Cameron Parish, 8/27/2011

Birding yesterday in Cameron Parish was pretty nice, even with the temperature in the mid-90s.  A north wind was blowing, and there was a good showing of migrants.

I started the day at Holly Beach.  In the town itself, close-cropped lawns provided good habitat for Killdeer and a single Buff-breasted Sandpiper.  The Buff-breasted was fun to see.  Buff-breasted Sandpipers are one of those straw-colored birds that look plain from a distance but show a complex pattern when seen up close.

On the beach itself, 3 Lesser Black-backed Gulls were interesting.  They might represent incoming migrants, or a coincidence of summering birds.  Lesser Black-backeds are European birds that have gone from rare to regular in the past two decades.  Apparently the birds have managed to get a foothold in North America.

From the beach, I hit the scrub.  Acacia scrub is my favorite habitat at this time of year.  The short, thorny bushes offer great cover for migrants and I like winding through thickets of thorn trees and prickly pear cactus.  There was nothing unusual in the acacia yesterday, but some expected migrants were there in good numbers, including flycatchers, yellow warblers, and gnatcatchers.    

Next, I passed by Peveto Woods.  Peveto has some good tall oaks and a smattering of other tree species.  I worked the perimeter of the woods to see what was in the short stuff, but spent a little time in the taller woods.

While there, I got a brief unsatisfying look at a Warbling Vireo hidden deep in oak leaves just before it flew.  Just as well; a few minutes later I came across 2 Warbling Vireos in a locust tree and managed to get photos of one.

There were also fair numbers of warblers there.  Offhand, I think I had 7 warbler species, plus good numbers of flycatchers (including 6 Eastern Wood Pewees and 1 Olive-sided Flycatcher).

From Peveto, I took a ride through East Jetty Woods.  Best birds there were a couple of Lark Sparrows, but I had to leave quickly when a tractor came by spraying.

On the ride home, I passed down Chalkley Road, one of my favorite birding locations.  Near Sweet Lake Land Company headquarters, there were plenty of birds including big flocks of cowbirds, swallows, egrets.
Among the egrets in the canal by the road was a Wood Stork, not rare but always nice for a day in Cameron Parish.

Nearby was a young Red-tailed Hawk, probably the young of the nearby nesting pair.

The icing on the cake for the day was the swallow show on Chalkley.  All day long I had been watching swallows fly by.  Most seemed to be Cliff Swallows, followed by Barns, and distantly by Banks.  However, as I approached the area near the Cameron Prairie NWR headquarters on the ride back, I began to see dense flocks of mostly Bank Swallows.  By the time I reached Chalkley Road, swallows were starting to congregate on lines there.  Again, it was mostly Banks, now followed distantly by Cliffs, and even more distantly by Barns.  There were also a few Purple Martins, Tree Swallows, and Cave Swallows mixed in.

Generally, swallows don't spend much time sitting down.  You have to be lucky to find a place where they congregate in the evenings, and the Chalkley Road area is usually a good bet.  Yesterday was the biggest group I've ever seen there, several times over.  Unfortunately, the day and the light were fading away, and I didn't get to look as long as I would've liked.  If I had the chance, I would have spent hours there.  I may have just seen the same things several thousands of times, but there's always the chance...

Kingbird Calls, Cameron Parish, 8/14/2011

I didn't want to post a picture of any of the kingbirds from Cameron here because I don't know which one was doing the calling.  Instead, here's a picture of the Kingfish.  The clip of the call repeats 3 times so you won't have to keep hitting the play button. 

Burrowing Owl, Holly Beach, 8/20

Another neat bird from yesterday was this Burrowing Owl that was holding steady on the debris line of Holly Beach.  I'm not sure how early this bird is compared to other fall records, but I was surprised to see a Burrowing Owl on August 20.

Burrowing Owls are rare migrants and winter residents in Louisiana.  Our birds would seem to come from the Great Plains and western states, where they are common sights around prairie dog towns.

Not the Last for the Least

 
Yesterday, after crossing into Cameron on the ferry, I saw a lump in the road ahead of me.  As I rolled past it and looked back, I thought I saw the lump stand up.  I doubled back, only to see some 18-wheelers headed down the lane.  In a very decent move, both of the drivers saw the bird in the road and went slowly around it.  I pulled next to the lump and saw it was a dazed Least Bittern.  I picked it up; it was apparently knocked out standing up, so I set it down in a shady spot on my car floor and put a cover over it.

Least Bitterns have always been a favorite of mine.  I first got to know them in my uncle's ricefields when I was a kid.  It was always fun to watch them fly in close, and then pull up short and change directions with a look of shock when they saw me.  What always struck me about them (other than their beautiful colors, of course) was their size.

How cool is a heron that you can hold in your hand?

I went about my birding business, and quite honestly, forgot about the bird until I heard somebody moving around on the passenger side floor.  I lifted up the cover, and there, looking fierce and awake, was the bittern. It flew up to the window, then across the dashboard.  I got a hold of it, and luckily wasn't holding it too close to my face.  It was some kind of fache', and it started striking everything near it.  It may be little, but that bill is sharp.

I drove to the nearest marshy area and let it go.  It flew about a hundred yards, then veered sharply and ducked into the grass.

Later, when I was unpacking my car, I realized my guest had left a present for me on the floor:

What Willet Be?

The Willet, although incredibly abundant and widespread, is still in many ways a mysterious bird.  Although it's been known for over a century that there are two distinct populations of willets (one which breeds coastally in eastern North America, and another that breeds in the western interior), much remains to be sorted out about the two populations.  Certainly a lot of the popular information on the species and its two populations is streamlined to such a degree that it promotes misunderstanding and bad science.  In the case of this species, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  Overzealous birders often confuse the material in soft identification articles with hard, reliable data, and take it into the field.  As a result, myth has been mixed with the canon of knowledge about this species.  Thus, some birders today believe that any and all willets can be identified as either the Eastern or Western subspecies based on morphology or seasonal distribution.

Most authoritative works on Willets, shorebird guides, and even the above-mentioned soft ID articles try to caution readers against being too hasty in attempting to identify all willets to subspecies.  However, reckless birders often fail to heed those caveats.  For instance, although most western and eastern willets show a difference in size, some birders ignore the hard, quantitative data showing that size overlap does indeed exist.  Many birds are simply in the middle.  As well, not every fieldmark is waterproof.  Judging between the two subspecies can boil down to subjective interpretation of characters.  Again, many birds are obvious; however, it's the middle of the spectrum that kills good science.

The timing of migration is also used by some as a means of separating the two subspecies, a fact which in itself is dangerous.  The popular mantra is that eastern adults are gone by the end of July, while juveniles sometimes stay until mid-August, rarely into September.  When this information was first published, it was acknowledged to be tentative.  However, with each subsequent retelling in popular birding literature, this suggested window of passage has assumed more of an aura of established fact.

Whatever the case, the juvenile above was photographed last Sunday (August 14) as it loafed in the open with several others like it on the muddy banks of the highway-side canal between the Cameron ferry and Holly Beach.  It seems pretty safely on the Eastern side of the spectrum.  It might have been interesting to see how many such Eastern Willets a stretch of this canal contained, but I was more interested in investigating the beach.  Luckily, this bird and its companions were impossible to miss from the road even at highway speed and I was able to back up to take its picture.  

Once on the beach, several other interesting Willets were seen.  One was a very large, "Western"-sized bird with very dense markings below that called the plumage of Eastern Willet to mind.  Another was the bird below, another Eastern which appeared to be well on the way to basic plumage.  I spent a good while examining this bird, as did a few other curious birders that seemed to be wondering what the big deal was.  I would have liked to have studied it more closely; however, traffic on the beach compelled me to move on.  Given the cooperative nature of this bird and the great looks available, I'm sure the other birders present were also able to identify this bird to subspecies by size and bill shape.                                                                                                                                                                      

    

Eastern Willet, Ruddy Turnstone, Black-bellied Plover, 2 presumed  Western Willets.   Note size difference between willet on left and willets on right.  

Some birders might debate the identification of the birds above as "Eastern" Willets.  I welcome the discussion and the chance to explore the question of Willet ID in greater detail.

Hopefully good science will replace the need for conjecture soon.  It will be nice when a reliable picture of the Willet's presence emerges.  

Wood Stork

For the past few weeks, I've been seeing giant soaring birds flying over I-10 every time I drive through the Crowley area.  I don't know if other motorists notice them, but I can't imagine how they wouldn't: these birds dwarf the egrets we normally see flying around.  Their slow, deliberate wingbeats and their ability to soar effortlessly also set them apart from our common waders.  These giants are Wood Storks.  

Wood Storks can be found in big flocks in rice country in summer, but I don't remember seeing any when I was young.  It seems like they've invaded in a big way in the past couple of decades.  I had a flock of over 300 storks mixed in with hundreds of egrets and herons south of Crowley a few days ago.  

Wood Storks nest in south Florida and in Mexico.  I've heard rumors of breeding in Louisiana, but I've never seen any proof.  Flocks of storks seen heading south along the Texas coast during fall months probably mean that our summer visitors come from Mexico. We get a mix of old and young birds (these photos are of a young bird that hasn't acquired the naked gray head of adults).