Bay on Flathead. There was also supposedly a Northern Hawk
Owl, a boreal species that rarely visited the United States, at Swan River
National Wildlife Refuge in the valley just to the east of the lake. We set out
at eight o clock, fifteen minutes after the bell for my school rang, heading
north with visions of rare birds soaring through our minds.
Though the gull, being the rarest of the possibilities
today, was our priority, we had to make several stops. First, we made a
speed-run of Ninepipe, visiting both the frozen lake itself and a nearby road
that supposedly had been supporting a Ferruginous Hawk all winter. The hawk
wasn’t quite as rare as the other species we were chasing, but raptors proved
hard to find even in their regular, summer habitat in the eastern prairies. Today,
we found the white-breasted bird fairly easily, along with several Red-taileds,
Bald Eagles, Rough-leggeds and a Prairie Falcon flashing its dark armpits as it
fled from a telephone pole. At Ninepipe itself, we almost collided with an
airborne Ring-necked Pheasant, and crept down a dirt drive to snap photos of a
possible Ross’s-Snow Goose hybrid.
We grabbed a delicious breakfast at the Ronan Cafe, then drove north through Polson, stopping at a fishing access on Flathead to check for gulls. The Ivory had last been seen heading south, and this hotspot, known as the Ducharme Fishing Access, also reliably held uncommon arctic and seafaring gulls like Iceland, Herring and Mew. In fact, due to the lake’s size, seabirds showed up on an annual basis, confusing it with an inland sea. The Ivory Gull was just the most recent, and possibly rarest, of these visitors. Today, however, we glimpsed only a few Ringed-billeds in the distance.
When the gull took flight, we thought it might be leaving. Instead it landed on a dock only about fifteen feet from us. Wish we’d had some krill in our pockets!
Normally, my dad and I don’t have the best luck chasing rarities. We’ve successfully found a few, usually by accident or thanks to excessive diligence of Nick Ramsey. Last summer, for instance, we chased an Indigo Bunting, Virginia’s Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warblers and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers in central Montana, only finding the bunting, which was difficult to miss in its neon blue plumage. When we pulled up to Blue Bay, though, we found two birders and one bird. That bird was the Ivory Gull, dressed in blank plumage dotted with black. At first we thought it was a plastic bag, due to its immobility, and proceeded to freak out immediately after raising our binoculars. The other birders, who had travelled from Washington to see this bird that normally dwells among the pack ice with polar bears, left fairly quickly after our arrival, leaving us alone on the beach to bask in the bird’s rarity and fill up our camera memory cards. The gull was incredibly tame, at one point landing five feet from us on a dry dock!
Strike a pose! This gull is obviously a huge Madonna fan!
After our success with the gull, we decided to drive north, then east, to Swan River in hopes of finding the owl. The location had been given to us by Nick, and it was much less direct and accessible than the gull had been. First we pulled off the highway at a makeshift parking lot, far from civilization, then trudged a mile through snow to a huge, open field. We proceeded to check and double-check the top of every pine, fir, larch and spruce in the area, searching for the diurnal bog-dweller. After searching the entire south end of the field, where the owl was supposed to be, we took a quick glance across the other side of the field. On a particular conifer far from us, a gray smudge caught the edge of my vision. I took a distant photo, confirming that it indeed was a gray smudge, and we continued to walk towards it. Once we got close enough to determine that it was at least bird-shaped, it disappeared!
If this isn’t an imposing, regal look, we don’t know what is. Good thing the owl couldn’t shoot lightning bolts down at us!
We frantically began re-checking every tree in the area, eventually relocating it again and—it was the owl! This time we didn’t take our eyes off it, eventually getting to about twenty feet from the tree that it perched on top of, like a star on a Christmas Tree. It glared at us, and we stared back, taking in its broad shoulders, square head and beautifully-patterned plumage. In an attempt to get better photos, my dad crossed a ditch, filling his rain boots with ice-cold water, and after the owl got bored with us, everyone departed. We had set out and seen every bird we’d wanted to, including three rarities, one of which (the gull) would quickly become at least nationally famous! To seal the deal, on the way home we glimpsed a Northern Shrike, another uncommon winter species that we hadn’t seen in a while. All in all, an incredible bird-filled birthday!
Me with my Birthday Gull perched behind me. Best Gift Ever!
Welcome to all of our new subscribers! If you haven’t subscribed yet, please fill out the box down in the right-hand column. The timing’s good as we’re about to unleash a flock of new posts!
Happy 2020 Fellow Birders! It’s been a while since our last post but that doesn’t mean we’ve been idle. In fact, we just arrived back in the country after a month-long adventure to the Middle East—something which will occupy at least our next four or five posts. Before we get to the Levant, however, we want to share some birds on the way—in, you guessed it, Amsterdam!
Birding Amsterdam’s Vondelpark was the perfect way to kick off our Middle East adventure!
Our flights were set up so that we got an eight-hour layover
in the Netherlands, and you can bet we took advantage of it. As soon as our
plane landed, we raced through immigration and customs, caught a train to
Amsterdam’s Central Station and then a trolley out to what looked like our best
birding opportunity, Vondelpark. As we entered the enormous urban landscape,
clouds and chilly temperatures greeted us, but no rain, so we were in birding
business. As fast as you can say “Common Wood-Pigeon”, our Life Lists exploded.
Rose-ringed Parakeets? In Amsterdam? Hard to believe, but yes–in abundance!
Braden and I had done our due diligence by studying eBird lists for Amsterdam prior to the trip, but we were still blown away by how many of the birds actually appeared in front of us. They included the European versions of some of America’s common birds—Eurasian Moorhen, Eurasian Coot, Gray Heron, and Eurasian Magpie—but soon we also saw the more specialized residents. The first was a big surprise: European Greenfinch. These were followed by Eurasian Blackbirds, Eurasian Jackdaws, Eurasian Jays, Carrion Crows, and a prized trio of tits: Great, Blue, and Long-tailed.
Tits are basically the Euro versions of our chickadees—and every bit as cute, as these Blue and Long-tailed Tits demonstrate!
But you know me. At the top of my “To See” list was the Great Spotted Woodpecker, the only possible woodpecker in the vicinity. After an hour, we still hadn’t seen one when Braden suddenly swiveled and pointed. “Woodpecker!” Unfortunately, the bird was high-tailing it away from us, but we saw it land in a tree at the far side of the park. “After it!” I shouted and we raced across the park. The lighting was terrible, but the bird stayed just long enough for some decent looks. BOO-YAH!
This Great Cormorant was a real surprise in Vondelpark.
Our birding expedition wrapped up with a look at a Eurasian Wren, a Redwing, and some great quality time with European Robins—both Braden’s and my “Bird of the Day.” Then it was off to get warm and take a quick tour of the Van Gogh Museum. No offense to the great artist, but it seemed oddly anticlimactic after the living art we’d seen in the park.
Some great hang time made the European Robin our Bird of the Day. Look for them in movies filmed in Europe!
Well, it looks like we have solved our Russian hacker problems but we’re still missing half of our subscriber list. You can help by sharing this with your birding friends and urging them to resubscribe. If you have a problem doing this, please let us know at collard@bigsky.net and I’ll subscribe you. We thank you, birder to birder!
Our last day of the San Diego Bird Festival took us away
from shore on the mighty birding (and perhaps fishing) vessel New Seaforth. This would be Braden’s and
my third California pelagic birding cruise and in many ways it proved the most
memorable. Almost immediately upon leaving the safety of Mission Bay, we began
seeing dozens of Black-vented Shearwaters heading north and, of course, we
followed them. They led us to a massive fish feast, where from 5-10,000 shearwaters
gorged themselves on acres of anchovies. At least a thousand gulls, countless
cormorants, and sea lions and common dolphins joined the fray.
Every time a shearwater surfaced stuffed with anchovies, gulls mobbed it until it regurgitated part of its catch. Note the shearwater on the far right fleeing the gang ‘o gulls!
After enjoying this spectacle for half an hour, we turned
south and angled farther out to sea. Braden said, “I have three priorities
today: Scripps’s Murrelets, Pomarine Jaegers, and Brown Boobies.” My own
priority was simpler: I really wanted to see a Brown Booby—or any booby for
that matter. It wasn’t long before our target species began showing up.
Scripps’s Murrelets were only described for science in 1859 and were heading toward extinction before efforts to rid their nesting islands of invasive rats and cats.
Undoubtedly the stars of the day were the Scripps’s
Murrelets. These birds nest only in the Santa Barbara Channel Islands and on
Mexico’s Coronado Islands, which loomed in the distance. The murrelets lay
gigantic eggs compared to their body sizes—a full twenty percent of an adult’s
weight. This advanced “in egg” development is no accident. Only two days after
hatching, the chicks sneak away to the ocean to be raised by their parents almost
entirely at sea. As we steamed south, we saw more and more of these adorable
alcids, usually floating in pairs.
The boat “chummed” with popcorn, and that kept the gulls busy behind the boat, but also attracted brief visits from Braden’s second target, Pomarine Jaegers. Then Paul Lehman, our leader for the day, shouted over the PA, “Brown Booby at 12:00 o’clock, coming straight toward the boat!”
Braden and I had longed to see a booby in American waters since visiting the Galapagos in 2016.
I hurried to the rail in time to see the elegant “gannet
shape” of the booby as it sped fifty yards off the port side. The bird even did
a quick circuit around the stern, giving us all good looks at its handsome chocolate-covered
head and back before speeding away again.
“Yes!” I whispered
to myself.
The day wasn’t without its challenges. The steady 3-foot swell took a toll on Braden, forcing him below deck for part of the journey. Still, he agreed that the birds were worth the queasiness and, as if to drive home the point, a pod of common dolphins escorted us part of the way back to the mainland.
Hasta la vista, San Diego—until the next time!
Dolphins are a highlight of any pelagic birding adventure—even if they are mammals!
This is the Big Day Mentality: Every species, no matter how rare, is worth one tally. During a 24-hour period, a team of birders try to collect as many tallies as possible; the end total is the sum of every single bird species seen or heard during the day by at least two members of the team. At the San Diego Birding Festival, my dad and I were invited to be “first lieutenants” on two Big Day field trips.
We co-led our first outing under the expert leadership of veteran birder Phil Pryde, a local San Diegoan who had an ambitious schedule planned out for the day, in order to maximize the amount of species we saw. From dawn to dusk we scoured San Diego county, which is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined; a bird only counted if one of the leaders and one of the participants identified it. By the end of the day we had arrived at a total of 113 species, and my dad and I at just over a hundred individually. The number wasn’t bad, and the day had given us a rough idea of how many birds to expect for the next Big Day. Overall, though, the day hadn’t been very “birdy”—we had missed quite a few common species.
At Lindo Lake we spotted several pairs of the most photogenic Wood Ducks we had ever encountered!
On our next Big Day, under the guidance of our good-natured chief, Eitan Altman, we were determined to break this record. Unfortunately, the conditions didn’t look good—a low, wet mist had rolled over the area. Thanks to the rain, we didn’t have to rush inland to get early-morning songbirds (they were probably huddled in their warm, dry nests with no intent on warbling at the weather), so we birded along the coast at a relaxed pace. While doing this, we saw an unexpectedly high number of species, including Common Loon, Surf Scoter and Brant, which had not been a guarantee, a huge flock of Black Skimmers, and rarities such as Glaucous-winged Gull and the well-known Reddish Egret which hung out in the San Diego River Estuary. The eccentric bird’s gait reminded me of Kramer from the TV show Seinfeld.
This Greater White-fronted Goose is a regular at Lindo Lake.
Finally, around nine in the morning, we headed inland to Lindo Lake, the place which had yielded the highest number of species to us on the previous Big Day. We tallied high numbers of waterfowl, woodpeckers and more, including some more rarities: the resident Greater White-fronted Goose hanging out with a flock of domestic geese, not one but two Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, and a Bonaparte’s Gull that had somehow wound its way inland.
We continued hitting different habitats to nab species, and by three in the afternoon our total sat at 120 species, the most recent being an altitudinally-challenged Band-tailed Pigeon, a calling Canyon Wren and the ever-rare American Robin. As soon as I confirmed our total, Eitan began thinking of other species we could pick up, now determined to beat his personal record of 128. On our way back to the coast we stopped at places to grab specific birds, including White-tailed Kite and Greater Roadrunner. The tide was out now, and at the San Diego River Estuary we grabbed another six species, though unfortunately none of the rarities being reported there (Tricolored Heron, Mew Gull, Eurasian Wigeon) except the spunky Reddish Egret and a beautiful double rainbow.
We spotted a wintering flock of blackbirds at Lindo Lake, including many Tricolored Blackbirds, a California endemic.
As the day grew closer to our deadline of five o’clock, we opted to try and get a few last birds at a place called Fiesta Island, arguing over possible birds:
“Was that a Northern Harrier?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?.”
And finally, right at the entrance to the island we hit 130 with a Spotted Sanspiper bobbing along the rocks of the coastline. A pair of American Kestrels on the actual island sealed the deal.
We finished the trip, said our goodbyes, then responded
appropriately to our biggest day ever by collapsing into bed.
