Frosty the Redhead

 It's been a few years since I've had a chance to really bird January 1.  But I had the chance this year (at least until a sputtering ice storm sent me home midday).

Tiscornia was pretty quiet, though there were a lot of Red-throated Loons.  A kestrel at the nearby Paw Paw canoe launch was the first raptor of the year.

A flicker on an opposite snag was the first woodpecker of the year, and then a group of Common Redpolls beat Junco onto the year list!

Paw Paw Lake was as birdy as I've seen it with both black-backed gulls and good numbers of ducks.  Most of the swans were Mute, but eventually a group of Trumpeters appeared.  There were 2 young birds and 3 adults.  One of the adults had possibly a radio collar?

The other two adults were unbanded.  This is one of them.  I find it difficult to separate Trumpeter from Tundra based on the cheek feathering, and this bird even has a hint of the yellow pip that Tundra shows prominently.  Its bill is too long for Tundra though, and all the birds were the same size.

The forehead feathering works better for me (if you're relatively close to it); Trumpeter has a pointy forehead if it's looking at you (like the bird on the left).  To the naked eye I thought the juvies were mutes initially.  I'd forgotten (or never knew?) that they can have some pale mosaic color to the bill.

Finally the odd redhead that the title refers to.  Eider crossed my mind for half a second to the naked eye.  You can see how the trailing hen has the usual slight frostiness to the foreface.  The lead hen practically has a white head, I don't think I've ever seen this effect.

the Tiscornia Scoter show

All 3 species of scoter have been seen on the pier the last couple days (though I didn't see the Harlequin Duck this morning).  But if you want to photograph black and white birds, what better time than first light?

The light gets away from you quickly...

While the White-winged's are the dominant species there were a few Surfs about.

And given that I forgot to eBird Black last year, I couldn't make the same mistake twice!  These guys almost lined up for a really nice composition, but that White-wing in front started banking a moment too soon

The "dark-winged" scoters, from the above shot wheeled past, if I only had the close-up pic below to go on, I might call them 2 blacks and 2 surfs... but studying the bill shapes of the top pic makes me think they're all black ... but I could be wrong.

And who knows, maybe the ice will soon be melted enough to let the algae get slick!

Waaaaaaay out of season Mergansers

After having scored the Marbled Godwit a couple days ago, yesterday I checked New Buffalo looking for more of the first wave of fall migration.  I wasn't expecting to see two representatives of migration's (cold and) bitter end... (8/3/15 addendum: and was unprepared for an ID issue I'd not run across before as Tim pointed out)

 The larger Common is on the right with a more clearly defined white throat patch, heavier-based bill, and more contrasting head.  Sibley lists Common as about 50% heavier than Red-breasted though a person would probably guess closer to double with these two .  So.  The bird on the right is a lot bigger, but a person doesn't realize when Common Mergs are in the water how much bigger males are than females.  Sibley does note males are bigger than females but doesn't quantify how much.  The male's bill is bigger, but the whole bird is bigger; in retrospect the bills are pretty much identically shaped.  Red-breasted would have feathering extending lower on the bill making the bill base look narrower.  Also, the smaller bird has a fairly well defined white throat patch that doesn't just fade into the face as a real Red-breasted's would.  Which means that the smaller bird is a female Common Merg and the other bird an eclipse plumaged male.

(in tennis-watching mode below...)

Yawn...

The Red-breasted's female's right wing is just trashed, with most of the flight feathers worn down to the feather vanes.  My guess is that the bird got stuck in the ice back in the winter and managed to rip itself free, at the cost of not being able to reach the breeding grounds.

I think the (male) Common is flightless too, though I'm guessing that's just because it's doing normal duck moult.  I can't even speculate on what left it stranded in southern Lake Michigan.

The two stuck together but the (male) Common was somewhat aggressive towards the smaller Red-breast female at times.

Apparently getting bit in the ass by a sawbill hurts.  I'd never seen a merganser jump before.

(8/3/15) one last pic of the female that in retrospect also has a much cleaner delineation between the head and the breast than a Red-breasted would have.

  and a last view of the male...

Pi Day Friday

in honor of a mathematician's (or physics groupie's) favorite day of the year, 3.14, here's pics from Tiscornia today.  The SE winds provoked some actual migration, though most of the movement was correctional; the birds, mainly Long-tailed Ducks, were going south.

 This one is actually from yesterday, it was calmer then.

Yesterday I was there at dawn, some of the birds hadn't woken up yet; check out the ice/frost on the WW scoters...

 they thaw though.

I was actually kind of excited about finding a Red-necked Grebe this morning.

That is until Tim told me Sarett released one there yesterday.  Oh well.  The commonly cited conventional wisdom is that bad weather causes these birds to lift off the sheltering 35 degree water they're designed for and choose to fly around instead in a 15 degree ice/snow storm, get lost inland, and then brought to nature centers.  Brandon Holden's been leading the theory that the wrecked birds are actually early migrants that fall out when they hit an unanticipated storm front, which makes a lot more sense.

There was actually a drake Red-breasted in the little back pond at LMC yesterday.  I'm not sure whose theory it would have fallen under.  This one is from its more traditional Lake habitat.

Random shot of blue ice.

I'm guessing the mechanism of its creation is different from other colors of snow.

Winter Waterfowl

These guys will hopefully be leaving soon so I'll start here with March's back log of local pics.

There have been a few more Long-tailed Ducks than the last couple years hanging out along the piers.  They have a bewildering array of plumages and moults.

I got mostly confused trying to age and sex these looking at the Sibley plates and was reduced to pulling out Pyle.  It says something that Pyle is more technical than any medical text that I own.  Pyle (as best as I can tell from the figure, the text is just waaay too dense) uses the shape and color of the longest scapular as a good place to start with aging and sexing this species.  On the lead bird, these are dark, relatively pointed, and edged with rufous making it an adult female in breeding plumage.  On the trail bird the longest scap is fairly (but less) pointed, brown with a buffy pale concave margin, making it adult female in winter plumage.  I think.

One of the omnipresent WW scoters is in the foreground.

I'm not sure if this next one is rattier because it's in the process of moulting or if it's a first spring bird.

No problems with the winter male.  For whatever reason they don't tend to come in as close though.

Finally a mess of (mostly) Redhead.  It feels like there's been a lot more of them this year, but that may just be my memory.

The New Buffalo workout

If anyone's looking for a novel upper body workout, I've got one for you. Walk the New Buffalo jetty, while carrying optics and a three-year-old. Four-year-old Hazel was enthralled by the prospects of clambering over the rocks, Hannah not so much. I was hoping for a Purple Sandpiper, but when a duck swam out at a rest point I was pretty happy with a bonus Harlequin Duck. I've never missed Harlequin Duck in Berrien, but this was a year bird.
This duck (the darker less-patterned female on the left) was at Tiscornia this morning.

It appears to be a female Mallard x Black Duck hybrid. Males are pretty easy to identify, but this is the first time I've had a good look at a presumed female.

The bill has the pattern of a mallard, with the so called melting chocolate icing effect, but it's muted by the ground color of the bill being a Black Duck's dappled olive rather than the orange of a mallard.

The cap is much more contrastingly dark than a female mallard's (you can compare it to the top photo). It almost had some vague greenish tones in the dark overcast.

The scapulars and side pocket have a suggestion of patterning to them, but nothing like the female Mallard's.

For what it's worth, here's the speculum. I've never had a digital camera yet that didn't way over-blue violets or purples in nature; this photo shows the color bluer than it was in life. I don't have any file photos of the extent of white in the speculum of Mallard's, but it's a heck of a lot more than a Black Duck would have.

Given that we've got a car in the shop hopefully Purple Sand (and even Thayer's Gull) will come to me at Tiscornia, I'm not sure how many trips to New Buffalo will be in the works for the next week or two.

3 weeks later...

Between a front-loaded work schedule this month and the general fun of a Michigan February I haven't been getting out that much. Photo standards are falling on a daily basis...

The scaup had re-accumulated between the piers, joined by this Long-tailed Duck.
Per my interpretation of Pyle, this bird appears to be a first cycle female in formative (first winter) plumage aspect, attained by a partial (pre-formative) body moult that runs from November to March. The fresh scapulars contrast the more worn flight feathers. Pyle depicts all non-juvenile males as having much more sharply pointed scapulars than this bird displays. In a first-cycle female these feathers are gray with whitish edges (this bird) whereas in an adult these feathers are brown with buffier edges. The pre-formative moult has also transitioned the sides and facial pattern to an appearance closer to a winter adult female's.


There's a black scoter sleeping in the next frame as well.

The title of the post is a reference to my post from Jan 21 where most of the Greater Scaup males had dusky sides. Now the birds are much whiter, though most still show some degree of duskiness to the sides.

Putting in the time

One of my goals every year is to get to Tiscornia 100 times, a number I've never come close to reaching sadly. My spreadsheets suggest that I find a review bird there every 40 visits or so, though obviously during the fall months with a lot of bird turnover (and the concentrating effect of the lakeshore's angle) that number is more favorable. In winter the odds are considerably less favorable, but I try to make token visits to try to stay on pace (maybe a more concerted effort would net a king eider, Barrow's goldeneye, or ivory gull after a decade or so). The last few times I've been there, presumably the same female-type Black Scoter has been in with the Greater Scaup flock, the same female-type Lesser Scaup has been in with a few goldeneye, and the same 2 Horned Grebes have been in the channel.

Today the winds changed and pushed much of the ice farther out into the lake and more birds were present. The greater scaup flock had about doubled and the scoters had changed. I walked out the south pier hoping for good photo light, but by the time I got to the end the sun was lost for good behind the clouds.
There's a couple adult males with bright white sides, but most are first-winter male Greater Scaup, a plumage aspect that Sibley doesn't illustrate though that is attempted in the Nat'l Geo. These birds are undergoing what Pyle terms the pre-formative moult which runs from about September through March. This moult, present in some species of birds, replaces hastily grown juvenile feathers and frequently transitions birds into a more adult-like appearance. It only occurs in first fall/winter birds. Most of the birds have managed medium gray backs though still with some dark retained juvenile scapulars along the rear edge of the back. The white side panels are still blotched with darker juvenile feathers as well.

The male in the foreground here, though, is a bit behind with a mainly brown side panel and only a narrow line of gray scapulars starting to come through.

Did you notice the Lesser Scaup in the rear of this cluster?


Here's the Lesser cropped more tightly from the above photos

Note the coarser vermiculations of the back, the difference in crown peak placement, the thinner head, and more restricted black at the tip of the bill.

Finally poor shots of some of the other divers that have been around (I really could have used the sunlight).