Evening Grosbeaks in North Carolina

Somehow I ended up birding the NC mountains last weekend.

Why? 

Evening Grosbeaks

I blame Mark K.  I had resigned myself to never see an Evening Grosbeak, but when he offered to do the driving and had a free place to stay, how could I say 'no?'

Evening Grosbeaks

What an awesome bird!

This was supposedly an irruption year for Evening Grosbeaks in North Carolina, the first since about 1996.  But other than a few flyovers and fleeting glimpses by feeder-watchers, the species all but eluded triangle birders.  Whether their scarcity was because the invasion was overblown or because of the species' troubling decline in recent decades, I can't say. 

Evening Grosbeaks

All I know is that four pairs (at least) showed up in Bryson City, NC this April and have been essentially the only ones to stay in place long enough for NC birders to see in the past decade or so. 

Mark and I with Andy Zivinsky, the Evening Grosbeak host and owner of Bryson City Bicycles

A big thanks to Andy Zivinsky of Bryson City Bicycles for being so generous with his time and yard!

~~~
Some notes for listing nerds:

This was North Carolina bird #340 for me.  I've still got a dozen or so reasonably target-able birds to find in NC, but after 350, the diminishing returns really kick in and it'll be mostly about having luck on Christmas Bird Counts and chasing down rarities to add state ticks.

Here's my prediction for the next 10 NC species that would take me to #350:

Willow Flycatcher - I'm pretty sure I've already seen one at Mason Farm, but it didn't call and so went down as Empidonax sp.  
Golden-winged Warbler - I should get this (and above) in a few weeks if I go up to the New River near Boone
Northern Saw-whet Owl - the last NC breeder I need as a lifer.  I tried for and missed it on this Grosbeak trip
Swallow-tailed Kite - I have a chance to find one with Ed Corey at the Cape Fear during Wild-a-Thon
Leach's Storm-Petrel - I've got plans to spot on some pelagics this summers, so I might get one or two of the four pelagic species listed here
Sooty Shearwater
White-tailed Tropicbird
South Polar Skua
Hudsonian Godwit - Mattamuskeet is supposed to be a good place to see them and fall and I'll be out that way doing field work
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher - A rare fall migrant I hope to stumble upon

With some luck, I'll get to 350 before next winter one way or another...probably with four of five from the list above.  Winter birds I need, like Western Kingbird, Glaucous Gull and Cave Swallow, should come in the next batch.

Why did the grouse cross the road?

The eternal grouse question for birders in North Carolina is more typically "why can't I ever see one?"  And for folks who don't live in the mountains, a grouse sighting is usually cause for some celebration.  Last weekend Mark K. and I enjoyed a bit of a grouse party along Clingman's Dome Road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

A Ruffed Grouse showing off its "ruff"

 We talked to some Appalachian Trail hikers, who said there was lots of drumming going on and while walking a trail looking for salamanders I noticed one a mere 20 feet ahead of me wandering along the forest floor.  I just missed getting a pretty stellar grouse shot (stupid twig).

Ruffed Grouse

Watching a grouse from such short range and then have it trot across the road like a chicken was quite a sight (and the inspiration for this post's title).

Ruffed Grouse crossing the road

I'm no authority, but for those Carolina birders still trying to find a grouse (and I know a few), it sure seems like checking out Clingman's Dome Road on an afternoon in April is the way to go!

Surveying a Snowy Plover

Counting Shorebirds for the International Shorebird Survey - photo by Mark Kosiewski

Bear Island is one of the few remaining undeveloped barrier islands along the east coast of the US.  Its wide open sandflats and dunes provide precious habitat for rapidly declining species of migrating shorebirds.

As part of the International Shorebird Survey, my fellow citizen scientists, Ed Corey, Mark Kosiewski, Natalia Ocampo-Penuela, and I, grabbed our scopes and counted hundreds of sandpipers, plovers and dowitchers. 

Of course it was a rare bird that enticed us to make the trip...

Snowy Plover

Snowy Plovers do not regularly appear on the Atlantic coast (and this was a lifer for me!), but over the years, a handful have turned up on various North Carolina beaches.  Ed Corey found this individual back in February.  I wonder how long it will stick around.

It seemed to be right at home (and was well-camouflaged) on the sand flats.  It would tilt its head at odd angles and zip around with remarkable speed making photography a bit of a challenge, but it did not seem particularly concerned about our presence.  Check out the video!


We found a whopping 5 plover species on the day (and 6 on the trip if you count the Killdeer we saw on the mainland), with plenty of Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, a couple dozen of the controversial Piping Plover and more Wilson's Plovers than I had ever seen...

Wilsn's Plover

 ...we counted about 80, which seemed like more than the island could support since they were constantly chasing each other around the beach.

I was too busy counting birds to try to digiscope any of the other species, but there were several of the rare Red Knot, a couple hundred Long-billed Dowitchers, and the ubiquitous Sanderlings, Ruddy Turnstones and Willets.  The most numerous bird was Dunlin--we tallied some 1700.

Hopefully our survey will in some small way help these populations.  It sure was fun counting them and the setting was beautiful!

Big thanks to Ed, for originally discovering the Snowy Plover and arranging the ferry, UTV and State Park barracks for us.

Spotting on the Stormy Petrel II part 2

Spotting on the Stormy Petrel II

For the second time I enthusiastically jumped at the opportunity to spot on one of  Brian Patteson's Pelagic trips out of Cape Hatteras.  The first time was last August, but I actually have more experience off shore in the wintertime, so I felt relatively qualified.

Of course everybody wants an albatross now, so meeting expectations is tough!

No albatross, but we ended up having an awesome day for birds.  Great Skua is almost always the top (reasonable) target and we had decent looks at two!  There were more Manx Shearwaters around than I had ever seen with as many as four visible at a time and a count for the trip around 20.  A few flocks of Red Phalaropes made a brief showing as well.

But the alcid numbers on the trip were absurd.  They were, roughly: 1000 Razorbills, 100 Dovekies and 10 Atlantic Puffins. (edit--official alcid counts were: 2000 Razorbills, 232 Dovekies, and 15 puffins).

Immature Atlantic Puffin

To me those numbers say there should have been 1 Murre out there somewhere to fill out the 10-fold alcid dilution ratio.  Sadly I wasn't able to spot one. 

 My proud moment instead came from spotting an odd bird in the Hitchcockian gull flock (fortunately they're just after chum and not us)...

See anything unusual?

 That's right an Iceland Gull!  I had never seen an adult before, so while not a tick, I still felt like this was a "lifer."

Adult Iceland Gull - it has some faint gray in the wingtips making it a kumlieni

More details on this trip can be found at Brian's Seabirding blog. A big thanks to Brian and Kate for having me aboard.

After the successful pelagic, Ed Corey was nice enough to me up for the night at Jockey's Ridge State Park.  Early the next morning, before heading onto Mattamuskeet (where I would stumble upon a White-faced Ibis), Mark Koseiwski and I ventured out into the dunes to find a flock of four Snow Buntings.

Snow Buntings

I had been trying to see this species at the coast of NC all winter, so I was glad to finally see this little flock!

Hopefully I'll get back out to Hatteras once the spring/summer season starts up...

North Carolina's third record of White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi)

Prudence dictates that I should put a question mark at the end of this post title, especially with a tough ID call like this...

...but tell me this isn't a White-faced Ibis.

The red eye and pink facial skin is glaring.

The suspect was hanging out in a flooded field at the east end of Lake Mattamuskeet in Hyde Co., NC in the company of about a dozen Glossy Ibises.  While superficially very similar (and apparently there is integradation between these species), in a scope from ~50 yards this bird stood out. 

Put the head away for a second and look at the leg color for example... pinkish-red on the White-faced and a cold gray on the Glossies.

Also the White-faced Ibis seemed to have slightly lighter-colored plumage and I noticed more tones of fuschia than in the darker Glossies.

This was pronounced enough so that even with the heads hidden you can tell which is the odd bird out (and which is the Boat-tailed Grackle). 


So I think I'll have to fill out some paperwork on this one for the NC Bird Records Committee.  Luckily the area where it was found opens up to the public for the season starting the Friday, so maybe some others will be able to see it.

Charlotte Chase!

Ed Corey, Nick Flanders, Natalia Ocampo-Penuela and I drove down to the Charlotte (pronounced this day with a hard ch-) area today to see a couple odd western species that had been showing up at feeders. 

The first target was a Bullock's Oriole.  After 20 or 30 minutes of waiting in a lovely yard he showed up to survey the buffet options that his hosts had left out for him.

Bullock's Oriole! (adult male)

He used several of the many feeding stations including the ant trap above the hummingbird feeder.  Was he taking advantage of the free insects or just getting a drink?

Eating ants or drinking water?

What a beautiful bird and a lifer for all of us except Ed!  That's 3 North American Orioles down and 5 to go. 

~

Our next stop was just up the road in Monroe, NC where a couple western hummingbird species have been spending the winter.

While we waited for them to show, we entertained ourselves by looking at a couple oddly white Carolina Chickadees that inhabit the yard.

Leucistic (?) Carolina Chickadee

I had never seen a chickadee like this before!  It must have some sort of pigment deficiency?

Eventually our first hummingbird showed up...

Calliope Hummingbird

This is a terrible, distant photograph, but the short tail (completely hidden behind the front wing) and the streaky throat make this bird a Calliope Hummingbird.

It wasn't a stunner like the oriole was and didn't give us such prolonged views, but it was a lifer for all of us except for Nick, so we didn't care. 

Rufous Hummingbird

The Calliope disappeared quickly because this larger, more aggressive Rufous Hummingbird arrived to have his turn at the feeder.

Bird chasing is always a risky business, but today we lucked out and swept our targets quickly!  A big thanks to the hosts, Noreen George and Cynthia Hinson, for sharing their rare birds.

Leadin' field trips down east

North Carolina's Albemarle Peninsula and Outer Banks make up a world-class birding destination in mid-winter, with waterfowl galore, and a healthy diversity of waders, shorebirds and sparrows.

I had the honor of leading field trips 'Down East' (as it's called) in back-to-back weekends.

Trip 1: Duke Conservation Society / Nicholas School Naturalists / Student Association of Wetland Scientists trip to Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge

A couple weeks ago Jeff Pippen and I took a group of 21 master's students from the Nicholas School down to Lake Mattamuskeetfor an unseasonably warm and sunny day of birding.

Lots of happy students

Bird highlights were a Eurasian Wigeon (thanks to Thierry Besancon, who we bumped into with a group from New Hope Audubon), a brief, but diagnostic glimpse of an Ashe-throated Flycatcher (the second one I have found in NC in as many months) and a very photogenic Anhinga.

Anhinga

I used this opportunity to swap SD cards and batteries for the cameras at my research site...

photo by Emma Hedman

Trip 2: Carolina Bird Club Winter Meeting at Nags Head, NC

This past weekend the Carolina Bird Club held its winter meeting at Nags Head, a launching point for a heap of the state's top birding hotspots.  I led 3 half-day trips around Bodie Island over Friday and Saturday.

The Bodie Lighthouse pond is the best place I know to get close enough to photograph (or in this case digiscope) ducks...

Northern Pintail and Northern Shoveler

sleepy Gadwall pair

American Avocets, Green-winged Teal and Northern Pintail

Oregon Inlet always has something interesting going on bird-wise. This weekend the highlight for many of the birders on my trips were a pair of Purple Sandpipers at the end of the jetty.

Purple Sandpipers

On the way back west I dropped by the 'sparrow fields' by Lake Phelps.  The hotspot lived up to its name and the adjacent shrub line was loaded with oddball sparrows that are usually pretty hard to come by in North Carolina...

Vesper Sparrow

Vesper Sparrows

Vesper Sparrow and Clay-colored Sparrow

Target birds for 2013

Last January I posted these targets:

1. Golden Eagle
2. Black Rail
3. Florida Scrub Jay
4. Limpkin
5. Black-bellied Whistling Duck

Amazingly I found all 5 in 2012!

I saw #1 and #2 both on the Mattamuskeet Christmas Bird Count.

...and #3, #4 and #5 at Viera Wetland down in Florida.

I'll have to make up for a phenomenally lucky 2012 with a lackluster 2013 full of dips and failures.

Here are my 2013 targets:

1. Evening Grosbeak - This is the year to see one since there hasn't been an eruption in NC since the mid nineties.  Everybody keeps saying that February is when they'll start showing up at feeders in force.  I hope everybody is right!

2. Atlantic Puffin - my one chance is on the pelagic trip I'm signed up for on Feb. 16.  Given this year's unprecedented Razorbill eruption I'm foolishly optimistic

3. Northern Saw-whet Owl - I've been to all the right places in NC to find this bird (Roan Mountain, Bodie Island in winter), but just haven't!  That needs to change.  It's the last breeding species in NC that I haven't seen anywhere.  Owls are awesome.

4. Black-backed Woodpecker - It looks like I'll be going to Duluth for a conference in June and this might be a possibility

5. Gray Jay - another boreal specialist that I hope to see for the first time in Minnesota

Top 10 birds of 2012

2012 was another great year of birds for me.  I saw 390 species of which 59 were lifers.  These numbers are down a bit from last year (405 species with 92 lifers), but that's a function of no travel to foreign continents and diminishing returns on local opportunities for life birds.  And I did significantly better in state, with 301 NC birds this past year compared 283 species in 2011. 

On an even more local level, I was finally able to catch Robert Meehan at the top spot for Durham County.  I'm sure we'll pass the lead back and forth as we each fill "holes" in our respective lists over the coming year. 

My main opportunity for exotic birds this year was a trip to the island of Hispaniola where I birded both Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  Haiti is an especially under-birded country; the 47 species I spotted there in a few days was enough to make me the second-most prolific ebirder for the country in 2012. 

Like the last two years, I'll celebrate its completion with a narcissistic look back at my 10 awesomest/best/favorite "self-found" birds of the year.  And again, it will be a challenge to see which of my loyal readers has seen the most.  Post your total in the comments below!  Win a prize!

The list...

#10: Least Bittern

This is not an especially rare bird (though it did not make the list of 340 species that Jeff Lemons saw in NC in 2012), but I had wanted to see a Least Bittern for awhile and I managed to cross paths with them on three occasions in 2012.

The first was at Brickhouse Road in Durham where one responded to tape.  This was bittersweet, though...it was great to find this bird in my home county, but I had to place it on my "heard-only" provisional list...

Least Bittern, Viera Wetland, FL

...until a couple months later when I dropped by Viera Wetland in Florida where Least Bitterns are trash birds.

Of course this felt a bit like cheating and I still hadn't seen one in North Carolina...

Least Bittern, Lake Mattamuskeet, NC

...that is until August when I noticed one clinging to some phramites stalks at Lake Mattamuskeet while I was doing field work.

#9: Long-tailed Jaeger

Now this is a bird I probably would not have even been able to identify (or at least without careful study of photos after-the-fact) if Brian Patteson hadn't called it for the boat.  But it was a special sighting for me because it was the best bird we found on my first ever pelagic trip as a spotter.  

Long-tailed Jaeger (immature), pelagic off Cape Hatteras, NC

It also closed out the jaegers for me.  Now if I can just find a South Polar Skua, then I'll have all the Stercorarius that occur in NC.

#8: Ash-throated Flycatcher

Ash-throated Flycatcher, Washington County, NC

This is the only bird on the list that wasn't a lifer for me, but it's probably the best bird I found without any help from Brian Patteson or John Fussell this year (and possibly my best ever for NC). 

Also I got pretty good digiscoped photos of it.

Ash-throated Flycatcher

This was immediately after seeing Ed Corey's Say's Phoebe, so it was a pretty good morning for odd flycatchers.

#7: Little Gull

I spotted one of these migrating north in a flock of Bonaparte's Gulls a couple days before my 27th birthday.  Not a bad present from the birding gods!  

Little Gull with Bonaparte's Gulls, Emerald Isle, NC

I was doing some experimenting with digiscoping at the time and managed this shot that captures the dark underwing.  Yeah it looks terrible, but I was happy to get any sort of record given the circumstances (distant bird over choppy ocean moving fast).

Little Gulls are pretty rare.  I guess I should mention that.

#6: Hispaniolan Crossbill

This species is listed as endangered by the IUCN and is odd in that the rest of the members of the Loxia genus, to which it belongs, are found primarily at high latitudes.  These birds managed to persist in the mountains on the Island of Hispaniola and are found nowhere else in the world.

Hispaiolan Crossbill, Dominican Republic

It's a species that can be easily missed, but I was lucky to find flocks in high elevation pine forests in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

#5: Black-billed Cuckoo

Black-billed Cuckoo, Croatan National Forest, Craven County, NC

The bane of many an American birder, the Black-billed Cuckoo, is an enigmatic bird with breeding habits and behavior that are poorly understood.  I met John Fussell out in the Croatan National Forest in July where he had recently heard Black-billed Cuckoos singing. There we found an adult feeding a fledging; the first record of breeding Black-billed Cuckoos in the NC Coastal Plain in more than 100 years.

#4: Bay-breasted Cuckoo (Cua)

One of the coolest birds on Hispaniola is the endemic and endangered Bay-breasted Cuckoo.  It's also an easy bird to miss, so I was thrilled to finally see one in the Sierra de Bahoruco after hearing a few call, but not show themselves.  No photos unfortunately.

#3: Golden Eagle

Golden Eagle, Gull Rock Game Land, Hyde County, NC

One of the better birds I've ever "self-found" and a nice addition to the 2012 Mattamuskeet Christmas Bird Count.  This one was bullying on a Bald Eagle over a flooded field in Gull Rock Game Lands.  Golden Eagle had been on my target list for a couple years now.

#2: Black Rail

One of the most impossible-to-see of all North American birds flushed from my feet in the marsh at Gull Rock Game Land.  I think this was the first ever Black Rail found on the Mattamuskeet Christmas Bird Count.  And it was another species I've been hoping to cross paths with for quite awhile.

#1: Black-browed Albatross

Black-browed Albatross, pelagic off Cape Hatteras, NC

Definitely the most famous individual bird I've ever seen was the Black-browed Albatross that showed up for Brian Patteson's boat near Hatteras Inlet last February.  It was one of only a few records of the species for the United States and may have been the first adult of the species ever photographed in North America.  My photo made it into an edition of the American Birding Association's Winging It publication.

**************

How many of these 10 have you seen?  How many did you see in the past year?  Let me know in the comments!

Free Brown Boobies T-shirt goes to the winner!

Rare birds for Christmas

When I was trying to come up with a Christmas wish list I jokingly included a couple birds I wanted to see: Evening Grosbeak and Golden Eagle.

No luck yet on the grosbeak, but I've crossed paths with a Golden Eagle twice since making the list!

Golden Eagle, Hyde County, NC

Both were in the Lake Mattamuskeet area, but this distant one I found and photographed down in the Gull Rock Game Land territory on the Mattamuskeet Christmas Bird Count.

And the previous day Ed Corey, Kyle Kittelberger and I were able to chase down this Lapland Longspur that Jeff Lewis found on the beach during the Bodie/Pea Christmas Bird Count.

Lapland Longspur, Dare County, NC

Lapland Longspur

And then during the Alligator River Count, we dipped over to Wanchese to see this Eared Grebe that Edmund LeGrande had found sitting right in the harbor.

Eared Grebe, Wanchese, NC

Eared Grebe

Horned and Pied-billed Grebes were in the same area for nice comparisons.

Eared Grebe and Pied-billed Grebe

Together over the course of 4 days and 4 Christmas Bird Counts we saw about 158 species.  Not a bad haul!

My best bird, however, was a Black Rail that I flushed in the marshes in the Gull Rock Game Land.  It was one of those lightning-strike birding moments, when you're just at the right place at the right time.  I wasn't expecting to cross paths with a Black Rail here (and this was the first I've ever seen), but fortunately in my brief view I was able to see white on the bird's back.  That field mark plus it's behavior, like a mouse with feathers and wings, left me without a doubt about its identity.

It was in a narrow strip of marsh bordered by the sound on one side and a channel on the other, so I gathered up the others in my party (6 people total) hoping that if we walked in a line through this area we might be able to flush it into the open.  But these attempts failed.  And we got no response to tapes when we returned at dusk hoping to hear it call. 

I found out later at the Mattamuskeet countdown dinner that John Fussell had surveyed this marsh for Black Rails for years and never found a one. 

This is one of those rare birds that birders hate to report.  There's no hard evidence and, in this case, not even any fellow witnesses.  Reviewing parties will be skeptical (as they should be) and it may not make it into the Christmas Bird Count records even though I submitted a detailed report (it would be a new species for the Mattamskeet CBC, I think).  Frequent reports like this, especially if they aren't accepted and made into "records," are liable to earn one a reputation as a "loose canon."

That's why digital cameras have become almost obligatory for birders and why so many people avoid reporting rare birds altogether. 

Now if I can just find an Evening Grosbeak this winter...is it too much to ask for one that will pose for a photo?