Kimberly and I got up early today to visit Williamson Park to hunt for some birds that had been reported there but we haven't seen yet. Although it was bit cool and windy this morning, we're feeling the pressure of the impending change in season and the departure of our winter birds.
I particularly wanted to spot an American Bittern--a difficult bird to see due to its camouflage and shy habits. Here's link to a brief video that has pictures of the Bittern along with audio of its crazy call: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAxAEoAVmuc
Now that you know what it looks like, check out this photo and try to see the Bittern. It's there I promise, but nearly impossible to see.
Can't find it? Try again. It's in the bottom-center of the photo, facing left, its long neck reaching up past the pinkish weeds. It is tan and white and looks just like the reeds. Still can't find it? Look between the bottoms of the two, green vertical reeds that are slightly in front of the rest of the reeds. Still can't see it? Exactly. These guys are hard to spot, but he's there, I promise.
One of them has been reported at Williamson Park a few times over the past few weeks but we hadn't had any luck yet, so we thought we'd try again.
The first thing we saw was an old man walking his dog and smoking a pipe. We exchanged a distant greeting and he seemed to appreciate that I was smoking a pipe too. Kimberly laughed and scowled a little and said she thought she saw the future (me). I wish we stopped to say hello and got a picture of him, but alas, we didn't, we had birds to find.
Kim pointed out a Barn Swallow, which put me ahead in the count again by one bird. She saw one earlier this week which had tied us up. Now I'm up again, with the Herring Gull I identified from our hotel room window in Seattle during the MLA convention making the difference. (I'm sure she'll get to see one later in the year.) I kept scanning the edge of the pond, looking for a Bittern in the reeds, but with no luck.
We saw a bunch of birds we already have: ubiquitous Coots, Canadian Geese (perhaps resting on their migration), a Common Gallinule (used to be called a common moorhen, they just changed the name, don't ask me why--professional birders tend to be persnickety about things like that), Gold Finches, etc. Then we got into the reeds, or at least next to the reeds, and started hunting for sparrows. First we saw a song sparrow--which we had already seen earlier this year. Then we struggled to id a few sparrows that were doing their best to frustrate our efforts. There are a ton of sparrows and some of them are hard to tell apart. We ended up identifying two new sparrows we haven't seen yet this year, a Lincoln's Sparrow, and a Swamp Sparrow--both birds are getting ready to fly the coop for their winter grounds in Canada, and both were on our target list of birds to see there. Success! But still no Bittern.
As you can tell from the pictures, these birds look alike. And we didn't even to get to see them that clearly. Nevertheless, we were confident in our identifications. The clearest difference in the photos is that the Swamp Sparrow has a black patch in the middle of its breast. The Lincoln's Sparrow has a wide, grey eyebrow and a darker patch on its cheek compared to the Swamp Sparrow.
Clouds started moving in, blocking out the sun, and the wind rose. Your hands can get mighty cold when you're holding up your binoculars trying to catch a glimpse of that damn sparrow (Song? Lincoln's? Swamp?) that keeps popping up on the reeds and then flittering back down into them. I know, I'm getting soft here in Texas, it was probably only in the low 50s. But still, my hands were getting numb. There were plenty of days coming when we could see the Bittern. Maybe he won't even migrate, and we'll have all summer.
We decided to head out. I was resigned to the fact that there would be no Bittern sighting today. Before we left we walked out onto the peer to see what we could see. A Common Gallinule, a cormorant, etc. No Bittern.
Then I noticed Kimberly intently glassing the edge of the pond near the road. She was tense and told me to look where she was looking. How deep in the reeds? I asked. Just in front of them, she said. She was nervous he was going to escape further into them. I looked and there he was, the American Bittern. Just hanging out for all to see, well, for all to see who were intensely looking for him.
Kim's worries about him dashing off ended up unfounded. The Bittern moved so ridiculously slow she had enough time to set up our spotting scope and we watched him do his slow motion strut for a few minutes, with his giant feet and claws (talons?). Then we packed it up and headed home. A good day. Too bad we didn't get a picture, but no one would be able to make it out anyway--"see that little blur in the photo..."--you need serious zoom lenses to get good pictures of most birds.
Later in the day I noticed an odd bird near our feeder. It was a Common Grackle, which actually isn't all that common around here. It was mixed in a flock of 40 Great Tailed Grackles that were having dinner next-door, compliments of our neighbors who leave out dog food for Ringo and Jordan.
So, for those who are keeping track, our bird numbers are: Michael: 144, Kimberly 143. Anyone care to take a guess how many we'll get for the year? Before we started my goal was to break 200. A day like today, where I got five new birds, is a real good day for this area, this time of year. But I think (hope) we might be able to break 200 before the end of the year. We have a few more birds on our target list for winter before they move, but then we'll perhaps catch some migrants, and after that summer birds.
The valley I refer to in that painfully punny title, is the Rio Grande Valley, home of the World Birding Center, and our destination this past weekend. Michael and I had been hoping to make it to the WBC some time before the wintering birds left, but the weather--drought for two years but wet and windy for the past three weeks--and school and dissertation commitments seemed to be conspiring against us. Really, we shouldn't have gone. But we figure that we probably won't be living in Texas much longer and thus won't have the opportunity to drive to one of the best birding spots in the country for much longer either. So, we went! To the WBC! In the middle of the semester!! Leaving all kinds of work and tedious obligations in our dust! To look for birds!
Clearly, we were pretty excited. This is Michael writing down his first bird of the trip and being excited.
Michael: It was a Great Kiskadee. And, by the way, I'm not actually this fat. That bulge under my jacket is my binoculars, not a result of the road food.
Kimberly: I was actually feeling really anxious about taking the time off, but that went away as soon as we got to the first birding spot on Friday morning.
To make things a little more interesting, which was totally not necessary, but I'm my mother's daughter and I like to make games out of things, I asked my mom, brother, sister, and brother-in-law to guess how many birds they thought we would add to our mini big year list on our trip. They had to be birds we had not yet identified this year. Before the trip to the WBC, we had about 70 birds a piece. And the winner gets a prize!! Yay for prizes! Michael and I also guessed, but just for fun, not for prize winning purposes.
Here's how people guessed:
Jarrod - 23 (way to have some confidence in us man)
Kim - 29 (my faith in us is only slightly stronger than Jarrod's, clearly)
Erin - 37 (my money was on this guess)
Michael - 42
Mom - 54
Evan - 68
Results at the bottom of this post. I'm making you wait. HA!
A bit more about what we did and where we went:
The WBC is a collection of (seven? nine?) sites/parks in different parts of the Rio Grande Valley of varying ecosystems and habitats that each provide winter, migratory, or year-round homes for hundreds of species of birds. Many of the birds you can find there in winter, as well as the ones that call the valley home year round, are found no where else in the country. It's the northern most point in the range of lots of birds, and its along a major migratory path making it a great stopping place for many birds that spend the rest of the year in other parts of the country, Canada, and even the Arctic. When big storms blow through during migration seasons (in the spring and fall) the coastal areas of the WBC can become vital resting grounds for windblown birds in desperate need of a break from the weather. Rarities, blown off course during migration, or wandering a little too far north from Mexico, also sometimes show up in the area. In short (yeah, too late talkie) it's an amazing place to look for birds.
During our trip we visited four sections of the WBC and one park managed by the Frontera Audubon Society. On Friday we started at the Frontera site (where we saw an honest to goodness rarity!) and visited Estero Llano Grande after lunch where we saw a super cool sleeping bird. On Saturday we headed out to South Padre Island where we saw a bird doing a dance, and ended the day at Edinburg Scenic Wetlands where we faced a particularly challenging birding identification. We ended our visit with a trip to the WBC headquarters at Bentsen Rio Grande where we hunted for but did not see the Northern Beardless Tyrannulet, but did see and learn the song of a sweet little sparrow.
Here is a breakdown of the birds we saw and where we saw them. (There might be a couple of errors in terms of location, but rest assured [this was keeping you up nights, I'm sure] Michael has the locations correctly entered on ebird.com.)
All birds with LL in parentheses after the name are birds that we had never seen before. These are known as "lift list" birds. Anything with a * is a rare bird, not just for us, but for everyone. I'm including some photos that I took. They've all been zoomed in and cropped. They are all a little blurry because my lense isn't anywhere close to long enough for bird photography. Time to save my pennies.
1. Frontera Audubon
Great Kiskadee
(my photo)
White-tipped Dove (LL)
Chachalaca
Long-billed Thrasher (LL)
White-eyed Vireo (LL) (special thanks goes out to Dr. I-can't-remember-your-name for helping us to id this one)
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Black-crested titmouse
Blue-grey Gnatcatcher
Olive Sparrow (LL)
Orange-crowned Warbler (LL)
*Golden-crowned Warbler (LL)
Altamira Oriole
Pyrrhuloxia (LL)
The Orange-crowned Warbler is a rarity and most of the birders who were at the site on Friday were there looking for that one bird. As soon as we walked into the office to pay, the woman asked if we were there to see the warbler. This was a new experience for us, and something that, frankly, we weren't sure was so awesome. Does it sully the experience of being out in nature if you are trying to accomplish a particular goal? Does it become something other than appreciating the birds if you are just desperately searching for this ONE bird? Does it just become a kind of competition if you're only goal is racking up the biggest numbers you can?
Well, yes and no. Speaking just for myself, I find that I appreciate and enjoy the birds (and the animals and trees, and all of it) more if I know what it is I'm looking at. Identifying birds (which is HARD by the way) means paying really close attention to the details of their appearance, behavior, and location. Being able to confidently identify a bird means that you know more about it, and that you spent some time really watching it. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with just watching the birds, that's great too, but if you want to add them to your list, you have to do more than just watch. For me, this makes me enjoy them more. But, it can be really frustrating when you can't get a good look at a bird, or when you do get a good look but you still can't figure out what it is you're looking at. And when you know that a particular bird is probably in that tangle of brush, and a dozen people are standing around, binoculars at the ready, waiting for the bird to show itself so they can check it off their list, things start to feel a little . . . weird.
This is what happend with the Golden-crowned warbler. We knew it was there. Someone had seen it. WE had seen something flitting around in the undergrowth, but we hadn't layed eyes (binoculars?) on it long enough to feel like we could id it. And then one of the guys in a trio of late-thirty-something men who seemed like they might be on some version of an extreme birding team found it. And then they stuck around and helped some other people see it. And then those people stayed around and helped yet more people see it. And it was pretty damn cool.
Here he is:
(photo from here: http://ibc.lynxeds.com/photo/golden-crowned-warbler-basileuterus-culicivorus/bird-perched-branch-about-fly)
Do you find him underwhelming? Yeah, that's another funny thing about birding. Sometimes the birds people get really excited about are the little, drab, unassuming birds that are just really freaking hard to see.
Michael: This bird is somewhat common in South America, and even in Mexico, but Frontera is the only place in America where this bird has been seen this year. Hence the *flocks* of birders there to see him. The doctor who helped us id the White-eyed Vireo had spent a few hours there the day before, as well as a number of hours that day, just to see this one bird!
2. Estero Llano Grande:
Canvas Back (LL) Wood Duck (LL) -- I was super excited about this one. There appeared to be only this one, male Wood Duck at the park. Here he is being all handsome and amazing:
And here's he is getting caught by a gust of wind:
hahahahahaha!!
This is not amusing to such a sophisticated bird. Maybe those ducks next to him said something snide?
See? Not amused.
On with the list:
Cinnamon Teal (LL)
Black-necked Stilt (LL)
Long-billed Dowitcher (LL)
Northern Pintail (LL)
Vermillion Flycatcher (LL)
Neotropic Cormorant (LL)
Common Galinule (this used to be called the Common Moorhen, but the name was just recently changed)
Harris's Hawk (LL)
Pauraque - This one was SO COOL!! These are nocturnal birds. During the day they sleep in the leaf litter and are almost impossible to see. There happened to be two of them who had taken to roosting during the day behind a brush pile right near the path. You can walk right up to them any time and look at them. But no touching!
Isn't he awesome!!?????
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron (LL for Michael)
Anhinga
Snowy Egret
Common Ground Dove
Buff-bellied Hummingbird (LL I think)
Rufous Hummingbird (LL I think)
Green Jay
Least Grebe
*Audubon Oriole (LL) - This one isn't totally rare, but it is uncommon where we saw it.
3. South Padre Island
This day was crazy windy, so a lot of what we might have seen, Rails and Bitterns, for example, just weren't out and about. Nonetheless, we did pretty well. We did some birding on our way to the birding center on South Padre Island. We were looking for falcons on this one road along the way and were turing around to head out to the center when we stumbled on a little state park kind of spot where people go to fish. Really it was just a parking lot by a river next to a bridge. But it had some really great birds that we ended up not seeing during the rest of the trip, so it was a really lucky find! Here's what we saw on the road and at that spot:
White-tailed Hawk (LL)
Brown Pelican
Chihuahan Raven
Royal Tern (LL)
Black Skimmer (LL)
Laughing Gull
Willet (LL)
American Avocet (LL)
Roseate Spoonbill (LL)
Forester's Tern (LL)
Semipalmated Sandpiper (LL)
Rudy Turnstone (LL)
Here's a photo that shows Roseate Spoonbills, a Royal Tern, Willets (the brown birds with their heads tucked in,) Black Skimmers (the crazy ones with the orange and black bills) and a Snowy Egret.
pretty good, right???
At the birding center:
Tropical Kingbird (LL)
Osprey - sitting on top of a telephone pole eating a fish and telling the whole neighborhood about it
Long-billed Curlew (LL)
Little Blue Heron
White Ibis
Tri-colored Heron (LL)
Black-bellied Whistling Duck
Ruddy Duck
American White Pelican
Reddish Egret - I couldn't get a photo of this one because he was too far away, but we got to see him hunting for fish in the shallows where the bay meets the inlets. When they hunt they put theirs wings out to frighten the fish in a particular direction. They repeat this, herding the fish into shallow water, so they can more easily catch the fish. It is awesome. Here's a video:
American Oystercatcher (Thanks to the volunteer at the WBC who pointed this one out to us)
Mottled Duck
4. Edinburg Scenic Wetlands
By the time we got here, we were losing light, energy, and patience with trying to use a spotting scope during 60 mph winds. But we managed one more cool bird before we called it a day:
White-faced Ibis
5. Bentsen Rio Grand
Black Phoebe - this is a bird that we saw when we went to Bentsen in March 2011. The Phoebe that we saw this time was in almost the same spot as the one we saw a year ago. It was certainly a different bird, but it was still neat. (Michael: I'm convinced it is the same bird.)
Cave Swallow - the ranger said that the swallows had just showed up that day. :-)
Black-headed Grosbeak (LL) - not rare, exactly, but the first spotting of one this season that the ranger knew of
Cooper's Hawk - I spotted this guy when we were trying to figure out what birds were making such a rucus. Turns out it was a bunch of Green Jays scolding the Cooper's Hawk who was apparently just trying to take a breather on a branch near them. Cooper's Hawks are accipters, meaning that they hunt for birds, squirrels, and other small prey within the trees. Most other hawks hunt from high perches or by soaring. The Cooper's Hawk normally eats Green Jays I think. This one didn't seem hungry.
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
We were disappointed that we didn't get to see some birds we really wanted to find, particularly the Bitterns and the Kingfishers. Bummer. We also saw relatively few hawks. But overall, we did really well, particularly considering the crazy wind, and the fact that it threatened to storm on us all Friday (it did rain off and on all day). It was pretty clear by lunch time on day one that my and Jarrod's guesses were too low. We had 13 new species by that time. By the end of day one, we were out of the running, and were sneaking up on Erin's guess. By lunch time on day two, only my mom and Evan were left in the game. What the heck was happening here? Surely they had guessed too high. Evan had guessed WAY high, right?
Well, we finished day two with 58 new species and we still had one more short trip for the next day. The only question was whether mom or Evan would take it. Well, as is often the way, the dark horse went home with the prize. We finished the trip with an astounding (for us, not for real birders)
66new birds!!!!
And Evan wins!! Whoop whoop!
All participants will recieve a little something for playing along. It was fun for us, I hope it was for the players too.
This brings our total for the year to 135 for me and 137 for Michael (he still has a Herring Gull and a Chipping Sparrow that I don't have).
We already have some other trips planned for the spring and we hope you'll join us on the blog to guess how many new species we see on our various trips. Let's make this interactive folks.
Alrighty, that's all I have for now. I hope to be back later this week to tell you all about our trip to the Atwater Prairie Chicken Refuge where we didn't see any Prairie Chickens. :-D
I thought we might stop it with the birds for a minute and talk a bit about other stuff that goes on around here. I mentioned in the first post that gardening is one of the things we do here. Well, it's January, so there's not so much of that going on right now. Although there's probably more of it happening here in TX than in most of the country. We have garlic, collards, brussel sprouts, and broccoligrowing right now, but only the collards are ready to eat. Everything else has months to go, but Michael did discover that three of the broccoli plants actually have baby broccolis on them! We've done broccoli before, but without much luck. They're in a new spot this time, though, and I think it might be helping. Yipee! That's all there is to say about the garden really. We actually ate some cherry tomatoes in our salad tonight that Michael pulled off the plant today. Texas is C-R-A-Z-Y ya'll. Some of the cherry tomato plants look like they might live through the winter. Nutso. Likewise, our lantana is happier than it ever was in the summer, and the morning glory vines might make it to spring as well. But man do they look sad right now. We still get the occasional bloom off of them, but they're kind of an eye sore. But the drought has been so bad here, that we figure the plants will do better if we let them try to hang on and maintain their root system so they don't have to start over in the spring.
The main other thing happening here is that the semester is about to start. This is likely to be the last semester for both of us here, and while we're both looking forward to moving on to the next chapter of our lives (cliche alert) we have no idea where that next chapter might be, and that's freaking me out. The job market for academics is really terrible right now, and I'm not having a lot of luck on the job market. I'm starting to swirl around ideas for alternative jobs in case we find ourselves out of work come summer time. Keeping those under my hat for now though.
I usually feel hopeful about each new semester, but the fall was just so brutal. I'm feeling more anxious than hopeful this time. We both have some syllabus finalizing to do before classes start next week, so it looks like the break is over (*weep*).
Nothing to do but get to it. Or maybe I'll watch Top Chef. :-D
Now that you have that song stuck in your head (hehehehe) let's do a run down (should that be hyphenated? No, right? No amount of degrees in English will help me to know when a word should be hyphenated) of the birds we've seen so far this year. Although the list is so far pretty modest, we've both added some birds to our life list (that means it's a bird we've never seen before) so we're feeling pretty good about it.
Since I'm the one writing this post (K), I'm going to put my list (with pictures of some of my favorites) and let Michael add any birds to it that I don't have.
Kimberly's Birds 2012 1/1/12:
1. Rock Dove (for all you non-birders out there, that's a pigeon)
2. Great-tailed Grackle
3. American Kestrel:
(photo from here: http://www.naturefocused.com/photo-gallery-8.html)
4. American Coot
5. Ring-billed Gull
6. Green-winged Teal
7. Kildeer
8. Northern Shoveler
9. Lesser Yellowlegs
10. Savannah Sparrow
11. Ruddy Duck
12. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
13. Blue-wined Teal
14. Yellow-rumped Warbler
15. American Robin
16. Eastern Phoebe
17. Brown Creeper (These guys are really cool; as you can see in the picture they're tiny, and they blend in really well with the bark on trees, but the really neat thing is how they feed. They start toward a bottom of a tree and then they hop up it going around the trunk in a spiral as they peck for food. Once they get toward the top, they hover down to a neighboring tree and start again. The first time I saw one, it was pointed out by the ecocritic Dana Phillips at Washington-on the Brazos. How weird is that, I went bird watching with the chair of my dissertation and a famous ecocritic (or at least what counts as famous for ecocritics) --Michael's note). Here's a picture:
(photo from here: http://tinyurl.com/7qpm3mr) 18. Northern Cardinal
1/3/12
26. American Crow
27. Blue Jay
28. European Starling
29. House Sparrow
30. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
31. Gadwall
32. White-throated Sparrow
33. House Finch
34. Red-bellied Woodpecker (We have a couple of these around the house. They seem to like the pecan trees and in the warmer months they jackhammer on our neighbors tin roof.)
35. Turkey Vulture
1/5/12 (These were seen in Seattle, WA)
36. Mallard
37. Bufflehead:
(photo from here: http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/onlinelearningcenter/species/bufflehead)
38. Red-winged Black bird
39. Common Goldeneye:
(photo from here: http://tinyurl.com/7paae6s)
40. Canada Goose
1/8/12 (In Seattle, WA)
41. Bald Eagle
1/11/12 (back in TX)
42. Ring-necked Duck
43. Great Blue Heron
44. Eurasian Collared Dove
45. Great Egret
In future posts we'll give you more details about the birds and bird watching. The bird stuff will be less boring in the future. :-D
by Kimberly & Michael
We're so glad you've come over to read our blog. This is a new endeavor for both of us and we hope it will be a lot of fun.
Before we get started, a bit about what this blog will be:
First, there are two of us here, Kimberly and Michael, and we'll each be posting individually as we find the time and might occasionally post something jointly written. That's the plan anyway. Since we haven't done this before, we'll have to see how it goes. As of now, there isn't any kind of schedule for the posts, but I hope they will be more frequent than not. I love a blog that posts every day, but I doubt we'll be able to do that. We both have lots of other things going on.
Second, this blog will be the repository for a number of things.
One of those things is birds. Wait! Don't leave! We admit it, we're dorks this way, but we suspect, and actually know, that some of you are too. Both of us are bird nerds (birders, or even twiggers for you Brits out there. Silly Brits), and have decided to make a concerted effort to see as many birds as we can this year. We are each keeping a record of the birds that we see (two separate lists because Michael doesn't like to share), and Michael is entering his on e-bird, a website sponsored by the Cornell Bird Lab. It's pretty damn cool for those of you who are into that kind of thing. So, this blog will be a space for us to keep you informed (since some of you care) of the birds we are seeing. This is the "Bird" part of our title.We hope to do more than just report lists of birds, so we'll try to provide some commentary on our bird watching excursions and the things we see along the way.
This will also be a space for general accounts of what we're up to. This is the "Bower" part of the title. Since we are nerds in more ways than one, I'll give you part of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) discussion of the word bower:
"A dwelling, habitation, abode. In early use lit. A cottage; in later use a poetical word for ‘abode’."
Since we are both literary types (by the end of the summer we'll both have PhD's in English) we especially like that bower is a "poetical word." Awesome. It is also likely related to the German word "Bauer" which means gardener. Gardening is another thing we do around here, and Michael is of German descent so double points for that.
Much of the inspiration for the title came from my absolute fascination with bower birds. Do you know these birds? They're amazing. They make houses and decorate them with collections of different colored objects they find in the forest and they spend their lives keeping their space tidy and beautiful in hopes of enchanting a female bower bird. Here's a picture of a bower. Isn't it cool???
(image from here: http://www.duskyswondersite.com/animals/bower-birds/)
Check out this youtube video with David Attenborough:
The BBC series Planet Earth has some great segments on bower birds, but I couldn't find a video.
In our next post we'll give you the details on the birds we've seen so far.
