Every Bird Trip Ending is a New Bird Trip Beginning

At the end of our long day of North Shore birding, Evan and I opted to stay in Grand Marais at my brother’s vacation house instead of retiring with the rest of our group back to Duluth. Besides making for a more relaxed travel schedule, this extra night also guaranteed another crack at those ocean-going birds as well as all the oddball birds that can mysteriously show up in Grand Marais in the fall (Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Townsend’s Solitaire, etc).  Grand Marais is great town even if you’re not a birder.  With the vibe of a seaside village it attracts artists and nature lovers alike.  In addition to the birds, eating at the world’s only Sven & Ole’s Pizza was a must, and according to Evan, so was a Tom and Jerry marathon back at the house.  To each his own.

After plenty of pizza, cat&mouse antics, and sleep, it was time to get going with the new day.  We had birds to find and a state to cross.  While I was hauling our things out to the car in the pre-dawn darkness, I heard those shooting lasers that Clinton talked about – flight calls of Common Redpolls.  The rising sun revealed a whole cluster of them feeding at the tops of the birch trees in the front yard.  They were close and in the sun, so I decided I should get a proper photo of one.  I pulled up the camera on one and realized it was pretty frosty in appearance, and the bill was so small and conical.  Right away I was thinking it was a Hoary Redpoll.

Hoary Redpoll

Many Redpolls cannot be cleanly deciphered as Hoary or Common.  There is a lot of overlap, and it is all very confusing and frustrating.  People generally only claim Hoary on the most perfect specimens that exhibit all the undeniable traits of a classic Hoary.  Hoaries are rare as there may be one bird in every flock of 150-200 Common Redpolls. I’ve stared at many, many suspicious birds in my own yard trying to make the call on Hoary or not Hoary.  The general discussion on Facebook of the bird above leans toward the Hoary side.

At any rate, we were not in Grand Marais to debate Redpoll statuses.  We had birds to find. The plan was to hit up the municipal campground to look for flocks of Bohemian Waxwings and a couple of Black-backed Woodpeckers.  Up to 75 Bohemians had been seen in town a few days prior.  Since I needed to charge my camera battery that morning, we went camera-less.  The campground held some interesting birds – four Snow Buntings and two very frigid, out-of-place Meadowlark species.  However, there was nothing we were after.

We then retrieved the camera battery and drove the streets of town looking for fruit-bearing trees for Bohemians and donut-bearing gas stations for us.  We were successful on the latter.  The gypsy-like birds are completely unreliable and never did show up for us. We made one more pass through the storied campground and could only muster up a few Rusty Blackbirds.

Rusty Blackbird

After an hour of searching for the Waxwings, we gave up and headed southwest down Highway 61.  I spied an interesting-looking raptor flying the same direction as us, but I didn’t stop because the focus was back on ducks.  Either this bird passed us or there was another one just like it because Evan was exclaiming he just saw a black raptor with a white tail sitting on the power line.  I asked him if he thought we should turn around to look.  He wanted to, so we did.  The bird was a gorgeous dark-morph Rough-legged Hawk that was now on the move again back to the southwest.  So we raced ahead of it and stopped at the same overlook where we got our White-winged Scoters.  The views were spectacular.

Rough-legged Hawk

After enjoying this new, rarer flavor of RLHA, we noticed the three White-winged Scoters were continuing from the day before.  Then it was time to pop in our book-on-tape and hit the road hard, only stopping briefly at the lookouts from our trip yesterday to scan for ducks.  The story was much the same – no sea ducks.  Interestingly the day after this trip, a couple of juvenile Common Eiders were found at one of these locations – the first time since 1966.  And we missed it by a day.

Anyhow, Duluth still held something very promising for us.  It turns out that American Black Ducks are a relatively easy find along Park Point.  We needed that bird.  We can get it at home in spring and fall migration, but it’s not an easy one.  Clinton, our guide from the sea duck trip, gave us a reliable location to try for this semi-nemesis.  He said to look bayside at 38th street.  As I drove down Park Point and could see Lake Superior to my left and the bay to my right, I was not seeing ducks anywhere, not even Mallards.  This was a bad sign.  Even at 38th where the water nearly laps onto the road, there was nothing.  I checked lakeside even though Clinton said the ducks are always bayside.  Nothing.  I couldn’t believe it.  Leave it to me to screw up a sure bet.  I was settling in for defeat and driving back toward Canal Park when I caught sight of a couple of Mallards on the grass on the bayside of the road right near 38th.  I stopped and looked.  This caused these Mallards and several others who were tucked up on shore in the cove-like corner under some brush.  As they swam out into the bay, I saw that five of them were Black Ducks! This was a very satisfying lifer, perhaps the best of the trip.  It was a nice ending to a fun weekend of birding.

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American Black Duck

It’s amazing how black these ducks really look in the right light.  The male below shows some green on the top of his head which might make it a Mallard X American Black Duck hybrid.

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Here’s a better shot of the green.

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It was finally time to leave the Black Ducks and Duluth behind and hit I-35 for the 3.5 hour ride home.  I was quite content to have gotten this hoped-for duck.  I was now looking forward to a relaxing ride home with no more birding stops.  Evan and I stopped one last time to fill up the tank and empty ours.  As I was waiting for Evan, I compulsively checked my phone (a bad habit brought on by birding).  Birding friend Tony Lau had messaged me to alert me to an incredible bird discovered by Jeff Grotte back home just a few miles from where I work. Before I knew it, I was hurrying Evan to get back in the car.  It was 1:00. Darkness was coming in four hours and I had to go just over 3 hours to get to this bird. Moreover, the coming 12 inches of snow that night would make a next-day search impossible.  Never mind that the bird could up and leave at any moment.  I had to get there – fast. There would be no relaxing drive home.

Searching for Sea Ducks on the North Shore of Lake Superior

Canal ParkThere has been a gaping hole in our Minnesota bird collection.  We have traveled extensively throughout the state and have pretty much seen all the specialty birds tucked into hidden nooks and little-known crannies.  Despite that fact, we have neglected one of the state’s most important birding areas – Lake Superior.  Here the possibilities for new birds abound with many sea duck species, northern gull species, oddball loon species and even three jaeger species.  I have never known how to approach birding the big water from the vast 150 miles of shoreline between Duluth and the Canadian border.  I had long ago figured that someday I might just have to hire a guide for a day to learn how to bird this sea-environment.  A couple weeks ago, though, I saw that Clinton Nienhaus was leading a FREE field trip through the Duluth Audubon Society along the North Shore specifically to look for sea ducks.  Free is always good, unless it’s a puppy, so I went for it.  Visions of Scoters and Harlequin Ducks danced in my head while I awaited this trip.

At long last, it was time.  This past Friday I picked Evan up from school, and we drove the 3.5 hours to Duluth.  We stayed in a hotel so we could be up and ready to go in Canal Park at 7:30 that next morning.  Evan was excited about the pool; I was excited about leaving at decent hour instead of 3 AM if we had foregone the hotel.

We met up with our guide, Clinton, and the rest of the small group for an adventurous day ahead.  First up was birding the canal and canal walls that you see above.  One never knows what interesting ducks will be in the canal or what special gulls line the walls.  Alas, it was pretty ho-hum.  We tried to make a Herring Gull into a Thayer’s, but it didn’t work. So it was off to our next stop, Brighton Beach.

Brighton Beach

No ducks could be seen, just a couple of Horned Grebes. We did observe a delightful birding phenomenon as we had Common Redpolls migrating by us and through us by the hundreds.  This was a great sign because strangely there were only two reports of Redpolls in the entire state last year.  That abysmal report contrasted greatly with the numbers we had two years ago when we had about 150 in our yard alone.  Needless to say, it was good to see these old friends again.  It was also fun to witness birds migrating down the shore;  southbound birds hit the big water of Lake Superior and opt to fly southwest down the shoreline.  Many of the Redpolls were literally flying over the rocks you see above.   I have hundreds of Redpoll photos at close range in great light of the many varied forms of this bird when they hung out in our yard two years ago.  So these photos are not the best but are provided to add a little meat to the bones of this post.

Common Redpolls

Clinton, a graduate student in environmental education, taught us that the Redpolls love to eat the seeds of birch and aspen trees. The catkins (those banana-shaped things below) contain thousands of the tiny, paper-like seeds.  When the Redpolls forage on these catkins, hundreds of seeds are then dispersed.

Common Redpoll

Throughout the day we kept seeing more and more Common Redpolls.  A conservative estimate would be 1,000 birds. Clinton pointed out that their flight calls sound like little lasers shooting.  That tip really helped this birder who is challenged in the auditory department.

After Brighton Beach our convoy of cars snaked its way up the shore to Stoney Point.  All I found here were dismal memories of missing Boreal and Great Gray Owls a couple years ago.  There still were no ducks either.  It was tough to get discouraged, though, because we had a long ways to go and many more stops to make, like at Agate Bay and Burlington Bay for which the town of Two Harbors is named.

Right away at Agate Bay an interesting raptor hovering in the stiff wind caught our attention.  It was a Rough-legged Hawk which ended up being one of several for the day.  Right now they are migrating through.  I always enjoy seeing this hawk.

Rough-legged Hawk

It was amazing how it stayed in one place in the air, seemingly hovering like a helicopter.  Finally it swooped down to the grassy bank below where it caught a mouse and proceeded to eat it on a rock.  Clinton taught us that mice are their primary food of choice and that though they are the same size as a Red-tailed Hawk, their talons are half the size.

Rough-legged Hawk

This hawk continued to dazzle us as it flew low over the parking lot.

Rough-legged Hawk

Here’s my favorite view of a Rough-legged Hawk when it shows off those black, carpal patches.

Rough-legged Hawk

But as cool as the hawk was, we still had no luck finding ducks on the water.  We took in migrating Bald Eagles, though.

Bald Eagle

And even some that might just be sticking around.

Bald Eagle

We took a little walk around the Two Harbors Lighthouse hoping to relocate the Western Kingbird or Northern Saw-whet Owl that had been seen there last weekend by the Minnesota Birding Weekend group.  No luck on those.

After awhile it was time to keep heading northeast up the shore.  Stops at the Silver Bay Marina and Taconite Harbor kept up the trend of the day – no sea ducks.  It was frustrating because in the past week all three Scoter species, Long-tailed Ducks, a Harlequin Duck, and a King Eider had all been seen.  We were running out of shoreline in a hurry. However, Taconite Harbor did have one goody for us –  a flock of fly-over lifer Bohemian Waxwings!  We never could get them to stick around to get good looks, but it was fun to finally get a life bid.

The next stop finally produced what the trip was offering.  As we exited our vehicles at the Cut-Face Creek Wayside at Good Harbor Bay, we could see a few dark blobs on the water.  One of those blobs was a Red-necked Grebe, but those three were our first lifer of the day, the White-winged Scoter!  This was a hoped for bird.

White-winged ScoterI was hoping for closer looks, but distance was a factor…

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White-winged Scoter

White-winged Scoter

I think we all had a sense of satisfaction of finally seeing a trip target.  We got to observe the Scoters dive which they do differently that divers.  Clinton told us to pay attention to how the ducks open up their wings just before they duck under.  It was pretty cool to watch the trio do this in unison.

With spirits buoyed we made the short jaunt into Grand Marais to see what the harbor was harboring. It turns out there wasn’t much in the way of ducks, and there were zero sea ducks.  One of the highlights, though, was getting to observe two Snow Buntings at arm’s length as they foraged in the parking lot.  I have seen many, many Snow Buntings but never this close as they are a skittish bird and never with a backdrop that is anything other than white.  This was a real treat.

Snow Bunting

Snow Bunting

And here is perhaps the best SNBU photo I will take my whole life:

Snow Bunting

We continued to bird around Artist’s Point.  Interestingly the group found an out-of-season, out-of-range Western Meadowlark right on the Coast Guard station lawn.  Then it was off to the lighthouse to get some better looks at the gulls across the harbor channel.  The appropriately named Sawtooth Mountains are in the background.

Grand Marais

Birds or no birds, it was an epic adventure for a 7-year-old to hike out to the lighthouse.  I had brought along his deer-hunting snowsuit to keep him safe on this opening day of deer season.  Perhaps I should have also brought a life jacket and a wetsuit??

Evan

King of the world, this very cold world.

Evan

Out by the lighthouse we scanned the gulls across the way.  I really don’t know gulls, so in this department I am not the least bit embarrassed to let someone tell me what some gull is or what cycle it is.  Clinton tells us this tawny-colored bird in the center of this shot is a first-cycle Thayer’s Gull.  We tallied it for the life list and moved on.  Personally I find these lichens to be more fascinating.

Thayers Gull

From Grand Marais we had a couple stops left.  We did them out of sequence going to Hovland first, the furthest point we were going to, and Paradise Beach second on the way back to Grand Marais.

There were no ducks at Hovland.  Paradise Beach held a few more White-winged Scoters that I never saw but the group did see and one Bufflehead that we tried to turn into Harlequin Duck.  Finally darkness was upon us and the great day of North Shore birding was over. Our hopes for more sea ducks the next day would not be further up the North Shore as we had no passports with us.  Instead, our hope for the next day was still alive because Evan and I would be able to continue the duck hunt back down the shore on our way to Duluth.  And it would prove to be a very bright day.

Hovland

My Kandiyohi Twohee

Last weekend I did some lifering on my own.  Normally I don’t write about such outings, but one of my finds was just too good to not share with the bird nerds at large.  And this bird wasn’t even a lifer.  My target for the day was the Winter Wren, a little brown bird that is quite unremarkable except for the fact that it has evaded my life list. Checking eBird, I had seen reports at our latitude of this stub-tailed gnome of the northern coniferous forests.  So I decided it was time to head to Robbins Island Park in Willmar and follow Ron Erpelding’s advice of walking around the edge of the small slough in the woods there to find this skulker.

It was a horribly windy day, but the slough was tucked in a depression in the woods making it a calm, sunny place.  The birds loved it.  I immediately saw all kinds of activity.  Most of the birds were White-throated Sparrows, but I also saw Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Yellow-rumped Warblers.  And there was this curious Eastern Phoebe.

Eastern Phoebe

Eastern Phoebe

I followed Ron’s advice and made one complete lap around the slough, walking through tangled brush and grass at the edge of the cattails.  My hopes were lifted at the end of my first loop when a wren flushed up.  I could see it was a House Wren because of its lighter coloration and longer tail.  Then almost immediately another wren popped up.  This one was dark and small…but a much bigger, more active bird stole my attention away from what I am claiming as my Winter Wren lifer.  There, ahead of me, in a brush pile was an obvious Eastern Towhee thrashing about in the branches!  I could not believe my eyes.

Eastern TowheeThe brownish coloration on the head and back indicated it was a female.  The male is jet-black instead of brown.  Male or female, it didn’t matter.  This was a good-looking bird and a very rare bird for our county.  How rare? I looked back through the database of bird sightings at the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union’s website and determined this was only the sixth unique Eastern Towhee to ever be documented in Kandiyohi County. Personally, this was only the second Eastern Towhee I’ve ever seen.  They just aren’t common in Minnesota as a whole.  This was also my second towhee species for Kandiyohi County – in a weird-twist of birding fate last spring, I found the even more rare vagrant Spotted Towhee before I ever saw an Eastern Towhee.  Both of these finds were the first of their respective species to be documented in eBird for Kandiyohi.  It’s always fun to make a solid contribution to the birding history of the region.

Eastern Towhee

Eastern Towhee

Below is a map from Robert Janssen’s Birds in Minnesota that shows the range of the Eastern Towhee, or Rufous-sided Towhee as it was formerly called.

Rufous-sided Towhee range map in Minnesota - Credit Robert Janssen in Birds in Minnesota

Rufous-sided Towhee range map in Minnesota.  Credit: Robert Janssen’s Birds in Minnesota

The Eastern Towhee dwells in deciduous forests, and this range map coincides very nicely with the hardwoods or deciduous forest biome of Minnesota, shown in the blue section of the map below.  The Arrowhead region is the pinelands or coniferous forest biome, and the large green section is the prairie biome.  Kandiyohi County is primarily in the prairie biome, but the northern part of the county clips that blue hardwoods section.  So it is possible to find the Eastern Towhee in parts of the county, but it is extremely uncommon.

The biomes of Minnesota. Credit - Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

The biomes of Minnesota. Credit – Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

 

The bottom line is that the Eastern Towhee is a very good bird here.  And it made for a very fun birding outing.

Eastern Towhee

Eastern Towhee

Other than the towhee, I’m pretty sure I saw a couple more Winter Wrens skulking into grasses.  I definitely did not get solid looks or pictures but they had the right GISS (General Impression of Size and Shape).  It was not a solid lifer by any means, but one I feel confident in counting. Regardless, it was not the best bird of the day.

I called Steve right away when I found the Eastern Towhee because I knew he would need this bird for the county.  We never could refind it for him, but he was able to see it the next day in the exact same spot.  A rare bird is fun in itself, but it’s always nice when a good find can be shared with someone else.

A One-Two Knockout: Black-bellied Plover and American Golden-Plover

Every cloud has a silver lining as they say, so when Marin’s daycare was closed last week due to an outbreak of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, I had a couple days at home that allowed me to check Carlson’s Dairy for shorebirds.  Specifically my targets lately have been the Black-bellied Plover and American Golden-Plover as we are currently in their southern migration window.  A couple weeks ago Steve found two Black-bellied Plovers at Carlson’s still in breeding plumage, but circumstances did not allow me to get out there.  Then a second-hand report of two American Golden-Plovers from just a week ago was giving me the itch to try for these two plover species before another fall migration passed.

Last Thursday our summer weather abruptly ended.  The weekend prior we were camping in unseasonably hot weather (84°) with unseasonably tenacious mosquitoes. It was awful.  On this day, however, the bipolar month of September showed its true ugly side – strong winds approaching 30 mph and temps in the low 40s.  I figured the sudden change in weather might knock some interesting migrants out of the sky. After I dropped Evan off at school, Marin and I went to Carlson’s to see what kind of fallout might be waiting.

At first glance it was slim pickings – nothing but some flocks of Green-winged Teal, Canada Geese, and a handful of shorebirds.  One of the shorebirds was a little bulkier, though.  I nabbed some pictures and knew that I had one of my two target birds.  Unfortunately I hadn’t studied up on juvenile plumages and couldn’t identify it on the spot.  Getting home I determined that I had my lifer Black-bellied Plover.   A breeding plumaged adult would have been preferred, but this bird was still handsome in its own right and a nice addition to the life list.  It also had the added bonus of being #200 on my Kandiyohi County eBird list.

Juvenile Black-bellied Plover

Black-bellied Plover

Black-bellied Plover

Juvenile Black-bellied Plover

It was a good learning experience to sit down at home that morning with my Sibley’s after-the-fact and go over the finer ID points of a juvenile Black-bellied Plover vs. the very similar-looking juvenile American Golden-Plover.  Little did I know how soon I would put that knowledge to the test.

I picked Evan up from school that afternoon and asked him if he wanted me to drive him out to Carlson’s to see the Black-bellied Plover I had found in the morning.  He said he was up for it, so I was now making my second trip to the shorebird spot that day.  I was confident the bird would still be there as the hurricane winds were sure to ground anything for the day.

I was a bit cavalier about my birding.  I had left both pairs of binoculars in the other vehicle; all I had was my camera.  No big deal, I thought since there were only a handful of shorebirds to sift through.  Well, when we got there the scene had changed from the morning.  There were now more birds.  The huge, exposed mudflats were hoppin’. There were Pectoral Sandpipers.

Pectoral Sandpiper

Pectoral Sandpiper

There were Solitary Sandpipers.

Solitary Sandpiper

Solitary Sandpiper

And there were about 50 DunlinXGreen-winged Teal hybrids all over the mudflats making it very difficult for a guy with just a camera to pick out a similar-sized Black-bellied Plover.

Green-winged Teal

Green-winged Teal

Then Evan hollered, “Dad! I see it!”  I don’t know how the kid does it.  He’s never looked at birds through binoculars.  He had never seen a Black-bellied Plover.  And here he picked out the plover camouflaged against the drab, muddy background not far from the road.  He’s got a keen sense of bird shapes and movements.  That very day before we got to Carlson’s, Evan told me the kids in his gifted and talented group had to answer a variety of questions earlier in the day.  One question was to name their favorite bird.  He said that the only bird the other kids could come up with was a Bald Eagle.  Not only does my kid know that a Black-bellied Plover exists, but he can pick one out having never seen one. {Proud birder parent moment.}

I might be giving Evan a little too much credit, though.  As I started snapping new pictures of what I presumed to be the same Black-bellied Plover, my morning’s plover study caused me to take pause with this bird. The smaller head, smaller pointed bill, and grayish undersides that I was seeing were spot on for the juvenile American Golden-Plover! It was unbelievable that I had now seen the two “big” plovers in the same day!

American Golden-Plover

I told Evan what I was confident we had and his response was, “You’re welcome, Dad, for finding you a life bird.” Not just for me either.  I called Steve up right away and got him on the road since he had never seen one before.  He had no trouble finding and viewing it.  Neither did we as the AGPL kept coming closer to the road.

American Golden-PloverFinally it came in to crushing distance. Boom.

American Golden-Plover

American Golden-Plover

While we enjoyed this lifer very much, I kept up the search for the Black-bellied Plover so Evan could get it too.  Whether I was handicapped with my limited optics or whether it flew away, we just couldn’t come up with it.  Evan was okay with that.

These two plover species are by no means easy in any part of the state.  To get both of them as life birds on the same day still blows my mind.  And to think if I hadn’t studied or if Evan hadn’t been along, it wouldn’t have happened. So, thanks Evan!  But as incredible as this day was, the following day would prove to be just as exciting as I would get a life look at another bird and then quickly turn my attention away from it and toward a much more unexpected non-lifer.

Squeezing a Lifer out of a Busy Life

I’m quite shocked, frankly, at how quickly it came.  I’ve long been familiar with the busy lives that kids and teens lead both in and out of school.  Parents have long shook their heads and rolled their eyes while saying, “Just you wait.”  Though expected, I never realized just how soon our family would be caught up in the tornado of our kids’ extra-curricular interests.  Mondays are the worst of it.  Evan has both piano lessons and Cub Scouts that day, and they are not back-to-back nor are they immediately after school.

So on Monday, September 22nd when I picked Evan up from school and we had an hour to kill before piano, it dawned on me that we had enough time to check out Carlson’s Dairy, the premiere shorebird spot in Kandiyohi County.  Randy had called the day before with a fantastic report: a lone American Avocet, Long-billed Dowitchers, and Black-bellied Plovers.  The latter two would be lifers.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get out there the day Randy called.  So hopefully there might still be something waiting for us on this burst of Monday birding.

Turns out there was.  I found three dowitchers.  We had never seen Long-billed or Short-billed, so it was a lifer for sure.  I marked it as a Long-billed Dowitcher since Randy had made that call the day before based on the date of migration.  We were in the middle of the migration window for Long-billed Dowitchers and had just passed the Short-billed Dowitcher window.  Later on I was able to use the humpback shape and excessively long bills to confirm they were dowitchers of the long-billed variety.

Long-billed Dowitcher

Short-billed Dowitcher

Long-billed Dowitcher and Short-billed Dowitcher Lifers!

Long-billed and Short-billed Dowitcher

I’ve always been amused by birds that scratch themselves like a dog or cat, but it was especially delightful to see a dowitcher itching.

Short-billed Dowitcher

Satisfied with a lifer and the best photos I could muster (shorebirds at Carlson’s Dairy are always far from the road), it was a bonus to see some other cool birds.  That American Avocet was still around.  It was pretty swell to see my first one in winter-plumage.  They are not a bird that we get every year during spring and fall migrations. In fact, when I uploaded my photo to the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union’s website, it was recorded as a first fall record for Kandiyohi County.  Neato.

American Avocet in winter plumage

American Avocet in winter plumage

I also wasn’t expecting to see a Northern Pintail.

Northern Pintail

Northern Pintail

There really was nothing left to see other than some common migrating shorebirds and waterfowl.  We came and scooped up the goodies in the half hour we had to bird before having to get to piano lessons. The lifer Long-billed Dowitcher and the American Avocet made for a tidy haul on this brief excursion.  It was efficient lifering – the best, and often only, kind of lifering in a whirlwind life.

Arrr! This be the feeder of RUHU, the Red-bearded Pirate-bird!

It was inevitable.  You knew it, I knew it.  I spent a day pretending I didn’t know it and actually thought I was being an adult when I decided against going on another five-hour round-trip to the same place to try again for the Rufous Hummingbird.  The inner birder-child won out last Friday, though, as I found myself checking to see if I had any unused comp hours at work to be able to get off early enough to get down to Le Sueur before the RUHU went to bed.  Friends at work continue to be enablers for this birding disease of mine as they agreed to cover my last two classes of the day.  With the extra time, I was able to pick up both kids, take care of the dogs, and hit the road with the sun still high in the sky.  We even stopped to pick up Melissa for yet another family-style bird adventure.

So what could cause all the angst?  What could be worth the fast-paced, high-stress hassle?  What could cause me to stop licking my wounds and go back for potentially more pain? This.

Rufous Hummingbird in Le Sueur, Minnesota

Rufous Hummingbird in Le Sueur, Minnesota

We had to wait nearly 20 minutes for our first glimpse of the bird when it made a brief appearance at the feeder.  It was not very active on this day and would disappear for another 15-20 minutes before our next sighting.  It was no small thrill to be waiting alongside a couple of Minnesota birding legends, Bob Janssen and Dave Cahlander. I’ve got Bob’s Birds in Minnesota book and am looking forward to his upcoming book on birds of Minnesota State Parks.  This was a second author sighting in as many months; I’m going to have to start carting around Evan’s bird book library for autographs.

Rufous Hummingbird

So, Evan got his lifer RUHU, and I got my MN RUHU.  Pretty sweet deal all around. Another interesting aside is that Evan is working on some electives in Cub Scouts to earn some patches for his uniform.  Several of them involve birdwatching; one in particular was keeping a week-long list of species he had seen.  When he started the list, we couldn’t have imagined in our wildest dreams he would be writing down Rufous Hummingbird.

Rufous Hummingbird

It was nice of the sun and the bird to cooperate for a brief moment to give me a shot of RUHU’s beautiful gorget.

Rufous Hummingbird

Though we did not get to see the Rufous chase away any Ruby-throats from the feeder he plundered and pillaged, it was clear that no RTHU dared to challenge RUHU, the Red-bearded Pirate-bird.  He was a fireball in every sense of the word.

After enjoying a couple more brief sightings, we headed to Mankato so Evan could stop at a Barnes and Noble to pick up his next book in a series he’s reading.  It was just our luck to visit on International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th).  The kids enjoyed listening to a store employee all decked out in piratewear read a pirate story in a pirate voice.  It was topped off with a treasure hunt around the store.  No fewer than three adults chortled/gaffawed/giggled when the pirate asked the kids if they wanted to look for her booty.

Since I have many teacher friends who visit this blog, I would be remiss to not mention that Barnes and Noble offers an educator discount.  My astute wife had the presence of mind to ask about it.  When I learned the discount was a hefty 20%, I hustled on back to the bird section and bought my first Sibley’s.  I think I’m a real birder now.

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So avast me mates and get ye to the B ‘n N fer some real book treasure to fill the bowels of yer ship!  And if ye should see Red-beard, the pirate-bird, raise yer glass of grog to his pirattitude and toss ‘er back in celebration!

Summer’s Grand Finale

When summer began I had a list of resident birds that had eluded me for over two years. Migrations and periods of summer residency came and went with no sign of these birds that live here at home in Kandiyohi County during the summer months.  General laziness and greenhorn status is certainly a part but not the entirety of the cause.  No, this list of birds reads like the Who’s Who of the most evasive and elusive birds on the continent. They were dismissed in my early birding days because they are rag-tag bunch of drab and frumpy-looking earth-toned birds.  They didn’t bring the ‘wow’ factor like a Scarlet Tanager or a Blue-headed Vireo.  Little did I know that this ‘playing hard-to-get’ quality would make them some of the most desirable birds around.  So here they are with their current status indicated.

Wood Thrush: Heard Only – the worst way to get a lifer (is that even a lifer?)

Yellow-billed Cuckoo

Black-billed Cuckoo: Conquered –  twice over with some crummy photos to boot!

American Bittern – Heard Only/Possibly Seen

Least Bittern

Black-crowned Night Heron Seen – but a pale juvenile far, far away. Sigh.

Henslow’s Sparrow – Heard Only?

Sora – Heard Only successfully converted to Flash Sighting

Virginia Rail – Ditto the Sora

So I guess I was fairly successful since I made contact with all but two on my list.  Even still, with nary a decent photo to show for my efforts, my work was anything but satisfactory. There’s no other way to put it – these birds are all just buggers, the whole bunch.  Given this C- performance on my wish list and the recent Least Tern fiasco, I’m happy to report that we’d have the last laugh over one of the species on this list and put it to rest photographically speaking.  It was a Life Bird thumping with unobstructed views requiring no binoculars.  And the icing on the cake was the cool way it all went down. Read on.

With a bathroom project choking out my time and the new school year looming on the horizon, summer birding season pretty much had all but the last nail in the coffin.  Part of my back-to-school agenda included a three-day training in downtown St. Paul.  On the surface, the Cities may not seem like a birding destination.  But I have seen some amazing birds in the Cities because the pockets and puddles of habitat are prowled and scoured by an army of metro birders.   And lately they were turning up one very cooperative and photogenic bird from my list.  Throngs of people were going to see this bird.  My Facebook feed was spammed up with countless photos of this bird in various lights and poses.  It was ridiculous how easy people were adding this bird to their life and photo lists.  It was cheap. It was unfair.  And I wanted a piece of that action.

So what bird could garner such attention?  It was none other than the Least Bittern, a couple of them in fact.  They were being seen daily from a boardwalk through a marsh at the Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield.  Being in the Cities at the zenith of this Least Bittern mania was a beautiful coincidence.  The whole family accompanied me to the Cities.  I got trained while hey had fun with their Science Museums, Childrens’ Museums, swimming pools, and such.  But the Least Bittern fun would be a family affair.

We got to Wood Lake Nature Center that first night with about an hour of daylight to spare and quickly huffed our way to the boardwalk that cuts right through the middle of the marsh.  I wasn’t worried about the time element; I knew there would be other birders there.  We just had to look for them and that’s where the bird would be.  Sure enough there was guy with a camera as long as my leg and a lady sporting some fancy binos. We were where we needed to be.  Of course there were no irrelevant introductions, but rather my first words were to inquire if the bird was present.  The answer was no. Before too long the lady went further down the boardwalk to look while the guy stayed put.  I have a tough time sitting still when birds are not being seen, so I started in the direction of the lady.  That’s when Mr. Camera whistled at us and motioned excitedly with his hand for us to join him.  He had it.  Evan and I raced down there, and I caught a mere glimpse of bird’s butt disappearing into the reeds. Mr. Camera showed me a lovely photo of the non-butt parts of the Least Bittern that he took just seconds ago.  The aggravation!

A short time later the lady came walking back to all of us and told us she had another Least Bittern further down.  Mr. Camera was amazingly mobile with his massive apparatus and got down there just as fast as we did.  And there we saw a glorious Least Bittern unobstructed just 6 feet off the boardwalk.  It was awesome.

Least Bittern at Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield

Least Bittern at Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield

 We got to watch this Bittern nab a minnow from time to time.  I was never ready with the camera.  I usually caught it just before or after such a shot.

Least Bittern

It was incredibly fun to watch.  Here Evan is waiting for it to reappear after one of its many disappearances into the reeds.

EvanEven Melissa and Marin enjoyed seeing this mysterious, petite bird.  But a potential screaming fit caused the two of them to go off on their own birding venture to look at Mallards and such. All of us, from different vantage points, saw this Osprey come sailing over clutching a fat, little meal from someone’s Koi pond.

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We never had to wait long on the Least Bittern to show up again.

Least Bittern

Least BitternLeast BitternEvan was captivated by this bird.  He never watches birds through binoculars, so he often misses just how cool some birds can be.  Here he needed none to enjoy the bird.  I wanted to capture him in this state, and Mr. Camera and his camera added some birding flavor to the background of the image.  Plus he and Evan were visiting about birds as the guy was asking him questions and teaching him things.  He was an incredibly friendly guy. Moments after I took this shot, the lady birder pulled me aside and whispered that Mr. Camera was Stan Tekiela, the famed author/photographer of the popular state-by-state birding field guides and other nature guide books!

Evan watching a Least Bittern with Stan Tekiela.

I recognized Stan’s name instantly but had trouble recalling where I had seen his name before.  Then I remembered a book from Evan’s library of field guides and nature books.

Stan Tekiela

The lady birder implored me to take a picture of my kid alongside Mr. Tekiela.  The look in her eye and the tone of her hushed voice indicated this was a big, big deal – so much so that if she had a kid (which she didn’t) she’d definitely get a picture of the two of them together.

It was cool to bump into Mr. Tekiela.  But what was really neat was to listen in on the natural conversation between Mr. Tekiela and Evan about all things natural.  He truly was an educator who genuinely enjoyed sharing nature with others.  Here is a snippet of conversation I overheard:

Mr. Tekiela: “There’s another bird that looks like this that’s a lot bigger.”

Evan: “Yeah, I know.”

Mr. Tekiela: “Do you know what it’s called?”

Evan: “The, uh, uh, American Bittern.  We’ve never seen one. We’ve only heard one at my Grandpa’s house.”

Mr. Tekiela: “Do you know what they sound like?”

Evan: “Like…someone throwing rocks in a pond.”

Mr. Tekiela: “That’s right, that’s right! They are called the Slough-Pumper because they sound like an old pump pumping the water out of a slough.”

Mr. Tekiela was quite social and amicable with everyone around.  He and I visited for a bit and it came up that Evan had his field guide for Arizona birds. So we visited about Arizona and all his fascinating work in making field guides for that state.  He told me for the Arizona mammals book they had to trap all the smaller rodents and photograph them in captivity and then carefully replace each one in the exact same spot they found it in.  Another fun story he shared with us was a call he got from law enforcement in the Twin Cities area about an Eastern Coral Snake someone found in the Cities!  Mr. Tekiela never was able to relocate the snake, but he showed us a picture of it on his cell phone that the police had sent him.

It was a very fun encounter.  But weren’t we looking at a bird?  Our visiting never scared it off…maybe it was hanging around listening to Mr. Tekiela’s cool stories…

Least BitternLeast Bittern

After dozens of Least Bittern photos which was still probably less than 5% of the number Mr. Tekiela had, we decided to keep walking the boardwalk to look for some of the abundant Virginia Rails people had been reporting.  Evan had never seen one, and I needed a photo.  At one point we were walking back toward where Mr. Tekiela was when he motioned wildly and whisper-yelled, “Evan, come here!”  We hustled up there just in time for Mr. Tekiela to point out a Racoon that was creeping out from the reeds and coming to the water’s edge.  Evan’s response was “Cool!”

After lingering a bit longer, the rain started to come down.  Evan and I took off running to join the girls and get back to the car as Mr. Tekiela chided, “C’mon, you fair-weather birders!”  We smiled back and kept running.  Once we were under the canopy of the woods and slowed down, I finally told Evan who he was birding and visiting with.  His eyes got as big as dinner plates.

It was one heck of a bird to end the summer with and one memorable birder encounter. That’s what I love about this game – you never know what will happen. And most importantly, everybody in the whole family had a genuine good time on this little outing.  It was the best way to wrap up the summer birding season.  It was perfect.

This Crew Breaks for Lifers

It’s not done.  Nope.  Home improvement enthusiasts will be let down while birding aficionados will rejoice that we have not let some silly bathroom remodel stop us from birding rather than the other way around.  But I’ll throw a bone to the former group by saying that we are getting there.  Like a jigsaw puzzle nearing its completion, the bathroom’s starting to fall now with rapid, visible changes taking place daily.  The truth is that I used to enjoy such work, but now it’s a chore — a horrible, dirty, dusty, cementy, go-to-the-eye-doctor-to-remove-a-foreign-object-embedded-in-the-cornea kind of chore. Each day that I go to my little 7x7x7 cube to endure such misery, I secretly hope that call or that email will come in alerting us to a birding emergency.  Last weekend as I was getting set to start working on mudding and taping the drywall, such a call came in.  It was Joel.  He had a Black-crowned Night Heron for us.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Time to roll.

Our list of life bird needs for our area is so short that all the guys here know it fairly well. All that remain are a handful of elusive and reclusive birds as well as a few shorebirds. The Black-crowned Night Heron is one such needed lifer.  And one such needed work break.

Black-crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

The photo is not much to look at, but we were fighting some serious distance.

Evan MarinIt’s a good thing Joel came out to point it out to us.  Even with the right location, I doubt I ever would have found the heron.  Evan felt the need to point this one out to his sister. It was pretty cute.

Evan Marin

After this we went to Kandiyohi County’s main shorebird spot, Carlson’s Dairy just west of Pennock.  We were after another lifer Joel had for us, the Semipalmated Plover.  We couldn’t find one at Carlson’s though. Try as we might, we just could not turn this young Killdeer into our bird.

Juvenile Killdeer

Juvenile Killdeer

Besides the little life bird excursion, the Blue Grosbeak searches, and all the in-state and out-of-state trips, I’ve been procastinating the bathroom project by hunting locally for another would-be lifer, the Wood Thrush.  A couple weeks ago Evan and I went to a spot marked out by Joel north of Sibley State Park.  We were successful in hearing our bird, two of them actually. It was another story seeing this brush-loving understory dweller. I guess we can only count it as a heard-only lifer, an oxymoron in the language of birders.  It’s tough to be so close but so blind.  At least I knew the song well now – owned it in fact.  So much was the case that as I was sitting by Melissa on the couch that evening while she was playing Hay Day on her iPad, the background farm sounds reached out and grabbed me.  I hollered for her to turn up the volume as I put my ear to the speaker.  And there it was, clear as a bell. Mixed in with the farm animal noises was a singing Wood Thrush.  Awesome, but also very cruel to be taunted by this repetitive bird song.

Wood Thrushes must love farms because another birding friend, Brad, called me a week or so later saying he had a Wood Thrush at his farm place. Off we went instead of doing work on the bathroom.  This time, though, we neither heard nor saw the bird even though we were hot on its tail. Argh.

But this story of procrastination does have a good finish even if the bathroom does not yet have the same thing.  Randy was at Carlson’s the other day and said there were Semipalmated Plovers all over the place.  Sweet.  Evan declined to go with me — he’s been burned by this bird too many times at this spot which is nearly a half hour away.  He had a farm to build on Hay Day and Wood Thrushes to listen to.

So I went to Carlson’s solo and put the Semipalmated Plover to rest.

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover

As a bonus I was able to use a recording to lure in one of several calling Soras, another heard-only lifer at this point. It was magical as I watched the ditch grass move like a snake where a Sora was sprinting his way toward me.  And then, he poked his head out in a small clearing allowing me to see his bright yellow beak.  He sized me up and then quickly disappeared once again into the grasses.  Two more life birds on the books. The wish-list for local stuff is really getting short now.

I suppose, though.  It’s time to get that bathroom knocked out.  But even if I find myself distracted by going out on the roads chasing a migrant, a vagrant, or a hermit, I’m still doing bathroom research.  The ingenuity of this farmer proves I have so much more to learn.

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Swainson’s Redemption and Nebraska’s New State Bird

All good things must come to end as they say, and this Colorado story is no different. Except this story needs to come to an end because more hard-hitting birding stories have been brewing back home since we got here.  It’s been intense. We’ll catch up on all that later, but for now we must finish the tale of birding Colorado.

Having taken four hours to get to Colorado Springs from Uncle Jon’s (a trip that takes non-birders two hours), we were now ready to hit the plains of eastern Colorado where the birds and landscape would be less inspiring and allow us to push the pedal down and get home. When driving through Colorado you learn that elevation is a big deal as it’s posted on every city’s population sign.  Undoubtedly this was the brain-child of the much cooler mountain cities, and it’s the scourge of those self-concious eastern towns who must display to the world just how elevationally-challenged they are.  The drop in the cool-factor of birds is directly correlated to the simultaneous decreases in elevation and town self esteem.  But what the eastern birds lacked, they made up for with great vigor. Case in point – Western Kingbirds.  They were everywhere and perched boldly on any kind of wire proudly displaying their awesomeness.

Cruising along on U.S. 24 I had a beautifully patterned Swainson’s Hawk come sailing high over the road.  Evan dipped on this bird in South Dakota and pouted about it since I saw it.  Because of this debacle, I kept my mouth shut when I saw one while driving through Denver earlier in the week.  But this time I couldn’t help myself, and I hollered that we had a Swainson’s.  Of course this jarred Evan out of his backseat activities, and he couldn’t get on the bird in time, setting off a fountain of tears.  Apparently he really wanted to see this hawk bad. I turned the car around to chase after it, but it had vanished.  Nuts.

Thankfully, though, that’s not how the Swainson’s saga ends.  As I drove east out of some non-descript town (sorry town, I only remember the names of the cool, high-elevation cities), a Swainson’s Hawk shot up out of nowhere from behind a grassland hill flashing his white wing linings and reddish brown chest as he soared across the road a mere 20 feet off the ground. I hollered. I couldn’t help it.  Evan was panicked.  I pulled over.  Thankfully this bird cooperated and gave Evan his sought-after lifer as it circled on thermals right by the road.

Swainson's Hawk

Swainson’s Hawk

Swainson's Hawk

So it took four Swainson’s Hawks before Evan finally got his lifer and I got my photo documentation.  Then a funny thing happened – or not if you are a birder: they were everywhere.  I bet we saw close to a dozen Swainson’s Hawks by the time we finished out Colorado, nicked Kansas, and then got into Nebraska.  And Nebraska? Well, when I was filling up with gas at some podunk town in the east-central part of the state, Evan was getting out of the car to go into the convenience store and he looked up and said calmly, “Hey Dad, a Swainson’s Hawk.” Sure enough another Swainson’s was cruising low over the gas station canopy!  The Swainson’s no longer had power over Evan, but it was still having an effect on me.  Gas still pumping, I reached for my camera to get try to get a shot of a Nebraska Swainson’s.

Swainson's HawkAre you sick of Swainson’s Hawk photos yet? Too bad!  It’s probably the coolest hawk I know, and there’s even more coming in a future post!

The Swainson’s Hawk alone would have made Nebraska a worthwhile state to drive through as far as birding goes, but surprisingly Nebraska put up another cool bird and lots of them.  No, it wasn’t the Western Meadowlark that holds the title of state bird in Nebraska and like a half dozen other western states (the meadowlark is a cool bird, but really the states all should have drawn bird names out of a hat).  Instead it was the Red-headed Woodpecker. Interesting side note about state birds on the trip – we didn’t see a single Ring-necked Pheasant in South Dakota and only one Lark Bunting in Colorado.

It’s kind of funny how things play out.  After spending a night in Kearney, Nebraska, I missed my road that angled to the northeast.  This forced me to have to go north and east but not northeast – something that aggravated me as a traveler and as someone well-versed in the Pythagorean Theorem.  Compounding the issue was that we hit road construction where we were stopped with a whole long line of cars waiting for the flag lady to let us have our turn to proceed.  Except there was no visible road construction for miles.  We had been waiting for quite awhile with no end in sight.  When the guy in front of me got out of his car, lit up a smoke, and leaned across his hood while jawing with the flag lady, I couldn’t take it any more.  I peeled out of the line and headed back west to go south just to be able to go east and north again.  It was awful and made worse because we were now traveling on gravel roads.  In the flat land of Nebraska, the gravel roads are laid out perfectly on a grid with an intersection every mile.  And they can really grow corn tall in Nebraska, so I was forced to stop at every intersection to avoid a collision.  The agony!

But there is a silver lining to this miserable cloud that seemed to follow us on our journey home.  We spotted a couple Red-headed Woodpeckers.  It is such a pretty bird that is declining in numbers.  It’s a good day any time you see one.  As we kept driving, though, we kept seeing them! Ten in all! It was crazy and fantastic and made the miserable travel worth it.  Melissa said it best when she said this was truly the way to experience Nebraska if you have to experience Nebraska – tall corn, dusty roads, and Red-headed Woodpeckers. Good save, Nebraska.

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-headed Woodpecker

Red-headed WoodpeckerWe also saw a couple of Brown Thrashers, and I even spied a Loggerhead Shrike in a bush as we flew past.  I was too frustrated with the stop-and-go travel to make many voluntary stops for pictures, though.

So, there you have it.  We got home to Minnesota without incident, and the birding has not slowed down a bit since we got here.  Who knew that late July and August could hold such bird wonders back home of all places?  Stay tuned.

Custer’s Last Stand

As I packed the car that last morning in Colorado, the Western Tanager was weighing heavily on my mind.  Yes, I had seen it earlier in the week, but the quick looks and obscured photos were unsatisfactory. Additionally Evan wanted it too.  There would be time for one last play. But I doubted that play and felt that Custer County was going to defeat us as it had us surrounded with Western Tanager-less mountains (or so it seemed).  Custer was the last option to see WETA as we’d be heading east out of Colorado into lower elevations and windswept grasslands.

I had been debating two options for that play – back to Forest Service Road 383 by Bishop’s Castle where six WETA had been reported or back to Greenwood Road where two had been reported.  I got skunked on 383 earlier, and it just didn’t give me a good vibe overall.  I finally settled on Greenwood Road; it wasn’t as much of a detour, and I had previous success there. Statistically speaking it was the worse bet, but sometimes a birder has to follow his gut.

With that decision made, we said our goodbyes and began descending the mountain to the Wet Mountain Valley below.  As I drove away, fear of not seeing the bird mixed with doubt about my decision.  All this was churning inside when I spotted a larger bird at the top of a Ponderosa while that mountain home was still visible and looming large up on the mountain behind us.  I had quickly become acclimated to the new species at Jon and Carol’s house and this one didn’t fit any of the profiles. Even as I reached for my binoculars on the floor of my car I had a strong suspicion of what I was about to see and could hardly get those bins up fast enough.  And my suspicion was right for I was looking at a Clark’s Nutcracker! Oh yeah!

Clark's Nutcracker

Clark’s Nutcracker

Evan looked up to get his check mark while I hopped out to follow this bird around a bit and get some photos.  I had hoped I would get this bird in Colorado, but I had read it’s a high elevation bird near the timberline.  Needless to say I was quite surprised and delighted to find one at 8,300 feet.  The whole time I observed it, it made this rasping, croaking sound.  I had heard that sound the past couple days but didn’t know what was making it.

Clark's NutcrackerClark's NutcrackerThis was quite the thrill seeing this cool bird.  Every new western species I find is a double bonus – it is one more for the life list and one less vagrant to chase in Minnesota.  I missed out on a Clark’s in Minnesota just before I really got serious about birding.

Now the prospect of potentially losing out on Western Tanager was easier to stomach. We eventually left the Clark’s to do his croaking and eating in peace, and we later arrived at the Greenwood Road for the moment of truth.  This road is a few miles long with very few inhabitants.  It was a nice, quiet, birdy-kind-of-road.  Not wanting to make this trip agonizingly long for the family, I was traveling around 25 mph – slow enough to bird but not too slow to keep us from making decent progress on our way home. Melissa then told me I’d never see anything going that fast.  (Isn’t she great?) Ok, then, so I dropped it down to 5 mph.  Melissa asked me what we were looking for so she could help.  Some of you may remember that she found all five of those Aitkin County Great Gray Owls and that bevy of Burrowing Owls in Arizona.  Anyhow, I explained the red, yellow, and black pattern to her of the tanager.  I no sooner said it and she pointed and said there was a bright yellow and black bird in the pine just ahead of us.  No binoculars were needed to see we already found the Western Tanager!  Of course, Evan couldn’t see it and the pressure or exhaustion was getting to him and the tears started coming.  I hopped out to grab a photo while Melissa was able to get him on the bird.  But that sneaky WETA was using his best goldfinch disguise.  I only got this shot before it flew across the road and down to the ground.

Western Tanager

I watched and watched the spot where it flew to the ground.  What in the world? They’re supposed to be birds who prefer the tops of conifers.  Eventually I figured it out as the now soggy Western Tanager flew up to a bush after bathing in the quiet mountain stream that was running alongside the road.

Western Tanager

The bird continued to sit in one spot, preening itself.  Even though it was still, the distance was too great and the bird too wet for any remarkable photo.

Western Tanager

Eventually it flew, and I couldn’t relocate it.  It was nice to get this one for Evan.  I was also able to improve my photo of the bird just a little, so I was content.  Even still, we kept birding.  There could be more Western Tanagers around.  We saw some empids, and based on eBird reports they were probably new birds for us.  I didn’t care though.  I will fight the empid identification battle in retirement when I have more time.  Time was precious right now, and I wanted to see more Western Tanagers with our last remaining minutes in the mountains.

Evan and I searching for WETA on foot on Greenwood Road, Custer County, Colorado

Evan and I searching for Western Tanagers along Greenwood Road, Custer County, Colorado

Reaching the end of the short Greenwood Road, we turned around to drive down it and back one more time.  Good thing we did because I saw another(?) Western Tanager fly across the road.  I got one photo before it was gone for good. Not a crush, but it was enough to defeat Custer.

Western Tanager

Western Tanager

Though I was still ignoring empids and the like, there was a bird I couldn’t ignore because its size, its numbers, and its awesomeness wouldn’t allow it. From a streamside Willow Tree, a half dozen big birds flushed high into the pines above.  From the same eBird report I had read earlier, I knew these were Band-tailed Pigeons!  And they kept pouring out of that tree.  We must have seen 20.

Band-tailed Pigeons

Band-tailed Pigeon

Band-tailed Pigeon

Band-tailed Pigeon

Two big bonus lifers (three for Evan) and the number one target nailed – I think we beat you, Custer.  In the last post I had said this would be the final Colorado post, but leaving the mountains is a natural break in the story and a good place to stop.  The story of the rest of the journey home will be a short and sweet post and will truly be the last one. Colorado had one more big gift for Evan, and Nebraska surprised us.