All I Want for Christmas... are Some Year Birds

Guess what, folks – New Year’s resolutions work. If they didn’t there’s little chance you’d be reading this. Back in August we took an epic road trip throughout California, and around the same time we bought our first house, so there’s been plenty to keep us busy over here in Hipsterland. We’ll tackle CA in due course, but recently we’ve been sorting through photos from our holiday circuit, which brought us over to Upstate NY to visit my parents, and then down to Houston to see Maureen’s family.

Black-capped Chickadee

(Slate-colored) Dark-eyed Junco

We usually don’t have a lot of time to bird when we fly to NY, but the one patch we visit reliably is Schodack Island State Park, which BirdLife International deems an Important Bird Area because of its status as a breeding ground for Cerulean Warblers. No chance of seeing them in December – someday we’ll have to make it up there in spring – but we can usually turn up an American Tree Sparrow or two. Or in this case, 30.

American Tree Sparrow

In Texas we stayed in Missouri City, a bit southwest of Houston-proper. The manmade ponds in the local neighborhood are a sure bet for scads of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks and assorted herons. The herons are a special treat, since we don’t get to spend much time with Snowy Egrets, Little Blue Herons, or Tricolored Herons these days – also herons are what got me into birding initially, given the diversity of the eastern varieties.

Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks

Little Blue Heron

Snowy Egret

Bad hair day, or best hair day?

On our way out to the ponds, a pair of Black Vultures were picking over the remains of a roadkill squirrel. The vultures were crushed in turn by Maureen, who mercilessly slayed them with her lens. Circle of life. The vultures scarfed down their Sciurid lunch in the road, but scooted out of the way whenever a car passed. Seems like a crow would know better, and maybe remove the corpse to a sidewalk where it could enjoy its squirrel guts in peace. Vutures: they’re no crows.

Black Vulture

"Have Fun"

A stroll through Sienna Plantation is a major boon to our year lists and we can generally turn up birds we won't see anywhere else in our annual travels. Neotropic Cormorants are present in smaller numbers than the Double-cresteds, but we've been able to find them pretty reliably over our past few visits. As for Ruby-throated Hummingbirds -- I can't believe we used to live where we only had one species of hummingbird. As spoiled as we are to live out west now, I sure miss these guys. At least we still have a chance to find them now and again.

Neotropic Cormorant

 

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

One Houston park we’ve enjoyed in the past is Bear Creek Park where we visited last spring and picked up some good stuff, like Acadian Flycatcher, Summer Tanager, Prothonotary Warbler. When I was looking through eBird reports this time around, I saw there were recent sightings of Couch’s Kingbird, LeConte’s Sparrow, and, oh yeah… Greater Pewee! (Spoiler, we didn’t find any of those)

Pileated Woodpecker

Pine Warbler

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

But we did still manage to leave perfectly satisfied with ourselves after tracking down a female Vermilion Flycatcher. We saw our first and only Vermilions in 2014 during our cross-country move. We’d hoped to find some at Joshua Tree this summer without luck, so this was a bit of a redemption.

Next time we'll pick up with a day-trip to Brazos Bend State Park to finish off our Texas trip.

Northern Mockingbird with a cutworm of some kind. Maybe we should import some mockingbirds to our yard while we still have some grass left.

Northern Cardinal

Excursion to the Everglades

Nick and I are knew that we couldn't make the most of our time here in South Florida without taking a good trip to the Everglades. We'd done a day trip to Shark Valley before, but we decided the best way to really experience it would be to camp there so that we could immerse ourselves in the awesomeness that is the Everglades. So we drove on a Friday evening down into Everglades National Park to Long Pine Key campground. When we get there, the first thing we noticed was how secluded this area really is. There are just tons of tall slash pines - their silhouettes lining the dark sky. And we lucked out with perfectly clear skies so you could see all the stars.

Long Pine Key

Right away, we realized we were in a new world. As soon as I walk into the ladies restroom, I notice a tiny scorpion on the floor! It was only about an inch and a half long. We had no idea we even had scorpions in South Florida! And we continue to see some awesome stick bugs along the outside bathroom walls. We knew right away how awesome this trip was going to be.

Baby Hentz's Striped Scorpion

Palmetto Walkingstick

We quickly set up camp and hit the hay. We were awakened around 6am to unfamiliar but intriguing sounds. I knew that these were not only bird sounds, but NEW bird sounds. Nick had remembered these sounds as Chuck-Will's-Widows from our Bird Songs CD, and sure enough, they were! These were life birds for us! It started with just a few distant calls, and then we seemed to be surrounded by them. We laid there in our tent with only the mesh top between us and the sky, and we felt completely immersed in the forest as the calls got louder and more frequent. It was one of those really incredible bird moments that we'll never forget. But never did we actually see one of these new life birds. And quickly, the other birds of the forest joined in the morning chorus - including Cardinals, Eastern Towhees, and Gray Catbirds.

Sunrise in the Everglades

Eastern Towhee

Gray Catbird

We then hit up the famous Anhinga Trail. As we turn on the road leading to the trail, we see a sign about the possibility of panthers - an incredible yet daunting warning. Unfortunately, we did not get to see these big cats, but I am sure that they were lurking about in the tall straw-colored grasses for which they are perfectly camouflaged. At the entrance to the trail, there are warnings about vultures ruining cars. The black vultures were abundant, and in fact, we did see one in the parking lot trying to tear up a top of a convertible Ford mustang.

Black Vulture

Black Vultures cooling off (This scene really made me laugh
for some reason...)

And of course we did see plenty of Anhingas, and even a mother feeding its chicks. You can see a video in our previous post. And the alligators were also plentiful, including the one hanging around under the feeding chicks, just waiting for one to fall down and be a quick snack.

Smiley Alligator

Female Anhinga feeding her chicks

Alligator waiting for an Anhinga Snack

How many Gators can you count?

Anhinga taking a break on the
boardwalk

Air Plant Flower

We saw some usual suspects, including Little Blue Heron, Great Blue Heron, Palm Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, and Red Shouldered Hawks. And surprisingly, we saw quite a number of Purple Gallinule out and about. They are usually pretty shy, but we saw a few foraging along the waterline.

Little Blue
Heron waiting for a fish

Palm Warbler

Purple Gallinule

Purple Gallinule

Purple Gallinule

The next day, we decided that we would try to get up especially early to see if we could actually try to get a view one of the numerous Chuck-Will's-Widow that fly about. A man the day before advised that we could find them all along the wires on a side road. So we woke up as soon as we heard the first set of calls while it was still dark out and drove to this secluded road. We drove up and down looking for these birds, but we had no luck. We thought we might have seen some fly by, but no definite ID's. I couldn't hear as many as the day before, but we could definitely hear them closer. We parked and walked out into the road to search on foot for a little bit. But after realizing that we were in panther territory with nobody else awake and nearby to hear our possible screams for help, we went back in the car to search again. But alas, still no sightings.

Morning fog over the swamp

One Eyed Gator

We headed to Anhinga Trail again the next morning, and we got to see the morning fog hovering over the marsh in a ghostly manner as the sun was rising. And we had a nice little surprise by a pair of Norther Waterthrush calling to each other and foraging for food while bobbing their little tails. We also had some nice views of a pair of Red-Shouldered Hawks, what appeared to be one adult and one juvenile.

Great Blue Heron

Northern Waterthrush

Adult and Juvenile Red-Shouldered Hawks

Juvenile Red-Shouldered Hawk

Me with my camera in hand

Nick getting a head start on the trail