Grande Mere Wormer

May is done, but that doesn't mean the birding is over!

I've been biking a decent amount lately, hoping to blunder into Blue Grosbeak.  No luck so far, but the season is young.  Today I walked Grande Mere covering about 4 miles of trails in a long loop.  Best bird was a Worm-eating Warbler singing away in the SW corner of the park.

Otherwise it was mostly the locals, dominated by pewees and vireos.  The flowers had turned the page from the spring ephemerals to summer as well.  Chicory was always the plant I associated with early summer when I was a kid, but here it'd more be Spiderwort.

Lupine was blooming nicely in a few places

And Columbines are hanging around still, though they start with the warbler peak.

Best. Flower name. Ever

Ladies and Gentlemen, 8th grade me is guest-writing this blog prior to a return to actual birds of interest next post I promise...

He'd like to present a fairly innocuous St. John's-wort looking plant, the yellow flowers on the dune...

What's so great about this?  Well, its name, drumroll please, is Hoary Puccoon.
Yes that's right, Hoary Puccoon.  I'm sorry, that name is hilarious.
Want a closer look?

 Because who wouldn't want to get up close and personal with ... Hoary Puccoon?  You have to inspect it carefully to ascertain it's not a sister Lithospermum species, the (I kid you not) Hairy Puccoon.  Because it'd just be embarrassing to confuse those two what with their (Litho = stone) spermum and all.

Notice the little jumping spider?  I don't have the first clue what it is, but how awesome would it be if it was a Hoary Puccoon specialist, living out its life cycle in the gentle embraces of ... Hoary Puccoon.  OK, I think even I've agreed that this is worn out.  The puccoon is native at least.

Because it's June, why not another spider pic (I'm quite certain I'm never going to type those words again even if I keep this blog going for a quarter century).  I'd be interested if anyone knows anything about its identity, I just called it a Watermelon Spider.

Reflection

Mostly of a Swamp Sparrow

Seems like I should have some deep thoughts to go along with a title like that, but I'm not sure they're going to be forthcoming.  It feels like spring is accelerating very rapidly and will suddenly be past us.  Enjoying moments is important.  I spent a decent amount of time today questing after bitterns/pelicans/longspurs/meadowlark recordings.  It would have been rewarding had I found one of those birds.  The less goal-directed serendipity of an unexpected Waterthrush, or the first Swampie song of the year was maybe more what I should have focused on.

Some of the woodland flowers have been spectacular this year.

One of these years I'm going to start at Warren Woods (where the above Spring Beauties and Trout Lilies were taken) and just stake out a morning lit patch and wait for a bird to pose next to one. 

Or maybe I'll photoshop in a White-throat.

This Bellwort is from today

Long hours for the next 3 days, we'll see how the woods have changed next time I'm out.

Warblers 2015

What are you lookin at?

Shutter clicks are close enough to a White-eyed Vireo's chick call that they sometimes show a decent amount of interest in the camera.  The unrelenting north winds of late April and early May really put a crimp on the mainly southern passerines.  Outside of this bird and the Kesling Yellow-throated's I struck out entirely on the rarer southern warblers and tanager.

 

I didn't have much more luck with the common migrants in terms of close birds.  This female Black-and-White was an exception.

I did a little better with some of the local breeders.  Hooded will forage very low down on their first couple days back before they're setting up territories.

This Blue-winged seemed territorial on a day with bright overcast, useful light for midday.

This is a Warbling Vireo

The posture that the camera froze it in gives it somewhat Philadelphia gestault.  The face isn't really contrasty enough though and the yellow is brighter along the side of the breast than it is where the throat meets the breast (plus we watched it singing).

 

No ID doubts with Scarlet Tanager

This bird was along one of the ridge trails above Floral, there seemed to be more migrants up there than along the low trail a lot of days.

 

This female BT Blue was along the main trail.

 She was shaking her plumage out after bathing, fluttering wings and tail.  It was super dark that morning and shot at a pretty slow shutter speed.  I'm going to say that it's an artistic blur.

A (somewhat late) Blue-headed Vireo we had on Birdathon.

Finally a Yellow Lady-slipper from Warren Dunes,

I'll be interested to see if they're back next year, I'd never seen them in Berrien before.

 





Empids

I'd mostly made the transition in my mind from birds to dragonflies (and had just texted that I'd pretty much given up on Yellow-bellied Flycatcher) when this bird appeared in front of me in the little park beside Hickory Creek by Ace Hardware.

I had my camera set for fast exposure in bright sun of (potentially flying) dragonflies so I wasn't prepared for a passerine in the shade.  It was a scramble to get anything workable of the surprise Yellow-bellied.  Given that they're pretty much the passerine migrant with the latest peak this isn't that late for one (I know Tim's had them into June), but with the bulk of the migrants north of us it was still a surprise.  Ace park is the best place I know of in the county for Wild Lupines.

Willow and Alder Flycatcher were calling there as well and while I was close to a Willow I couldn't get a pic of one.  This Willow teed up by the golf course though.

There were a few calling there.  I was mostly trying to catch dragonflies (probably a future post) when I heard this next one calling.  It seemed closer to Willow but the tone was much thinner, it honestly seemed somewhat intermediate between Willow and Alder to me. 

Finally a dunlin from the beach that would have fit a lot better in the last post.  There was a willet too at the base of the pier but pierwalkers flushed both birds with me 200 yards away.  The willet headed south, the dunlin landed close and worked its way even closer to me.

Spring Warbs, round 1

It's that time of year.  With foliage so far behind, I've got high hopes for warbler shots this year, though my schedule's not looking great honestly.

Here's a Yellow-throated Rhoda and I had a week or so ago in Warren Woods

Definitely my best pics of one.  Next up, hopefully Cerulean.

This morning I went into the river bottom behind the house.  I found one little pocket of birds.  It was mostly Palms,

but one Black-and-white and one Black-throated Green

 I missed an alternate Parula song, I was actually thinking BT Blue for a second when I saw the blue back with some white in the wings before it turned to show the yellow; you can never be disappointed with a parula though, even if it was quite as good as last years...

Finally a Prairie Trillium, overcast is actually better for photographing a lot of the flowers

Smiths before the rain

It was a pretty good sparrow day.  It started at Tiscornia where an odd call note drew Tim and me onto a flyover bird which he recognized pretty quickly as a lark sparrow (clicking through the view-finder no less).  I was having trouble making sense of the darkish tail with round white corners and the heavily contrasting malars setting off the breast feather tract that tapered
down to the central spot at first.  It landed distantly, too far for pics though with a digiscoping camera I might also have gotten ID-able images.  It stayed far "longer" than any prior Tiscornia Lark Sparrow; Rhoda was able to successfully "chase" the bird traveling all the way from the parking lot.

After Tim had to leave for work (can you say role-reversal) Rhoda and I did a south-county loop.  While Yellow-throated Warblers, Louisiana Waterthrush, Fish Grackles, and Wilson's Phalaropes were nice, the highlight by far was a small group of Smith's Longspurs at the expected location Tim's worked out along Buffalo.  There was a male and 2 females though I managed pics of only one of the females.

 

 

 

We'd have stayed longer for the male to come back but rain started up in earnest.

 

Earlier in the week some harriers put on a show at Tiscornia, none were adult males that day, this one I think is a first spring female based on the streaking along the breast.

 

Here's a montage of shorebirds from yesterday and today.

Upper left is 2 sanderling from this morning, certainly our earliest.  Upper right is Wilson's Phalarope from the Rocky Week pothole yesterday (behind the teal), lower right is another WIPH from the Buffalo Rd pond that's really overexposed and lower left is the pair of WIPH from 3 Oaks today.

 

Finally it isn't spring without flower pics, this is a nice clump of hepatica from Kesling.

 

 

 

Well??? We're waiting...

I have to admit, I didn't think it would be this hard to get quality pics in April, but lots of North winds have had me scuffling.

We had some decent looks at Yellow-throated Warbler at Kesling, definitely the best shots I've obtained of them, but still room for improvement.

There were good winds last night and I did have a Blackburnian Warbler over the driveway, unfortunately it was misting/light rain so I didn't pull the camera out.  I had close to 10 warbler species today but low light made it tough for shooting.

Earlier in the week some Blue-winged teal were hanging out in a local retention pond.  This was the first time I've seen blue-wings do anything beside swim around.  The males did some displaying, rocking their heads back and forth and giving a hoarse Daffy Duck like quack.  The males would fly at each other at times even though they were all paired up with females.

This is Celendine poppy, a fairly showy native that I've found in only 2 places in the county (there's surely more).  All the "celendine" around my house is the introduced stuff, much less impressive than thte real thing:

Since posting a 4-leaved trillium worked so well for me last time (see Sandpiper, Upland), here's another one:

nesting before the storm

It feels like I've been royally neglecting the blog; the northerly flow of wind on most of my birding days has led to some quiet mornings at Tiscornia. The flood of passerines hasn't even begun, but some of our locals are already nesting. This Carolina Wren in my yard made repeated trips to their nest in one of our eaves. They've tried nesting there before and have been flooded out, we'll see how they make out this year. I think the female is on eggs as I heard no babies when the male would return with prey items (here a moth with the wings beaten off).

The beach has been so quiet I was reduced to taking grackle photos the other day. I told myself I was just building up file photos for when the "tailed" grackle appears; I don't know if I believed myself.

Here's a White Trout Lily, I don't find them very often on this side of the state.

Finally, we all know what a 4 leaved clover brings, we'll see what 4 leaved Trillium will bring with SE winds (at last) forecast for the morning...