January 3: Thayer's Gull! (Or is it conspecific with Iceland?)

Thayer's Gull

 Today I added another bird of conservation concern, a Thayer's Gull in Canal Park in Duluth. This bird, which may actually be a subspecies of the Iceland Gull, is mainly of concern because so little is known about it and its needs. Thayer's and Iceland Gulls nest in very inaccessible areas, but are very vulnerable to oil spills. Following a 1993 shipwreck near Shetland, a disproportionately large number of all gulls found dead were Iceland Gull. Behavior of aerial feeding from surface of sea may make Iceland Gull especially prone to ingestion of oil or oil-covered items in contaminated areas.

 Erik Bruhnke and I met at Canal Park at 11 this morning to see gulls, but they weren't gathering at all near the point. We did see them rise, probably when a Peregrine Falcon passed over--the falcon landed on the aerial lift bridge and even the distant gulls pretty much disappeared. I'll have to spend more time studying the gulls later in the day tomorrow or Saturday (my dog Photon has a vet appointment tomorrow late in the day). We did pick out a Great Black-backed Gull, several Ring-billed Gulls, the Thayer's and another that we saw only briefly and couldn't be sure whether it was Thayer's or Iceland (one day that question may turn out to be unimportant). We also saw this Herring Gull with a weird tip to its bill.

Herring Gull with deformed bill tip

   

Erik picked out this hybrid Common Goldeneye x Hooded Merganser. The bill is very merganser-like. It stayed a bit separate from the main flock of goldeneyes.

Common Goldeneye x Hooded Merganser

   

I wonder if the female Bufflehead is the same one as last year?

Bufflehead

   

I added 7 new species for the year today, including the Peregrine Falcon, bringing my total so far to 36. Oddly enough, though it's only been a few decades since breeding peregrines had been entirely extirpated from the eastern US, its reintroduction has been so successful that it's no longer considered of conservation concern at all. The two species I've seen so far that are of conservation concern are the Evening Grosbeak and Thayer's Gull. 

I looked for the Varied Thrush again on my way home from Canal Park, but got skunked (though I did finally see a Blue Jay). Miles put on today: 13, making the total so far 267.

New species added:

1. Mallard
2. Bufflehead
3. Ring-billed Gull
4. Great Black-backed Gull
5. Thayer's Gull
6. Peregrine Falcon
7. Blue Jay

January 2: Evening Grosbeak!

Snowy Owl 

I spent the day with Erik Bruhnke, first driving around Superior, where we saw our first bird of the day, a Snowy Owl, in quasi-darkness in the parking lot of the Superior High School. We headed to Wisconsin Point for a short while, where we had about 70 Common Redpolls and at least FIVE Hoary Redpolls! Then we headed out to the Sax-Zim Bog.

Hoary Redpoll

   

My most wanted bird of the day was Evening Grosbeak, a bird that has been dangerously declining for the past decade, and is the American Birding Association's Bird of the Year. I'm thrilled that we saw 8 of them at the Blue Spruce Road feeder this morning, making this the first bird of conservation concern that I've seen on my Conservation Big Year. Evening Grosbeaks have long been one of my favorite birds, and so their dramatic drop in numbers is particularly distressing for me. 

Evening Grosbeak

 Lots of cool birds, ending the day with a Great Gray Owl, I brought my year total to 29. I posted all my sightings on eBird, but in a number of different checklists.

Bird of the day: Hard to choose among Hoary Redpolls (so many!), Snowy Owl (Really cooperative, though the light was crappy), Great Gray Owl (how superb!)... but I'm going with Evening Grosbeak, the only one of the bunch that is suffering egregious declines and needs continent-wide research to elucidate the reasons for its decline. 

New species today:

1. Common Goldeneye
2. Bald Eagle
3. Rough-legged Hawk
4. Snowy Owl
5. Great Gray Owl
6. Northern Hawk Owl
7. Pileated Woodpecker
8. Hairy Woodpecker
9. Northern Shrike
10. Gray Jay
11. Boreal Chickadee
12. Snow Bunting
13. White-winged Crossbill
14. Pine Grosbeak
15. American Goldfinch
16. Evening Grosbeak

Total: 29 species

Great Gray Owl

   

Erik and I carpooled, going 222 miles, for a year's total of 254 miles.

January 1: Black-capped Chickadee and Hoary Redpoll

(Photo not taken today)

First bird of the day and the year: Black-capped Chickadee, which I got to enjoy with three senses, because s/he alighted on my hand for mealworms. I mostly stayed home today because it was my daughter's last day home. While Katie and Michael were out to brunch I did make a couple of stops trying to see the Varied Thrush (didn't get it) and to Pat Thomas's yard on Superior Street to see some of her splendid birds, including Hoary Redpoll.

Hoary Redpoll at Pat Thomas's feeder today

  Russ and I drove Katie and Michael to the airport, and checked along the roads up there for owls, but were skunked. I'm counting the miles even though I didn't see much at all, because we put on some of those miles trying for birds. My day total is pretty dismal, but 13 for the start of 2013 is pretty cool. Bird of the Day: a tie, between Black-capped Chickadee and Hoary Redpoll. Total miles: 32 Tomorrow's plan: I'll be birding all day with Erik Bruhnke, at the bog and looking for gulls. Keep your fingers crossed!! New Species for the Day:

1.  Sharp-shinned Hawk 
2. Herring Gull 
3. Rock Pigeon 
4. Downy Woodpecker 
5. American Crow 
6. Common Raven 
7. Black-capped Chickadee 
8. Red-breasted Nuthatch 
9. White-breasted Nuthatch 
10. European Starling 
11. Northern Cardinal 
12. Common Redpoll 
13. Hoary Redpoll

Conservation Big Year: January Game Plan

It's time for my Conservation Big Year to begin! My goal this year will not be focused on out-of-range rarities that are common somewhere, but on species of conservation concern as defined by the American Bird Conservancy, with a few additional species that seem to me to be declining seriously. So my “target list” includes about 177 species. Some are found only up in the Arctic, which I just can’t afford to travel to this year, so I don’t expect to see anywhere near all of them. I’ll be looking at every bird I can find as I search for those target species, and by year’s end, I hope to have seen at least 500 species and to have taken at least marginal photos of most of them. I’d set my goal at 600 if I had more money and time and no family. Pursuing so many birds will involve a lot of travel, which not only will keep me away from home more than I really like and use more money than I really have—it will also exact a high cost in terms of using natural resources. I’ll be doing my best to minimize my use of energy and water in other ways this year, and whenever possible I’ll try to carpool to birding destinations. I’ll keep track of every mile I travel for birding by every means of transportation. At year’s end I’ll try to donate at least a penny per mile to the American BirdConservancy.

   

 In January, I’ll mostly be focused at home in Minnesota and in Florida, where I’m headed for the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival. I’m hoping the Varied Thrush found during the Duluth Christmas Bird Count will stick around long enough for me to see it on New Year’s Day. Varied Thrushes are vagrants to the Midwest and East, but they’re of conservation concern in the Pacific rainforest, where they’re declining. Two gulls that have been appearing regularly in the Duluth-Superior harbor, Thayer’s and Iceland, are also ranked of conservation concern. And one of my favorite birds of all, the Evening Grosbeak, is dangerously declining. 2012 was the fourth year in a row that not one appeared on Duluth’s Christmas Bird Count, but fortunately a handful have been regularly appearing in the Sax-Zim Bog.

   

 At mid-month, I’ll be driving to Florida, where it’s theoretically possible that I could see over 25 species of concern. Many of them are uncommon, but I expect to see at least a dozen, and, being an optimist, I have hopes of even more. So I’m setting my January goal at a total of 150 species, including at least 15 that are of Conservation Concern. I’ll be keeping a detailed field notebook and entering all my sightings for the year into eBird, too. That’s going to involve a level of self-discipline I haven’t mustered up in years.

   

Minnesota and Wisconsin Target Birds: January 1­–13

• ·      Thayer’s Gull
• ·      Iceland Gull
• ·      Varied Thrush (If the CBC bird is still hanging out in my neighborhood)
• ·      Evening Grosbeak

Florida Target Birds: January 18-29

• ·      Mottled Duck
• ·      Northern Bobwhite
• ·      Magnificent Frigatebird
• ·      Masked Booby
• ·      Reddish Egret
• ·      Black Rail (This is my one shot at a lifer for the month.)
• ·      Clapper Rail
• ·      King Rail
• ·      Snowy Plover
• ·      Wilson’s Plover
• ·      Piping Plover
• ·      Marbled Godwit
• ·      Red Knot
• ·      Sanderling
• ·      Western Sandpiper
• ·      Black Skimmer
• ·      Razorbill (I might get lucky—a lot of them have “invaded” Florida this year.)
• ·      White-crowned Pigeon
• ·      Red-crowned Parrot
• ·      Red-headed Woodpecker
• ·      Red-cockaded Woodpecker
• ·      Loggerhead Shrike
• ·      Florida Scrub-Jay
• ·      Bachman’s Sparrow
• ·      Saltmarsh Sparrow
• ·      Seaside Sparrow
• ·      Painted Bunting

VERY Provisional Itinerary:

January: Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, Florida, mostly around the middle, from Sarasota to Merritt Island and the Viera Wetlands, and one pelagic trip with the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival.

February: Duluth area, and 9 day trip with Kim Eckert’s Minnesota Birding Weeks to South Texas

March: Wide open. Suggestions?

April: 13–21^st to Colorado with Kim Eckert’s Minnesota Birding Weeks. 27^th I’ll be speaking in Kansas near Cheyenne Bottoms.

May: First week I MIGHT be speaking in Oklahoma. That would be SO exciting! Then I’m off to Delaware for at least a week (I’ll have one speaking opportunity), and then moving up the coast to Machias Seal Island, and then across northern Michigan for Kirtland’s Warblers and back home. The Wisconsin Society for Ornithology is having their annual meeting in Ashland, and I get to speak there, and then I’ll be teaching my usual Elderhostel (oops—“Road Scholar”) birding class with Troy Walters at Trees for Tomorrow in Eagle River, WI.

June: Up in the air. Suggestions? Any chance it’s not too late for Colima Warbler? Southeastern Arizona and/or Grand Canyon?

July: Up in the air. Suggestions? (Minocqua, Wisconsin, on the 27^th and 28^th.

August–December: Up in the air. I’d like to go on at least one and maybe two Shearwater pelagic trips. Which would be best? And I’d like to get somewhere to see Yellow-billed Magpie and other California specialties.

Starting to plan again

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 How can it be November already? This has been a hectic year for me, with an unexpected book project and a loss of focus due to dealing with an aging family member's needs. I'm still plotting out plans for 2013. So far, I know I'll be in Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival in January and trying to take in some other birding spots while I'm in the state.

 

 I'll be birding for a week or so in northern Minnesota in February and then going on one of Kim Eckert's Minnesota Birding Weeks to cover south Texas. (I figured this tour would get me to a lot of great places, and even though it will be too intense to spend time talking to people working on conservation, I didn't see a more inexpensive and realistic way I could cover that ground, and no one from Texas has contacted me about conservation projects for this anyway.)

 

 March and April are fairly open--I want to get somewhere to observe both prairie-chickens and also Sharp-tailed Grouse and both sage grouse. I'm not sure how I'll manage to swing these trips financially, but they'll have to be pretty low-key. My income for all of 2011 was less than $10,000, and this year will be marginally better but not by a whole lot, so I'm working on a tighter budget than Greg Miller was doing his Big Year. 

I'll be spending the first and second weeks of May in and around Delaware—Bombay Hook and Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuges, and Cape Henlopen State Park (which has a protected beach area for nesting Piping Plovers!)—and the mid-Atlantic coast. This is one of the coolest invitations I've had so far--I'll get to visit with people from the Delmarva Ornithological Society and maybe get to tag along with a team for their Bird-A-Thon. If I do that, I'll be asking for pledges to help raise money for this conservation-oriented fund raiser where ALL of the proceeds go towards helping acquire or preserve vital migratory shorebird habitat in Delaware. So far, they have raised over $193,000 and helped acquire 274 acres of habitat in their first five years. This is EXACLY the kind of project I hope to highlight!

 

 En route home, I'll certainly stop at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory. I'll be missing the Biggest Week in American Birding, but any time there is time well spent, and I want to highlight their great work. I'll be home just in time for the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology's annual convention, which this year is in Ashland. Then I'll be teaching a "Road Scholar" class at Trees for Tomorrow in Eagle River, Wisconsin. When that's done, if there's time I'll head to Michigan for a quick visit to Kirtland's Warbler habitat. (I'm also hoping to see one in Wisconsin, where they now breed!!)

 

I'm hoping against hope that I'll be able to scrape up the funds and will get to go on Kim Eckert's Minnesota Birding Week up to Churchill in June. I could see a lot of important northern species up there! Otherwise June is open--it will be hotter than Hades down in Texas, but I've never seen Colima Warbler, and my only Golden-cheeked Warbler has been in Guatemala. These birds deserve highlighting! Also, I'll want to see Black-capped Vireos. I've seen them in Oklahoma (where, in 2013, I hope to see Lesser Prairie-Chicken), but not in Texas. But I'm not sure I can swing that yet.

 

 And for the rest of the year? It's still open. The one thing I want to schedule is a trip or two with Debi Shearwater. Her passion for conservation as well as birds is important. There are SO many places to go! I'd love to spend a day or two in the Sierra Nevadas when the Cornell Lab of Ornithology holds their Sound Recording Workshop, but that will probably overlap with Kim's Churchill trip. Oh, well--if I don't get into Kim's class that will be an alternative. There are a lot of important Western species I hope to see and highlight, so I'm hoping the second half of the year will open up some of those opportunities.

That's how the year is shaping up so far. Any suggestions or offers for birding gigs that can help me get to more places are welcome!

BirdWatching Magazine: great resource for seeing prairie grouse!

The current issue of BirdWatching (the one in the mail right now) has a fabulous article by Noppadol Paothong, "Prairie Dancers," that has information about where and when to watch these amazing birds displaying. Great photos, too! I'll have to get out to the Waunita Watchable Wildlife Site to see Gunnison Sage-Grouse in Colorado, and there is also a possibility I can see it east of Monticello, Utah. That's the one lifer I could add among the five species.

I saw my lifer Greater Sage-Grouse in the Arapaho NWR (south of Walden, CO)--I'd like to get there again, just because. But I want to pick places where I'm most likely to get good photos with a 400-mm lens, and where strong conservation work is happening.

I got my lifer Lesser Prairie-Chicken in Campo, CO--I'd also like to see this splendid bird at the Selman Ranch in OK, and wherever else strong conservation work is happening.

The flock of Greater Prairie-Chickens that I added to my lifelist on April 30, 1976 is now wiped out--no more prairie chickens exist in Michigan. But I want to see them in Wisconsin at the Buena Vista Grasslands, at one of the great Nature Conservancy spots in western Minnesota, and somewhere else where strong conservation work is happening to protect this amazing bird.



I'll of course have to return to the Sharp-tailed Grouse blind near Solon Springs, in Wisconsin, where I've gone a few times to see this cool bird.



I'll also want to get to the West to see the Columbian Sharp-tailed Grouse, the subspecies of highest conservation concern.

Resources I'll be using in planning my Conservation Big Year

On the eve of 2012, it's time for me to start seriously planning for my Conservation Big Year in 2013. Some of the most important resources are, quite naturally, publications of critical bird conservation organizations that I wish everyone would support. All the illustrations and logos are clickable to get information about that actual resource.


The single most important resource for getting started is the American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation. This book has species accounts of all of ABC's Watch List birds. Each provides an overview of the species, its current conservation status, the threats it faces, and what actions are necessary to help restore it to population health. It also has overviews of the Important Bird Areas essential for protection of birds.


The American Bird Conservancy Guide to the 500 Most Important Bird Areas will be essential for plotting out the places I visit to see my Watch List birds. The American Bird Conservancy has a large number of well-researched reports about important bird conservation issues available for free on their website that I'll also be referring to. I've been a supporter of ABC since they first came into existence.

When The Birds of North America was originally being published by the American Ornithologists Union, the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, I started subscribing as soon as I could pull together the $800 for a discounted subscription. It was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I also started subscribing to the online version as soon as it became available, and have given a few subscriptions to people as gifts, because it is such a superb resource for people serious about learning more about birds. As wonderful as my hard copies are, BNA Online can be updated and includes more photos, and also includes videos and sound recordings. I'll be consulting this as I gather information about each species.
I've been a member and supporter of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology since the 1980s, long before I thought of applying for a job there. I think the achievement I've been proudest of in my entire life has been being asked to serve as science editor there. If my home and family in Minnesota hadn't beckoned, I'd still be happily working full-time at the Lab. This amazing world-class institution's mission is "to interpret and conserve the earth's biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds." They live up to this, providing a huge number of resources to people to learn more about birds, many of them free, supported by those of us who support the Lab. I'll be using the Lab's All About Birds site for quick reference and their wonderful maps.

eBird, an amazing resource from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon, has all kinds of interactive maps and apps that will make finding rare species on my list much, much easier. I intend to submit all my daily checklists from my Conservation Big Year to eBird, too.

A huge group of cooperating organizations and agencies, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the American Bird Conservancy, Audubon, and The Nature Conservancy, have been putting together an annual State of the Birds report since 2009. These full reports are all available for free online.


The American Birding Association's unique niche is the sport of birding, but they have a great many resources that are going to help with the nitty gritty of seeing birds. ABA's amazing bird-finding guides give detailed directions to the best places for seeing birds and the best timing for finding each species. I'll be using these extensively. I'm been a proud member of ABA since the 80s, and though I let my membership lapse when I was just not earning enough money to afford it, happily joined again in 2010, long before they thought of profiling me in Birding or making me an ABA blogger.


I was also a big fan of Birder's World long before I spent a day birding in northern Minnesota with Chuck Hagner (a day when virtually no birds were to be found in the Sax-Zim Bog!!), and long before he asked me to write an article for the magazine, which has now evolved into BirdWatching. BirdWatching provides a lot of resources that I'll be using to plan out trips, especially their Hotspots Near You, which covers many areas that aren't included in ABA bird-finding guides. BirdWatching, both the magazine and their wonderful online resources, also help me keep up-to-date on important conservation issues.