Saturday, November 29, 2008, 5:55 pm

Northern (Great Grey) Shrike in southwest Missouri

GREENE CO., MO — This morning Lisa Berger, Charley Burwick, and I wandered around the Osage Plains west-northwest of Springfield, Missouri. We found gobs of red-tails, kestrels, and harriers, but no Merlins or Prairie Falcons. We did pretty well with sparrows: Harris’s are always special, I don’t get to see American Tree Sparrows in north-central Texas, and we heard a Fox Sparrow singing.

But the day’s big excitement was a certain shrike.

great-grey-shrike-lanius-excubitor-3

From a distance, the shrike’s mantle appeared rather pale (”frosty,” Lisa said). Its mask seemed narrow, and the bill seemed long. All these features suggested Northern Shrike, but the distance was a little too much to be certain. Northern Shrikes are rare in this part of the state, and we didn’t want to make a sloppy call.

great-grey-shrike-lanius-excubitor-2

Happily, we didn’t have to wonder forever. As we sat quietly beside the road, the shrike worked toward us, eventually offering fantastic scoped views. Fine dark edges on the bird’s pale breast feathers produce a scalloped or vermiculated look at close range. Note too that only the lower half of the bird’s eye is within its blackish mask. And, the area immediately over the bill is whitish, not dark. Photo digiscoped by Charley Burwick.

great-grey-shrike-lanius-excubitor-1

Here you can see the bird’s huge, very strongly hooked bill, which is pale at the base. You can also see a pale whitish mark in the bird’s dark lores. The bird shows a square head and a distinct neck. (See more on Loggerhead and Northern Shrike ID.) This photo is also by Charley Burwick.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 11:22 am

Texas Century Club: Fun for crazy psycho listers!

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — Texas comprises a whopping 254 counties. Its closest competitor is Georgia (oddly enough), which contains 159. Our smallest county is Rockwall, weighing in at just under 150 square miles (i.e., approximately 12 miles by 12 miles in linear dimensions). The biggest is Brewster, which is almost 75 percent larger than Delaware, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia combined. It’s also larger than Connecticut.

So what’s a birder to do?

Well, if you’re David Sarkozi, you dream up the Texas Century Club: a challenge to find at least 100 bird species in at least 100 Texas counties. (Here’s the email that started it all.)

It may sound deceptively simple, but I estimate that if you birded full time, with an unlimited travel budget, you would need to bird for at least 18 solid months to pull that off. And that’s if you’re smart, competent, and lucky.

Given a more moderate but still quite adventurous birding pace, we’re looking at years — even decades — to accomplish the goal. Three Texas birders have seen 100 birds or more in over 50 counties: Dell Little (67), D. D. Currie (66), and Anthony Hewetson (52).

Well, I finally got bit by the bug. It’s kind of insane, but there are several reasons I gave in:

  1. Suddenly, every bird is exciting. Can you imagine actually trying to find House Sparrows and coots?
  2. I’m kind of a sucker for numbers games.
  3. Keeping county lists forces me to pay attention to distribution and habitats. Where do Red-bellied Woodpeckers stop and Golden-fronted Woodpeckers begin?
  4. I am motivated to explore new places and learn new things.
  5. Reporting observations from underbirded parts of the state is satisfying because I feel I’m contributing in some small way to our knowledge of bird distribution and abundance.
  6. I have an excellent tool — Birdstack — to track my lists. (Yes, I’m one of Birdstack’s owners, but I’m also one of its biggest fans.)

I’ve made a little graphical map to track my progress by county:

tcc

After poring over various old records I have, I came up with a list of 65 Texas counties in which I’ve recorded at least one bird species. I’ve recorded over 100 only in five (Dallas, Galveston, Harrison, Smith, Tarrant) but am close in three others. One frustration is that I didn’t keep better records between 2000 (my first visit to Texas) and 2007, so dozens of counties have only a few species recorded because I kept track only of highlights. You can check out my lists on Birdstack; counties with over 100 species have a “TCC” prefix while others have a “Texas” prefix.

So now I find myself planning trips to hit new counties or boost my lists in various counties that I’ve visited before. There’s actually quite a bit of strategy to the whole thing — identifying habitats, picking different times of year, seeking out cemeteries, hanging out in Walmart parking lots ….

Help!

Sunday, November 9, 2008, 7:26 pm

Birds of the Luzon tropical pine forests

QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES — I’ve been attending some meetings here in the Philippines and had a chance to bird at Camp John Hay in Baguio City. Baguio is nestled in Luzon’s Cordillera Central mountain range, and Camp John Hay has a nice “eco-trail” through montane pine forest. Come with me for an early-morning walk:

luzon-pine-forest

Elegant Tits twitter high in the pines. Tawny Grassbirds skulk in the open, ferny understory, offering quick looks at their rusty caps and streaked backs to the patient. The Luzon tropical pine forests cover (or covered) much of the Cordillera Central and provide habitat for some surprising birds, like an endemic subspecies of the widespread Red Crossbill.

tree-fern-in-pine-forest

Tree ferns and pines? It seemed an odd combination to me, but they seem to coexist quite happily in the mountains of Luzon. This forest provides a home for the smoky blue and rufous Blue-headed Fantail and brilliant yellow Citrine Canary-Flycatcher. A mix of Palearctic and Indo-Malayan avifauna have carved out niches here.

elegant-tit-periparus-elegans-1

Here’s a less-than-stellar shot of a nice Philippine endemic, the Elegant Tit (Periparus elegans). To North Americans, it would seem most similar to a chickadee; to Europeans, a Coal Tit. They are dapper in yellow, black, and white as they move in flocks through the forest, extracting seeds from pine cones or plucking small insects from the large fronds of tree ferns.

large-billed-crow-corvus-macrorhynchos-1

Large-billed Crows range widely across Asia and do reach the Philippines. I liked the shot of this bird silhouetted through the pines. The steep forehead, long bill with an arched culmen, and long tail are all field marks for this species. Sometimes they skulk in the forest, but they are also capable and spectacular aerialists, soaring on winds that sweep up from the valleys.

grey-streaked-flycatcher-muscicapa-griseisticta

As winter approaches, many species have retreated from northern Asia to warmer tropical lands like the Philippines, Indonesia, and New Guinea. One of these is the Grey-streaked Flycatcher (Muscicapa griseisticta), which perches on limbs and stubs below the canopy, flying out to snag small insects.

brown-shrike-lanius-cristatus

The Brown Shrike is another migrant, and it seems widespread and common on the island. It’s also rather noisy.

long-tailed-shrike-lanius-schach

A resident shrike species, the Long-tailed Shrike (Lanius schach), is quite variable across its wide range. Birds in the Philippines have solid black caps and grayish backs. They are fairly common in the forest understory and in more open areas.

red-crossbill-loxia-curvirostra-2

Red Crossbills range widely through North and Central America and all across the Old World. There is an endemic subspecies in the mountains of Luzon, and I really wanted to see these birds. Finally, my last morning, I watched a bird sitting high in a dead pine, singing and singing and singing in the morning sun. I sat and watched him until he flew away.

tree-fern-among-pines

Hundreds of species still await me in the forests of the Philippines: bleeding-hearts, racket-tails, malkohas, the Celestial Monarch, and the Philippine Eagle. I can only hope for a chance to return on a real birding trip someday — and that at least small fragments of the islands’ extraordinary ecosystems will survive in the years ahead.

Monday, November 3, 2008, 12:22 pm

Sulphur-billed Nuthatch

BAGUIO, PHILIPPINES — Pine forest. Nuthatches. Shrikes. Crows. (Sounding like North America? Well, I’ll keep going.) Bulbuls. Babblers. Swiftlets. White-eyes. Ah yes, this is Asia.

sulphur-billed-nuthatch-sitta-oenochlamys-1

The Sulphur-billed Nuthatch (Sitta oenochlamys), with which I first became acquainted this morning, is endemic to the Philippines. I think its bright yellow eye-wattle makes it look rather comical.

sulphur-billed-nuthatch-sitta-oenochlamys-2

This angle shows the bird’s black forehead patch and eyelines. The forehead patch and bare skin around the eyes are shared with S. frontalis and S. solangiae, which occur in other parts of Asia. In the past, they have all been lumped as S. frontalis, Velvet-fronted Nuthatch. Relationships among these taxa are not yet clear.

sulphur-billed-nuthatch-sitta-oenochlamys-3.jpg

I noticed that the birds have pale grayish patches on their backs.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 1:24 pm

Merlins on wires and gulls in the sky

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — It’s a beautiful October day in north Texas. I can’t find a cloud anywhere in the sky. My sweatshirt is a little too warm if I stand out on the sun. Franklin’s Gulls are passing through, brilliant white against the blue of the sky, and there are wigeons on the lake.

Oh, well, you caught me. I was out running errands and stopped by Joe Pool. Didn’t really have time, but sanity has to count for something. And I figured the exercise couldn’t hurt me either. I was hoping for juncos or Harris’s Sparrows, but they are late migrants, and they aren’t back yet. They will be here in November.

Winged elms have begun to change in earnest now; most are yellow-green or golden brown. It’s supposed to reach the 80s again at the weekend, but by then, I’ll be in another hemisphere. Yes, more adventures coming soon for me, so stay tuned.

american-robin-turdus-migratorius

Robins, which are scarce here during the summer, are moving through again. I noticed pale fringes on their ruddy breast feathers, which I think means that the feathers are fresh.

merlin-falco-columbarius

I’ve discussed with some birding friends whether a small falcon perched on a wire can be assumed to be kestrel. This photo provides proof: no. Merlins will perch on wires too, and I noticed that when this bird landed, it did bob its tail a bit, though not as long or as emphatically as a kestrel does. Perhaps it’s some sort of balancing routine?

fox-squirrel-sciurus-niger

Around here, the fox squirrels are always dressed in autumnal colors. They’re busy now carrying acorns here and there.

jumping-spider-phidippus

I was impressed by this Phidippus jumping spider’s metallic green chelicerae.

mill-pond-2

Some colleagues who work in Mexico were here and wanted to go birding, so we went over to east Texas. At Caddo Lake, the cypress trees had started to turn, and winter birds like kinglets, Blue-headed Vireos, sapsuckers, and Winter Wrens had returned. At Martin Creek Lake in Rusk County, we saw an alligator snapping turtle (a lifer for me), which compared to a nearby Snowy Egret looked absolutely huge!

My 2008 year list stands at 690 species as I prepare to leave the country again. I’m hoping to break 700 next week! That would certainly be my biggest year total ever. We’ll see how it goes.

« Previous PageNext Page »