Search and Serendipity

MOBILE, ALA. — False expectations, when one has traveled too much and too fast, flicker readily across the consciousness: Toucanets could emerge from the mist. That stub should hold a treeswift. Am I looking for king parrots? Sights, smells, emotions trigger these strange moments. But other moments — the immediate and the real — are the ones that ground the self in time and in place.

An Eastern Kingbird, having just survived a nonstop flight across the Gulf of Mexico, rests a few yards behind the dune line on Dauphin Island, Alabama:

VICKSBURG, MISS. — The laptop that has powered Search and Serendipity for almost three years has died, apparently of massive hardware failure. I suspect the motherboard but will never know for sure. It hasn’t been the best of laptops, but it traveled with me to many strange and wonderful places. I guess that’s all over now. Not that I’m sentimental.

The good news is that no important data is lost. The failure has been in progress for about two weeks, so I’ve had ample warning (and frustration).

The bad news is that my blogging schedule will continue to be disrupted for several more days at least.

I am writing this post on the WordPress app for iPhone. I’d been looking for a chance to try it out, but this is an unfortunate way to do it (much better to have been in some exotic locale uploading a photo of a rarity…).

While I’m dealing with this, head on over to 10,000 Birds, where Mike has posted Renato’s video of a hummingbird we saw in Ecuador. It’s awesome because the gorgeous little bird is bathing in puddle on a large leaf, but we are also requesting ID help. Which hummer is it?

OK, I guess now I have no excuses to put off that housework I’ve been avoiding….

VICKSBURG, MISS. — Whew, lots going on and a failing laptop on top of everything, so we’re going to cover a lot of ground in this post. Still have heaps of Ecuador photos to share, and more systematics and ID posts in the hopper.

Purple Martins return

I spotted my first Purple Martin of the spring out my bedroom window one week ago — Sunday, Feb. 7. We saw one at the Audubon office on Tuesday, and on Thursday evening, when we returned from Little Rock (that’s another story), a female appeared to have taken up residence in one of our gourds.

SNOW

Friday, it snowed in Vicksburg. We got about 6 inches, which I’m told is the most that’s fallen here in several years. It was a beautiful wet snow that stuck to everything and transformed my “backyard.” I don’t know when or if I’ll see this again here.

Great Backyard Bird Count

Friday also kicked off the Great Backyard Bird Count, so I started counting in the snow. This year, in addition to submitting checklists, I’m also helping out as a reviewer for the state of Louisiana. When reports get flagged by the eBird filters, I follow up on them, contacting the observers for further information if needed.

Have you ever seen a Purple Martin in the snow? I did on Friday, and here are the (blurry) photos to prove it:

By mid-afternoon, the sun was peeking out, and the snow had already started melting.

100,000 blackbirds

Saturday, I went to count birds at Mahannah Wildlife Management Area in southern Issaquena County. I had good numbers of Canvasback, White Ibis, and sparrows, and I saw three Common Yellowthroats, which was good.

But the real spectacle began as the sun started to set.

I heard the distant clamor of blackbirds and finally spotted a river of Common Grackles up high, moving south. Thousands of birds streamed past — and that was only the beginning. They kept coming. Thousands became tens of thousands, and somewhere along the way, the Red-winged Blackbirds started pouring toward me as well.

The grackles moved high in long ribbons that, at times, stretched farther than I could see in both directions. One such stream passed overhead continually for 20 minutes. The red-wings were much lower, flying in wide bands and in a slightly different direction. Vertigo gripped me briefly as the birds rushed past.

By the time it was done, I’d estimated totals of 75,000 Common Grackles and 30,000 Red-winged Blackbirds — a staggering figure, and one that, so far, gives Valley Park, Mississippi, (the nearest town) more individual birds than anywhere else on the continent in this year’s GBBC.

I couldn’t even begin to hint at the magnitude of the event with my camera, but here are some shots anyway.

Rusty Blackbird

I got some birding in on Sunday too — four checklists in fact — and was please to hear mockingbirds, cardinals, and House Finches singing. It was almost 60 degrees, and all our beautiful snow is gone already.

I had lots of pelicans and 3,000 Double-crested Cormorants at Eagle Lake north of Vicksburg, and there were a few Rusty Blackbirds feeding on wet ground near the parking lot at the public boat ramp.

One more day

The Great Backyard Bird Count runs through Monday, so you have one more chance to participate!

VICKSBURG, MISS. — At the risk of angering my friends in more northerly latitudes, I’m once again celebrating the first day of spring on the first cross-quarter day — the day halfway between December’s solstice and March’s equinox. This year, that’s today, February 3. It’s spring!

Most of us in the United States regard the vernal equinox (March 20, 2010) as the first day of spring, but various cultures throughout time have celebrated season’s beginnings on the cross-quarter days (this is the origin of Groundhog Day, Celtic Imbolc, and Japanese Setsubun), and in the southeastern United States, I think this makes a good deal of biological sense. Plants come to life and birds begin returning in February; by the time the vernal equinox comes, many of the southern breeding warblers will already be singing on territory.

Exposed surfaces carried a light frost this morning, but I went out early, hunting for signs of spring. At Vicksburg National Military Park, Tufted Titmice were singing persistently — a new development! And something caught my eye in the grasses:

The birds — Hermit Thrush, Eastern Phoebe, White-throated Sparrow — were still the birds of winter, but songs from titmice and even once from a chickadee told me that something is stirring within them. And though the Purple Martin houses at my office remained empty today, we are expecting martins back any day.

So how about you? Do you see any signs of spring? Or are you siding with Punxsutawney Phil and bundling up for six more weeks of winter?

VICKSBURG, MISS. — Today’s Ecuador feature highlights the Great Sapphirewings we encountered at Yanacocha Reserve near Quito.

This post is part of a series on Ecuador and was included in Bird Photography Weekly #75.