Little Big Year

Did I say 300?

2007-12-18T14:54:00.001-08:00

Though I finished 2007 with only 175 species, I started fast. On May 23 my count stood at 164, compared to 125 at the same point in 2006. Things looked possible, but by July, with a move to Madison, Wisc. approaching, it was again painfully obvious I had no chance at 300.

Little Big Year will continue in some form, perhaps as another big day attempt at 100 species (I had 85 on my first big day). I will also list birds on our family farm. We're gradually restoring about 55 acres of prairie and savanna, and I'd like to record trends or return appearances. Most of all we'd love to see meadowlarks (prairie) and red-headed woodpeckers (savanna).

Four calling birds

2007-12-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

173 sharp-shinned hawk
174 red-breasted nuthatch
175 rough-legged hawk

DEC. 15, MADISON, WISC., snowy, 20—It’s not a good sign when the highlight of your birding day is a bathroom break. Not to say my experience at the 108th annual Christmas Bird Count was miserable, though it did involve more cold tolerance than I normally like to have to demonstrate for birding.

The CBC is a nationwide survey of bird populations, where counters add up not only different species but all individual birds. This is my fourth. Last year we had a cracking good time in Missouri on a 68-degree day. Now that I’ve moved four degrees of latitude north to Madison, Wisc.—which explains the huge gap in Very Little Big Year—a winter day in the 60s is pure fantasy. The reality on CBC day was 16 at sunrise, reaching low 20s in the afternoon. Also in the forecast: the sixth snowstorm of the month, if I counted correctly.

So it was no surprise when it began snowing soon after my partner, Peter, picked me up. We stopped first at Vilas Park at the Lake Wingra shore, a known spot for screech owls. Our territory was a combination of parks, lakeshore, neighborhoods, and a corner of the university arboretum. We quickly realized we’d have to depend on mixed winter flocks for most of our count. At mid-morning an alley turned up finches, chickadees, goldfinches, cardinals, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers—the usual winter suspects.

By late morning I felt chilled. I can also report that a combination of gray sky and falling snow makes terrible light for birding. My binoculars fogged regularly, rendering the obscure objects in my field of view even more invisible--assuming I could focus in time with gloves. Luckily Peter was a good birder who managed to pick up everything. We needed a timeout.

Vilas zoo offered public restrooms, warmth, and the largest collection of tropical birds in Madison. Basking in the unreality, we stepped inside a steamy rainforest aviary to watch tanagers (including the multicolored paradise tanager), white-faced whistling ducks, and gregarious blue-and-gold macaws.

Back outside, Lake Wingra was mostly frozen (two tiny areas of open water held mallards). The brushy lakeshore had little beyond cardinals. Our arboretum section stood silent except for a few chickadees. The place to look for birds was at backyard feeders.

Fortunately we had decent backyard views from alleys and the southwest bicycle path. We noticed what the popular feeders have in common: tree variety in the area, especially evergreens and shrubs—good protective cover—near the feeders. Three or four feeders provided the bulk of the afternoon’s birds.

By late afternoon we hoped to reach 20 species. A red-tailed hawk high in a tree gave us that, and at the end of the day a flock of Canada geese flew over for no. 21 (final count here). We decided not to include the macaws and tanagers.

[where: 53711]

Don't move here

2007-07-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

166 gray jay
167 Steller's jay
168 western wood-pewee
169 violet-green swallow
170 yellow-headed blackbird
171 lazuli bunting
172 Cordilleran flycatcher
(total on this date in 2006: 134)

JULY 12-19, BOZEMAN, MONT., mostly sunny, 90s—Bozeman is a city that makes you wonder why you don't live there. Not only is it surrounded by mountain ranges and outstanding flyfishing rivers, but the city is highly bikeable, an anonymous donor just paid off the last million on the new green-built public library, and the monthly art gallery walks are happening. And Yellowstone is 80 miles away. Ask a family member to move there if you can't do it yourself.

Over three mornings I went to Sourdough Creek, the East Gallatin River, and Kirk Hill at the foot of the Gallatin Range--plus an afternoon climb to Ross Peak in the Bridger Mountains. Notable birds included redstarts and yellow-headed blackbirds (in the same places as last summer), a spotted sandpiper, and plenty of yellow warblers.

The lazuli bunting, a life bird, was a complete surprise. That made up for zero western tanagers, my top priority. Animal of the week was a fawn that ran the length of a stream, only six feet in front of me. Its mother and sibling, more careful, followed by crashing along the slope above in a wide detour.

T-shirt weather

2007-06-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

165 alder flycatcher
(total on this date in 2006: 132)

SUMMER, COLUMBIA MO.—One of our great American traditions is the and all I got was this lousy t-shirt t-shirt (example here). Assuming I get the shirt, that's how I think I'm going to feel after birding this summer in Missouri.

Migration season is over, meaning few easy birds until the migrants return this fall. It's also hot and hard to see birds in the jungly woods. At least I can enjoy seeing dozens of great blue herons at Eagle Bluffs, madly spawning (or nervous) fish (see video), and hummingbirds in the woods at Grindstone park.

Along Grindstone Creek I saw an empid flycatcher, a family of birds with vast potential for causing nightmares. I tried to memorize its chip note, then played a birdsong CD back home. The notes seemed to belong to an alder flycatcher but since it could be a willow flycatcher—until 1973 they were considered the same species (Traill's flycatcher)—I doubt I'll be listing a willow later this year.

A paragraph from the American Bird Conservancy field guide should discourage any further interest in identifying empid flycatchers:

"Science currently recognizes 11 species, distinguished by differences in voice, nesting habits, and habitat. Unfortunately, empids usually sing only at the nesting grounds, and migrants can appear in any habitat, making species identification impossible at times. Most species are so alike in plumage that their color varies more due to molt and wear than from one species to another. Few birders can identify more than their local nesting species…"

Looking for spare Gulf-coast bedroom

2007-05-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

158 western kingbird
159 Forster's tern
160 black tern
161 red-headed woodpecker
162 scissor-tailed flycatcher
163 little blue heron
164 bank swallow
(total on this date in 2006: 125)

MAY 23, EAGLE BLUFFS, mostly sunny, 75—Reports of shorebirds dropping in to take advantage of our receding Missouri River flood—who can resist so much exposed mud?—send me to Eagle Bluffs. We see only a distant flock of unknown sandpipers in tight formation.

There are two surprises, though: a western kingbird and scissor-tailed flycatcher, birds of the prairies and plains to the west. Check out that scissor tail!

I may need about 80 more surprises to reach 300. After checking off probable Missouri birds and counting species I might find in Montana and Wisconsin, I can see I'll need a trip to somewhere like Florida or Texas. Howard, I know it's been a long time, but what are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Little big day

2007-05-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

144 yellow-breasted chat
145 great horned owl
146 house wren
147 ruby-throated hummingbird
148 white-eyed vireo
149 Tennessee warbler
150 Nashville warbler
151 prothonotary warbler
152 American redstart
153 mourning warbler
154 chestnut-sided warbler
155 Wilson's warbler
156 sandhill crane
157 red-breasted merganser
(total on this date in 2006: 108)
my Big Day list

MAY 12, KATY TRAIL, sunny, 60-85—Today is a big day of birding. Actually, a Big Day with capital letters, where you try to see as many species as possible in one day. For my first one the target is 75. The X factor is the flooding Missouri River—most of the day I'll be next to it. I have food, water, and to handle the X factor... extra socks.

Today is also the North America Migration Count (NAMC) and, no coincidence, International Migratory Bird Day. Knowing I'd be spending a big chunk of the day on NAMC, I decided to make a Big Day-NAMC sandwich. Like last year, our count area is seven miles of Katy Trail State Park between Huntsdale and Rocheport.

My first identifications are a robin and nighthawk at 5 a.m. When I arrive in Rocheport I note some obstacles to birding: the town park, river trail, boardwalk, and conservation area are all underwater.

The Katy Trail doubles as the town dike, with concrete jersey barriers, sandbags, and loose sand piled on it. I walk the trail in half-light surrounded by an enormous racket of birdsong. When the trail goes underwater with no dry ground ahead, I turn into the woods and climb the bluff.

From the base of this bluff to the river is all water. Who would guess I'd find my bird of the day at sunrise? Watching me from a tree is a great horned owl, a juvenile with fuzzy gray head feathers. The Lewis and Clark expedition climbed this same "projecting rock" above Moniteau Creek in 1804 (journal entry here). The "Courious Paintings" Clark mentions were probably destroyed by the Katy Railroad when it tunneled through the bluff in the 1890s.

NAMC mates Jim and Donna arrive at 7:30 and we shuttle to Huntsdale. Returning to Rocheport on foot via the Katy, we travel about a mile per hour, big bluffs on the right and the Big Muddy on the left. The river is high and fast, and submerged wingdikes have the power to flip large logs. Luckily the trail is only slightly damaged by flooding.

Since this is a survey we do our best to count every individual bird (see our count here). The NAMC is supposed to be a one-day snapshot of birds across the United States, but an online national clearinghouse of count data doesn't seem to exist (though I've found state data).

At the end of the count at 4:30 we're all loopy from seeing and hearing 874 birds (73 species). On my own I go down the road to Eagle Bluffs, where I'm sure to pick up at least a horned lark and dickcissel. What I don't count on is the levee is breached at Eagle Bluffs and access is closed a third of the way in.

It probably doesn't matter, because the whole habitat is transformed. Instead of fields, pools, marshes, and mudflats, the conservation area now consists of a glassy lake of water. There's no place for shorebirds to probe shorelines along ponds and channels (zero shorebirds all day, in fact.)

From a grassy levee I see a close second to the great horned owl: a juvenile sandhill crane flying over me and landing near a group of Canada geese to feed. Trees are full of orioles and red-winged blackbirds. When I flush turkey vultures away from some carrion, 11 perch in a nearby snag and wait for me to leave.

Brainpower is fading but I manage a plan for the rest of the evening. On the way back to Columbia I stop at the city wetland cells, hoping for mallards, shovelers, and blue-winged teal. No ducks, but I see three soras, marsh birds I usually hear but never find.

Running out of daylight, I stop at Shireen's house for a guaranteed rose-breasted grosbeak (they're regulars at local feeders this month). After a few minutes I have one, then head down the street to Bear Creek, where the combination of open grassland, creek, and woods is promising.

Soon the light is too dim to see much, though I pump my fist at a barred owl calling. As a last gasp I stop at an out-of-the-way corner of woods where I've seen a pileated woodpecker in the past. Nope. Nighthawks come out, which is fitting since I started my day as they finished their night.

The final stop is my home park of Grindstone, where I have realistic chances at hearing a screech owl and whip-poor-will. Small forested hills rim a grassland where savanna is being restored. Fireflies are out and I hear an owl, but it's another barred. Final count: 85. I'm ready for home.

Big(ger than usual) Muddy

2007-05-09T13:47:00.001-07:00

138 purple martin
139 blackpoll warbler
140 yellow-billed cuckoo
141 gray catbird
142 eastern wood-pewee
143 Eurasian tree sparrow
(total on this date in 2006: 107)

MAY 8, POINT DU SABLE PARK, sunny, 70—In St. Charles I accumulate as many ticks as birds walking a new 100-acre Missouri River park. This is work, but I seem to be performing it mainly through binoculars.

The big surprise (besides a blackpoll warbler, a life bird) is the Eurasian tree sparrow, an introduced species that in all of North America lives only in the St. Louis area.

Because the sparrow's range is so irregular, last year I made a special trip to a St. Louis neighborhood by following directions on the Internet. I'd been thinking about another Eurasian mission this year, but today two flew up to the huge concrete pillars of the Interstate 370 bridge spanning the park and river. Strange that the Eurasian tree sparrow may be the rarest bird I'll see all year, but with a little effort a sighting is guaranteed.

The Missouri River is high from a month of rain but has fallen two feet in the past day. That will change shortly when floodwaters from torrential rains—produced by the same storm as the Greensburg, Kan. tornado—roll downstream from Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and northwest Missouri.

The predicted height next weekend for St. Charles isn't on par with the Flood of '93, a flood that earned capital letters, but close to 1986 and 1995 levels.

If that sounds like a lot of major floods in a short time, it is. The Missouri River channel is so engineered with wing dikes and levees that a not-unusual spring rise now forces towns to sandbag against disaster. I vote for restoring wetlands next to the river.

Birds in bunches

2007-05-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

126 common nighthawk
127 dickcissel
128 palm warbler
129 orchard oriole
130 great egret
131 sora
132 Baltimore oriole
133 fish crow
134 yellow warbler
135 greater scaup
136 eastern kingbird
137 rose-breasted grosbeak
(total on this date in 2006: 98)

MAY 6, EAGLE BLUFFS, partly cloudy, 75—With April's freeze damage behind us trees are now in full flush and spring migrants have no reason to move on. Not only are my numbers rising fast, but every week I'm picking up life birds: today, palm warbler and fish crow.

The Eagle Bluffs birds had two nice bookends: a midnight nighthawk above my neighborhood (almost the same date as 2006's first) and a rose-breasted grosbeak in the evening at my friend Shireen's birdfeeder.

Until recently fish crows were rare on the Missouri River, but their range expands year by year. Small differences between fish and American crows in shape and size are impossible to spot in the field. Voice, usually a giant obstacle for me, is the key.

Fortunately it's easy to tell apart the well-known "caw" of the common American crow and the quacky croak of a fish crow. Many thanks to the red-winged blackbirds for harassing the crows into breaking their silence.

Foiled

2007-05-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

125 Cooper's hawk
(total on this date in 2006: 89)

Another good window sighting: a juvenile Cooper's hawk across the street swooped down to a flower bed arranged around a cedar stump. For 3-4 minutes the hawk moved around the perimeter of the flowers trying to flush something, probably a bird. It peered in, flared its wings in a menacing posture, but finally gave up. I never saw its target so I don't know whether the hawk was mistaken.

5 a.m. pays off

2007-05-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

110 Kentucky warbler
111 green heron
112 common yellowthroat
113 red-eyed vireo
114 blue-winged warbler
115 summer tanager
116 wood thrush
117 great crested flycatcher
118 black-and-white warbler
119 worm-eating warbler
120 Swainson's thrush
121 scarlet tanager
122 rough-winged swallow
123 indigo bunting
124 yellow-throated warbler
(total on this date in 2006: 89)

APRIL 28, PRAIRIE GARDEN TRUST, sunny 50-65—We had perfect conditions for the annual Prairie Garden Trust bird walk, which doesn't mean perfect conditions for spring. Trees remain practically bare—they're leafing from secondary buds after our April winter—even though May is three days away and migration is peaking. See the dramatic evidence here.

For the morning the group had 60 species (about 55 for me). Some identifications were by song only, but we had clear looks at many birds normally hard to locate in foliage. Many were stunners in red (scarlet tanager), yellow (blue-winged warbler), or blue (indigo bunting). At Hillers Creek we saw a turkey's nest, pipevine swallowtail, and Devonian fossils.

Lorna and Henry own the property and carefully manage the woodlands and restored prairie. Henry, I think, is a world-class photographer. He sells his work to anyone but targets health-care facilities because he believes patients can relieve stress by looking at scenes of nature.

Now they're everywhere, of course

2007-04-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

108 common grackle
109 northern parula
(total on this date in 2006: 89)

APRIL 25, ROCK BRIDGE, cloudy, 65—Amazing. Incredible. Remarkable. I'm still shaking my head. No, not the beautiful parula, a kind of warbler. It took me almost four months to see a common grackle!

100th is a lark

2007-04-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

99 cliff swallow
100 lark sparrow
101 lesser yellowlegs
102 pectoral sandpiper
103 semi-palmated plover
104 least sandpiper
105 barn swallow
106 spotted sandpiper
107 brown-headed cowbird
(total on this date in 2006: 89)

APRIL 22, EAGLE BLUFFS, partly cloudy, 75—Along the Missouri River a strong west wind blew all morning, buffeting the least sandpiper so much it looked like he might flip over. Most waterfowl moved to windward shores for protection. You can even see waves in a channel where a map turtle basked.

Small numbers (but a nice variety) of shorebirds worked the shallow pools and mud shores. I saw two dowitchers, whether long-billed or short-billed I couldn't tell. Like many near-identical species, voice is the key. But I'm taking my notes in for high-level consultations and may issue a report later.

My 100th bird last year came on May 9, this year on April 22. So I'm ahead, but I need to be considering last year I fell way short of 300. My next goal is to have well over 150 at the end of May, compared to 131 last year.

Bad imitation

2007-04-22T18:27:00.000-07:00

96 Carolina chickadee
97 chimney swift
98 whip-poor-will
(total on this date in 2006: 89)

This morning I ran to my window after hearing a Carolina chickadee sing like an aging rocker attempting an old hit. Instead I saw a starling.

Half a minute later I heard the starling's inspiration nearby: a textbook (songbook?) Carolina chickadee. I knew starlings were mimics, but didn't realize the extent.

If starlings weren't mimics, they probably wouldn't be in North America. Starlings were introduced in New York's Central Park in 1890 to honor their appearance in Shakespeare. In Henry IV Hotspur thinks he could antagonize Mortimer using a starling's ability to imitate the human voice (Shakespeareans can use "starling" as a find command here).

The whip-poor-will cranked up right before dark. I hardly hear them these days, but as a kid a whip-poor-will was a permanent summer fixture in the woods behind our house.

Flowers powerless

2007-04-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

94 Louisiana waterthrush
95 chipping sparrow
(total on this date in 2006: 89)

APRIL 18, THREE CREEKS, sunny, 60—Flowers on our weekly spring wildflower walk are in tough shape after a rollercoaster last month of weather. Shrubs and trees also look stressed. Fruit and nut harvests (wild and domestic) will suffer this year—how much, nobody knows.

In March the woods looked like April. Now April looks like March.

Why wake up early?

2007-04-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

90 hermit thrush
91 ruby-crowned kinglet
92 eastern towhee
93 brown thrasher
(total on this date in 2006: 89)

APRIL 16, ROCK BRIDGE, sunny, 70—I'm lucky to have a bird spotter, Donna, who from time to time reports spring arrivals to me by cell phone. Today she'd seen a kinglet on the white connector trail at Rock Bridge Memorial State Park.

When I showed up a few hours later it was moving through cedars near a sinkhole pond a short distance from where Donna had described it. In a nearby mini-grove of persimmon trees a hermit thrush flicked its tail. Double bingo!

Before sunset I crossed the road to my favorite part of the park, High Ridge. The last 10 minutes before dark were full of sounds.

I flushed a barred owl deeper into the trees, where it looked down on me. Near a pond below the ridge a thrasher sang distinctively (multiple phrases, all repeated twice), though spring peepers were calling so loudly I could barely hear the thrasher. A turkey gobbled from the other side of the hill. Two Canada geese descended and plunged into the pond, just yards away.

Climbing back to the ridge, bats overhead in the darkening sky, I heard a deer snort. Six watched me, ran hard for 50 yards, then stopped and watched again until I disappeared from view.

Four-mammal day

2007-04-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

86 greater yellowlegs
87 cinnamon teal
88 double-crested cormorant
89 dunlin
(total on this date in 2006: 84)

APRIL 9, EAGLE BLUFFS, cloudy, 50—Missouri waterfowl demographics are in flux. Eagle Bluffs is almost mallardless, a reversal from the hundreds to thousands that dominate the flooded fields in February and March.

An out-of-its-range cinnamon teal, reported by local birders, swam among a group of blue-winged teal (photos here). Blue- and green-winged teal, gadwall, and coot numbers are trending up, shovelers hold steady, and ring-necked ducks and pintails have mostly moved north.

But it's migrating shorebirds I most want to see. A small pockets of dunlins probed the mud and a single yellowlegs flew over, earlycomers for the season.

Deer are common here, but a muskrat, two beavers, and raccoon made four mammal sightings for the day. To make five we looked for an otter we'd seen at its den in March, with no luck.

Purple haze

2007-04-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

84 field sparrow
85 blue-gray gnatcatcher
(total on this date in 2006: 76)

APRIL 1, GRINDSTONE PARK, sunny, 65—Any day with a blooming redbud tree is a good day. I'd never seen one until I moved to Missouri, but now it's my favorite sign of spring.

Tent caterpillars are active again, though the ones I saw were garrisoned in their shelter.

At a stream-field edge I saw a possible least flycatcher but couldn't be sure. Flycatchers in the Empidonax genus (empids, for short) can only be distinguished by voice and other clues. If you're feeling masochistic, have a go.

In the woods I often nibble on grass stalks, and I would've believed one was hallucinogenic if not for the photographic evidence above.

Phone call away

2007-03-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

83 yellow-bellied sapsucker
(total on this date in 2006: 72)

I should try to think of a nicer metaphor, but today I carried out an avian hit. My friend Donna knows my list lacks the sapsucker, so she called me when a pair that hangs around her backyard every spring returned.

Confirming my target later that day, I stopped by and after a few minutes' wait the male showed up to check holes it had drilled (see typical lines of holes here).

Poking around the web for interesting sapsucker facts to disguise a disturbing trend toward content-free LBY posts, I was reminded that the yellow-bellied sapsucker is half joke-half bird. From Wikipedia: "Apparently because the name sounds amusing, yellow-bellied sapsucker is sometimes used as a comic, generic term for an unusual animal."

And from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: "most non-birders believe that the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a fictitious bird created just for the humorous name." The real thing will be in Donna's backyard for a few more weeks, or refer to this range map.

Flyovers

2007-03-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

77 blue-winged teal
78 pied-billed grebe
79 ruddy duck
80 bufflehead
81 eastern phoebe
82 tree swallow
(total on this date in 2006: 69)

MARCH 19, EAGLE BLUFFS, cloudy, 60—The Missouri River corridor at Eagle Bluffs remains grand central flyway. Besides the usual passengers (mallard, shoveler, gadwall) today has a few new waterfowl travelers, and swallows are back because insects are back.

Large-bird flyovers highlight early evening: multiple great blue herons (the one above speared a fish moments later), a bald eagle nabbing a fish just in front of us, and a flock of 150 pelicans, circling at cruising altitude to find a roost for the night. The pelicans like the southernmost pool, now almost pool-less because of a fish study.

Talk the walk

2007-03-10T17:34:00.000-08:00

73 Savannah sparrow
74 Le Conte's sparrow
75 lapland longspur
76 Smith's longspur
(total on this date in 2006: 64)

MARCH 10, BRADFORD FARM, sunny, 40-55—On a classic March morning, windy and warmer every minute, Bradford's fields were filled with calling and singing killdeer, meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds. Our team moved as systematically as a harrier cruising for rodents, and with 15 people we had extra eyes, ears, and experience—plus walkie-talkies.

Though maybe not as impressive as three short-eared owls, two sparrow species and two longspurs (lifers for me) ended up making the day. The sparrows stayed down in a weedy field and we slowly encircled them for a look.

In birding slang these are LBBs, little brown birds: they tend to be brown, streaky, and sparrow-sized (see Audubon's Savannah sparrow above).

People I bird with aren't heavy on jargon or bird nicknames, thankfully. If I ever talk about IDing by jizz, pishing out LBBs, or chasing rare peeps, you have permission to confiscate my bins.

Night of the bogsuckers

2007-03-10T17:31:00.000-08:00

72 barred owl
(total on this date in 2006: 64)

In the birder equivalent of an evening at the movies, several of us gathered at Brad's and sat in lawn chairs by the backyard basketball court. At dusk through a rising mist we heard male woodcocks peenting in the valley, then glimpsed their wide, wing-twittering upward spirals before they coasted down to the ground to wait for admiring females. It sounded like this.

After dark

2007-03-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

69 cackling goose
70 Wilson's snipe
71 American woodcock
(total on this date in 2006: 64)

MARCH 6, EAGLE BLUFFS, sunny, 50—This is probably a bad time for my boycott describing birds: thousands of waterfowl are feeding and resting at Eagle Bluffs, including 40 or so white pelicans. Across Missouri, entire landscapes are full of birds—half a million snow geese, for example, at Grand Pass conservation area. (They're gone now.)

Early spring is also the time for the strange woodcock's strange sunset mating flight (descriptions here and here). In brushy grass a couple hundred yards from the Missouri River I heard my first peents of the year.

Game theory

2007-02-27T21:04:00.000-08:00

66 American coot
67 killdeer
68 wood duck
(total on this date in 2006: 60)

FEB. 27, EAGLE BLUFFS, sunny, 50—Nice spring days require you to go outside, so I grabbed my binoculars, PDA, iPod, and laser pointer and headed for the Missouri River.

Or so goes the new wave of 21st-century birders, as the Wall Street Journal reports. I won't express outrage, though I can't believe someone would carry a bird database on their PDA when fieldguides in book form are far superior. And I will say that laser pointers are lazy and gauche and I would betray my entire upbringing by using one.

But I've birded with people carrying iPods and don't object in any way except for the cautions pointed out in the article: to play sparingly and in the right circumstances, which I believe nearly all birders do. Rare-bird alert services? Not my thing, but I do check this website, which tells me pelicans are hanging out by the river now.

I think most birders bird for a combination of reasons. First, to be immersed in the outdoors and see wild things. That's why people walk in the woods, canoe and backpack, hunt and fish, climb and sail. No doubt it's a deep instinct.

Many birders also play a game with themselves to identify birds by sometimes split-second clues—puzzles of memory and learning combined with alertness and dexterity in the field. Some play the game hard. Me? I'm playing for 300.

Migration day

2007-02-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

62 snow goose
63 ring-necked duck
64 northern pintail
65 lesser scaup
(total on this date in 2006: 60)

FEB. 19, EAGLE BLUFFS, sunny, 60—I'm tired of writing descriptions of bird sightings, though it's tempting this afternoon, a day that feels like the first true day of spring. Canada geese, snow geese, and white-fronted geese cross the sky in all directions, and more than a thousand mallards rise in unison from a flooded cornfield. Today is all about the noise and movement of migration.

Whooping cranes now migrate in the eastern United States (between Wisconsin and Florida) for the first time in more than a hundred years. First-year birds are trained to follow ultralight planes south to Florida and find their own way north and south after that. Last month a tornado in Florida killed 17 of 18 first-year cranes. But there are 60 others, the oldest now old enough to breed. Later this month you can follow each day of northward migration here. The whooping crane is so tall—North America's tallest bird—that Audubon painted it reaching down to snatch a salamander.

Spring in winter

2007-02-12T13:33:00.000-08:00

61 red-winged blackbird
(total on this date in 2006: 50)

Feb. 11, BEAR CREEK, partly cloudy, 40—This week I went west on Columbia’s Bear Creek trail. I enjoyed a kestrel at the peak of a sycamore, kingfisher moving along the creek in front of me, rattling all the way, and a solitary duck winging high overhead.

But nothing compared to the red-winged blackbirds.

Red-winged blackbirds return to Missouri some time in February, and the 15 I saw probably half-wished they'd canceled their return flight. The male redwings wore faded, ragged red-and-yellow shoulder patches (or epaulettes), which they flash in spring as an all-powerful mark of social status (hey, it's cheaper than an Escalade).

The interesting part about the epaulettes is they can be covered easily by feathers, and a redwing male intruding into foreign territory (either to claim it or find food) will hide his. He is thus ready to submit to the territory owner and avoid a fight. But if the intruder finds the territory vacant, out flash the epaulettes! Spring is not far off.