Weekend of April 27-28, 2013, Cameron Parish

 

Ruddy Turnstone, as fancy as any spring warbler.  

Fancy and plain Sanderlings.  

Bejeweled Piping Plover.  

An Audubon's Warbler that Phillip Wallace found at Willow Island.  

At the corral by Holly Beach, a Western Tanager was a nice accessory for a blooming acacia tree.  

This gregarious Dickcissel lost its flock and seemed to want company very badly.  

Vying for my Bird of the Day honors was this bluerunner, or Yellow-bellied Racer, at Peveto Woods.
This was my first bluerunner on the coast since Rita, and a welcome sight.

Venus's Looking Glass.

Blue Grosbeaks, Bobolinks, and Dickcissels were great to see.  Fields were full of birds.  Orioles, tanagers, thrushes, and hundreds of Indigo Buntings were strange to see jumping out of the thick grass.  

I was surprised to see a couple of LeConte's Sparrows still around.  

Birds were in strange places, showing strange behaviors.  A good day for birders can be a bad day for birds.  

These two frigatebirds were over Johnsons Bayou, heading SE to the Gulf.  I saw 2 others doing the same thing later.  

These birds were hungry, but I managed to escape.  

This male Brewster's Warbler was a first for Gary Broussard and me, at Willow Island.  Brewster's are hybrids of Golden-winged and Blue-winged Warblers.  

Spring migration doesn't always end well.

Cameron, 4/20/2013

Dave Patton, Mac Myers, and I went to Cameron Parish yesterday to see if there were any holdovers from the front that pushed through two days before.  The weather was as close to perfect for a mid-April day as you could ask for, with a cool east wind making the temperature just right in the sun in the morning, and in the shade in the afternoon.  In the morning I had the pleasure of making a new friend, John Romano, a SWLA birder whose posts to the LaBird listserv I enjoy.  In the afternoon, I had the pleasure of running into an old friend, Tom Finnie, photographer and raconteur extraordinaire.  And all day long, I had the great fortune to enjoy and renew many old acquaintances among the citizens of the bird world.

The diversity of birds wasn't spectacular, but it was colorful.  Tanagers were present in good numbers, and generally pretty conspicuous.

This male Scarlet Tanager was perched low to avoid the wind, and maybe to regain some energy after a long migratory flight.  My photo doesn't do justice to the bird's real color.    

One interesting observation involved trees, specifically, the Toothache Tree.  Also known as Hercules's Club (from its scientific name, Zanthoxylum clava-herculis) and Prickly Ash, this tree is flowering now in southwest Louisiana.  In several spots we saw short toothaches with groups of warblers attached. Whether it was the flowers, bugs attracted to the flowers, or some other variable, one tree of no more than 6 feet in height attracted the following warblers: Hooded, Kentucky, Northern Parula, Black-throated Green, American Redstart, Yellow, and Tennessee.  

Another encouraging observation involved a reptile.  In an area that I visit regularly, I saw my first Speckled Kingsnake since the destruction of hurricanes Rita and Ike.  This was actually the first snake other than Cottonmouth I've seen in the cheniers post storms.  I can only hope the Slender Glass Lizard makes a reappearance in these areas soon (I did see one roadkill a few years back near Peveto).  

At the Baton Rouge Audubon Society sanctuary at Peveto Woods, bird(watch)ers were as prevalent as birds.  As Dave noted, the Summer Tanager below was probably photographed by all of us as it haunted one small flowering acacia (I failed to mention that the sweet smell of this beautiful tree was present in the wind all day).  

Shorebirds were also well-represented, and many were in nice breeding color.  American Avocets were in present in several places.  

All in all, a beautiful day with good company and good birds.  This year, relaxation has been the rarity I most want to find, and yesterday I got a good look at it.  

Above is the first Common Nighthawk I've seen this year.  In honor of the melancholy annual iterations of life on this planet, below are nighthawk pictures from summers past for your study and pleasure.

How like a winter

I finally got my binoculars back from repairs today.  They took a tumble last November and got knocked out of alignment, and I sent them off in early December.  They might not look great, but they seem to see pretty well so far.

In their absence, I used my old Zeiss Classics for several months, but it wasn't very comfortable.  The old Classics have great glass, but their inability to close-focus and the fact that they focus in reverse from my other pair were a pain.  I got a loaner pair of Zeiss Conquests that made birding more bearable last month.  They still focused "backwards" for me, but they focus within about 6 inches of where my pair can, which was nice.  Still, it felt nice to get my beat up old pair back.  

I hope the fixes hold.  I can't wait to have them for a whole day in the field.  

  

Papabotte

When I was a kid, these birds were known as Upland Plovers.  Now they go by the name of Upland Sandpiper, but if you take a closer look you'll get the sense that they're really just curlews with straight bills.  The local name for them was Papabotte, an onomatopoetic attempt at their weird Wood Thrush-like call.  I'm sure the Mound Builders, the Tchefuncte, the Mandans, and the Attakapas had their own names for this beautiful little bird that either paid them a visit along their migration route, or nested among them on the endless prairies.    

Despite the sandpiper name, this is a grassland bird.  Probably wildly numerous when prairie stretched unbroken up the middle of North America, the day the plow met the Great Plains was a sad day for this species.  Unlike the Rocky Mountain Locust and the Eskimo Curlew, however, Uplands were lucky enough to survive.  In Louisiana, we find them as migrants in early spring and late summer, usually in short grass settings.  They rock their heads forward and back as they pick their way along, or hold still and hope to blend in to dirt or dry grass backgrounds.

It being April, the bird you see here is on its way north, having spent most of the year on the pampas of South America.  Let's hope it makes it where it's going, and makes it back in August with some of its brood along for the long trip south.    

 

Coming Soon to a Town Near You?

Last summer, Dave Patton noticed a pair of Cave Swallows going under a bridge in Lafayette.  That sighting was a first for Cave Swallow in Lafayette Parish, and another sign that Cave Swallows are continuing their northeastward march across Louisiana.

Dave and I have both visited the Lafayette nest site over the past few weeks with no sign of Cave Swallows.  Yesterday, however, I stopped and waited for a few minutes and was rewarded with a nice group of Caves.  There were 7 of them, I think.

The birds seemed pretty serious about nesting.  In addition to disappearing under the bridge for short periods of time, the birds were engaged in what appeared to be aerial courtship or competition.

At times, their maneuvering reminded me of Chimney Swifts in flight.  

It's amazing to think that Cave Swallows have gained a foothold so close to home that I can drive 5 minutes and get my fix.  If this colony persists, there's no shortage of similar sites nearby.  Soon, instead of living on the edge of known Cave Swallow range, we might find ourselves well behind the front line of their range expansion.  

Cameron Parish, 4/1/13

Following a night with rain, there was good action along the coast today.  Most of the yellowrumps were gone, replaced by about 15 Hooded Warblers, the same number of Black-and-white Warblers, around 30 White-eyed Vireos, and a small number of other migrants.  My warbler total for the day was 11 species.

Robby Bacon kicked up a nighthawk that proved to be a Lesser Nighthawk.

 Other good sightings were the legendary Melvin Weber and Ron Stein.