Archive for March, 2006
Midwestern Waterfowl
Posted by: | CommentsThe first full day of spring, and I was up to my knees
in new snow this morning at Gavin’s Point, on the
Missouri River between Nebraska and South Dakota. It’s
a long ways from Omaha, our base of operations for the
next week, but the drake Harlequin Duck reported there
recently was an irresistible lure. And there he was,
feeding and diving along the dam face just as if it
were a stone jetty off Cape Ann. Not often I get a
state bird on visits ‘home’, and this one was a beaut.
Waterfowl diversity was gratifyingly high for this
late in the season, probably as a result of this
week’s blizzard. Common Merganser was the most
abundant duck, but every species expected in early
spring was present in numbers, even the normally
scarce Greater Scaup: I stopped counting at two dozen!
There were scattered Ross’s Geese in the flocks of
Snows, and I enjoyed close looks and listens at
several small flocks of Greater White-fronted Geese,
the classic voice of March nights from my Great Plains
childhood.
I swung back to Bellevue and picked up Ruth and
Carolyn then for a quick check of Lake Manawa, across
the river in Iowa. The lake is covered with divers,
mostly Canvasback and Lesser Scaup, and the recent
celebrity, a Trumpeter Swan, lingers in the protected
waters behind Boy Scout Island. I was even more
excited by my first Franklin’s Gull of the spring,
though, a splendid adult loafing among the American
Coots. White, wet, and cold as it is out there, spring
is on the way!
Real Birders
Posted by: | CommentsPoppe said something funny the other day:
“I don’t think you can count yourself a birder,” she said, “until you’ve exposed yourself to personal injury looking for birds. And advanced birders, they’re the ones with scars.”
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Omaha Invaders
Posted by: | CommentsEurasian Collared-Dove has done well in small towns on the Great Plains, but the cities have so far resisted the expansion of this exotic. I was surprised, then, to have a bird fly across the road in front of me just as I left the Omaha airport this afternoon; are they gaining an urban toehold here, too?
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Olive Tree Birding
Posted by: | CommentsTo Boyce Thompson Arboretum, near Superior, to look for the Rufous-backed Robin. The robin eluded us, wretched creature, but the time we spent standing quietly under the tree it’s been feeding in was well worth it.
Olives are widely planted as ornamentals here in southeast Arizona, but I never think of looking for birds in them: afraid, I suppose, I’ll get hit by one of those black marbles they call fruit! As the season wears on, though, it seems that the birds discover and appreciate them, and the robin has been reported often in the last few days from a large specimen on the arboretum’s main path. In the tree this morning were many House Finches, Gila Woodpeckers, Curve-billed Thrashers, and Northern Mockingbirds. While we watched, they were joined by a Scott’s Oriole and a Crissal Thrasher, the former an arrival, the latter an uncommon skulker there along Queen Creek.
The ground was littered with olive fruits knocked down by the recent snow, and I was amazed to see them being picked carefully apart by sparrows, including Green-tailed Towhee, White-crowned Sparrow, and Lincoln’s Sparrow. True “globalization,” this: American emberizids happily gobbling the fruits of a Mediterranean tree! I may have to start an olive tree list….
The Black-chins Return
Posted by: | CommentsIn the east and the midwest, the arrival of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in April is a dramatic event, an overnight passage from no hummingbirds to hummingbirds. Here in the southwest, it’s a little different; with nearly every feeder in Tucson hosting 2 or 3 species all winter, arriving migrants and summer residents can easily sneak in unnoticed.
I’ve spent most of today on the front porch, working on the trip list from last week’s run to Sonora. Inevitably, I’ve been distracted by the birds at the feeders: Gambel’s Quail, White-winged Doves, Pyrrhuloxia, and the usual lot, including Broad-billed, Costa’s, and a few Anna’s Hummingbirds. Around noon, a gray hummingbird diffidently approached one of our feeders, then hovered, tail a-pump, at our Mexican honeysuckle just long enough to be identified as our first Black-chinned Hummingbird of the year; her quick visit was followed by at least two males, one of whom even managed to get a drink before a Costa’s chased him off. It’s good to have them back, and to know that they will be daily fixtures now until deep into the fall.
