270.

As recently as a few years ago Tim and I considered 270 to be a nearly untouchable number for yearbirds in one county. At that time the record was in the mid 260's and 260 had only been reached a couple times. Well, that year Tim went ahead and reached 270, and has gone over that (actually way over that) in each successive year. Last year I ended at 268. Today we re-found the goshawk he photographed yesterday which in addition to being a county lifer was 270 for the year. It flew past us at Sarett displaying the heavily marked underparts, stovepipe tail, really broad secondaries, thick chest, and flight style really different from Coops. He managed a few shots of it as it disappeared through the trees, I just watched with bins. Unfortunately I don't even have any file photos of actual Goshawks, so will just pull out a few shots of Red-morph Goshawks, which are better known as Coops.

Here's a juvie red-morph gos from Tiscornia from the digiscoping days. Note the minimal eye stripe, lean Cooper's body, straight tail banding (Goshawks have irregularly edged bands), and terminal white tail edge.

Another red-morph from the dunes.

This one has the "hangman hood" which they sometimes exhibit (as described by Pete Dunne in Hawks in Flight). Note how on the Coop the belly streaking is narrow giving it a white-bellied look. The dark splotches on a legit Gos really stand out. This bird has the classic "Flying cross" wing shape of a Coop (though the tail is spread a little taking away from the complete effect).

200 for Tiscornia

I updated some of my spreadsheets last night and noticed that I was at 197 for my Tiscornia list. I thought there might be a possibility of the same bird being my 200th for Tiscornia and my 300th for Berrien. It turned out I wouldn't have to wait that long.

After trying below my house for Connecticut I headed for Tiscornia after dropping Hazel off at school. There wasn't any movement and the wind seemed very unlikely to force whimbrel onto the beach so we headed for the trees and fairly quickly I picked up a Black-billed Cuckoo. 198.

This is probably a second year bird given the retained buffiness on the throat and lack of any real color to the eyering. It was also a nice year bird which won't have to be dug out of Brown or Love Creek.

Next some warblers appeared, first a Canada, number 199,

then after a few redstarts, a Wilson's and a Magnolia, a female BT Blue for an even 200.

I guess the birding gods wanted me to stay at a nice round number since I never got on a female Connecticut that gave Tim a brief series of glimpses. Arrrgh. Ah well.

Two for Tiscornia

I pulled into Tiscornia this morning. The first thing I noticed was Tim's car in its expected location at the University of Tiscornia Official Counter "reserved" spot. The second thing I noticed was a mockingbird flying across the road. I hit the brakes, lowered the window, fired a sequence of frames and reached for the cell phone. Ten seconds later Tim appeared jogging off the side of dune, worked his way around, and ultimately pushed not one but two mockers back towards me. There's a decent chance this is the pair that was at Jean Kloch last year (or possibly offspring) dispersed by a large amount of brush clearing that's ongoing there at present.
To our knowledge, this is the first record of Mockingbird at Tiscornia.

We lakewatched for a bit without appreciating much in the way of movement and then walked the dunegrass to see what we could kick up. We stopped after a bit upon hearing some rustling in the grass. We expected a rodent or something; much to our surprise, this ran out...

Another bird new for the park to our knowledge. The bird would dart generally faster than our auto-focus, both of us achieved our best results by reverting back to manual focus, good to know for next time when it's a Yellow.

There wasn't much waterfowl movement, but the RB mergs that were close were courting. The female would call and the males would respond more loudly and exaggerate her movements.

The time lapse collage shows how the male on the right doesn't do the display and the female promptly chases him away. Kroodsma describes in The Singing Life of Birds how female cardinals choose mates based on how closely they listen to her and mimic the song fragments she initiates. I haven't really thought of females actively chasing away potential suitors however; most of the time you see the female just flying away. CW Townsend (apparently not Townsend's Warbler JK Townsend and I don't think Townsend's Shearwater CH Townsend) described this courtship behaviour in the Auk in 1911. He does describe the female at times chasing out at a male, but didn't make a big deal about it. I came across a figure from The Handbook of Waterfowl Behaviour online; it'd be nice to know what's described in the book itself (somehow I don't think I'm going to find it any library locally).

The hunted

I ended last year with 296 birds on my Berrien Life list putting me almost certainly on pace to hit 300 this year, at least a year earlier than I had expected after the impressive number of rarities which turned up last year.


Here's Number 1 on the list: ruffed grouse This is the first bird pic I ever took with the current camera I use, a bird that appeared under the feeders of my childhood home in Midland Co Christmas morning sometime early last decade. Per the current Berrien checklist it's the only "regularly occuring" species I'm missing, though is a rare breeder. "Regular" birds are defined as being seen in 9 out of 10 years (1995-2005). As I look back in the Field Notes, though, I see it was missed in 2005 and 2007, so the next time Jon revises the checklist, the grouse is going to get bumped out of regular...



Next are the "casual appearing" holes in the list, this being defined as 4 or more records, again, in the 10 year period of 1995-2005. There's 36 species in that category of which I've seen 29.

Missing are (in semi-phylogenetic order):


White pelican (photo from Ding Darling in Sanibel Fl) It feels like these get stealthed through the newspaper by a fisherman in the rivermouth every May, unreported until too late on the listserv. Looking back at the Field Notes, it looks like 3 Apr records and 2 from May in the last decade, usually from one of the big inland lakes (Chapin or less commonly Paw Paw).

Snowy egret (one of at least 2 I saw in Washtenaw)

I count 4 records in the last decade, 3 from May and one from April, clearly this bird will probably teeter between casual and accidental depending on what 10 year span you choose. None of the records have been while I've lived in the county.

Upland Sandpiper (photo from Muskegon - I saw 2 in Allegan that day too)

I looked hard for one of these last April in the South County without success. As I look back through the Field Notes, I see one from April, one from May, 3 from July, 1 or 2 from August, and one record from September. Clearly I need to move my target period. I wonder if the birds overfly us on the last legs of their migration northward whereas on the southbound migration they're just getting started and probably not going that far.

Western Kingbird is one of my state bugaboos, this one's probably from Colorado.

I see 3 records in the last 10 years or so, 2 from May and one from August, so this is another one that walks the line between casual and accidental. If memory serves me, Kip still needs Western Kingbird too.

Yellow-headed Blackbird (a crappy photo from Pte Mouillee):

This bird has had an odd distribution in the county with 5 records in 2003, 5 records in 2005, and I think 2 or maybe 3 in the rest of the decade. May is the most common month.

The other 2 birds currently listed as casual that I need are Sabine's Gull (would be a lifer) and Goshawk (which is quite get-able if a person can hit the hawkwatch dune with a good SE wind in March or NE wind in late October/early November).

There's a few others that are currently rated accidental on the checklist but will probably get down-graded to casual with the next revision that I need. This group would likely include Trumpeter Swan and Little Blue Heron (Lil Blue along with Black-backed Woodpecker are probably the "easiest" Michigan birds missing from my state list).

I'm going to try to apply myself to find the grouse drumming next month on sunny February days and add it to my owling nights as well. Hopefully my schedule will permit me to hit the dunes on the right day for a goshawk. As for what 300 will be, we shall see...

105 on a bike

Well, I didn't really set out to put a big number up in one day on a bike but it worked out that way on Tuesday. I would have been better off, however, with a smaller number had it included a Kentucky warbler.

After a series of days spent working into the wee hours of the morning at work getting frustrated at not being able to get out in the peak migration when I arrived home at 3 am I had 2 choices, one was to go to bed and roll out of bed on my day off at 11am, or I could just start biking. Sleep is for the weak right? After repairing a couple of bike lights, I headed south, picking up sora and sedge wren not far from the house and hearing woodcock and horned larks at various points. The larks were singing a much longer clearer song than the thin short song they sing during the day. Vesper sparrows were starting up pretty well as well as I biked down through Weesaw into Galien. After checking a few flooded fields along US12 in the pre-dawn finding only lesser yellowlegs and solitaries, I arrived at the Avery Rd flooding whose holding of a marbled godwit and long-billed dowitchers for a few days spurred this insanity. Those 2 birds were gone however (DOH!). There were good numbers of birds on the pond, again mostly the lessers and solitaries, but one greater was obvious in the deeper water. Two semipalmated plovers were new for the year and a pheasant called as well (a bird I totally should have had by now). I continued on to 3 Oaks where a group of about a dozen dunlin and a purple martin were the main new additions.

I continued on to Forest Lawn Rd where cerulean warblers were practically the dominant song (grrrr... after not being able to find a single bird a week ago). I started to doubt myself but fortunately one started singing quite close which was easy to track down in the still very thin canopy. One parula called and a white-eyed vireo sang nearly continuously, saving me the trip down a fairly dangerous dirt hill on Lakeside. The casino has at least doubled the traffic on the road and it took me a while to finally hear a yellow-throated warbler in this, one of the only sites in Michigan where they are regular. I was still lacking Louisiana waterthrush but decided to continue on as I can get it considerably closer to my house and decided to get to the New Buffalo Marsh in hopes of hearing something interesting there. It was too warm, however, and I added little. The lakefront was very quiet, perfectly calm and I could see waterfowl on the lake a LONG ways away, which I suspect were all loons and cormorants though only one of each were close enough to be certain.

I then headed up to Floral Lane, which is really where I should have started since the big shorebirds were gone at Avery Rd but Kentucky warblers have been seen there the last few days at Floral, regular overshoots but not breeders. The other southern warblers I can get later in the spring (though of course it was nice to get them out of the way). There were good numbers of warblers there, most notably 3 golden-winged's, as well as another white-eyed vireo (which I would happily trade at this point for a blue-headed), but I was unable to find a Kentucky. I spent an hour and a half there resting my legs and looking, but in the end gave up (a bank thermometer read 77 degrees, probably not ideal warbler weather).

When I added it up once finally home I found I had tallied some 105 birds, 35 of which were new for the Bigby list over the 60+ miles biking. My eyes were by far the sorest body part between the wind (mostly created by the bike as it was calm going south and a tailwind on the way back (thank goodness, otherwise I might still be out there)), the pollen, and dusty roads. Somewhere along the way some bird was Total Township Tick #1500 for the county as well. At any rate, I should be on a pace to go over 200 for the Bigby year assuming catastrophe doesn't strike...

If I'd REALLY planned stuff/foreseen the future, I would have biked for the Kentucky in the morning allowing me to chase the neotrop corm (not for the Bigby year) in the afternoon before coming over to Ann Arbor where I am now for a conference. Oh well. Cormorants are ugly anyway. There's 2 birds over here that would be state birds for me, Bell's vireo and lark sparrow in adjoining counties but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to go after them ... may have to wait to find them in Berrien.