Arthur and I spent Christmas afternoon at Canaveral National Seashore, where we shared the beach with Willets (and little else).
I’ve submitted this post to this week’s Bird Photography Weekly. BPW is a regular collection of user-submitted bird photos from all over the world. The new edition comes out every Sunday. Go have a look at this week’s submissions!
It should come as no surprise to anyone with any familiarity with this blog that my best bird of 2011 is actually a pair of birds: the Mooseheart Bald Eaglets.
The first baby Bald Eagle flies free!
The adventure began back at the end of May, when FCWR became aware of a downed Bald Eagle nest in Mooseheart, Illinois. The race was on to keep the parent Bald Eagles on site and replace the fallen nest, reuniting the baby eagles with their parents.
One of the eaglets on the ground
When the parents unfortunately failed to care for the babies in the new, human-made nest, the eaglets were brought back to FCWR for care. Arthur and I helped with their initial enclosure – complete with a new “nest” – but this was only a very tiny part of their time in the care of FCWR. The eaglets were eventually transferred to a new, large flight chamber, where they learned to fly and all of the other skills they would need to be released back into the wild.
The release at Starved Rock State Park was magical, and I feel so lucky to have been able to attend as a FCWR volunteer. Both babies flew strong from their release site on Plum Island.
In case you missed the release videos, here they are:
If you click through to the older blog posts, you’ll see more photos and video of these beautiful birds. The Mooseheart Eaglets were easily the highlight of my 2011!
Mooseheart eaglet rescue part 2
Mooseheart Bald Eaglets to be released next week!
Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation is a non-profit, federally licensed rehab organization with locations in Chicago and Barrington, Illinois. You can follow their blog here, follow them on Facebook here, and make donations online here. This post reflects my own experiences as a volunteer with FCWR. Any errors are purely my own, and opinions here do not necessarily reflect those of FCWR.
When I sat down to reflect upon the ups and downs of 2010 about a year ago I had no idea what was in store for me in 2011. Moving out of Illinois wasn’t on my radar at all. Now I sit here in my Florida home just one year later, looking back on twelve months that saw a lot of personal ups and downs, and one huge change – the move to DeBary.
But what about the birding? Here are my 2011 bird-type highlights.
Moving from northern Illinois to central Florida was a major highlight, bird-wise, even though it meant I’d be missing a lot. The below photo shows your blogger at Gemini Springs, the new local patch.
I managed to pick up a whopping 35 life birds in 2011! With just 285 ABA lifers, it’s still not too tough to pick up new birds. 15 of the birds were found in Illinois (including the Ogle County Snowy Owl), and the remaining 20 were all found in Florida.
Six of those life birds were picked up on my first-ever pelagic birding experience on a voyage out of Ponce Inlet in September.
One of those lifers was a rather out-of-range western treat in our own Florida back yard: a Western Tanager.
Early in the year I helped out with the Raptor Internship at FCWR. I had a lot of fun helping the new volunteers learn about handling raptors and I made a lot of friends (who I still miss every day). Of course spending time with some amazing birds is always special. This is Darwin puffed up on a particularly cold day.
My very best bird experience of the year also came courtesy of Flint Creek, and I’ll share that with you tomorrow (though regular readers will surely have no problem guessing my #1 for 2011!). Stay tuned!
More fun from our visit to Merritt Island NWR and the Black Point Wildlife Drive on December 10th. There were lots of kingfishers, yes, and lots of other birds to see, too, like this one.
It had rained a bit in the early morning, but it wasn’t much more than a drizzle and it didn’t last very long. So we were puzzled when we came across this very wet Loggerhead Shrike close to the Wild Birds trail.
It was completely soaked across the lower body and tail, and I wondered if it fell into water while pursuing prey.
It perched in the open and shook itself a few times, but we didn’t see it preen at all. After a while it started to vocalize.
It didn’t mind our slow approach or observation, so I happily fired off a bunch of photos while wondering what exactly happened to this wet little predatory songbird.
… literally! Some of the twelve birds featured in this 2012 Backyard Birds Mini Calendar may be Backyard Birds, but you’d never find them all in the same back yard.
Click picture to see larger
Northern Cardinals are native to eastern North America.
Cedar Waxwings live across much of North America.
Wren is kind of non-specific for a calendar published in Indiana, but it probably refers to the Eurasian Wren, which is commonly referred to as simply “wren” and is native to Europe and Asia.
Great Tits are back yard birds through much of Europe and are also found across Asia and north Africa.
White-crowned Sparrows live across much of North America.
Great Spotted Woodpeckers live in parts of Europe and Asia.
Steller’s Jays live across western North America.
Oriental White Eyes are found in tropical Asia. I can’t find any evidence of them frequenting feeders.
Siberian Rubythroats live in Siberia, natch. They eat insects.
Vermilion Flycatchers (spelled Vermillion on the calendar) live in the Americas, from the American southwest through much of South America.
I’m having a hard time figuring out what a “Common Tree Pie” is supposed to be, but it looks like a White-winged Redstart, native to southwest and central Asia. They eat insects.
Finally, the Azure Kingfisher is native to Australia and neighboring islands. However, the bird identified as such looks more like a Common Kingfisher (native to Eurasia and Africa). If you’ve got a thriving body of water in your yard, you might count a kingfisher as a yard bird, but they’d certainly never be feeder birds.
On Amazon’s best seller list, this calendar ranks #258,859 in books. That seems a little high to me.
On Saturday Arthur and I participated in our first Christmas Bird Count. We counted in the southwest sector of the West Volusia County circle with six other birders. The weather was perfect for being outdoors, but a string of pleasant weather days kept many birds generally quiet.
We started out at the home of our sector’s leader, where the count cars were outfitted with official signage. Here’s our minivan ready for the day. We counted some feeder birds before heading out.
We listened for birds from the car, driving slowly on some low-traffic roads. At an early stop we spotted an adult Osprey bringing major branches and other material to a dilapidated-looking nest.
Along Cummer Road, a popular birding-by-car spot here in Volusia County, we found 130 Sandhill Cranes.
We also counted 15 Wild Turkeys here, plus a Red-shouldered Hawk, several hunting American Kestrels, our first Eastern Bluebird of the day, and our only Eastern Meadowlarks. Our leader knew about a Bald Eagle nest in the area, and we were able to see one adult already on the nest. While scoping other birds, we heard a Bald Eagle vocalizing. Shortly the the other adult appeared, soaring over the nest.
While we really enjoyed the entire day, one of the best parts was finding out about local birding hotspots that were previously unknown to us. We stopped at many private marinas where special access for the count was granted, but other public spots were visited as well.
One cute discovery was the Hummingbird Garden at the Hontoon Landing Resort & Marina. While we didn’t have any hummingbirds on count day, we learned that hummingbirds frequent the feeders especially during spring migration, so this is a spot we’ll have to hit again in the new year.
At the north end of Lake Beresford, we found a large flock of White Ibis feeding. At this little hotspot we also found our only Blue-gray Gnatcatchers of the day, another Eastern Bluebird, and the only Orange-crowned Warbler of the CBC circle.
Another roadside stop, at a hunter’s access point to Lake Woodruff NWR, we searched for Brown-headed Nuthatches but came up empty. We did pick up our only Eastern Towhees of the day, our only Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, plus a few additional birds.
It was a great day out with some new friends. In all we counted 1243 individual birds of 56 species. The initial tally at the CBC dinner came up with 108 species for the circle. Not a record, but not a bad number, either. And a very good count day for these two newbies.
Last week Arthur and I spent a few hours checking out the action at Merritt Island NWR’s Black Point Wildlife Drive. Bird-wise, there were a lot of new arrivals, including over a dozen Belted Kingfishers. Florida has kingfishers all year, and we invariably see them on Black Point, but during the winter the residents are joined by migratory birds from the north. I’ll never forget the many, many Belted Kingfishers we saw a few years back during a drive on U.S. 1 from Key Largo to Key West. It seemed every stretch of telephone wire had a kingfisher or two on it, every one of them looking down into the water. We saw the handsome fellow pictured here on December 10th.
Besides the preening ibis, I saw other birds at Epcot the other day.
Right after I got out of the car, a monorail sped by the parking lot. It honked at a Great Egret that was loafing on the track. The bird squawked and flew over to the other track.
In Future World, Arthur and I stopped to watch a gospel choir singing holiday music. They were just barely loud enough to drown out the boisterious Common Grackles that were perched in the trees behind the choir stage. I know Common Grackles are in Florida all year, but I hadn’t seen much of them until a few weeks ago, and these were the first ones I’d seen at Epcot. (We just had a few visit our back yard feeders this week for the first time, too.)
A lot of the birds at this theme park hang out around the World Showcase Lagoon, a small body of water around which the country pavilions are located. That’s where I saw the ibis, and where I found this lone Anhinga chillaxing on a “pier.”
The White Ibis from the previous blog post was just one of a larger, loosely-formed flock. Most of the other birds were foraging or dozing.
By the Mexico pavilion I stopped to watch a large flock of American Crows flying between trees, perhaps preparing to roost for the night. I also exchanged looks with a Ring-billed Gull. You can see the crows as blurry dots in the background of this picture.
A flock of somethings flew overhead. Without my binoculars, I wasn’t positive of their identification; my camera helped me see they were Sandhill Cranes.
Once, during a fireworks show at Magic Kingdom, we saw a Great Horned Owl leave its roost tree for the night. That was very exciting. It unfortunately remains my only owl sighting at a Disney park so far. Well, besides these.
I always enjoy spending a day at one of the Disney parks (I better – we have season tickets!). Birds make everything better, though, and that’s good, because I’ll never stop watching them. 🙂
White Ibises are extremely common here in central Florida. We see them in parking lots and in our neighborhood, foraging in suburban front yards, almost as often as we see them in more natural areas.
While I see these white birds quite often, I hadn’t really noticed one preening before I stopped to watch a particular bird in a small flock along the World Showcase Lagoon at Epcot last week. I must have seen them preening before, I just never stopped to pay attention until that moment.
According to the Birds of North America Online, White Ibises “spend much of the day preening, […] usually at day roosts. […] Back preened directly by turning head, lower belly by placing head between legs.” BNA goes on to explain in detail how they preen other body parts (what a resource!), but I only was able to witness this bird getting busy with its backside. 🙂
Watching birds do what they do is always interesting, and I was especially interested watching this individual taking care of feather maintenance with its unusual bill. The back didn’t seem too tough a spot to preen. I would love to see that belly move though – it sounds like quite a move!
Can you find the imposter in this raft of coots? This was just a portion of a much larger raft of 99.9% American Coot taken on the Black Point Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge late last month.
