Berkshire Flowers, Newt, Toad, and Potholes

 I made a visit to the Berkshires near the Mowhawk trail in Massachusetts. I did some birding in the area but I thought that I would post a few non-bird photos first. The first picture was taken in Shelburne Falls on a rainy morning. It is an old trolley bridge that was transformed into a Bridge Of Flowers by the Shelburne Women's Club back in 1929.

I found lots of Lady Slippers in the woods at a place called High Ridges. I was told that there were even yellow Lady Slippers growing out there but the pink ones were good enough for me.

I looked this up on the web and found that it was a Red-spotted Newt in the terrestrial eft stage. They spend up to 3 years on land before returning to the water. I may have seen these before but on this particular morning I counted 15 of them along one trail! I was afraid that I might step on one but they really stood out with their bright orange color.

  I found this toad hanging out in the middle of the night. I'm not sure what kind it is but I think it's an American Toad. 

Another attraction at Shelburne Falls were the falls themselves. There were glacial potholes in the rocks below the falls.

Here's a close-up of one of the potholes. 

I enjoyed my visit to the friendly little village of Shelburne Falls. They had a good breakfast diner too which is always a plus in my book. In the next post I'll tell you about a cool place called Hawley Bog that I visited along with some Berkshire bird photos to go with it.

Scenes from The New River Birding Festival 2013 Part 1

Every spring I make the trek to south-central West Virginia to help out guiding, speaking, and performing at The New River Birding and Nature Festival. Those of you who've read this blog over the past several years know all about why this event is special to me. And each year it seems to get a bit more special. There are lots of things about "the New" that appeal to me: the incredible natural beauty of the New River Gorge region, the amazing variety of nesting, migrant, and resident birds, the chance to eat ramps... but I think the real reason is the people.

I've become great friends with the folks who founded and run the festival—we're like family at this point. But it's also the people who come as my fellow guides/speakers—they are some of the most talented field birders and fascinating personalities on the planet. And it's the folks who attend the New River Birding Festival as participants. It takes a special person to see the intrinsic value in a small, friendly birding event run deep in the middle of a state that is probably not naturally on the radar of the average traveling bird watcher.

But that's changing...

I speak and guide at a bunch of birding festivals every year. And lots of times someone on one of my trips will say to me "Hey Bill, I see that you do that New River festival in West Virginia every year. What's that one like?" I always say: "Man, it's great! Low key. Great birds, food, people, scenery." But what I really should say is: "You've gotta be there to experience how great it is."

In this post (and maybe one or two others coming up) I'm going to show some images from the 2013 NRBNF to help you get a feel for what it's like.

The pre-festival guides' meeting (with local micro-brew) in the gazebo. Festival hosts, from left: Lynn Pollard, Bill Hilton, Jr, Geoff Heeter, Dave Pollard.

Most mornings we meet for breakfast at Burnwood, a picnic area and campsite near the gorge. After fueling up, we head to our vehicles—if we can find them in the fog that sometimes blankets the gorge.

The fog burns off and we're into the birds. This is a group I led early in the week this year, on a new route called Hunt Club Road. We were looking at this:

Male golden-winged warbler

When we see a good bird like this, we take a moment to celebrate. Here is a photo of a low-key version of The Life Bird Wiggle (we didn't want to disturb the bird).

Then we're off after more birds...

There's a lot for us guides to point out...

Ernesto Carman from Costa Rica came to guide this year. He has incredibly good spotting skills.

Keith Richardson, one of the festival's organizers and hosts, points out a worm-eating warbler on the Nuttallburg hiking trail.

There are so many great birds that we get long, binoc-filling views of...

Male Kentucky warbler.

Male prairie warbler.

Male scarlet tanager.

There's a lot more beauty to enjoy than the feathered kind.

Roaring mountain stream above Nuttalburg.

Flowering pawpaw tree.

Spidery grape vine.

Swirling stone. What made this pattern in the mountain?

If this post piques your interest, make plans now to attend The New River Birding Festival in 2014. I'll be there and I can't wait!

Oh Canada

With summer rapidly winning over the woods the breeding residents have supplanted the migrants.  Canada Warblers have been in good numbers so far in Warren Dunes.  This territorial male was fairly fearless in the days leading up to Birdathon.

He held still long enough that I experimented with some video... it's on Youtube here, I can't for the life of me embed it in the post like I'm supposed to be able to do (and can find every other video I put on youtube, just not this blasted one).

Family Of Foxes On A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

 I found this family of Red Foxes near a railroad track in an industrial area in Portland.
 One of the kits even wandered into a parking lot and then took a tour of landscaped shrubs around one of the factories.

It stopped and started to sniff the air as I moved in closer. When you think of wild animals like foxes you might expect to find them in a field out in the country but they've  learned to adapt to more developed areas in order to survive.

and then there were two

I've walked Floral at dawn a lot more this year than I ever have before, giving up shots at Tiscornia megas in favor of trying to get the hard spring passerines.  I appear to have missed Olive-sided, though it's probably the least difficult of this group to reclaim in the fall.  Connecticuts have been hard to come by this year, I'm aware of only one in the county so far this year.  After listening to a lot of Northern Waterthrushes making Connecticut like songs (with a few Yellowthroat impersonators as well), it was nice to have the real thing pop out at Floral this morning.  It sang off and on through the morning, but we never even got a glimpse of the bird moving in the brush.

This Mourning along the nature trail was much more obliging, by far the best shot I've obtained of this fellow skulker.

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher was the other passerine I was hoping for.  As one of the latest migrants we're entering its peak window.

The primary extension on these birds is as impressive as the belly is.

I tried to turn this Acadian into a Yellow-belly as well (and actually called it out as one).  I was wrong though.

That leaves me with Worm-eating and Chat as the last 2 warblers I need.  The wormer is really the last woodland bird left, unless there's a late Olive-sided lurking somewhere.

Hatin' Time

The post-Birdathon wrap-up is always entertaining.  Some years the theme is Scarlet Tanagers.  This year a lot of the focus was on the camaraderie of birding.  Birding with others is certainly more fun than birding alone.  That being said, sometimes 15 hours into a Big Day, nerves are a little frayed, caffeine crashes occur, the afternoon lull sets in, someone stuffs wrappers and chewed gum in someone else's (still half-full) pizza box which is then emptied onto another party's hat and a good old-fashioned Hatin' Time ensues.  There are two ways that Hatin' Time can be defeated, one is a good bird.

Our best bird of the day came early in the morning, a Yellow-headed Blackbird that jumped out to Tim's eyes at Three Oaks, only the 2nd I've ever seen in the county.  Check out the length of the hindclaws.

Of course it came during the adrenaline rush of the dawn (and the first dawn in a few years that lacked rain), so it didn't really affect the Hatin' Time.

Summer Tanager would have been a perfect bird for the afternoon lull; we didn't get one on Birdathon though.

The other cure, aside from some good birds, is for Hatin' Time to morph into Killin' Time.  That one's self explanatory.

Joking aside, we had a fun time.  Most of the birds were pretty common, and we were actually fairly even with our record pace until we got to Floral.  There was a really nice hawk movement, but the passerines just didn't happen there; most of ours came elsewhere.

Hooded Warblers were hard to miss though.

 We managed to filter out all of the Rose-breasted Grosbeaks at our first several passerine spots, it was actually new at Floral.

I missed the first Magnolia of the day (maybe the first two), so one in a little bush was also new for me.

Finally a Chestnut-sided that was near the grosbeak while scouting (unsuccessfully) for Worm-eating Warbler.

 

Forest Floor Turned Green By Magic Meteorite?

 I found this patch of ferns tucked away in a hidden area of Wangunk Meadows. It was a surprising change from the dusty, dirt roads I had just been walking on. It reminded me of a scene from a movie that I saw in the 1980's called Creepshow (IMDB) . One of the 5 tales was about a farmer who found a meteorite that covered everything with some sort of green vegetation. 

 In an area not far away this Tufted Titmouse was agitated by my presence and seemed to be trying to tell me something.

I wonder what he was trying to tell me? Careful now, this blog is rated G!

Parula in a Redbud

The weather this year has been ideal for the flowering trees, no hard frosts and cool for the last week keeping the flowers fresh, and I've been studying them fairly closely looking for subjects teed up in a sea of pink.  Until today my best had been robins and house sparrows.

A Parula however was defining its territory at Kesling, this was the closest I've ever been to a male.

The sun was pretty high so the flowers are blown out a little bit, but I really can't complain.

It dropped pretty low, presumably after insects.

We didn't have tons of warblers, but I did get my first Golden-winged, Baybreast, and Blackburnian of the year.

Veeries were the theme at Floral in the morning.  Some of them were very confiding.

Finally a Clay-colored Sparrow we heard at Chikaming that popped up right next to the car.

Spring Census Mystery Bird Makes Number 100

 I've been working on the Spring census for the town of Portland and having a blast! It's so much easier to look for birds in your own town because you know where everything is. If you want to add a Great Blue Heron to the list just visit the local rookery. Of course it doesn't matter if there are 150 herons there because you can only count 1. I also found one Great Egret at this sight which was pretty cool.

I visited some of the nature preserves but found more flowers than birds. What kind of flower is this? 

I can usually count on finding Peregrine Falcons around the bridge this time of the year. They like to spend time making friends with the pigeons before giving them the bad news. I didn't have any luck on this particular morning but it was a nice view of the river though. I don't know where the falcons are hiding but I still have until this weekend to find one.

You never know what you'll find this time of the year. I went looking for warblers and then just when I Least expected there was a sandpiper.

My most exciting moment so far came when I heard a bird singing a song at the power-lines. I was unable to get a good look at the bird because it was hidden back in some cedars. It kept repeating the same song but I had no idea what it was. I recorded the song and the members of Birdforum identified it for me. It's a White-eyed Vireo which aren't that uncommon along the shoreline but I've never seen one in Portland. Later I was able to go back with my spotting scope to get a decent look at it. Don't bother watching the video but if you listen closely you can hear the White-eyed Vireo singing which turned out to be the 100th recorded species for the Portland Spring Census this year. Update: final total was 117.

Mr. Kentucky needs some friends

I'd heard the Kentucky last week, but it took a couple trips to Floral to finally see the little guy, despite foliage that's way behind where it is some years.

The bright morning sun really blew out the foreground with the bird in the shade, though the side-light definitely made it better to shoot with the bird in the shade.

Aside from the Kentucky, I've found warblers to be few and far between on the mornings I've been out, Black-and-White is probably the migrant I've encountered the most.

This Black-throated Blue Warbler was seen by about a third of the people who were on the Costa Rica trip, who showed up by happenstance.

Finally an Ovenbird that may or may not set up a territory along the strip of trail at Floral he's been hanging out in.

Red-headed Woodpecker this afternoon made 200 for the year in Berrien, hopefully tomorrow will bring a nice push of birds.