Where I’ve Been and What I’ve Seen (I)

 

Time away is a funny thing. It goes breathtakingly fast, particularly when it combines a great visit to Alison with some excellent birding. And yet fast as these last two weeks have gone, this morning when I got off the plane it seemed like an eternity since I’d been home.

An eternity filled with fun and with good birds, though. After a relaxing few days in Atlanta with Alison, we headed to the coast, where the Florida and Georgia Ornithological Societies were holding their joint spring meeting. On Saturday evening I delivered a lecture, “RTP’s RBI: How Roger Tory Peterson Founded Birding, Twice”; the talk was very well attended, and the snores from the audience were nicely drowned out by the very perceptive questions and comments that followed. It does the heart good to know how many birders actually think about their chosen sport.

The main point of the weekend, of course, was to spend time afield with the local experts, and Alison and I were as impressed by their skill as we were delighted with the birds they showed us. Jekyll Island truly is a paradise, and it was a rare treat to have the bird artist Lydia Thompson as our guide. Gray Kingbird was our special target, and Lydia led us right to them; we had fantastic close views of two birds as they hunted and squabbled from the telephone wires before flying into a tree for a little domestic bliss. Painted Buntings were another highlight, the first of the eastern subspecies Alison and I had seen.

Waterbirding was fantastic, of course. The Wood Stork colony was a great sight, with the huge birds surprisingly graceful in their treetop nests.

 

We got to see a fine variety of herons, including Tricolored and Yellow-crowned Night-Herons. Loafing on the beach at the south end of the island was a fine flock of larids and shorebirds, and we spent a wonderful couple of hours sorting through them.

Wilson’s Plover eluded us, but a single Piping Plover was among the Black-bellied Plovers, Least Sandpipers, Sanderlings, and Dunlins. The tern flock included many Forster’s and Royal Terns, along with a few Black Skimmers and Least, Sandwich, Caspian, and Common Terns: a treat indeed for those of us from the southwest.

A great day that came to an end too soon!