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.