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.