300

I always set 300 species a year as an informal goal of what I'd like to see in Louisiana. Hitting 300 in a year used to be a little harder to reach than it is now.  Between range expansion, introductions getting common, and splits of species (Baltimore/Bullock's, Eastern/Spotted), there are more species available now compared to just a few years ago. Just as $300 isn't as much as it used to be, 300 species in a year for Louisiana has lost some of its luster.  I still use 300 as a yearly benchmark, but I adjust the figure upwards for inflation.  Nowadays, I think of the 315-320 range as the new 300.

Caracara is pretty much a gimme today.  Just a few years ago, this bird was nearly impossible to see in Louisiana.  

This has been an exceptionally birdy year in Louisiana, so even with some misses, I hit my target a couple of months ago.  I'm not sure exactly where I stand today, here on the final day of 2011. I may stop to tally it up, but I doubt it.  It is informal, after all.

Merry Xmas!

Click on the photo above to see the ornaments.

It's Getting Better

During rain delays on the Lacassine-Thornwell CBC yesterday, Mike Musumeche and I had a nice discussion about birds that used to be difficult to impossible to get within the past decade or two that are now "gimmes," or pretty close.  We came up with a list that included some of the following birds:

Black-bellied Whistling Duck (taking over)
Ross's Goose
White-tailed Kite
Crested Caracara (how cool is that?)
Lesser Black-backed Gull (probably present the year around)
Eurasian Collared-Dove (from 0 to 60, and then some)
Inca Dove (from rare to a backyard near you)
Calliope Hummingbird
Cave Swallow (taking over)
Clay-colored Sparrow
Yellow-headed Blackbird
House Finch

At the same time, it seemed to us that some rare or uncommon birds have also become much more regular.  We tossed a few names around, but never settled on a list.  I've cobbled one together, including the following:

California Gull
Glaucous Gull*
Great Black-backed Gull*
Allen's Hummingbird*
Broad-tailed Hummingbird (not a Review List bird, but not quite a gimme)
Broad-billed Hummingbird
Anna's Hummingbird
Say's Phoebe*
Ash-throated Flycatcher (not a Review List bird, but not quite a gimme)
Great Kiskadee*
Bell's Vireo*
Black-whiskered Vireo
Black-headed Grosbeak*
Bullock's Oriole*

All of these birds are still good finds, but if the trends continue, I think it's possible at least some of them (*) will be removed from the Review List.

Different drivers seem to be responsible for different species becoming easier to find here.  Some of these birds are introduced and have invaded Louisiana.  Some are "Texas" birds that are expanding into Louisiana.  Others are birds that are expanding on their breeding grounds.  Whatever the reason for their increase, it's nice to see.

Oh, and by the way, Mike and I didn't find many of these birds on the CBC.  We stunk it up, but seeing a White-tailed Kite flying over the cold rainy fields was a nice sight!

Thanksgiving Redux

Thanksgiving vacation was great.  I made a few short trips out, but for the most part I stayed home and enjoyed family time.  Below are a few images from what little birding I did.

A Blue Grosbeak that will be a nice find if it sticks around through CBC season.

One out of 10 Sprague's Pipits I had one morning in Acadia Parish.

The amazingly rare Snow-capped Least Sandpiper.

The amazingly common but equally under-appreciated American Pipit.

And this beautiful ghostly Red-tailed Hawk.

Spot the Ball

Can you spot the Yellow-headed Blackbird? Click to enlarge.

How many species in the flock below?

Offshore Buffet

Steve LeBlanc sent these great shots of a Peregrine having dinner offshore.  Click on them to see them in all their glory.  Thank you, Steve!          

Birds to Look For?

It's always interesting to use continent-wide factors to predict trends in migration.  This year, the biggest factor affecting migration through/to Louisiana (or at least our predictions) seems to be the drought in Texas and western Louisiana.  The link between the drought and the presence of certain birds is pure conjecture, but as many predicted, there's been an eastward shift for some western species that normally winter no closer than Texas.

Spotted and Green-tailed towhees and Say's Phoebes have been the most visible representatives of this eastward shift so far, but there's no telling what may still be lurking out there.  No birds that are completely new for the state have shown up yet, but second state records of both Brewer's Sparrow and Gray Flycatcher have been documented.  It'll be fun to see what turns up in the months ahead, but for now I'll think aloud about birds we might be looking for.














The drought has reached extreme proportions over most of Texas, and much of Oklahoma and New Mexico.  That area is huge, and includes the wintering grounds of many species.  Longshots from the west such as Lewis's Woodpecker and longshots from the south like Pyrrhuloxia and Clay-colored Thrush are birds that the hopeful might keep an eye out for.  Other species like Mountain Bluebird, Townsend's Solitaire, Baird's Sparrow, and Lark Bunting that have made it here before may make it again.  And of course, waterbirds may have a hard time finding water out west.  Maybe a Least Grebe, Masked Duck, or Green Kingfisher will come our way.

Winter is always a fun time to think big...    

Good luck!

Cameron Parish, 11/12/11

Mac Myers, James Beck, and I took a slow ride down to Cameron Parish yesterday.  The forecast during the week had called for medium low temps and sunny skies on Saturday, so I planned to stop by the spot where Dan Lane had reported a Green-tailed Towhee to see if it would pop into the early morning sunlight to warm up.  Unfortunately, the weather was warm and cloudy instead, and though there were tons of birds around, we saw no sure sign of the towhee.  There were dozens of hunters enjoying the opening day of the first split of duck season, including a few that were extremely close to the towhee spot.  I found myself wishing I was sitting in a duck blind.

I'll try again later for that towhee, or another.  This is an invasion year for Green-tailed Towhees, with 4 reported already.  I have an invitation to bird the spot where the first one of the year was spotted, so I may look for it during the holidays.  Hopefully these birds will winter.  Dan Lane's bird has been relocated since the initial discovery (by Kevin Morgan and Jacob Cooper).

After the towhee miss, we wandered down to Cameron via Fruge Road, where we saw this great-looking dark Red-tailed Hawk.  There were a lot of red-taileds all day long, spanning the spectrum from dark to pale.  

After that, we headed over to the ferry.  There were 3 Lesser Black-backed Gulls there, but not much else.

James has a thing for owls, and he really wanted to see a Long-eared Owl that was reported from one of my favorite birding spots, so we headed west.  By the time we got there, a few birders were finishing their round of the woods with negative results.  The woods are pretty barren and with few good places for an owl to hide, so I trusted their findings (or lack of).  Still, James was determined that he was going to see the bird if it killed him, so we headed in.  And it almost killed James.

Actually, he just caught some cactus thorns in his bad knee, which made it even worse.

Overall the woods were pretty dead, but we did see a few nice things like this Grasshopper Sparrow.

Sparrows were really the story of the day.  As we walked (or hobbled, in James's case) through thick scrub and grasses on some private property in the Johnsons Bayou area that's tailor-made for sparrows, we got great looks at a good number and variety of sparrows.  Among them were another handful of Grasshopper Sparrows, such as the one below.

Grasshopper Sparrows are uncommon migrants along the coast, and a count of two (a farthing's worth, if you will) would be a good day.  We had 8 of them, which is a new daily high for me in SWLA.  These sparrows are secretive, and good at scurrying along in the grass.  One was doing this so well that I almost stepped on it before it kicked up (but not a sparrow will fall to the ground).

This locale yielded 11 species of sparrows.  My favorite species--along with Grasshopper--was this Le Conte's Sparrow, a sparrow that would be probably be more prized for its beauty if it was larger and less secretive.  Like so many grassland birds, Le Conte's is a brilliant mixture of earth tones.  I was lucky that this one sat up in the open for a few seconds and let me snap a picture, but my photo really doesn't do it justice.  

The Clay-colored Sparrow and White-crowned Sparrow made a nice pair.  The Clay-colored might be a migrant on its way through or a winterer.  If the latter, it'll be an uncommon find in a few weeks.  White-crowneds, on the other hand, winter here in good numbers.

Other nice birds for the day included the White-tailed Kite below, an agile raptor that was once an extreme rarity here.  In recent decades, this species has become regular in Louisiana, and has bred here.

Another pale raptor seen was this male Marsh Hawk (or Northern Harrier).  This bird looks pretty great even in my poor photo.    
















Last but not least, it's important to remember that scavengers are people, too, and even the scavengers were able to find some nice birds.  With the opening day of duck season, this Turkey Vulture looks like it was able to find a bird or two to fill up on.  We interrupted it as it dined where a hunter had been cleaning ducks earlier in the day, and it didn't seem too ready or able to leave the area in any hurry.  With its great new love of birds, perhaps it'll start a life list.            

Cameron Parish, 11/05/2011

At one of my first stops, this Ash-throated Flycatcher popped out in the open.  These birds can be secretive at times, but this one wasn't.  I've seen an Ash-throated at this spot for 3 or 4 weeks, always coming out to pose.  These sightings might all be the same bird, maybe a winterer.  

At the same spot, I came across this nice duo of sparrows, a Clay-colored and a Grasshopper.  The picture is lousy, but the pairing isn't bad.  

Marsh Hawks (a.k.a. Northern Harriers) were on the hunt everywhere.  These raptors float like air-hockey pucks over the fields, close to the ground, tilting from side to side as they scan the ground for small game.  Speaking of names for these birds, my grandfather had a cool one: coissarde (pronounced kind of like "Kway-sard").  Older Cajuns knew quite a bit about the birds of the area, and one as conspicuous as the Marsh Hawk, with its white rump band and slow-motion levitation, was probably well-known to many.  

Red-tailed Hawks were in good numbers along the coastal strip, probably making a great living off the native rat population.  Rats rebounded well after Hurricane Ike, and predators are only now putting a noticeable dent in their numbers.  Last year was a good one for hawks and owls, and I'm hoping for an encore this winter.  

Most winter birds haven't shown up in typical numbers yet, but Eastern Phoebes were pretty liberally spread throughout the landscape.  The one below was in a territorial struggle, and seemed more worried about flying off and giving ground to its rival than about landing next to me.  

Early November is a crossroads time on the coast, with a blend of winter arrivals and lingering fall migrants.  Among the lingerers were Nashville Warbler (which sometimes winters), and Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Summer Tanager, below.

White-winged Doves, now common along the coast throughout the year, were also present in decent numbers. 

I crossed the ferry into Cameron and headed east toward home late in the day.  This cool dark Red-tailed on the eastern edge of the town was cooperative, but the light was getting horrible.  I would've loved a closer look and just a few more minutes of sunlight, but the days are getting shorter.  

Nothing spectacular, but a lot of enjoyable birds.  

Red-necked Phalarope, Kaplan area

A surprise yesterday tucked in among a few thousand ducks, coots, and other waterbirds was this Red-necked Phalarope.  These northern nesting shorebirds spend their winters at sea, but I guess they have to fly across land to get there.  I was lucky to cross this one's path.  

Cameron Parish, 10/8-10/9/2011

Mac Myers, Dave Patton, and I joined up with New Orleans maestros David Muth, Curt Sorrells, and Phillip Wallace for a weekend of birding in Cameron Parish.  Upon arriving on Friday night it certainly didn't seem like the weather would cooperate.  Strong easterly winds were getting stronger and the chance of seeing eastern migrants or western vagrants seemed pretty slim.

Upon stepping out on Saturday morning, the first birds we saw were swallows.  Down low there were Barns and a few Banks, and in the next level up, Cave Swallows.  We only watched for a few minutes, but we tallied a handful of Caves; the next morning we counted 75 Caves and then moved on.  No telling how many Caves we could have gotten if we'd watched all weekend.  The oddest thing about the swallow movement was that the birds were all moving east, into the full force of the wind.  The conventional wisdom is that Cave Swallows vagrants are blown up to the East Coast by strong southwesterly winds.  Recent observations such as ours challenge that idea.   

The western flavor continued as we added Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, Vermilion Flycatcher, and Clay-colored Sparrows to our list.  We also watched a Reddish Egret motoring steadily offshore from west to east, against the wind.  For all of the wind, everything seemed to be moving eastward.

The next day was more of the same.  At Peveto, an Ash-throated Flycatcher was almost tame (seen below with Phillip).  It hadn't been detected the day before, which isn't saying much, but given the ease with which it was detected on Sunday, it's possible that it had recently arrived against the wind.

     

Here's another shot of the Ash-throated.

The best western bird of the day was found on Saturday.  Tucked into the scrub was a Brewer's Sparrow, only the second record for the state, following the first state record by 59 years.  The photos below show all of the field marks that separate Brewer's from Clay-colored Sparrow including the streaked nape, complete eyering, streaked crown with no central dividing stripe, weak facial pattern, and overall pale and plain plumage.  Note also the tail with only two full-length feathers and the rest growing as a stub.  The latter point fits in nicely with the idea put forward by LSU ornithologists Van Remsen, Steve Cardiff, and Donna Dittmann that proposes that many of our vagrants are in fact migrants with defects of some kind.

Among the other good birds found over the weekend was this Bewick's Wren, below, found by David Muth at Willow Island.

On the way back home I ran into Steve Cardiff and Donna Dittmann near Sweet Lake, where they were watching a flock of over 50 Scissor-tails.  As we traveled on in the last light of the day, we tallied one more good western bird for the weekend, this one in Calcasieu Parish, a Say's Phoebe (below).

Cameron, 10/01/11

       Yesterday, Mac Myers and I met up with Dave Patton in Cameron Parish.  Birding was pretty good; it was one of those days where everybody afield was bound to find something that pleased them.  I spent a lot of my morning walking through knee-high brush kicking up sparrows, mostly Clay-coloreds and Savannahs.
       When I made it into the woods, I lucked onto a Blackpoll Warbler.  Blackpolls migrate through Louisiana in spring and at times can be common to abundant.  However, their fall migration path takes them from the East Coast over the Atlantic all the way to South America.  In fall, Blackpolls are rare birds here.  I was excited to find this bird. Even though I'd seen plenty in the spring, I considered it the best bird I saw all day.      

          Dave left the woods a little earlier than Mac and me, and soon called to let us know he'd found a Say's Phoebe on the way out.  Say's Phoebes are slender, brown and buff western flycatchers that stray east regularly in small numbers, small enough that finding one makes for a good birding day.  The bird had moved a bit from where Dave reported it, but we kept our eyes open and relocated it a bit farther along.

     
     











            Later on, in a different location, another common warbler made a rare appearance.  Orange-crowned warblers are common here in winter, but usually start showing up here in late October.  Many Orange-crowneds are reported earlier than this, but the reports I've followed up on have always proven to be cases of mistaken identity.  As a matter of fact, when I first saw this bird (only the rear half of the bird was visible), the gray color of the body and the yellow tones near the tail had me hoping this was something truly rare like a Virginia's Warbler.  That hope died when I saw this bird's face, but I was still pretty pleased with an early Orange-crowned.  Later, in the same woods, I got looks at a different Orange-crowned, a more typically greenish bird.

       

             On the ride in the morning, Mac and I had discussed the lack of Bell's Vireo reports this fall.  Bell's are fairly early migrants, and by the beginning of October there are often a few reports.  I was wondering if I'd already missed my chance to see one this year, which would have been a shame because I missed them last year, too.  Luckily (the key word in birding is luck), Mac and I stumbled onto a Bell's late in the day.  The light was horrible for photos, but I managed to coax the following image out of my shots.  Don't adjust your screen, I simply suck as a photographer.