2011 Florida birding begins

Marbled godwits

     We're back in sunny warm Florida and have begun our southern birding adventures in earnest.  We could not have a better way to begin as we are joined by 6 superb birders from the Cape May Birding Observatory back in New Jersey.  They are here for the Space Coast Birding Festival, but came down a little early to get in some extra time in the field on their own.  I have the honor of showing them some of Sharon and my favorite haunts.
     Today, we spent most of the morning and afternoon birding Merritt Island.  The reserve is pretty dry in spots as we are experiencing a major drought in the south.  Still, we and the birds manage to find some of the wetter areas and wind up with almost 100 species for the day.  As we wind up today's trip, we throw in one more often productive locale as the daylight wanes.  Riverbreeze Park in Oak Hill, FL can be very interesting, especially if the tide is out.  An exposed sand bar close to the fishermen's pier generally yields a nice number of skimmers and today, well, the tide couldn't be better.  As if on cue, over 200 black skimmers have crowded onto the fairly small exposure of sand and are joined by a bird much harder to find on most occasions, the Marbled godwit.  Well, not only are they joined by this more elusive bird, but it turns out that by our count, there are 59 of them!  None of our birding team has ever seen anywhere near this number at one time.  What a wonderful way to wrap up a great day of Florida birding.

Black skimmers at Riverbreeze Park

More Winter Specialties

Horned lark

     Off to the black dirt farms again as we try for a few more winter birds before heading south. One of our most reliable spotters from the Mearns Birding Club has posted reports of Horned larks, Snow bubtings, aand other winter specialties on our Group Site. We are pretty sure that when Rob says you'll find the birds along Missionland Road in Pine Island, they'll be waiting for us when we arrive. Sure enough, the Horned larks are precisely where he said and we waste no time setting up the scope and getting out the camera.

      We also had nice sightings of a White-throated sparrow, a majestic "Grey ghost" male harrier, American pipits, and Lapland longspurs. As the time for our departure for the sunshine state draws near, it is certainly nice to get these northern birds on this year's list before we leave.

American pipit

First redpolls of the year

    Sharon and I are off and running once again as we start to compile the 2011 Year List.  We won't be here for much of the winter, so we figured we'd better get out and get some of our visitors from the north while they and we were still around.  A listing from the NY List-serve noted that there were several flocks of Common redpolls in the Sullivan County area, and so, we hopped into the RAV4 and set out sights on these handsome winter finches.  We've been very fortunate lately in scoring on the "chases" we've set out on.  And today was no different.  As if we had set up an appointment with the Redpolls, they were exactly as had been described in the posting.  It was another case of the GPS saying, "Arriving at your destination" and us looking up at the hoped for birds.  The flock we encountered numbered around 30 birds and they flew to the trees most closely situated along the roadside.  Without getting out of the car, we were able to get fine looks and nice photos.  I even had the chance to try out the new video recording feature on the Nikon D300s that Santa brought me on Christmas day!

                                  

  
        Having been so successful so soon on our trip out to Neversink, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather of the day and head south to Mongaup and the Rio Reservoir to see if we could add Bald eagles to the year list.  Again, without much effort we rang up 9 fine specimens in a short amount of time.  Indeed, we spent much more time riding out to the sites than we did actually birding today, but it was a great day and a perfect day to be out in the field.  We can only hope that the rest of this year will be so productive.

Bald eagle - Rio Reservoir

The First Day of 2011

Carolina wren

     We generally try to get out into the field on the first day of the year in an attempt to get a head-start on the new "Year-list".  Today, however, I'm trying to beat a cold (thank God a rare occurrence for me), and defer to watching some football on TV while keeping an attentive eye on our 11 feeders.   Our first bird of the New Year as it so happens was one that I was thrilled to have.....a fine Carolina wren.  This bird has been a regular at the feeding stations this year, and it seemed only right that he would be the one to usher in the new birding year.  The day's list was rounded out with a dozen more typical "yard birds" with our resident House sparrows making up the bulk of the numbers.

We also had good numbers of the handsome White-throated sparrows, Blue jays, Northern cardinals, many juncos and titmice,  an occasional Common grackle, and American crows flying high up in the surrounding trees.

      We can be sure that these feeder birds will be with us throughout most of the remainder of our time here in the northeast.  It is only a few weeks from our departure to Florida, and in the meantime, we'll make an effort to get as many of our northern winter finches, Bald eagles, and other visitors from the colder regions of New England and Canada.  But for now, we'll enjoy the view from our living room window and get the new year's list started.

Common grackle

Last day of 2010

       It's been a cold December, and it is rare to see so much ice on the Hudson this early in the year.  With the ice come the eagles, and we have begun to see the national symbol here in the valley several weeks earlier than usual.  Sharon and I had several errands to run, but we managed to work it out so that we passed a number of our favorite and most reliable eagle sites along the way.  The sites produced nicely, and although we couldn't spend an inordinate amount of time at each location, we did manage to rack up 9 sightings.  At our first spot along the Hudson, the RTE 6 pull-off looking down on Iona Island, we found a lone mature eagle riding the ice heading south.  As we got the scope on the bird, we were joined by a couple from Europe....he from England and she from France.  It was her first Bald eagle in the wild and she was thrilled.  Soon, more cars began to roll in, taking advantage of the first sunny and warm day in quite a while.  Before it was all over, we had shared our sighting and some of our knowledge of the birds with almost 20 passers-by.  It always augments the experience of seeing these majestic birds when you can share it with folks who have never seen an eagle other than on the TV or caged in a zoo.  We had our next eagles at the Annsville Circle kayak launch and I managed to get a nice shot of a mature bird perched back in the woods.  As I photographed this bird, an immature flew overhead at close range.  And so the day went.  We always look forward to "eagle season" here on the Hudson and we can be sure that the numbers will be high once again as we enter 2011.  For the final day of 2010, it was a great way to "ring out the old" and get ready to start our new "year-list".