Occasional Jots and Tittles

After some minor traffic issues leaving Baton Rouge today, two friends and I headed down to Alliance to chase after a Fork-tailed Flycatcher that had been reported last weekend. Once we found the correct spot, we had no trouble locating the bird and got great looks at it for almost an hour (although it stayed out of camera range for me). While looking for the Fork-tail I also picked up Western Kingbird, making those birds 292 and 293 on my ever-so-slowly growing life list.

Otherwise, my back is completely screwed up; I slept in an odd position last night and woke up with it already messed up, and then a couple of hours in the car each direction finished the job. Thankfully Jonathan had some painkillers left over from something because when I got home I had trouble moving at all. Hopefully tonight will be better - I’m kicking the cats out of the room so I can sleep in a straight line in the bed.

Chasing is the birder’s term for going to look for a rare bird, usually some distance away (if it’s only across town, that’s not “chasing”). It’s usually dones when a particular bird has been sighted in a given area, and it’s rare enough that it makes more sense to make a special trip to see it, rather than look for it another time when you’re closer. I don’t do a lot of chasing because (a) I prefer to bird with others, and often can’t find someone to go with me, and (b) I don’t trust my car on long trips so I have to find someone else to go with me, which brings me back to (a).

Tomorrow, however, I’m going chasing again, with a neighbor who also likes to bird. A Fork-tailed Flycatcher has been reported most of this week below New Orleans, at Venice (a really good birding area in the state that I’ve never visited), and it’s only the second state record for the species. I figure this is my shot at it for my lifetime in Louisiana, so.. off we go. I’ll post notes tomorrow on whether we find it, and if I can get pictures…

OK… non-birders won’t understand, but I just love the pictures of this beauty. She’s subtle, but her rarity combined with the flash of color in the winter is just what I needed as a pick-me-up. A friend got these pictures in my yard while I was gone for the weekend.

I swear… some days it doesn’t pay to hit “Publish.”

No sooner had I clicked on the Publish button than a flash of yellow in the yard caught my eye. I thought at first it was an American Goldfinch well along its way to its summer plumage (some of them are already brightening up considerably), but then I realized the wings weren’t black. And it was big. Lots bigger than any goldfinch.

It was another Western Tanager female (or, possibly, the same bird I had last year, no way to know for sure). I think possibly the same because she went straight for a suet feeder, which is what she did during her month of visiting last year. Pictures to come, if she stays around (naturally the camera wasn’t handy).

There’s precious little to report lately, especially on the birding front. This time last year, my yard was filled with a variety of really good birds for the winter, including a Western Tanager, a Baltimore Oriole, a Broad-tailed Hummingbird, and a Calliope Hummingbird, along with a handful of Rufous Hummingbirds and the usual winter suspects (American Goldfinches, House Finches, Cardinals, etc.).

This year, with the exception of a single young female Rufous, I’ve had no resident winter hummingbirds, and the Purple Finches were only here for a couple of days. I did manage to see the Ash-throated Flycatcher on Tuesday, down at the riverfront, but that of course doesn’t count as a yard bird.