Polar Bear's Revenge

Those of you reading this post no doubt have read Gary Becker's posts about his birding and pursuit of legal nude sunbathing in Florida this past month. All designed of course to make us green with envy while we in PA put up with cold, wind, ice and a winter that so far hasn't even had the decency to provide us a decent snowfall.

Well to Gary I say BAH!! PARLOR BIRDING!!

The Polar Bear division of BCDC (me with a small family support staff) has traveled to our vacation home in the midst of the Vermont Green Mountains where I plan to get some REAL winter birding in and coincidentally a Great Backyard Bird Count that is guaranteed not to tire out my mouse-clicking finger on ebird entry. But each entry will be hard earned.

We left Delaware County at 4:45 Wed afternoon in balmy 41 degree weather and arrived at our place 6 3/4 hours later where it was 14 degrees at 1900' but single digits in the valleys that serve as cold air traps below. The snow looks to be 2-3' deep. There was no wind and complete silence when we got out of the car. The clear winter night stars, unpolluted by lights, were absolutely spectacular. Orion was marching across the front of our deck. The Milky Way was directly overhead. I listened for a Barred Owl that often greets us on arrival but no luck.

Thursday 2/12 the temperature stayed in the mid 20s. We had a steady light snow all day with occasional heavier showers of beautiful large snowflakes the kind where you can see the different shapes on your jacket because they don't melt quickly. (BTW-we recently had the 150th anniversary of the birth of "Snowflake" Bentley-look it up: http://digital.vpr.net/post/celebrating-snowflake-bentley-pictures ) The snow added 2-3 more inches. Pretty day but no real birding. The best I could do at the feeder all day was 5 black-capped chickadees and 2 white-breasted nuthatches.  A long lovely walk on Bingo Rd in the National Forest through a spruce-hemlock forest in the steady snow produced only about 30 chickadees & a few White-breasted Nuthatches all clustered near a home with a feeder. But a lovely walk it was nevertheless.  GBBC starts tomorrow.

Bingo Rd Green Mountain Nat'l Forest, Rochester VT
photo by Tim Eberly

Kind of reminds you of the Sanibel beaches doesn't it Gary?

Today, Friday, I awakened to clear skies, a gorgeous sunrise and a temperature of 8 below zero. It's the first day of the Great Backyard Bird Count so I went birding.  I donned my layers and headed out for a brisk walk on a favorite 1.7 mile loop on the mountain roads here in Rochester. Luckily the winds were calm and as long as I didn't stop to actually look for birds it was tolerable. I started at 7:15 am & was back home at 8:20.   Chickadees were calling everywhere - I counted 28 but I'm sure I heard many more. Nuthatches were calling & I tallied 4 white-breasted but surprisingly no Red-breasted Nuthatches. Four Downy Woodpeckers were it until I arrived at the "redpoll house" This is a private residence where the owners live year round & maintain feeders. Redpolls are "always" there in irruption years & today did not disappoint. The yard sported at least 20 but likely many more Common Redpolls. I looked for hoary for as long as I could stand still but with no luck. The yard actually held 2 Tufted Titmouses which although not rare, is a bit unusual here in VT especially at these temperatures and elevation (1650' for the house).  So the morning walk was good for 5 species.  I did go out for a short walk around 3:45 this afternoon when although still sunny and the temperature was +5 degrees the wind gusts very brisk creating quite a wind chill. I added Common Raven & Brown Creeper to the day's list for a grand total of 7 species. Hey, I still have two days to juice the list up a bit. Maybe I'll hit 10 species although the weather forecast isn't great.

When it's cold out and the winds are blowing on the GBBC you do some feeder watching. Of course the feeder only sported 2 species today but provided plenty of opportunity to brush up on my black-capped chickadee ID skills.

Puffed up chickadee surveys the land in below zero temps

see the hockey stick?

Playing in the snow

Species diversity at the feeder

Updates will appear as warranted.

Dave

Sanibel Island, FL by Gary Becker

 

Sanibel Lighthouse on east end of Island

          It was a cloudy, drizzly morning in the middle of January when we set out for Sanibel Island from our base in Naples, Florida.  We chose a less than perfect beach day in the hope that the crowds would be reduced and we would be able to find parking space on this overdeveloped island. Last year we visited and had to turn around as there was no parking space available at any of the beaches. It’s an hour drive from Naples plus a $6.00 toll to get onto the island.  Our bet turned out to be correct as parking was not an issue on any of the beaches. Fortunately the weather gradually cleared and the sun came out and the crowds never materialized. 

         We first stopped at the Lighthouse Beach.  Our luck continued when Susan spotted a small group of shore birds which turned out to be lifers for me:  5 Snowy Plovers.  Although year- round residents I had never seen the bird on any of our beach trips on the Gulf, but what a  great start to the day. 

Snowy Plovers

         We left the Light House area and traveled down to Bowman’s Beach on the opposite end of the island. 

 

Gary thinking hard about breaking the law

Red Knots

A local travel writer calling himself “Dr. Beach” rated it Number 5 among “Best Florida Beaches”.  It’s fairly desolate with a long stretch of lovely sand plus some good shelling and birding. I found lots of Red Knots, Short-billed Dowitchers, Royal, Sandwich and Forster’s Tern’s, Black Skimmers and Lesser Black-backed Gulls. 

 

Black Skimmer

Short-billed Dowitchers and Black-bellied Plover

          We spent a few hours there and then headed to the Ding Darling Nature Preserve just a few miles away.  Once inside the park we took a walk on the Indigo Trail where a Mangrove Cuckoo had been seen shortly before we arrived. Our attempts to locate the bird were unsuccessful but we got nice looks at an Eastern Screech Owl, some Roseate Spoonbills, Green and Blue-winged Teal, Tricolored Herons, Great, Cattle and Snowy Egrets and a new find:  the Red Mangrove Crab. 

 

Eastern Screech-Owl

            These small tree-dwelling crabs turned out to be “vegans” relying  completely on a diet of the Red Mangrove leaves.  After leaving the Indigo trail we drove through the preserve and observed a good-sized flock of White Pelicans and a single Reddish Egret. 

         We returned several weeks later following the “snowstorm of the century” which produced some strong surf and washed lots of animals onto the beaches.  I felt like I was in the Invertebrate zoology lab back at school.

White Pelicans

Susan with Lined Sea Star

Storm wash

          Sanibel is noted for its shells but this went far beyond the usual shells. There were two types of starfish, several variety of sea cucumbers, “salt pork”(a colony of tiny animals embedded in a rubbery lump), sandy-skinned tunicates, crabs, sea urchins, a lone sea horse  and an assortment of soft coral including sea whips and sea feathers. 

 

Sea Cucumber - squeeze them and they squirt salt water

Lesser Black-backed Gulls

         On our way out of Sanibel we stopped at one of the many gift shops where I found a wonderful book “Florida’s Living Beaches” by Blair and Dawn Witherington. It provided great photos and brief details of almost all the flora and fauna of coastal Florida and helped me ID some of the weird stuff on the beaches.  In their introduction to “What are beach animals?” they read my mind with the opening lines: “Figuring out what is and isn’t an animal-or what used to be one-can be tricky…A wide variety of beach animals seem to be plants, rocks ,trivial specks, or visitors from space…As a rule, live animals twitch when prodded, and dead ones smell worse than rocks or plants.” Not too scientific but it summarizes things pretty well.

 One brief note on Captiva Island which joins to Sanibel by a single road and a small bridge:  there are no accessible beaches or parking unless you are renting on this small island. The only beach area is at the bridge where there are small parking lots on both the Sanibel and Captiva side. You can walk along the Captiva beach from this bridge and enjoy the enormous homes of the well-to-do, privacy loving residents and you might even be invited in.  Well, not exactly” invited in” but  there was a realtor’s  “open house” sign planted out on the beach, so we got to see what 12 million dollars can buy on Captiva Island.  It’s the stuff dreams are made of.

Eagle Lake Mitigation Site - Naples, Florida

                                                                    by Gary Becker

Roseate Spoonbill

         It was almost noon in mid January 2015 when I arrived at Eagle Lakes Mitigation Site, one of my favorite birding places in Naples just 15 minutes from our condo. Getting such a late start I was not expecting too many surprises but in southern Florida you never know. While waiting for the traffic light to change at the entrance to the park, I spotted 3 Wood Storks circling overhead. Within minutes after parking I was treated to a kettle of 7 Wood Storks, a juvenile Bald Eagle, a dozen Turkey Vultures and 4 Anhingas.  

 

Wood Storks - very adapt at soaring

Immature Bald Eagle

Little Blue Herons

          Another 8 Little Blue Herons flew by without joining the kettle.  I was able to follow the birds for about 5 minutes before they drifted away some still maintaining a circling formation. Next discovery was a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk partially submerged in a marshy pond.  

 

Red-shouldered Hawk Skinny Dipping

          About 15 feet away was a flock of Coots which he was stealthily observing.  I think he was weighing his chances for a successful amphibious assault on the Coots but he never made a move in the 10 minutes I watched him.

 

American Coot

           A few blocks further along the path a calling Red-shouldered Hawk caught my eye sitting high in a pine tree.  While photographing the adult a second mature bird landed in another tree close by. I attempted to locate a nest but without any luck. Large combined flocks of White and Glossy Ibis, Little Blue Herons, Anhingas, Wood Storks, Double-crested Cormorants, Snowy, Great and Cattle Egrets, Common Gallinules, Mottled Ducks, Blue-winged Teal  were seen along with smaller numbers of Great Blue Herons, Tricolored Herons, Pied-billed Grebes, Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, Killdeer, and a single Roseate Spoonbill.  

Florida race - Red-shouldered Hawk

Wood Stork, White and Glossy Ibis

A close relative of the vulture - Wood Storks feeding

          Yellow-rumped and Palm Warblers, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and Boat-Tailed Grackles were abundant.  A week earlier I observed an Orange-crowned Warbler but no luck today.  A tantalizing surprise came toward the end of my walk when a couple of birders alerted me to a “Bobcat” only a few blocks further along the path. Apparently the cat was harassing some waterfowl and the resulting ruckus caught the birder’s attention. Although only 5 minutes further along the path, there was no sign of the Bobcat when I arrived.  The Little Blues, Ibis and Egrets wading there in the water seemed pretty composed considering they had just been visited by a major predator. Besides the Red-shouldered Hawks and Juvenile Bald Eagle there were numerous Osprey and a  lone Kestrel  but missing were the Swallow-tailed Kites which were regular sightings on past visits in March and April of 2014.

 

American Kestrel

           Also missing from last spring was the large flock of Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks and the lone White Pelican. I could also not find any of the unusual Fox Squirrels which were fairly common in the park last year. Still present were several Loggerhead Shrikes.  Last March there were 5 nesting pairs here but it is still early in the season.

 

Although a declining species, Loggerhead Shrike is still fairly common in Florida

          The park’s 90 acres contains a trio of water retention ponds all surrounded by a pine flatwood. I would recommend the park for anyone visiting the Naples area whether you are a nature lover or not. The paved trails makes for easy hiking and the abundance of beautiful animals makes for a great adventure even with small kids.

The omnipresent Boat-tailed Grackle

Who says February Birding is Boring - Barnegat Light NJ 2015

Male & Female Harlequin Ducks (photo by Nick Pulcinella)

          Nick Pulcinella and I decided to make a winter excursion to Barnegat Light, NJ since neither if us have been there in ages. Of course, we had to pick one of the windiest days of the year. We arrived around eleven o'clock and put on our extra layers of coats and hats. After all preparations were made we headed to the lighthouse and quickly spotted several Red-breasted Mergansers with a few males already started to be protective of their female partners. 

 

Red-breasted Merganser

Across the bay we could see hundreds of Brant flying around and gathering on the far shoreline.

Brant (photos Nick Pulcinella)

 

           As we trudged along the promenade we noticed several Common Loons and one Red-throated Loon, all in winter plumage. Nick was having a good time with his camera while I was grappling and agonizing over trying to hold my telescope still against the steady 30 mph winds. Long-tailed Ducks made a beeline for the ocean after taking off from the bay area.

         I was surprised that we only found one Horned Grebe in the channel the whole day. After leaving the cement walkway we started our perilous 3/4 mile hike to the end of the jetty. Along the way we added Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls and Great Cormorants. At one point I spotted some shorebirds on the jetty up ahead and yelled to Nick, who was walking on the sand and had a better camera angle. He was able to get photos of the Black-bellied Plover, some Dunlins, and a Ruddy Turnstone.

Black-bellied Plover on jetty (Photo Nick Pulcinella)

Dunlin

           As we approached the terminus of the jetty the winds were really kicking up now. We were finally able to find 11 Harlequin Ducks hanging tight against the jetty staying under cover from the stiff winds.

Harlequin Ducks (photo Nick Pulcinella)

           We also found three Purple Sandpipers clinging to the rocks while feeding.

Purple Sandpipers (photo Nick Pulcinella)

          While we were looking at the birds on the jetty, thousands of scoters were ascending on the ocean just past the jetty on the other side of the inlet. We estimated about two thousand birds, about 1500 Surf Scoters, about 500 Black Scoters and although we didn't see any White-winged Scoters while there, a later photo provided by Nick shows that at least two were present.

White-winged Scoter in mixed flock (photo Nick Pulcinella)

           Also at the end o f the jetty were a large group of Common Eiders that I estimate to be around 200 indivduals.

Common Eider

            So, as we headed back to the car, we walked though the short grasses and managed to spot a cooperative Ipswich race of the Savannah Sparrow. The sandy beach area is usually a good habitat to find this race of Savannah.

Savannah Sparrow (Ipswich race)

           We ended the day with 29 species and a good feeling that birding anytime of the year is fun, even in February.