A Southern Warbler in a park

  In the winter Pine Warblers are one of the drabbest looking warblers around. In Newfoundland Pine Warblers are usually seen in the fall, not in January. Pine Warblers are a southern warbler. They eat insects such as larvae and caterpillars. This year a Pine Warbler showed up in Bowering Park, St John's. I went to see this Pine Warbler today. The weather was horrible. It was rainy and then the rain turned into a slushy snow fall. The winds were also horrible, but the Pine Warbler was seen. Considering the Pine Warbler should be in the southern US right now and the temperature here is dropping into the -20s C with the wind chill, the Pine Warbler is probably facing its last few days alive. The Warbler is now living on seeds. That is not a sufficient feed to keep it alive. It really needs lard 24/7 if it is to survive. Bird watchers have put out a suet cake for it. If seen please report to nf.birds!

This weather is bad news for the Pine Warbler

The Pine Warblers range.

Gull Identifacation

Gull identification is one of the hardest aspects of bird watching. There are different winter plumages, hybrids and different plumages for the age of the gull. You could send off the American Bird Alert by thinking a Lesser black backed gull-Herring gull hybrid is a Yellow-legged gull or a Lesser black backed gull is a Slaty black backed gull. Telling by size can be useful but only if the birds are in close range and are standing right next to each other. If you have found an odd looking gull take out your field guide and look at three identification points of the bird - back colour, head pattern and wing pattern.
Back colour:
The back colour is a easy way to distinguished species like Great black backs from Glaucous gulls. It also helps when your looking at a large flock of gulls. Even the smallest change of the shade of grey can mean a different species of gull.
Head pattern:
During the breeding season most species of gull have a white head with the exception of black headed species such as Bonapartes and Laughing. In the winter most of these white heads turn streaky except for some species such as Great black backs and Western gulls. The black headed species get a black blotch on their heads.
Wing pattern:
Most gull species have black wingtips but some species like Iceland gulls and Glaucous gulls have pale wingtips.
Happy New Year!

Finding Seaducks

   Sea ducks are one of winter's highlights for many birdwatchers. While being on vacation in Nova Scotia I made a trip down to a small bay. The results were incredible. The most common bird seen was the Red-breasted merganser. Over 100 of them were seen. Hooded mergansers were very numerous too. I found a small flock of about 25 birds. 3 Buffleheads were seen. One of many favorite type of birds are grebes. I saw 3 Horned grebes and 1 Red-necked grebe. In Newfoundland these types of grebes are infrequent and rare. My scope helped me find many smaller types of birds such as Buffleheads and a flock of Common goldeneyes that were a long way of shore. The weather had a negative effect on finding the birds because it was very foggy.

A little warbler a long way from home!

The yellow throated warbler should not be anywhere north of Tennessee in the winter. Where does one show up? - Kelly's Brook, St John's - a small brook next to a large park. Yellow throated warblers are very glamorous with a striped body and a bright gaudy yellow throat. I found the bird on Saturday the 13th of December. When we got there, there were quite a number of birders looking for the warbler. One group of birders had been there for 2 hours. We looked around with no luck. Then we found a large flock of juncos. We followed the birds across the river until we had found the flock again. Then I saw a small bird with a large beak. I whispered, "I got the bird." I showed the bird to my companion in the art and another birder who was there too. What a good day! Below is an ebird interactive  range map. You can see a a bit of blue over St John's.

Deciding on a Scope Tripod

After buying myself a scope I was faced with a problem. What tripod and head should I purchase to go along with the scope? After looking on our friend google I found out that there are thousands of different tripod models out there - Nikon, Manfrotto and  Swarovski are just a few of the many companies that produce tripods. Another problem arose - what style head do I want? I ventured down to the local birding shop with my friend Bobbie to find that they had some nice tripods but they were either to hard to control or they were too light to survive the Cape Spear winds. We went to a camera store to see loads of tripods but all of theirs were meant for cameras. We went back to man's best friend - google - to see videos about choosing tripods. We settled on the Vanguard Abeo 283AV which is light and durable. Another bonus is free shipping from Amazon.ca.

E-BIRD

I've been finally convinced to join E-BIRD. After checking out their website I came to the conclusion  that this is a very interesting program. What I really like about it is that you can check out all the data that has been accumulated over many years. I learned that an Ivory-billed Woodpecker was reported in Oregon; whoever let that one pass must be pretty gullible! But, some things were a bit more believable. The invasive Eurasian-collard Dove can now be seen in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. If you look at data from 2006 and then 2014 you can see that they've been expanding on a northwestern pattern. The next Starling? These birds may be in Newfoundland soon. The recently discovered Omani Owl was known as E-bird's missing species due to the fact that after the discovery of the owl in the summer of 2014 no e-birder has found one yet. Then people started to submit data of rare and endangered species. With this information, and thanks to this, 93 new species were added to E-bird including the Omani Owl. The things you can learn about nomadic species is very cool. I looked at last year's data on the Snowy Owl and Newfoundland just looks like a blob of purple. As you can see then, I am ready to launch my first e-bird entry from the time I went to Mundy Pond.  

Acorn Woodpecker Video

I was looking at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's website and I came across a fascinating video about Acorn Woodpeckers. The video was made by Marie Read and it is very well done. The footage and pictures are amazing. The video explains their foraging habits and how they store acorns in tree holes.  If you haven't heard or seen an Acorn Woodpecker it will be a surprise to see what they look like. They look a lot like little clowns. They have a blueish black back and black on the nape and a red crown. The bird has a bit of tan on the front of the head and around the bill there is black. Acorn Woodpeckers are common in there fairly limited range. There range goes from Southern Central America to to Northern Oregon and Southern Washington State. They live in social groups of up to a dozen or more birds. Take a look:
www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/acorn_woodpecker/

Small Park Lots of Birds

I went to a park that was recommended by a bird watcher I met a few days ago. The park was located just up the road from my grandma's house in Saskatoon.  She said that birds you would see were Blue-headed vireos and Wilson's warblers. When I arrived at this park one first look and I thought for sure that this lady had pulled a fast one and sent me to the worst place in the whole of Saskatchewan to bird watch.  I was wrong! Right when I was about to leave to go home, I heard the call of a Wilson's warbler. I found the Wilson's and then I started to scan for movement. There was a flash of grey and blue - it was a pigeon. After locating the commoners of the bird world I started looking for a Blue-headed vireo. After a half an hour of seeing the same Eastern kingbird I started to lose enthusiasm. Finally I gave up, I started to trudge out of the park in my wet and cold feet (I was wearing sandals). A dog walker came in and her dog started yapping at something. Then a little bird flew out of a Chokecherry bush to a crabapple tree. Thinking it was a Warbler or a finch I checked it out. It was a Blue-headed vireo! So, a humble, small park can mean lots of birds. The complete list is as follows:
Black-capped chickadee
Palm warbler
Yellow warbler
Grey catbird
Wilson's warbler
Eastern kingbird
Blue jay
Rock dove
Black-billed magpie
House sparrow
Blue-headed vireo

Back To The Country

I went back to the countryside today.  I can say that it was enjoyable. Western meadowlarks were seen more frequently than on Saturday. Solitary sandpipers were the most common species of shorebirds seen. Other shorebirds seen included Spotted sandpipers and Semipalmated plovers. Yellowlegs numbers decreased with only one Greater yellowlegs. My sister described what might have been an American avocet. We are not certain though. Once again the most common bird was the Cedar and Bohemian waxwings. Tons of these birds were eating berries and flower buds. Swallows were everywhere. I found a Barn swallow nest in the screened-in porch. Their were four chicks and the parents kept flying in to feed them. Sparrows were only seen three times. All of them were Song sparrows. Warblers were seen along the river bank quite often. The species seen were Wilson's, Yellow, and Black and white warblers. The highlight was an American pelican. A large completely white bird with a black area on the wing and a huge beak. At first I thought it was an overgrown Ivory gull with a black wing area and a beak deformity. There were once again a large number of Eastern kingbirds. I saw them fighting over a dragonfly that one of them had caught. Gulls were seen only a few times. They were all Ring-billed. Common ravens and American crows were squawking away all around me. Canada geese were not hard to find with a flock of 100 along the other side of the river. It was a good day of birding and I'm glad I did it despite it being a 30+ degree day.

The Sibley Comparison.

While I was at the Saskatoon Public Library I was happy to find "The Sibley Guide To Birds Second Edition". I have the first edition and now having both in my hands I can do a comparison. The second edition has added 111 rare species  and more than 600 new paintings and illustrations. It illustrates the subspecies and races much better than in the first. It also separates the Cackling goose from the Canada goose. The font in the second edition is very light and that sure did not help it win the support on Amazon.com. "Knopf has laid an egg" says one reviewer as he begins to describes the second edition. Some paintings that were in the first edition were not changed such as the Ovenbird. I think in a new addition the author should make changes to at least one painting of each species to freshen things up a bit. Both editions in my mind are very reliable field guides. Well, I'll be asking for that for Christmas!

"Once in a great while, a natural history book changes the way people look at the world. In 1838, John James Audubon's Birds of America was one . . . In 1934, Roger Tory Peterson produced Field Guide to the birds . . . Now comes The Sibley Guide to Birds"   - The New York Times 

Fall Migration is on the Way.

It's the time of year that we've been waiting for - when birds of all sizes begin to move south. Some just go a few miles but others make majestic journeys across the globe. There are many globe trotting species such as the Northern wheatear -  a small thrush that will migrate back to its wintering grounds in the plains of Africa, the Whimbrel - a shorebird that will go from it's breeding grounds in Alaska and northern Canada to northern South America, and the Arctic tern - the bird that makes the largest migration in the world - from the northern parts of Europe, Asia and North America to the southern Antarctic, not my idea of a summer holiday. The flyways of the world are the routes that migratory birds take to get from their wintering grounds to their breeding grounds or vice versa. There are eight  flyways in the world: the Mississippi Americas flyway, the East Atlantic flyway, the Atlantic Americas flyway, Pacific Americas flyway, Black Sea Mediterranean flyway, East Africa West Asia flyway, Central Asia flyway and the East Asia Australian flyway.
Enjoy it while it lasts!