Occasional Jots and Tittles

Once I realized the new theme looked kind of wintery, I decided it would be better served by being used after Christmas – so some slight changes to things for the holidays here.

I usually love the look of a black-background webpage. Still, the white text and blue links on the black were hard to read, and with winter coming on, I felt it was time for a change. Amazing what changing a couple of CSS codes will do for the site look!

One of the things I always point out to people living in bigger, more interesting places is that Baton Rouge may be a dinky slow small town of a city, but at least the weather is moderate year-round. And that’s true, even though we can have some cold days in January occasionally, when the overnight drops into the teens and we barely break freezing the next day. That never lasts more than a couple of days, though, and it’s not uncommon to have “winter” days in the 60’s and 70’s.

But every so often, we get a day that – if you didn’t know better – makes Baton Rouge look like it’s in, say, northern Illinois. Today was one of those days. It started snowing about 5:00 AM, and by early morning, about 8:00 AM, we had about three inches of snow on the ground.

We do get snow here, but it doesn’t “stick”. You get flurries for half an hour, it gives everything a light white dusting, and then the sun comes out from behind a cloud somewhere and it looks magical for about five minutes. Then it melts.

Today’s snow stuck. In fact, although a good bit did melt by the end of the day, there’s still a layer on top of my car (which sat immobile all day) and on the ground nearby. The view from my home office window:

Not all birders keep lists; I’m not as compulsive as some people, but I do keep a lifelist and state lists for each state where I’ve birded more than casually. I also try to keep tabs on “first arrivals” for migrants in my yard, if not overall, to get a better picture of my local ecology.

But the biggie, of course, is the lifelist, where every species you’ve seen is recorded. When I stopped birding at the end of my freshman year of college, I had 179 life birds; not bad for someone who’d only birded his own yard, the LSU campus, and a couple of other spots on field trips from school. I picked up a couple of other birds just in passing, in 1996 and in 2000, but started back “semi-seriously” birding in June of 2004.

At the end of 2007, I’d reached 289 birds, or 110 more than when I left off – and that included a very productive trip to California where I saw 26 lifers, or more than 1/4 of the total year gain over three and a half years. I made a goal for myself to pick up 111 lifers in 2008 – one more than the “recent years” total, and coincidentally enough to put me at 400 birds total.

The biggest leaps forward on that front came through four trips I took: one to the Upper Texas Coast in April, another to Grande Isle, La. also in April; the Taste of Arizona trip in August; and the Journey West in November. In fact, with a little more luck on the Taste of Arizona trip (where being with a non-birder made it difficult to spend a lot of time hiking trails, etc. for hot specialties) or on the Journey West (where a combination of park closings and park events led to some strikeouts on specially targeted birds), I’d have hit the 400 mark easily.

As it is, five days into December, I’m at 397 birds. Twenty-five days is a lot of time to get three lifers, except that virtually every common wintering bird in Louisiana is already on my life list. (Note: I still need plenty of those on my STATE list – I’ve seen them elsewhere, but not here – but seeing the bird again here wouldn’t up my lifelist count.) I’ve identified a small handful of birds that may be gettable with some work, and some help from birders who know the areas where they’re likely to be found. So I haven’t missed the mark yet — wish me luck, people, I’m gonna need it!

Note: A good while back (in September, 2006) I wrote about Ten U.S. Land Birds I Want to See. I decided to go back and look up that post; of the ten, I’ve since seen seven. The three I haven’t gotten so far are Scott’s Oriole (missed on Taste of Arizona trip), Black-throated Blue Warbler (hard to get anywhere east of the east coast) and Mountain Bluebird (missed on the Journey West). At least, though, that gives me some high-value target birds to aim for on future trips.

Back from my trip late Sunday night, but I’m just getting around to writing anything about it. This was a longer trip, and because it was all by car on the outbound part, it was tiring. But it was interesting to see parts of the country I’d never seen (like south Texas) and I managed to set foot in one new state (New Mexico), although only briefly, at a stop for bathroom break and cold drinks.

Birding in Texas was great – although we missed a few birds we’d hoped for, we nonetheless saw nearly every one of the “specialty” birds of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. I hadn’t realized how far apart some of the birding spots are down there– I assumed it was all within, oh, an hour’s drive from one end to the other. Silly me.

Anyway: I didn’t get nearly as many pictures of stuff as I’d have liked, but here are some of the more interesting birds I saw.

I first dragged out the camera to get shots of Green Jays, perhaps one of the most visible, iconic birds of the area, at Laguna Atascosa:

And although it was a bird I’ve seen many times before, even in Louisiana, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this Wilson’s Warbler bathing:

At the same site was this female Painted Bunting, a bird we see spring through fall in Louisiana but rarely in winter:

As we moved deeper into this refuge, we got close looks (and a few good shots) of this Osprey:

Pictures at many of the other refuges didn’t turn out as well (though I’m hoping to get some from the other guys on the trip), and at some places it just wasn’t easy to get the camera gear out and ready for the good birds. Late in the Texas part of the trip, however, we stopped at a key birding hotspot at Salineno, a small tract of land which was sold to the US Fish and Wildlife Service some years ago. The sellers retained lifetime “trespass” rights to keep their motor home on the property in the winter and to run the bird feeding stations; the last few years, someone else has taken over that job for them, but the place is still welcoming. We had the nicest visit here, and I got some of my better shots.

Although I’d seen Hooded Orioles in Arizona, they were new to me for Texas; I got good looks at both male and female:

We’d also already seen Altamira Orioles (only found in south Texas) on this trip, but we got much better looks here:

Two types of doves, the White-tipped and the Inca, were present as well. The White-tipped is also limited to south Texas.

And again, although I’d seen them in other spots on the trip, we got our best looks ever at the Great Kiskadee, a large flycatcher who nonetheless seems to enjoy peanut butter:

We visited many other sites in Texas, but by mid-day Wednesday we had to be moving on, so that we could be in Chandler, AZ by Thursday afternoon for Thanksgiving and for Rob to pack for moving.

I spent Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday birding in Arizona, mostly north of where I’d been in August. Only bird pictures, however, come from Boyce-Thompson State Park and Arboretum, where I saw this Verdin:

And although Arizona is noted for hummingbirds, there aren’t as many around in the winter. I did get a few shots, though, of this beautiful adult male Broad-billed Hummingbird.

By Sunday mid-day, I was ready to head home. I love traveling, and I love birding, but it was time to be on my way back, and I really missed Jonathan. I came home not only to a cleaned living room, but he’d already bought our Christmas tree, mostly decorated it, and had all the outdoor christmas lights up. Pictures of Christmas stuff to come soon. I couldn’t ask for more – gotta love that boy.