Local Sightings: January 2010

One of the birders in my town compiles a monthly list of birds seen in and around my town and posts them on the Environmental Commission's website. Since I send her a list of sightings at the end of every month anyway, I decided to start posting them here in case any local readers are interested. The sightings list is generated from my submissions to eBird.

Common Name	Location	Date First Seen
Canada Goose	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Mallard	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Common Merganser	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Great Cormorant	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Black Vulture	Donaldson Park	01/21/10
Turkey Vulture	Donaldson Park	01/21/10
Bald Eagle	Donaldson Park	01/28/10
Cooper's Hawk	Home	01/03/10
Red-shouldered Hawk	Donaldson Park	01/21/10
Red-tailed Hawk	Donaldson Park	01/21/10
Merlin	Home	01/12/10
Peregrine Falcon	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Ring-billed Gull	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Herring Gull	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Iceland Gull	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Great Black-backed Gull	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Rock Pigeon	Home	01/04/10
Mourning Dove	Home	01/01/10
Red-bellied Woodpecker	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	Donaldson Park	01/05/10
Downy Woodpecker	Donaldson Park	01/05/10
Hairy Woodpecker	Donaldson Park	01/28/10
Northern Flicker	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Blue Jay	Home	01/01/10
American Crow	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Fish Crow	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Carolina Chickadee	Home	01/17/10
Black-capped Chickadee	Donaldson Park	01/05/10
Tufted Titmouse	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
White-breasted Nuthatch	Donaldson Park	01/05/10
Carolina Wren	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
American Robin	Donaldson Park	01/05/10
Northern Mockingbird	Donaldson Park	01/05/10
European Starling	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Yellow-rumped Warbler	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
American Tree Sparrow	Donaldson Park	01/21/10
Song Sparrow	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
White-throated Sparrow	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Dark-eyed Junco	Home	01/04/10
Northern Cardinal	Home	01/01/10
Red-winged Blackbird	Donaldson Park	01/28/10
Common Grackle	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
Brown-headed Cowbird	Donaldson Park	01/28/10
House Finch	Donaldson Park	01/01/10
American Goldfinch	Home	01/01/10
House Sparrow	Home	01/01/10

Link Round-up for Bloggerhead Kingbirds

Bloggerhead Kingbirds at Andrews Point

I am posting this to collect all of the posts on this year's Superbowl of Birding in one location. I will update with additional links if any more get posted. Corey's second post has a photo of the points and species totals for all of the competing teams.

10,000 Birds (Corey)

• The Day Before the Competition 
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Superbowl of Birding

Birding Dude (Andrew)

• Super Bowl of Birding 2010 - On the road to MA… 
• Super Bowl of Birding 2010 - Game Day – Luck and Time Management…
• MA Super Bowl of Birding 2010 - Grace Under Pressure...
• MA Super Bowl of Birding 2010 - The Home Stretch... 

Picusblog (Christopher)

• Bloggerhead Kingbirds at the Superbowl of Birding - The Pre-game show 
• Bloggerhead Kingbirds at the Superbowl of Birding - Game Day
• Bloggerhead Kingbird - wrap up post

The Drinking Bird (Nate)

• Saw What Owl? 
• Ice Bowl

The Feather and the Flower (Mike)

• Let the (Re)counting Begin! [Fun & Games]

Finally, my own

• Finally, a Northern Saw-whet 
• Cold Competition
• Cold Competition, Continued
• Scoping for Seabirds

From other teams

• Granite State Bird Watch: Superbowl of Birding Results 
• NYSYBC Ninja Nighthawks: Superbowl of Birding 2010 
• Burger Kinglets: Super Bowl VII 1/30/2010

Newspaper coverage

• The Newburyport Current: Superbowl of Birding draws crowd

This should be my last post on this topic, and next week the blog will be back to its normal topics.

Loose Feathers #224

Black-legged Kittiwakes / Photo by Peter Mulligan

Birds and birding news

• A birder found and video recorded a long whiskered owlet (Xenoglaux loweryi) in Peru – only the fourth time the species has ever been seen and the first time anyone has captured footage of it.
• A brown-throated three-toed sloth may have been killed by a spectacled owl. The dead sloth showed puncture wounds that match the owl's talons. 
• Bird species from landscapes subject to deforestation have developed more pointed wings over the past hundred years. In contrast, birds in reforested areas gained rounder wings. Pointed wings have higher energy costs for take-off and foraging but are more energy-efficient for flying longer distances between habitat patches.
• Comparison with modern feathers show that a small dinosaur from the late Jurassic probably had colorful feathers: a reddish crest and gray body, with white stripes on its legs and wings.
• Climate change could make the prairie pothole region much drier and deprive many North American waterfowl of their breeding grounds.
• A Red-tailed Hawk that was badly burned as a result of a plane crash is recovering but will likely be in rehabilitation for a long time and may not return to the wild.
• Lead-based paint in some older abandoned buildings is killing Laysan albatross chicks on Midway.
• A letter-writer wonders about the purpose behind Nantucket's winter crow hunting.

Birds in the blogosphere

• Great Auk or Greatest Auk: Buffle 
• Ecographica: Buffalos and Birds: Flightless Wings from the KT Extinction to Darwin’s Dinner Plate
• The House and other Arctic Musings: Neat Little Boxes
• Blog Around the Clock: Extended Laying Interval of Ultimate Eggs of the Eastern Bluebird
• Coffee and Conservation: Know your coffee birds: Rufous-capped Warbler
• The Nemesis Bird: Interesting Herring Gull
• Biological Ramblings: Conservation, Paper Subdivisions, and the Google Age
• Fat Finch: Self-Publishing Birders
• The Nature Lady: 10 Ways that Birders and Wildlife Watchers will Help Save the Planet 

Environment and biodiversity

• There are concerns that climate change would result in a drier climate in the Amazon region; combined with deforestation and fires this could lead to destruction of much of the ecosystem within 65 years.
• Household pesticides like pyrethroids are entering storm water runoff and sewage in sufficient levels to kill stream organisms such as amphipods and the larvae of mayflies and caddisflies.
• Speaking of toxic runoff, the Anacostia River is still one of the most polluted rivers in the country. Several initiatives are underway to clean it, but the deadlines for a clean river keep getting pushed back. Make sure to see the photo gallery included with the article.
• Migratory insects fly at altitudes where they can find the most favorable winds.
• Reintroducing small packs of wolves into national parks could restore ecosystems by reducing the number of ungulates and in turn increasing plant diversity.
• The US Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the American pika under the Endangered Species Act even though the species is threatened throughout its range. 
• Olivia Judson explains why island animals seem so tame.

Carnivals

• I and the Bird #118
• Carnival of Evolution #20
• Scientia Pro Publica #20 
• Festival of the Trees #44 
• Circus of the Spineless #47

I and the Bird and SkyWatch

I and the Bird #118 is now online in some weird dialect at Ben Cruachan Blog, a long-time member of the blogosphere.

The photo above, presented here for SkyWatch Friday, is from the early morning last Sunday on Cape Ann.

---

Scoping for Seabirds

 At several stops during the Superbowl of Birding, other birders would ask us what we were seeing. According to the contest rules, teams may not receive assistance from people who are not on the team during the competition, except for a few sanctioned sources. This means, in part, that teams cannot give each other assistance. Even without such a rule, it would be unwise to tell other teams where good birds are located because that could make the difference between winning and losing. So we had to coldly rebuff such requests. After several such encounters, Christopher expressed his frustration that he wanted to get back to talking about birds instead of keeping quiet.

On Sunday morning, we had a chance to do some normal birding (without a veil of secrecy) before all of the team members had to go their separate ways. We chose to return to Cape Ann, to look for the King Eider we all missed and the Dovekie that Mike and I missed. We also hoped that some of the unusual gulls might have returned to Gloucester Harbor or Niles Pond. Unfortunately we missed all of the desired birds, but the coves at Cape Ann provide ample opportunities to view and photograph some gorgeous seabirds such as Harlequin Ducks and Purple Sandpipers. I was also glad to spend more time at Andrews Point, which became my favorite birding location from the trip.

Mike had brought an extra spotting scope when he drove from New York to Massachusetts, so I had use of a scope throughout the competition and during the next day. On the competition day it was very helpful to be able to scan the ocean and marshes because I was able to find birds faster than I would have otherwise. On Sunday I took advantage of the scope to take a closer look at some species (such as a Black Guillemot) and try my hand at digiscoping.

The bird above is an immature male Common Eider that was swimming in the bay near East Point. Unfortunately the focus is a little soft; I am not sure if that was a result of how I focused the scope or what the camera picked as a focal point. The birds below are Harlequin Ducks from Andrews Point.

I tried digiscoping a few other birds as well, but the results are not presentable. I will need a lot more practice before I can produce images on par with someone like Mike McDowell or Kevin Bolton.

As I mentioned in my second post on the competition, our team won the Essex County Excels award for accumulating the most points in Essex County, Massachusetts. We received gift certificates for a nature store in Newburyport, and since we were all (except Christopher) leaving the area that day, we needed to cut short our birding time if we wanted the opportunity to use them. I used mine on a lens pen and two insect guides: Stokes Beginner's Guide to Dragonflies and Caterpillars of Eastern North America. Those books should help me to identify insects faster and more accurately – and post photos of them on the blog more quickly.

Having said our goodbyes, we went our separate ways. I was very happy to meet and bird with Corey, Andrew, Nate, Mike, and Christopher, and I hope to bird with them again, hopefully sooner rather than later. You can read their own versions of the weekend's events on their blogs; I'll post links here to the individual posts once everyone is done posting.