Suburban Birdwatching Assault Missions

[QuikSand]

Suburban Birdwatching Assault Missions

No, this is not some new participatory shoot-em-up combat mission game...

Okay, among my biggest faults is my need to be entertained fairly constantly. I can’t go out and just shoot baskets at the local court, I need to manufacture some sort of contest for myself… that sort of thing. Need to have a focus.

This time of year, I usually would be spending a good deal of time out taking bird walks, but the new addition to our family has made my time a bit more scarce. I’ve been out a few times during the last few weeks (the great spring migration, just wrapping up) and I’m basically done with that. But it has whetted my appetite for birding, so I’m improvising using the chances that I do have.

The result – take the baby for a nice little walk in the neighborhood, and while I’m out, I’ll try to break the record for the number of bird species I can confirm while I’m walking in the neighborhood. It’s competition. Demented and sad, but competition.


To demonstrate the degree of enthusiasm my beloved daughter brings to this adventure, I present to you my team co-captain, Elisa Kay:



With that appropriate degree of endorsement, we’re now ready to set the stage… we’ll drop back a few days to create the scene.

[QuikSand]

Where Are We? What Are We Doing?

I live in a typical, even dreadfully typical, suburban community in Maryland – in the general strip between Washington DC and Baltimore. Our neighborhood is fairly quiet, and adjacent to a modest natural area, so it’s not completely impervious surfaces. From our yard and deck, we have a view of a small woodland area, and occasionally see interesting birds there. But for the most part, it’s the usual run of feeder birds and “urban” stuff that just happen to like the habitat of residential living areas like ours.

So, for the walks, I have little hopes that we’ll see lots of exciting birds, but I’ll create the challenge as best I can. We (usually Mrs. Q, little Q, and yours truly) have gone out for a neighborhood jaunt around sundown probably ten or fifteen times this spring, and usually the bird species count would be in the five to eight range – we made it a goal to try to spot ten species in a day, hitting that target only occasionally.

Now that the spring migration is underway (and actually mostly concluding) we have a broader range of possible birds. Here’s a list of things that we’d expect to see in the neighborhood over time and ordinary conditions:


Urban Birds

European Starling
House Sparrow
Common Grackle
American Robin
American Crow
Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds

Common Goldfinch
House Finch
Northern Cardinal
Northern Mockingbird
Ruby Throated Hummingbird

Nearby Woodland Birds

Wood Thrush
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Eastern Towhee

Flyover Birds

Great Blue Heron
Turkey Vulture
Red-Tailed Hawk
Chimney Swift


Not really an exhaustive list, but off the top of my head – that’s pretty much the universe that we’d expect to be drawing from. I’m not going out on these walks “armed” like I might be for a serious birding venture – no field glasses, no books, just my naked eyes and my own mad birding skillz.

Incidentally, I don’t know of anyone on the walk circuit who has a hummingbird feeder that’s visible – so while they can be fairly common at tended feeders, seeing one on this circuit would be a surprise.

[QuikSand]

Wednesday, May 31

Really nothing all that exciting, just a surprisingly good showing from the relatively expected list. So, with that, I will spare you the gory details, and offer the bounty from the best night we’ve had before this week:

Official Checklist:

Urban Birds - European Starling, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, American Robin, American Crow,
Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds - Common Goldfinch, Northern Cardinal, Northern Mockingbird

Common Flyover Birds - Great Blue Heron, Turkey Vulture, Chimney Swift

Nothing there individually very exciting, but most everything that we see more often than not was in view that night, so we got to 12. We’ve set the bar.

[QuikSand]

Monday, June 5

Okay, this week. Baby is enthused. Mom is not. It will be a two-man venture, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Walking across the open area toward the schoolyard that we circle during our usual walk, we make a nice spotting. Actually, it’s a loud, clear call from the nearby woods:

tiny MP3 of Bird Call

This bird is a frequent caller from woodland edges across the Eastern US, and one we hear regularly from our yard. It’s an Eastern Wood-Pewee, a fairly nondescript member of the flycatcher family. One of many, many birds more or less name for their call sound, the Pewee is a great start for birders trying to start with the task of “birding by ear.” Very distinct call, pee-weeeee, and they often perch out in the open enough to be seen once you identify the source of the call.



Thus is the case here – our pewee was right at the top of a nearby tree, very visible (even without field glasses) in silhouette against the dimming skies. Check the box, our most interesting bird of the evening. I put it on the list of ones we expect to see sometimes, but getting this good a look (rather than just hearing one in the distance) will be a rarity.


Along a residential roadway on the way back toward our house, I heard a very clear call of a Mockingbird. Mockingbirds are mimics – they pick up the call of other birds that they hear, and imitate them – often in rapid succession. This guy was in full display, quickly rotating through a pretty impressive variety of calls – for me, I
it was a little bit like having a “lightning round” of calls to identify – song sparrow, red-winged blackbird, starling, cardinal, and so forth. The mockingbird generally makes each call five or six times, and then suddenly shifts gears to another call. This guy was on his game, every call was very, very sharp.



Enough so that as I walked past him, and started looking forward again, I was alarmed to hear a Killdeer calling from behind me. The killdeer isn’t a rare bird, but it’s not one that I’m going to see regularly around here – so I was excited to add it to the list for today. Alas, I looked toward the killdeer cal just as the mockingbird rotated past that imitation and on to his next performance of a goldfinch. Fool me once…


Official Checklist:

Urban Birds - European Starling, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, American Robin, American Crow, Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds - Common Goldfinch, Northern Cardinal, Northern Mockingbird

Nearby Woodland Birds - Eastern Wood-Pewee

Flyover Birds - Great Blue Heron, Turkey Vulture

Not a bad day – but our count of 12 is only good enough to tie the record for the year. A better assortment, and the pewee made it a better overall experience, but in terms of raw numbers, you can’t set your goal to land right on Bob Beamon’s line, right? We’ll keep striving.

[flere-imsaho]

Fascinating. Sadly I only have a limited knowlege of bird species.

[Kodos]

No chickadees, flickers, red-wing blackbirds, woodpeckers?

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Kodos

No chickadees, flickers, red-wing blackbirds, woodpeckers?

All are occasionals in this area... actualy, I could have included chickadess and flickers on my list of "expected" birds. In fact, we might see one of those any minute now...

(But Red-winged Blackbirds are not all that regular right in our area, for whatever reason)

[QuikSand]

Tuesday, June 6

Another venture, another shot at the record. I hope you’re thrilled. This is what good dynasty threads are all about – deep intrigue, suspense, the whole bit.

Anyway, our three-member team is off with aplomb for an extended walk – mom wants to stretch the legs a bit, and Dad is eyeing bird #13 already, and is plotting ways to walk closer to the woodland edges by the schoolyard, in hopes of catching some oddball bird or two out there. Always scheming.


So, we go out… and it’s the usual array early on. Goldfinches fly by – in their characteristic bouncy flight – but we expect to see them, as there are a number of feeders in the area to attract them (with thistle seed). Pretty bright yellow birds – ones we’d appreciate more if they weren’t on our deck every day.

We get another nice flyover from a Great Blue Heron, which is nice. There’s no bird that conjures up the link to dinosaurs better than the Great Blue… they just look like a lost relic of some sort, like the toy pterodactyl that Dr. Walken was flying around on his little island in War Games.



Anyway, as we are at about the far end of our walk, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be any sort of record day. Haven’t even seen a crow yet, and a few other regulars have not shown, either. Numbers won’t be there, disappointing.

We do, however, see one bird that I failed to put onto my original lists above, but I should have. The Carolina Chickadee is another bird that frequents feeders, but also enjoys light woodlands. We saw a couple of them twittering right over our walkway in some light woodsy area. Not an unusual bird, and really belongs on the “expected” list – I just forgot up until this writing that we had seen them.



Chickadees are nice little birds – we’re about 100 miles or so south of the “line” that fairly decisively splits the eastern populations into two distinct species, the Carolina and Black-Capped Chickadees. They are, to my eye, impossible to differentiate by sight, but their calls supposedly have some differences… and serious birders make a very firm point to keep them separate. Where I live, I just consult the map – we’re south of the line, so all we get are Carolinas. Back home in Ohio, they’re all Black-Cappeds. Simple.


We approach a tree overhanging the sidewalk, and I suddenly see a quick flash of brilliant red. Cardinal is the obvious guess… but no, even brighter red than that. Fortunately, the bird quickly lands right ahead of us, in plain sight. This will be the first addition to the sightings list that qualifies as an “oddball” – really not a bird that I’d expect to see along the way at all.



The brilliant and beautiful male Scarlet Tanager! This is a bird that I see fairly regularly this time of year when out on dedicated bird walks, in fairly secluded areas … but this is the first time I have seen one anywhere like this setting. They do, I’m told, come to feeders sometimes – usually attracted by fruit rather than seeds – but most often to fairly secluded places near woodlands, their preferred habitat. Cardinals are lovely birds, but the tanager is by far the more beautiful red (shading very slightly toward orange, even). It’s one of those birds that basically define its color… in the perfect color palette, I think you’d take your “scarlet” right from the tanager and define that as the absolute example.

So, Mrs. Q and I watch the bird for a minute as it dips around a bit in the front lawn tree of some house, and then it scurries away. Great sighting, really. Won’t be a big total, but that was a pretty great look at a beautiful bird – one that Mrs. Q has never seen from that close before. She’s not all that interested in birding, but a strikingly beautiful bird like him is certainly one to get even a casual observer to take notice. She may even gain some enthusiasm for my march toward a new record sighting total…

For the night… no record, but one great bird.

Official Checklist:

Urban Birds - European Starling, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, American Robin, Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds - Common Goldfinch, Northern Cardinal

Nearby Woodland Birds – Carolina Chickadee

Flyover Birds - Great Blue Heron

Unexpected – Scarlet Tanager


A nice evening with 10 birds. And one brilliant scarlet superstar.

[Kodos]

Nice. I'm not sure I've seen a scarlet tanager, although when I was a kid, my family went on frequent birdwalks in parks, so I've probably just forgotten. Sadly, I haven't really kept up on birding as an adult, partly because my wife is not a big outdoors person. But with my son in the picture now, I can see myself getting back into it again to help him appreciate nature. It was always fun feeding chickadees out of our hands. Maybe I can even get the wife to come along because of Noah.

I remember on one of the walks, we ran into the spectacle of a rat snake slithering up a tree toward a birds nest (I think they were some variety of woodpeckers - it was a long time ago). The parents were frantically diving at the snake to try and stop it, but it ended badly for them as the snake eventually made its way to the nest. It was like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom playing out right in front of us.

Good luck in your continued bird exploits -- I hope you crush the record!

[oliegirl]

Cool thread QS, but less bird pictures and more pictures of your cute baby! Preferably of her awake and making funny faces

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by oliegirl

Cool thread QS, but less bird pictures and more pictures of your cute baby! Preferably of her awake and making funny faces

Anything for you, dear.



I'm a pushover, anyway.

[QuikSand]

Tuesday, June 13

After a little time off (out of town a few days, bus to Belmont one day, recover from Belmont bus the next day, you know the idea) we are back at it Tuesday evening. Mom is off on a “mommy time” endeavor, and Dad and Elisa are ready to take on the avian world once again. She expresses her usual degree of enthusiasm for the venture… and I’m a little bit distracted as we start off on our walk.

Anyway… things start out in the usual fashion. Quickly we spot most of the familiar “urban” birds from the likely list – house sparrows, starlings and robins in the yards, a grackle or two in the nearby trees, and a few cooing mourning doves on gutter edges. Lovely birding experience.

As we walk over toward the narrow strip of trees separating our neighborhood from the nearby schoolyard, I notice the same Eastern Wood-Pewee in the same spot as the last time I saw him… calling out again, and very visible. Looks like he’s a regular, and since he’s an aggressive evening caller, an easy addition to our list for tonight. As I walk past a home with a few feeders in its backyard, we add a cardinal to the list – nothing too special so far, but a pretty bird regardless.

In the schoolyard, we see a mockingbird – he’s not making any calls, but his bright white elbow patches make him east to differentiate from the other robins and starlings who are milling about on the grounds. I check the various black birds looking for the bright red epaulets of the Red-Winged Blackbird, but instead we have only starlings and grackles present… no chance there to add one more quick species, alas.

Walking along the street where we saw the Scarlet Tanager last week, I notice a bird…then a pair… fairly high up in a tree overhead. The male is calling, and I don’t completely place the call – it’s fairly robin-like, but this bird definitely does not have the shape of a robin. I am without field glasses, and my angle gives me basically just a silhouette anyway, so I can’t really make out any good features of the bird. I watch for a couple minutes, and then the pair both fly directly away from us – yielding no good identifying clues. Given the call and the overall shape, I’m guessing that they might have been a pair of Summer Tanager, a close relative of the brilliant bird we saw last week in this same area:



The Summer Tanager doesn’t have quite the brilliant scarlet of the other species, but is quite beautiful in his own right. His call is often described as being like a “robin with a sore throat” – and that isn’t a terrible description for the call that I heard overhead.

MP3 of Summer Tanager call

It’s an ongoing dilemma for serious birders to decide at what point they actually “confirm” a bird seen or heard in the field, generally a decision left to the birder. While I’m not really taking this little adventure seriously, nor is this bird so unusual that the identification would be frought with some kind of controversy, I decide that I have to leave this bird as an uncertain sighting. Probably a tanager, but I’m just not familiar enough with the call to say it with certainty – and by my own ethics, that merits a question mark, rather than a period.

As an aside -- Mrs. Q and I have had extended discussion about this general subject – with her generally taking the position that a bird only heard but not seen could never be placed onto a “confirmed” list. I side with the overwhelming majority of birding organizations, subscribing to the “judgment of the birder” as the best indicator – if I’m in the field one evening on a bird walk, and I heard the call of a Whip-poor-will (a fairly nocturnal ground bird with a loud, very distinct call, which is very rarely mobile enough to be spotted) – I’m counting it on my list for that day, even if (like almost always) I only have a decent idea where it is, and have zero chance to actually see the bird. To me, that’s a reasonable standard – if your goal is to positively identify species in the field, I’m every bit as secure about that Whip-poor-will as I might have been about the Cooper’s Hawk that flashed right past us for about two seconds on the woodland trail. If I am comfortable based on what I saw or heard, I’ll count them… but I also have no shame in occasionally listing a bird with a question mark, or even just noting a family/genus name but not the actual species, if that’s the best I could do based on sight.


So, on we go … as I’m looking up at the would-be tanager, we spot one of our overhead birds, the Chimney Swift. This is another bird that warms up to the urban environment – they like open-air settings, and really do nest in chimneys sometimes, so they are a fairly common sight out here.



The swift is a pretty tiny bird that makes squeaky noises as it darts around overhead – their behavior is almost bat-like. Some say that it looks like the bird has no tail and “steers” itself just with its wings – not quite true, but the body is definitely a sort of cigar-shape. Count it. That gets us to nine species for the day, not counting the unidentified birds.

Walking along the roadway, we pass a house with a finch feeder in its front year – it was empty of seed on our last trip, but is full today, and has one faithful bright yellow goldfinch perched there, checking off one more expected feeder bird for us. A little later, we tally species #11 as we see a House Finch in a yard, mixed in with the House Sparrows milling around. The unidentified bird – who was most definitely something not on our list from today, even if it wasn’t a tanager – is now looming larger, like a missed extra point.

On our last stretch of the walk home, I’m looking overhead for an errant heron or hawk, the sort of thing we see fairly often along these walks. One bird gets us 12, two gets us a record. However, we turn the corner and head for home sitting right on 11 species – so no worries about breaking our record of 12, at least.

Until…there’s a quick flash and an odd sound, as a bird flied over us and into the nearby woods.



It’s a flicker – in the woodpecker family, but a little more commonly seen in settings like this. Nice little bird, we don’t see them all the time here, but it probably does belong on my list of what we’d expect to see sometimes. So, we land at home a moment later with 12 birds on the list, and one that got away. Tying our record once again.


Official Checklist:

Urban Birds - European Starling, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, American Robin, Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds - Common Goldfinch, House Finch, Northern Cardinal

Nearby Woodland Birds – Eastern Wood-Pewee, Northern Mockingbird, Northern Flicker

Flyover Birds – Chimney Swift

Unexpected – unidentified pair, possible Summer Tanager (?)


* sigh *

[Runtheball]

I'm hooked!

And I'm motivated to follow your example. My wife (and 10 month old son) and I took our first evening walk through our new neighborhood yesterday. We just relocated to the outskirts of Atlanta from San Diego. We were renting here for a few months, and just moved into our home about 10 days ago. We're in a great residential neighborhood with moderately large lots and mature trees on virtually every property. It borders on a swampy forested area. Should have good success birding. When we drove through this neighborhood we were both struck by the cardinals flying around, and all the birds singing everywhere...that was one of the factors that made us decide on this neighborhood over others.

I worked as a wildlife biologist in my first career (which I'm not sure has totally ended yet, but the wildlife here is vastly different from that in the southwest, and I'm not even looking for work as a biologist here). I used to get paid to go birding, but never really looked at it as a hobby. But I love your idea, and think this will provide a little added excitement to our evening walks.

[QuikSand]

Glad you're interested... and I'd welcome contributions from a bit farther south. Your breadth of summer residents probably isn't as wide as ours is here, but we'll certainly have a lot of birds in common, especially in this sort of limited environment.

[SFL Cat]

One cool thing about living in South Florida is waking up in the morning and seeing these birds in your front yard.



On the downside (especially this year it seems), you've also gotta watch out for these guys, especially if you live near water.



Makes you think twice about sending your five-year old outside to play by the lake.

[Wolfpack]

Interesting. I notice birds, but I don't really analyze who or what they are, usually. I do recognize baseball teams outside my window (Orioles, Blue Jays, Cardinals) all the time, but that's about as extensive as I get in terms of knowing one bird from another. Well, those, plus crows, red-wing blackbirds, turkey vultures, ducks, Canadian geese, swans, and a few others that are terribly obvious.

[QuikSand]

Tuesday, June 20

So, last night we get out for another little jaunt around the neighborhood. I had to negotiate the pass with Mrs. Q, who fancied some idea about driving to a nearby park instead – I HAVE A RECORD TO BREAK OVER HERE!

Anyway, I have expectations of a good night, as we had storms last evening, and a wetter environment generally spurs bird activity. We head out, baby in her roller, and dad with his game face on.


Quickly, we have a conundrum – but one I basically had settled in advance. When in a more wide-open birding setting, it’s perfectly fine to identify birds in the field by their calls – as long as you are confident in the identification, that is considered perfectly appropriate. But for this little exercise, it seems unfair to “count” a bird heard from far away – this is about seeing birds in the neighborhood, not hearing the birds from somewhere within the nearby woodlands. So, the beautiful call of the nearby Wood Thrush gets me to look quickly for him, just in case he’s right out in sight… but when there’s no bird to see (and it’s pretty clear he’s calling from back within the adjoining woodland area) I write him off. Alas.


Anyway, while things are a bit quiet initially (in a literal sense – just not much birdsong around) we do manage to pick up many of the usual suspects in the opening stages of our suburban path – we see starlings and finches and mourning doves in the first few minutes, nothing too exciting. We walk by the pewee tree, but he’s not there tonight – might be a bad omen.

Out into the schoolyard, we pick up robins and a mockingbird, and our count is doing okay, par for the course. I decide to walk around the front of the school rather than the back, and this turns out to be a pleasant surprise –
as we walk there, I am surprised by a flash of white underbelly on a bird carrying a worm (or similar) in its mouth:



It’s an Eastern Phoebe, a nice bird, another member of the same flycatcher family as the Pewee. Phoebes are notorious for building nests on man-made structures – under bridges especially, but also on transoms and in gutters, and the like. With a worm in her mouth, this was probably a nesting parent taking food back to hatchlings, so this might be a bird I can see more regularly by walking this way. Anyway – nice spot, and a new bird for the universe of possibles on these walks, I guess.


Walking across the schoolyard to the adjoining neighborhood, I always look overhead to check for hawks, vultures, herons, and other flyover birds. Tonight, we had an interesting sight – a small group of three Chimney Swifts (tiny, tiny birds) who are mobbing a crow (much, much larger). This is a fairly common behavior among birds – usually among those who are concerned for their territory, but very often involving a small bird aggressively harassing a much larger bird. It’s odd to watch – the crow is easily ten times as big as the three swifts put together, but they are easily getting the best of him. Anyway – that’s two more species to add to today’s list.


As I get out to the far point of the walk, I take stock for the day, and am sure that I stand at 11 species of birds. What’s left to be easily seen? Grackles – the loud blackbirds that I usually see at least in flyover, are not on my list yet. And I have yet to see any flyover birds other than the swifts. So I’ll be looking up, hoping to spot a new addition to get us to twelve.

Grackle! After a minute or so, three grackles fly over and land on a nearby roof – there’s one urban bird that rarely inspires must enthusiasm from a birdwatcher, but under these “house rules” (you know me) it’s another check mark – and we have tied the neighborhood record at this point, and I still have half the walk to go.

Anyway… as we wander along, I do hear another distant bird from the nearby woods – a Carolina Wren. It’s clearly not close enough to be seen, so this one will also stay off the official list, but that’s okay. I contemplate stopping to look for a while, but think about the spirit of this little game – this isn’t about real birding, it’s about counting the birds I see on the neighborhood walk. Stopping and standing and investigating isn’t what I do on a normal walk (well, it might be what I do, but not a normal person) so it doesn’t seem fair to crane my neck for ten minutes just because that would be bird thirteen. I move on.


On the way back, it seems our walk has been going briskly, so I walk back across the school grounds on the way home. The fact that this will take us past the pewee tree for one more shot at him has no bearing on this decision, I’m sure.

As we break through the woodland edge separating the school ground form our neighborhood, there’s a flash in front of me – a bright whit tail spot.



Flicker!

(I tried to find a good pic that reveals the white patch – it’s very visible in flight, but not so much when perched for a picture)

Anyway – I even see two more flickers as I walk through this 50-foot stretch off woods, but that’s most definitely our 13th bird for today. A new record!

The rest of the walk home is pretty uneventful – no pewee, no overhead birds, and nothing new to add to the list for tonight. But at least we have raised the bar. I still think it’s possible to do better… but 13 it is.


Official Checklist:

Urban Birds - European Starling, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, American Robin, Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds - Common Goldfinch, House Finch, Northern Cardinal

Nearby Woodland Birds – Northern Mockingbird, Eastern Phoebe, Northern Flicker

Flyover Birds – Chimney Swift, American Crow

[QuikSand]

Wednesday, June 21

We’re ready for a serious walk – the whole team is raring to go. Mrs. Q announces a last-minute equipment change, though (you horseplayers will know how unsettling this can be) as she indicates she wants to use the Baby Bjorn rather than the usual jogging stroller. So – this might limit our ability to really be out for too long – our usual 40-50 minute neighborhood walk might get shortened a bit. But I am unfazed, and remain focused on the task at hand.


Early in the walk, things are looking good – we see several of the usuals, in quick succession. Even before we get out of our immediate neighborhood, I hear a “different” bird call, coming from a nearby house/yard. Before long, a Song Sparrow perches on the corner of the house’s roof – in plain view.



The Song Sparrow is a pretty widespread bird, but not one that spends a whole lot of time in truly urban settings – they aren’t “junk birds” like the ubiquitous House Sparrow, so they aren’t seen all that often like here. I hear their call pretty frequently in the nearby woods or fields, but the sighting is unusual. Good species to add for this setting.


We walk by the pewee tree, which is again empty. Disappointing, I was hoping he’d be a fairly regular sight, but these last two visits, I have neither heard nor seen him around.


We get over near the school, and I suggest we walk around front again – where I saw the Phoebe last time. I am guessing she’s nesting nearby, so I expect we might se her again. Bingo! A flash of white breast flits by, and we watch mother phoebe darting from tree to tree, presumably looking for food. I still think she’s nesting nearby, but she’s more likely to actually have located the nest in some man-made niche rather than in one of these trees… but this is clearly her territory.


On top of the school’s roof, there’s a flutter of feathers – sounding kinda like a mourning dove (one of the urban birds we see nearly every walk) but this time it’s the related Rock Pigeon – the standard “pigeon” familiar in urban environments, but one that we don’t get often here in the suburban setting. Not a terribly exciting bird to see, but it’s one more to add to our list for the evening. If this is about counting – then seeing the Song Sparrow, Phoebe, and Rock Pigeon is a good sign for getting to a pretty good number tonight, as all three are fairly unusual sightings here. If we can just fill in with most of the regulars, we’ll be in great shape.


We continue the walk, taking a slightly different path that I usually do, but manage to see a mockingbird, a flicker, and a chickadee in the thin wooded areas – all nice songbirds, and all good additions to our list. We’re sitting at 12 species, and there are a number of common residents we haven’t even seen yet – including a cardinal, which is practically a slam dunk.

Elisa is very, very excited about the evening’s bird count, and expresses this enthusiasm in her usual fashion:



We get our cardinal as we are turning back toward home, but with half the walk left to do, we’ll surely find a goldfinch…or a chimney swift… or a crow. It’s a can’t miss, and we’ll surely hit our target of 14 species.

Time passes. . .

Unbelievable. A flash of yellow, please, at anyone’s feeder? One little twittering flyer overhead? Anywhere?

As we get close to home, it’s clear – this will be a disappointing evening, that we tied our record count, but somehow managed to miss a number of pretty common species we see most trips. So, we even peek toward our own thistle seed feeder on the way back… and even there, we are disappointed (there are goldfinches there nearly all the time, but not right now).

13 it is.


Official Checklist:

Urban Birds - European Starling, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, American Robin, Mourning Dove, Rock Pigeon

Feeder Birds - House Finch, Northern Cardinal

Nearby Woodland Birds – Song Sparrow, Northern Mockingbird, Eastern Phoebe, Northern Flicker, Carolina Chickadee

Flyover Birds – nada

[QuikSand]

Thursday, June 22

I yielded to Mrs. Q’s plea to do something other than “the walk” so we drove to the nearby park instead. Nothing to report on the bird front… just a baby outing, really. Elisa, of course, took to the swings like she’d been doing this her whole life:



Check in soon, as Friday night’s plan is for an endur-o-rama long walk around the neighborhood… might not qualify for the birding contest per se, but we’ll offer an update anyway.

[Kodos]

I actually found myself looking for birds on my walk with Noah the other day. No notepad, and not nearly as much bird expertise, but it was still fun. We got nowhere near 13 though. Your record is safe for now.

[QuikSand]

Friday, June 23

Well, this was a little below expectations – the planned “long walk” degraded a bit to a pretty ordinary walk as we get a later-than-usual start, and it was clear early on that the birds were not really co-operating. So it goes.

No extensive details, other than two notes:

-We did see a song sparrow again – that’s twice in a row, after it being completely absent from the spotted lit up until now. I’m not sure if I’m just more open to looking closely when I hear one (which isn’t that uncommon) or if we’ve just gotten lucky – but it’s now a bird that has to appear on the “watch for” list.

-We did add one new species to the repertoire – overhead, I’m looking for any of the various flyover birds, and in the schoolyard where I have been pretty regularly seeing Chimney Swifts, we instead spot a few Barn Swallows instead tonight.



Nice little birds – swallows are so named largely because of their behavior. They are insect-eaters, and during the right time of day, they basically fly around “buggy” areas with their mouths open, seeking to fill up. Barn Swallows are indeed known for nesting in barns and other man-made structures, and are a fairly common site in a variety of open settings and near water. I don’t think we’d be too likely to see them often in a purely residential setting, but this open area adjacent to a school (playground, ballfield, etc.) is a pretty decent site for them, I guess. Coming out a little later in the evening (approaching dusk) probably ups the bug quotient, too.


So, no formal checklist – I think we ended up with 10 or 11 species, but I failed to jot them down, seeing that this wasn’t a particularly good night. But the swallows are another one to add to our watch list.

[QuikSand]

Saturday, June 24

So, after a day of errands and family stuff, we manage to get out for a fairly quick walk – Mrs. Q has baby in the bjorn again, so this will be fairly quick. But it’s a pleasant evening, and the setting is pretty good to spot some birds.

Mrs. Q is unusually on board – she is out looking right away and spots several of the usual suspects, including a goldfinch, which has eluded me/us in several recent trips. So, we’re off to a solid start. We walk by the pewee tree, and despite being unusually silent, he’s there right on cue. Great.

We walk by the school, and see a few more of our usuals, including just one chimney swift overhead. We also hear a killdeer from behind us – but I won’t be fooled again, and when he makes another call right afterward, we revise that to mockingbird and move on. By the time we cross the schoolyard, we have a pretty good list going, including seeing a song sparrow for the third straight trip.


As we walk through a path splitting two homes adjacent to the schoolyard (into the next neighborhood over from ours) there are a couple of feeders, that sometimes attract good birds. As we walk by them, there’s a very loud chatter as a bird buzzes right in front of us…



A Gray Catbird! Again, not a terribly unusual species – I see them pretty regularly around here when out in the field – but not one that we see that much in this sort of setting. He’s agitated about something (possibly us, but I don’t think so) and makes quite a racket as he flashes in front of us.

The catbird is ordinarily a mimic, in the same family as the mockingbird. However, by all accounts, catbirds lack the true artistry of the mockingbird’s renderings, engaging instead in a series of semi-mimic calls resembling other bird calls, and generally interspersed with a variety of odd whistles and even a very cat-like meow that’s a dead giveaway (and, obviously, the inspiration for the common name).

On an organized bird walk, no big deal. Here in suburbia, a fairly pleasant surprise. Here on our attempt to break our record, this is a huge sighting – another bird that we didn’t expect to see! On a night when we have most of our regulars accounted for, this might be meaningful.


Mrs. Q asks for a count. I go through it mentally – and realize that we’re at 12 species already. We have yet to see a grackle – that’s probably our easiest bird left to tie the record of 13. Past that, I speculate, we probably need an overhead bird – a crow, a hawk, a heron, or something of the sort. Last night, we saw barn swallows, but that was a bit later in the evening – but they remain possible. We have options.


We round through the second neighborhood, and can’t pick up any new birds, not even a grackle. I start to think back to some earlier “heard birds” including a Carolina Wren and a Wood Thrush, and wonder if we can weave back in that direction – but mom’s carrying the baby in her pouch, and that’s not really fair. We’ll need to just earn it on the way home.


We are traversing the parking lot in front of the neighborhood pool, and I spot a bird in a treetop. I see it only in silhouette, but it looks like a flycatcher to me (same family as the Pewee and Phoebe we have seen sometimes). A phoebe would be an addition to our list tonight. This bird sits regally atop the tree, but I simply can’t make it out with specificity. My best guess is that it was another Pewee, though it might have been a Kingbird instead. We’ll never know – he gets away as we approach the tree’s base. Good news is, though, that two grackles land in the tree as we’re watching the unknown bird – so we’ve hit 13 again.

Mrs. Q is pretty excited, as she missed out on the previous trip of 13. Now she’s in the record book, and she has made several of the spots (and calls) herself, too.


We start to sense rain in the air, and that adds to our sense of desperation. One more bird! Flicker? Great Blue? Come on!


I’m looking upward, hoping for a hawk or crow, when there’s a quick flash near an overhanging tree, and a blue dart sails out. It’s a Barn Swallow, once again, and we’re at 14 – uncharted waters! Mrs. Q and I see another couple walking toward us on the sidewalk, so we celebrate with a very reserved fist-check, but we’ve topped the mark once again! She is excited… I’m pretty excited… and baby is actually awake for the whole deal! We scurry back toward home, as the raindrops are just starting to fall as we get to our front porch. Perfect timing… and getting 15 here just wouldn’t be right, anyway. That hummingbird can drop by another time.


Official Checklist:

Urban Birds - European Starling, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, American Robin, Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds - Common Goldfinch, House Finch, Northern Cardinal

Nearby Woodland Birds – Eastern Wood-Pewee, Song Sparrow, Northern Mockingbird, Gray Catbird

Flyover Birds – Chimney Swift, Barn Swallow


Done, and done.

[QuikSand]

We've has a lot of rotten weather here of late, and we've only gotten out for a couple of walks in the last ten days or so. Neither one ended up getting recorded properly, as neither generated more than nine or ten species. So it goes.

[Kodos]

More please!

[QuikSand]

Will be getting back to this... I've been out of town a little lately, and before that we were just drenched with rain here in Md, yielding few chances for any decent walks around the area.

We'lll be back to it soon, and will report more, I pledge. Elisa will hold me to it.

[QuikSand]

Hmmm... well, I'm still learning, but I'm not sure what to report.

We have made it out for four different alks in the last two weeks or so, and I have not managed to gather a list of bords worth reporting even once. Last night, we went out for the same circuit that has generated most of these write-ups, and managed to see only the most mundane birds from the usual lists -- the blackbirds, cardinals, robins, and the like. No pewee (haven't seen one in weeks) no phoebe (same) and not even any of the swallows or swifts we're used to seeing overhead. Very disappointing.

Most of thes birds that we were seeing in June were summer residents in this area, but it may be that we've cleared the nesting/breeding activity season, and that the birds who are still around are just less visible than before. I'm not sure. The torrential rain (for several days) followed by punishing heat (for many more afterwards) might be a factor as well.

Regardless... my lack of substantive updates is not a reflection of lost interest on my part, but rather just a lack of anything worthwhile to say. Last night the most exciting bird of the day was a mockingbird. Nice bird and all, but I'm not exactly alerting the media.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by corbes

enjoyed your tanager spottings, especially.

Thanks, and me too!

[QuikSand]

Another walk last night (though not the tradtional neighborhood walk, as we went to the nearby park again) but this time we got out a little bit earlier -- and in the comfortable weather we did see a fair number of the more interesting birds that we've gotten used to -- a pewee, some chimney swifts, and even some blue jays (which, alas, have yet to show up in our neighborhood during any of these documented walks). So, there's still some hope that this effort can continue productively.

No official list from last night (might have been 10 species if I kept track) but some signs of life, at least.

[QuikSand]

Well, it has admittedly been quite some time since our last update. This is for many reasons – we suffered some awful weather here for a while, which relegated “a walk in the neighborhood” to a slot just below “shoving bamboo shoots under my fingernails” on my list of evening activities. And the several times we have gotten out to walk around the are since, we have witnessed a decided dropoff in the presence of bird species. I suppose I could have offered a variety of updates detailing the numerous trips that included final lists of six or eight species… but honestly, once we’ve been to the mountaintop of 14, it’s kind of hard to enjoy the valleys again.

So, I will offer a few highlights from the recent weeks instead, without much of a count involved.


We have intermittently been mixing in a walk to the nearby park instead of the shorter walk around our neighborhood. Elisa continues to enjoy the swings, especially if there are other children nearby. Mom occasionally takes a swing herself… dad remains the fairly stoic and unmoved witness rather than participant, but still enjoys the visit.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, on our walk to the adjoining neighborhood with the nice park, we came across a new bird species. This isn’t a routine “suburban” bird at all, but there were actually two calling males within earshot, and we got a look at one of them pretty close up:



The Blackpoll Warbler is one of the most brilliant and beautiful family of American songbirds, the wood warblers. This particular species is just black and white, but the warblers vary widely in color, and include some of the most beautiful birds on my life list. They are all small birds – under 5 inches in total length – and generally pretty active. Nearly all are migrants in the Eastern US, though many species will nest in this region. Seeing two male Blackpolls here in Maryland in August is ordinarily a sure sign that they were nesting in this area. But from the maps I have been able to find, we are well south of the expected summer range for the Blackpoll, which really is generally just a late migrant here, and should be out of the area (and likely up into Canada) by now. There’s no uncertainty in the sighting, I got a good look and even heard a call from the bird, so I’m tallying this one up to just a fluky sighting. They were not there a couple days later on our next visit, so my best guess is that these are probably two young males who jumped the gun and got a head start on the southward migration – odd things like this are known to happen from time to time. Odd sighting, though.


On another recent walk, we walked by what I’ve been calling the “pewee tree” and I made my perfunctory look for a perching, calling flycatcher (recall, the Eastern Wood-Pewee is in the flycatcher family). However, another bird flits up to an overshooting branch, and it’s behavior is different. Rather than perching and flitting like a flycatcher would, this bird is staying close to the tree trunk, and is climbing upward.

I only see the bird in silhouette – but this is a perfect case of putting to use more than just the pictoral identification clues. I can see from the behavior that while this bird is perhaps a little smaller than the pewee, its behavior just doesn’t match that type – this is not a flycatcher. Staying right on the trunk, rather than the branches, means that he’s probably feeding on or in the tree bark, rather than insects that might be flying by. So, there are a few species that might fit the bill for what I’m seeing.

Nuthatches are nice small birds who frequent bird feeders, especially in the winter, and are known to stay close to the tree trunks. However, there are two clues that this bird is neither the white-breasted nor red-breasted nuthatch – the two species that would be around this region. First, the body shape isn’t right – nuthatches are about the right length for this bird, but are generally pretty plump-shaped, and this bird is more slim and erect. Not a fit. And also, this bird is climbing upwards on the tree trunk, and about 98 out of 100 times, when you see a nuthatch, it’s climbing downward on a tree trunk – a strong giveaway sign in the field. So, even in silhouette, with no coloration or markings to go on, I’m ruling out one of the obvious choices.

In the same grouping with nuthatches is the Brown Creeper. The creeper fixes the two things I mentioned above – he’s generally a bit slimmer than the nuthatch (enough so that I wouldn’t completely rule out this bird by body shape alone) and he does indeed prefer to climb upward on the tree trunks. So, that’s a possibility – but I don’t like it. This bird is way above the canopy of the surrounding trees, out in the open. I know Brown Creepers are fairly stealthy birds, and prefer to stay in more wooded areas – seeing one way out in the open like this just doesn’t fit their profile. (The far more common way to notice a brown creeper is to be looking into a wooded area, and you see a leaf fall alongside a tree from somewhere fairly near the treetop… then the “leaf” suddenly flutters and re-attaches to the bottom of the tree trunk… that is the m.o. of the brown creeper – climb slowly and diagonally up the tree trunk, flutter down to the bottom, and start over again) So, with this bird way out in the open, I’m writing off the Creeper here, especially since I have a better candidate.

This bird is sitting pretty upright along the side of the tree, and that’s a good clue. Its behavior is really not quite like a nuthatch or creeper, but rather… a woodpecker. And by the size, that quickly gets us down to one species:



The Downy Woodpecker is the smallest Eastern woodpecker, only a trifle larger than the tiny warblers, and his appearance and behavior fit perfectly here. They are a year-round resident in this area, so this one appearing here is no great shock. Nice addition to our working list for the whole summer – but it comes on a day when we have fairly little to add to the list.


Finally, last night, we have another interesting sighting. We are walking past the nearby schoolyard, and into the next neighborhood, when there’s a quick flutter right ahead of us. I had hopes that our bird list was going to be worthwhile this evening, so I get a good look…and so does Mrs. Q, who is totally stumped. It’s flying erratically back and forth in a sort of figure-eight loop, right over our walkway. It’s light brown, and flying in a really jerky fashion… my birdwatcher instincts kick in again, and I figure this one out without the aid of any bird books of identification guides at all:



Any guesses yet?

It’s a Little Brown bat, the most common flying mammal in North America, and a fairly widespread resident around neighborhoods, including yours. This is a little early for him to be out, but he’s pretty precisely covering an area under tree cover, so he’s doing fine in relative shade.

Mrs. Q handles the situation very well – we have to walk (and push the stroller) right underneath his repeated path, but she (momentarily at least) accepts my assurances that the bat wants nothing to do with us, and we make it through unscathed. Another interesting sighting that manages to help not at all with the pursuit of another noteworthy bird listing night.


That’s really the best update we have of late. My best guess is that the end of breeding season also means the end of most of the visible activity of the resident birds. So, many of the birds that we were seeing well into June (ones that have ceased their migration and settled down) are basically still around through the summer, but just not as visible as they once were. So, my nights of 12+ bird species seem to be over, at least until the fall migration starts and we being to see some of the migrants coming back southward (devoid of their bright breeding colors, in many cases).

[QuikSand]

2007 Renewal

Spring has sprung here in the mid-Atlantic, and with a chance to get out a bit on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, we geared up for a nice walk across to the nearby park. We decided to keep an eye out for a bird count for the day – it’s too early for any migrants, but we ought to have a chance to see the usual litany of feeder birds and winter residents. So, off we go…

The day’s sightings are really not all that exciting, by and large, but we do manage to cover a lot of the familiar year-round area resident species. Nice backyard birds like the Carolina Chickadee and Tufted Titmouse are joined by robins, cardinals, mockingbirds, and most of the usual suspects.


We’re closing in on the park, and as we walk by a narrow wooded strip, I hear a bird calling from high up. It’s the distinctive trill of the Chipping Sparrow.



Nice bird – not one we usually see in our neighborhoods per se, but a pretty regular in areas like ours. So, that’s nice… and I fully expect it to be the most interesting species we see on the day.


After a little time spent at the swings at the park with baby Elisa, we head on our circuitous route home. We follow a path that travels between two narrow wooded strips, and I’m keeping my eyes open for a woodpecker along the way, amidst the mostly gray woods.

I don’t see a woodpecker, but we get another logical sighting – it’s a White-breasted Nuthatch.



We get a pretty good look at him, perched in the crotch of a tree maybe five feet overhead and ten feet away. A little bit of ruddy underneath, but it’s pretty clear to me that this is a White- rather than a Red-breasted, the closest other species in this area. So – that’s another bird that doesn’t surprise me to be around, but is nice to see on one of our walks.


Anyway, we manage to spot a pair of turkey vultures overhead, and then as we are getting close to home, we also see two red-tailed hawks flying overhead. Those are the two most common overhead soaring types we’d be likely to see here, and that pretty well round out a good day and a decent list.

And just as I’m watching the redtails soar, I notice another bird flying onto the scene. This picture isn’t too far from what we were able to make out:



It’s a bigger bird than the redtail, and I see the white head and point it out to Mrs Q, who quickly asks “is that an eagle?” Yes, it is – and we are further treated to seeing him fly up right past the nearer of the two hawks, and then we see the redtail start to “mob” and harass him. I had to do a little looking to assure myself that a redtail will indeed mob an eagle… but it’s true, they will. So – there’s something we hadn’t seen before.

The bald eagle isn’t on our “yard list” even – but now we’ve seen one from the neighborhood. So, that’s another pretty interesting sight.


That wraps up a nice little outing – since we crossed the main street and didn’t stay within the “official” confines of our own neighborhood, we won’t count it as a record day – but the species count was pretty solid, in the final analysis:

Urban Birds

European Starling
House Sparrow
Common Grackle
American Robin
Mourning Dove

Feeder Birds

Northern Cardinal
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Dark-eyed Junco

Nearby Woodland Birds

Northern Mockingbird
White-breasted Nuthatch
Chipping Sparrow
Song Sparrow

Flyover Birds

Turkey Vulture
Red-Tailed Hawk
American Bald Eagle

[QuikSand]

For those who celebrate... the tiny baby in this little thread is now applying to colleges, and I will soon report to the "Leaving Home" thread to shed tears.

[Chas in Cinti]

Shoot, I saw this and was thinking, "Wow, it's been so long since a Quik birdwatching dynasty"... time flies...

[QuikSand]

On this mornings walk, with younger sibling, saw a Bald Eagle overhead (great close look) and a Pileated Woodpecker from afar, two pretty interesting sightings.