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.
When I began birding in the 1970’s, Louisiana often experienced what we called “invasion” winters, where some combination of cold weather, food distribution and luck pushed large numbers of northern species into Louisiana. In fact, it was just such an invasion that really pushed me into birding, when a friend of my mother’s hosted dozens of Evening Grosbeaks, Purple Finches, Pine Siskins, and other birds at her feeders in the winter of 1977-78.
When I returned to birding in the early 21st century, after almost 20 years of not paying attention, things had changed. Winters were far more likely to feature summer birds and fall migrants “staying over” into the winter months, and the winter hummingbird phenomenon had replaced nothern invasions as a birding hot topic. On our Christmas Count this year, for instance, we had this perky little fellow, an Ash-throated Flycatcher, hanging out in the batture on the Mississippi River near LSU:
This photograph of the Ash-throated Flycatcher was taken by Dr. Carol Foil, who discovered the bird during the Christmas Bird Count in Baton Rouge.
Ash-throated Flycatchers, like this one, are rare but semi-regular winter visitors from the western United States, like many of our hummingbirds.
So I was pleased during the Christmas Bird Count to hear that some of the counters had found Purple Finches on their count tallies. This is a bird we haven’t had regularly in winter in Baton Rouge for years. I was fairly certain that the folks who saw the birds correctly identified them, even though they can be confused with House Finches (a recent introduction to eastern avifauna). Two days later, I had fairly good backup, as several Purple Finches made it to my yard as well:
At the same time, the western winter invasion continues, as I also saw a Buff-bellied Hummingbird in my yard – briefly, but long enough for it to count. These birds of the lower Rio Grande Valley area, for some reason, occasionally migrate north in winter and find themselves along the Gulf Coast. This year, we’ve seen a couple of dozen of them already, and more are being reported every few days. I’ll have to get pictures if I see another one in my yard – the camera is now ready by the window.
The Christmas Bird Count’s over – thankfully – and I can rest a bit now. Results will take a few days to compile, but it looks like we had at least as good a count as usual. My best birds were two adult Bald Eagles flying high over the Mississippi River.
Well, not Christmas, but the Baton Rouge Christmas Bird Count, for which I am, somehow, the compiler.
Two years ago, after the count, I volunteered to help the then-compiler and her assistant with totalling up the numbers of birds spotted. I must have gone to the bathroom at some point because when I left the meeting, I’d become compiler for the 2006 count. Go figure.
That count was, weather-wise, a disaster, as we got six torrential inches of rain in one day. Numbers of birds were down across the count circle, although oddly enough, our species count was too adversely affected. My birding partner Jacob and I started listening for owls around 4:00 AM, and were joined about 7:30 AM by my friend John from Houston, who’d driven over to help with the count. From that point forward we were dodging rain all day.
This year’s count should be much nicer, weather-wise, and hopefully we’ll have good luck with the birds. I’ll post a recap tomorrow or Sunday of anything really good. Maybe even pictures if there’s any to be had.
Nancy, Steve and I kicked off hummingbird banding in 2008 on New Year’s Day at one of Nancy’s regular sites in River Ridge, Louisiana. The house is nestled between the Mississippi River delta, in the back yard, and a busy highway lined with apartment buildings a block away from the front street. Because of the river and because the yard is well-landscaped for hummers (read: parts left overgrown with large plants with nectar-rich blossoms), this site usually yields good birds. Just how good, we found out that morning.
In the past, the yard had produced high numbers of Black-chinned Hummingbirds, the western U.S. counterpart to our own Ruby-throated Hummingbird, with as many as 17 individuals of this species present on a single day. In recent years the yard has attracted an even more diverse group of species, including last year hosting four Buff-bellied Hummingbirds. These larger hummingbirds, with their iridescent green throats, rusty brown tails, and loud “electric static” chatter, are unlike any other hummingbirds found in the United States.
Over the course of the morning, we trapped, banded, and marked seven of these beauties – a one-day record for a single yard for Nancy as a bander. We also got a single adult male Calliope Hummingbird (a returnee, no less, banded at the same house last winter), one immature male Black-chinned Hummingbird, and three immature Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Quite a mix for a January day! The only drawback was that I was unable to watch any other birds because of our focus on all those Buffies.
For about a year, now, I’ve left my blog untouched (although I’ve monitored for comments and deleted thousands of spam ones). It stayed blank for a while because I just didn’t have anything to say, and once I had things to say, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to say them publicly. For personal blogs, like this one (which rarely touch on the news or political issues or current events), it’s always a balancing act: how much do I tell these people about me vs. how much do I want to keep to myself? What about issues that concern me, but which also reveal personal information about Jonathan, or about friends? For that I could keep a journal, but if I don’t want others to see it, why bother? I have a good enough memory that I won’t forget the things I need to know – at least until I get old and senile.
On top of all that, I was in a general funk for months, something that a few friends knew about, and helped me through, but which definitely wasn’t conducive to writing. I’m not the sort who wants people to feel sorry for me, so how do you say “My life sucks at the moment” and not sound whining?
But… part of me needs the writing practice, and sometimes I just feel like saying something. Moreover, I’ve got to remember that not every post I make needs to make a point, to teach a lesson, or accomplish some goal. Sometimes it’s just enough to want to put something down.
Plus, I’m going to be more diligent in my birding efforts this year (continuing a general trend over the last few years to get out to more places and see more birds). I might as well share some of them with the handful of people who read this. So… more posts will be on the way.