Birding Notes

While I have been neglectful of this blog over the past two weeks, I have been seeing some good birds.

Last week was phenomenal for red-tailed hawk migration. At a single banding station we banded 102 for the week, including 36 on one day (tying a single day record for the project), and 27 and 24 on two other days. It appears that a lot of buteos were lingering north of here, until a series of strong cold fronts (and possibly some snow) pushed them south. The last two weeks have also brought three red-shouldered hawks, a peregrine falcon, and a merlin – all rather late migrants – to our station. The hawk watch had similarly impressive red-tail numbers last week.

At the same time that red-tailed hawks were barreling through, fox sparrows started to arrive in large numbers. I have been hearing their songs all over the island this week. At first the song confused me because it starts off like a cardinal's but does not end like one, and at times sounds almost like an oriole. Eventually I figured out what it was. Speaking of orioles, there are still some around here, including one that I saw outside of where I am staying.

Owls are also migrating through. Yesterday I followed a report to find a long-eared owl. It was mostly obscured by branches, but still identifiable. A northern saw whet owl was reported from the same location, but I did not find that species. Had I stayed and checked each tree thoroughly, I might have located the tiny bird, but I did not want to create too much disturbance in that grove.

This afternoon at the Beanery, I encountered a Cooper's hawk, a sharpie, a red-tail, a kestrel, and a merlin. That's not bad for a walk of only about an hour. Plus there were several sparrow species – all of which gave great looks in the low-angle sunlight – and a few meadowlarks.

Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be back to regular posting fairly soon.

I and the Bird

I and the Bird #86 is now available.

Taking Aim

Background here.

Adult Male Harrier

We band very few adult hawks in Cape May, as most of the coastal migrants are hatch year birds. This is the first adult male northern harrier that I have seen in the hand; I still have not held an adult female.

Note the bright yellow eyes and gray facial disk.

While the breast is gray, the belly is white (with light brown barring).

The back is darker gray than the wings.

These birds stand out at a distance, so much so that they seem less in tune with their surroundings than the female and immature forms, which take the color of marsh and meadow grasses. Male harriers seem to belong on the tundra, like snowy owls or gyrfalcons.

How Many Rare Birds?

David Sibley has been running an interesting series of posts on how many rare birds are out there versus how many we find.

1. How many do we miss?
2. How many do we find?
3. Rare birds and the internet

The second post was partly in response to an interview that I did with Nick at the Birdist. I had already been changing my opinion somewhat since doing that interview because of my experience at Cape May. While there are a lot of birders here, it seems that the same few places get the bulk of attention from most birders, while other sites get less coverage. So a lot of rare birds could be slipping through, even here.