Smith Oaks, Hooks Woods, Eubanks Woods Sanctuaries

Smith Oaks was extremely productive for us on multiple days and hella fun to bird, generally better than Boy Scout overall. Smith was consistently somewhere between "moderately birdy" and "guhhhhhh birds everywhere" throughout the week...eBird checklists were best characterized as "corpulent". Here are a few of the hundreds of migrants we met there, starting with this Chestnut-sided Warbler.

As expected, the always becoming CSWA was a fairly common migrant throughout the week at all the migrant traps we visited.

A female Blackburnian Warbler with a trophy-sized worm of inches.

This is the same male Blackburnian that was hanging out next to the egret rookery in the last post. I'm still suffering from heart palpitations from seeing so many of these crippling heart-stoppers that week, which were one of the most common warbler species. So many glowing Blackburnians everywhere were difficult to cope with, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Another crippling gasper, Golden-winged Warbler was certainly not a common migrant, but we did connect with more than I thought we would. We didn't come across any particularly confiding birds unfortunately, but who is complaining? Not me. A couple of them were singing, which is the first time I've ever heard them.

Though not a lifer, Cerulean Warbler was one of the main target birds of the trip for Yours Truly, #7. We had great success, and pleasantly saw a modest number of them.

Also like Golden-wingeds, they were hard as fuck to photograph/see well. Fitting, I suppose, for such a sought-after gem of a bird.

Female Cerulean, showing off her distinct long undertail coverts and almost stub-like tail.

Hella Wood Thrushes that week; we saw hundreds of them. This is not something I expected or have experienced before. Stoked.

When one encounters This Machine Nate on a trail, only one thing can be said for sure: you are in for a treat.

Nate's treat was met by a mix of intrigue and revulsion.

We also spent a lot of time at Hooks Woods. It's a lot smaller than Boy Scout and Smith, but it's the closest patch of trees to the coast, the habitat is good, and the concentrations of Geri there seem to vary between "low" and "bearable". This was the first Blue-headed Vireo of the trip; we would go on to see a handful spread out over the week.

I should mention that birding the road in front of the sanctuary can also be productive; this is where This Machine lifered Black-billed Cuckoo.

Here it is, your friend and mine, SWAINSON'S WARBLER, THE BROWN WONDER. This one was Dipper Dan's lifer. This was a good spring for these skulkers on the UTC apparently.

A surprise to one, Eastern Wood-Pewees adorned the migrant traps in large numbers. Lord knows how many of them were misidentified by Geri and friends.

Veeries were uncommon but dependable throughout our trip. Hooks Woods, and the lawn directly across the street from the entrance, was spilling over with Catharus the entire week. Thrushes were just littering the ground. We even saw some poor completely black thrush that had clearly just taken a bath in an oil pan someone had left out.

What a fucking bummer.

Where there are mulberries, there are Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. Mulberry trees are magic.

On our last day of birding the coast (April 27), Officer Shaw picked out this Olive-sided Flycatcher up in the canopy at Smith Oaks. Though not a late migrant on the west coast, it is in the eastern half of the country. It would be the only classic "late" migrant we would end up seeing; we did not connect with Alder, Willow or Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, or Mourning Warbler. We somehow dipped on Least Flycatcher as well, which seemed bizarre to me. I don't know if they are just not abundant on the UTC, or if they simply weren't moving through the area that week for whatever reason. We had several days with tons of Acadians...migration is weird.

Wrapping up High Island...Dipper Dan and I birded the High Island Historical Park (walking back to Guirdy Road) during the one very brief "slow" period we encountered....it was predictably slow, but I could see it being good when there are migrants around. We checked out Eubanks Sanctuary (mostly because we kept driving by it) on a birdy day and found it to be rewarding, although the habitat is overgrown and pretty much the same throughout the patch. Here is our eBird checklist; of note were Cerulean, Golden-winged and Canada Warblers (a new bird for the trip at the time). There is a pond in the back of the sanctuary that attracts a lot of birds, it is worth loitering around there for a bit. And amazingly, there were no other birders there! So if there are birds around and you want to take shelter from Geri, it is worth taking a look. We never did make it to the Crawford or Gast sanctuaries.

That wraps up our High Island coverage; in summary, it was as advertised. Absolutely ace birding, hordes of Geri, rampant misidentifications, and worthy of revisiting repeatedly.

Anahuac is up next!

This Week In BB&B: Traffic Jam, An Unbirdy April, HJs On Deck

Allen's Hummingbird is a nice spring bird.  There has been a distinct lack of nice spring birds in my life this year, though that will all change soon.  Lake Merced, San Francisco, CA.

Wow...what a month April has been.  And I'm not talking about birding...I'm talking about the blog! Between a pathetic three (3) posts for the entire month of April and randomly getting linked to on Reddit (this photo is why), BB&B has had drastically more web traffic than ever before, which is nice after all these years of toiling in the blog mines.  We are only going onward and upward here at BB&B, and the Birdosphere continues to be taken by storm...by me.  Thanks for reading everyone, and I hope to maintain the same level of...whatever it is that keeps you coming back, and especially if I keep getting bizarre emails from those jealous of my high rank in the Global Birder Ranking System.  That is why I do this!

Apologies for the lack of output lately...April has flown right by, and I did not give it the amount of birding attention that April rightfully deserves.  I feel much shame, and have done you, my birding family, a great dishonor.  I haven't even seen a Nashville Warbler yet this year...how embarrassing. And sad.  Oddly, I've spent more time looking at shorebirds than looking for warblers and flycatchers...it's been a weird spring so far for me.  This time last year I was pretty much obsessed with birding South Padre Island, and always fixated on the fallout that never came.

Surfbirds are among the humblest of birds much of the year, being built like obese plovers, staying relatively silent and repping the Economy of Style.  But in spring they shed their shabby attire for fancy scapulars and intricately patterned upperparts, and if you get too close you might find your face getting a little melty.  It's not difficult to discern the difference between the new and old feathers on the bird in this photo, the same goes for the Willet on the right as well. Emeryville Marina, Emeryville, CA.

Western Sandpipers in spring are really striking, as are their Dunlin brethren (molting bird in center). I understand why beginning birders struggle with shorebirds, but if they worked on them in the spring the learning curve would not be steep at all.  Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, Oakland, CA.

That said, my birding is soon going to be different...very different.  I am taking the unilateral decision to make a very important public announcement.  In less than 3 weeks time, I will be combining forces with the following bird bloggers: Birdcrusher Dan, Flycatcher Jen, and This Machine Nate.  Why would we do such a thing?  Such an embarrassing thing?  To bird where none of us have birded before...Maine.

That's right, Maine.  As the years go by, there are fewer and fewer birds that I have yet to meet in the Lower 48, and many of the remaining species for which I quest are found in Maine.  I've also never even been to Maine, and am longing for a change of scenery...keep in mind The Perpetual Weekend is dead (long live the Perpetual Weekend!), so being nonmigratory for so long has gotten to me...gotten to all of us.  We must get life birds.  We must surround ourselves with birders that we actually want to be around.  We must drink whiskey, to toast birds we may not see again any time soon.  We be will covering a fair amount of ground, from Machias Seal Island up to Bicknell's Thrush country, and lifers will be had by all.  The HJ rule will, of course, be in play, which is an entirely different sort of thing to prepare for.

California is Catharus depauperate state.  We have Hermits and Swainson's, anything else is pure gold.  To say that I am looking forward to reopening my eyes and ears to Veery, among certain other thrushes, would be a gross understatement at best.  South Padre Island, Texas.

Migrant Chugging

The birds are just chugging through South Texas now...anything and everything seems to be showing up. My sense of birding FOMO is growing quite acute, although my obsessive monitoring of the weather makes me not worried that I'll be missing a fallout anytime soon. Right. I was lucky enough to come across some cooperative Yellow-billed Cuckoos last weekend. Usually shy and reclusive, the cuckoo does not always stick to it's reputation in the company of one #7 birder.

I could get used to hanging out with stationary cuckoos. I feel like they do this a lot. I wonder what these birds mull over when not migrating or casually decimating tent caterpillar colonies.

Scarlet Tanagers are also moving through now, with reckless abandon. Birders are getting blinded left and right...many will never be able to see color again. I swear there is nothing redder than a male Scarlet Tanager. A cardinal appears dull and lifeless in comparison.

The notorious threat posture of the male Scarlet Tanager is enough to make anyone weak in the knees.

Drab birds want to be crushed too. Here is a female Scarlet Tanager. Note the short, grayish bill and contrasting dark wings, which help set them apart from female Summer Tanagers. They actually remind me of female Painted Buntings a little bit.

This is the one and only Veery I've seen this year. On the day I saw it, it was constantly foraging way out in the open. Very few people seemed to notice it though, although it seemed to be begging for the attention of all birders and photographers in the area. Pro tip from #7: if you want to avoid the hordes of birders and photographers at South Padre Island, watch brown birds.

See? Begging for attention. The descending, ethereal song of the Veery is one of my favorites by the way...if you've never heard one, be assured that you are poorer for it.

Although gifted with a Veeryish voice, the song of the Swainson's Thrush doesn't compare. No offense Swainson's Thrush.

I do enjoy Swainson's Thrushes...they are a fun bird to study, and relatively variable. The birds here are much drabber than those of the west coast, but still have a lot of color in the face. And yes, I have seen a couple Gray-cheeked already this spring.

There are piles of Indigo Buntings out on South Padre right now. Talk about facemelting. I'm not really accustomed to crushing helpless birds like this but I'm not complaining. If Scarlet Tanager owns the color red, Indigo Bunting has mastered the color blue.

There are often a pleasant number of birds around. Sometimes there are hella. This is hella. Here are Indigo Buntings, Orchard and Baltimore Orioles.

Dickcissel has arrived!!!! Before this year I've only seen them as vagrants in California. Now I feel like a non-vagrant Dickcissel veteran...I've seen some big flocks on SPI. I'm still trying to make sense of their face and breast pattern...its complicated. Their distinctive, fart-like calls easily give them away as flyovers.

Franklin's Gulls are still coming north in big numbers. Note the limited black visible in the underwing, and obvious white primary tips, which help differentiate it from Laughing Gull. Of course, Laughing Gulls do not have pink bellies.

The other day I went out after some north winds had been blowing, hoping for more migrants putting down than usual. While there was no fallout, there were thousands of Franklin's Gulls around the convention center. Here is a chunk of the big roosting flock.

The Global Birder Ranking System has subsequently informed me that being in the presence of so many Franklin's Gulls has awarded me +8 points. Not a bad way to level up. All photos in today's post were taken on South Padre Island, TX.

Fall Birding in Dry Tortugas National Park

Dry Tortugas National Park is doubtlessly one of the most famous and crushingly good birding hotspots in North America. It is mentioned in the same breath as any incredible place birders swarm to for migration...Cape May, Magee Marsh, High Island...you get the picture. Ever since I was a teenager, I drooled about someday going (yes, I also drooled about girls too). Being out in the open ocean, the Tortugas are a migrant vacuum for landbirds...this is one of the few places you can reasonably hope for real fallout. Equally as stoke-inducing is the great collection of nesting and visiting seabirds as well.

Of course, almost all birders go in spring. That's just how it's always been done. That's when warblers are the brightest, that's when fallouts happen, and that's when you have the best chance at seeing the high-quality terns....Sooty, Bridled, Roseate, and Brown and Black Noddies. Fall in the Dry Tortugas is not something birders seem to know much about...so being the Number 7 Birder in the nation, I decided to do something about it.

In the predawn hours of October 17, Booby Brittany and I managed to make it on to the Yankee Freedom III (after I was almost stranded on a sailboat that was NOT going to the Tortugas, but that's another story). Despite my enthusiastic (bordering on desperate) efforts to find any shearwaters or pelagic terns, the boat ride there (and back) was uneventfu beyond a few boobies and frigatebirds. The only surprising thing was the tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands are more likely) of lobster traps that carpet the ocean between Key West and the Dry Tortugas...I can't imagine that's a very sustainable fishery.

As we arrived at the Tortugas, so did a rainstorm. As we passed Brown Boobies on channel markers and the mini Masked Booby (year bird) colony on Hospital Key, a sizeable flock of birds appeared out of the rain. As they crossed the bow, I got a good enough look to see they were thrushes...a good sign.

The skies can get quite congested above Fort Jefferson, with frigatebirds and raptors being the most obvious. The Tortugas are probably the best and most reliable place for Magnificent Frigatebirds in the U.S., as they are persent in numbers throughout the year. The white-headed bird is an immature, the black-headed bird a female.

Garden Key has a good roosting spot for gulls, terns and shorebirds. A Piping Plover (year bird) roosts with Black-bellied Plovers.

A flock of Magnificent Frigatebirds met us as we docked at Garden Key, and Booby Brittany and I quickly made our way to the campground to stake out a good spot...we were to stay 3 nights, and wanted to pick a place with shelter from the rain. We wound our way through the tame flock of Ruddy Turnstones and Eurasian Collared-Doves (what a weird mixed flock) and finally settled on a spot, where a Gray Catbird eyed us with anxiety. It was a precursor of things to come.

After getting camp set up, we took a walk into Fort Jefferson in the pouring rain. The first bird we ran into was a Hooded Warbler (year bird), followed by a redstart, then a Clay-colored Sparrow...then Peregrine Falcons, Merlins, Cooper's and Sharp-shinned Hawks, a flock of Tricolored Herons, and hundreds of Gray Catbirds. Catbirds seemed to be ravaging the place...practically every tree had its own catbird flock. Finally the storm let up, and I was free to bird unrestrained...to put it lightly, it was intense. I knew things were going to be good when we walked right up to a Philadelphia Vireo (year bird), which paid us no attention at all. There were a lot of birds around, which I finally realized was a result of the storm.

The next day was almost just as birdy (another storm rolled in overnight), but with clear skies things really mellowed on days 3 and 4, although it was not hard to figure out that birds were arriving and leaving throughout the day regardless of the weather. I watched birds like Cave Swallow (year bird), Chimney Swift (year bird), and White-winged Dove fly in off the ocean, only to never be seen again. As always, its great to watch migration in action.

A Black-throated Blue Warbler was one of many birds that caused carnage to my adrenal gland. This was our campsite buddy for a day.

This was the one and only Veery I saw while out there. I like it's facial expression. Despite the sizeable thrush flock that flew over as I arrived, the only thrushes present were this Veery and a few Swainson's.

The campground turned out to be one of the best spots on the island. At one point I watched a Swainson's Thrush hop past my feet and into our tent. A male Black-throated Blue Warbler spent a whole day in and around our campsite, brushing me with its wing as it flew past at one point. Ovenbirds strutted under the picnic table while we sat playing cards. Hooded, Canada (year bird), Worm-eating, Blackburnian, Orange-crowned, Magnolia, Palm, American Redstart, etc. all popped in to our campsite as well...not the campground as a whole, mind you, just at our little campsite. A couple of Piping Plovers roosted with the small shorebird flock at the coaling dock, a stone's throw away.

A couple of Blackburnian Warblers came in with one of the rainstorms and foraged point blank. Some birds out there went beyond "confiding" and far into the realm of "not giving a fuck". Awesome.

This crippling adult male Hooded Warbler was one of the brightest birds at Garden Key during my visit.

All in all it was a completely successful trip. My face was left badly disfigured, almost completely melted off by the avian brilliance, and I have had to spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery since then. Vireo Vita and Booby Brittany had an amazing time snorkeling, and from shore I was happy to see enormous groupers (bigger than people!), parrotfish and angelfish, barracudas, and even the fabled Tortuga Crocodile, which I understand has Loch Ness Monster status among Key West locals (undoctored photos to come soon). In 4 days I tallied 77 species of birds, including 21 species of warblers...pretty good for a 400 X 500 meter island! It would be awesome to get to explore Bush Key or Loggerhead Key, but that's not something many birders get to do.

Sandwich and Royal Terns roost on one of the the old coaling docks. Both coaling docks are quality snorkel sites as well. Bush Island is in the background; that's where the Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies nest in season.

A Northern Parula takes a break from moth-catching to collect itself.

I would definitely recommend camping on Garden Key, although you have to bring all of your supplies (they do have bathrooms though)...but that's just part of the fun if you ask me. Also, the Yankee Freedom III is docked at Garden Key most of the day, and you are welcome to buy lunch, beer, etc. on board, so you are not really 100% roughing it. It's really nice before and after the boat is around though, because there are fewer people around. Biting insects were few and far between.

Birders should check the campground, the trees inside the fort, and the patch of vegetation that lies north of the campground, outside the fort. Both coaling docks should be checked, and don't forget to frequently look up for incoming wayward migrants. Birds come and go throughout the day so it's a good idea to do the rounds regularly (what else do you have to do?). Hope and prepare for rain. As of my visit the famous water fountain in the fort courtyard was not being used in the fall...Booby Brittany overheard a park employee saying something ridiculous about leaving it off so migrant birds don't try to winter there and die.

The conclusion: the Dry Tortugas have huge potential during fall migration. Of course, now I want to go back in spring...

BIRDMOB

The Swallows of Capistrano (Cliff Swallows, obvi), by way of North Dakota.

It's becoming more and more apparent to me that I live someplace....someplace....not "enchanted" or "fucked up", but someplace inbetween. I am slowly becoming aware that my place place of residence, Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge, is one of the premier places in the country to see a couple species of birds. Yes, I type this atop the world's Mecca for Baird's Sparrows and Sprague's Pipits. And if those birds are the Chosen Ones, then you may call me.....The Oracle.

Why The Oracle? Look dudes. I'm already a birdwatcher. A BIRDWATCHER. If I'm going to be offensively nerdy, I might as well get a cool pseudo-biblical name to go with it. And, for you uber-nerds, its also a nod to Halo.

Failing that...you may also refer to me as The Gatekeeper. Because I'm pretty sure that I bird this place more than anyone else....I've got a finger on the proverbial Bird Pulse, and only I know what the good word is. All birds entering and leaving the refuge check in with me, and the international birder population is slobbering for this sort of access.

As Gatekeeper, I know where to find the world's most approachable Clay-colored Sparrow. The position has its perks.

Veery nice, I like!

Multiple email accounts of mine are being deluged with the same questions, day after day....where are the Baird's? Where are the pipits? Yes. It is I, and no one else, that can provide the one true path to these species.

Unfortunately, I can't tell these people very much. The beloved Auto Tour Route through the refuge, aka The Yellow Brick Road, is closed to vehicles. On top of that, there simply aren't many of these birds on the refuge this year. Why? I don't know. Prolly the rain.

Now don't get me wrong. I run into these birds on the regular, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who has arranged for me to wander all over private property on the prairie out here in my official capacity as Piping Plover seeker. It's great. Nothing soothes the nerves like being serenaded by Baird's Sparrows, Sprague's Pipits and Chestnut-collared Longspurs. The soundtrack of the prairie gets high marks from The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive as well. I do feel the smallest twinge of guilt though, that a lot of the birders here seem to be leaving empty-handed...

Blackpoll Warbler, where are you now? Alaska? You crazy.

Some Prairie Smoke in bud. I think there's a weed joke in there somewhere.

Gadwalls do these kinky, violent courtship flights. It makes up for being drab, I guess.

The BB&B staff is beaming that we've had more site visits in the last month than ever before. Yup. It's time to ride this shamelessly nerdy wave to birder fame and birder fortune. Birder fame, of course, doesn't get you the perks that normal fame does, but you know, since most birders are already wealthier than average, birder fortune is pretty good.

Red-necked Grebe. Horns up!