Big Year Brazos County 2015

On a whim, and spurred by an unusually insatiable need to go see things, I decided to do a Big Year in Brazos County in 2015. It at least kept me close to home and kept me busy (or productively procrastinating).

Why did I do this? I don’t know… I’ll try to explain more at the end. Suffice to say, it was the right time to commit to something a little eccentric like this!

Let’s break this down by some general grouping, as I’m sure no one wants a day-by-day report (and I don’t want to write it!)!

How many roads must a man walk down, before he finds that dang finch!?!?
Frequently traveled county roads highlighted in blue.

Butterflies, butterflies, butterflies

With the upcoming NABA Butterfly Count, I’ve been out practicing- or trying to practice- finding, observing, and identifying our local butterflies. Initially, I was very gung-ho about it: I want to see everything, not miss an ID, pick out the unique or interesting butterflies, and generally have a rewarding time.

I didn’t succeed. As it turns out, I’m not very good at IDing butterflies. They’re small, fly fast, hide in the bushes, and can have very cryptic or subtle colorations. I mean how hard can it be to identify a Monarch? It’s big, iconic, easy to see! It seems to me that the Monarch is the butterfly equivalent of a Bald Eagle. They’re everywhere- on billboards, tv, symbols in businesses and of the US. But in real life when you’re out looking for a Bald Eagle, they can be pretty difficult to find. You’ll find Cardinals and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, and Grackles much more easily. And don’t forget the I-got-a-quick-glimpse-and-thought-it-was-a-Bald-Eagle but it was really a Crested Caracara. Monarch’s have those too: Queens, Viceroys, and Soldiers. Heck, a quick glimpse of a Gulf Fritillary can send you to the wrong ID!

It's... uh... ok. It's not the thing I thought it was.

RBAS Spring Challenge 2015!

All right! It's time for another RBAS Challenge! What we want to do with this challenge is encourage birding right in your backyard and report your sightings to Ebird.

In case you don't know, Ebird.org is a citizen science data entry platform that aggregates bird sightings from all over the world and makes them available to anyone and everyone that's interested in learning about bird distribution, recent sightings in a particular place, or historical trends. All of this data allows researchers at Ebird make a Migration Forecast- a resource that combines our submissions to Ebird with weather forecasts to predict which species will be where, when they'll be there, and if there's going to be bad flying (good birding) conditions.

They can also compile all of this sightings data and make some really awesome migration maps! Here's one for the Indigo Bunting. Very cool!

To better attract birds to your backyard, we've set up a resource for you. Some of the basics of backyard feeders and yard set up are discussed, as well as the benefits for planting native plants. We've linked out to a lot of other resources as there is a lot of information available on this topic!


The Challenge

Our Spring 2015 Challenge is to submit at least 10 Ebird lists from your backyard before 01May2015. This gives you 6 weeks to get 10 lists! Easy! If you don't have a backyard, pick a favorite park or neighborhood spot and see what you can find.

For everyone that completes the Challenge, your name will be entered into a raffle to be held at the 13May RBAS Meeting. Prizes will include guide books, bird feeders, and whatever other items we can conjure up. We're expecting to have around 20 prizes, so lots of people will walk out of there with something!

Once you've gotten your 10 Ebird lists in, REGISTER for the drawing!


Ebird

For a quick how-to-Ebird, I've made an instructional video covering the basics for setting up an account and submitting a list. Ebird.org a free site- no cost you the citizen scientists- it is sponsored by National Audubon and Cornell Lab of Ornithology! So get reporting!

The Big Day!

Every year in late January or early February, the country pauses to take in a spectacle like no other: Months of preparation, training, late nights and early mornings, tough competition, and a singular focus to survive. That’s right, it’s:

SUPERB OWL 2015!

Now the Superb Owl celebrations were originally a way for t.v. comedian Stephen Colbert to avoid the legal ire of the NFL by talking about the “big game” without permission last year (relevant part starts about 2min in). Now in good fun, National Audubon’s CEO David Yarnold got in on it to talk about some of the issues with the Barred Owl/Spotted Owl management in California.

Who manages you? Who manages you all!?

2014 RBAS Year in Review

As we look forward to the new year, let’s take a quick minute to look back at Rio Brazos Audubon’s 2014. We ended the November Challenge (well, we ended with the Christmas Bird Count, but I was sick so I can’t tell you about it!). And it’s well overdue to post the winners to the group! 

We had a very good response in for sketches and photo submissions… and a good response from the voters!

To calculate the winners, each vote was weighted (1^st pace vote got 5 points, 5^th place vote got 1 point) and total scores were tabulated.

Our grand prize winner of a field guide and a bird feeder was:

Gus Cothran and his Chipping Sparrow!

Chipping Sparrow by Gus Cothran

November Challenge

The simple act of seeing and recognizing a bird in your backyard carries with it a long- and somewhat unappreciated- history of natural observation. What do you notice when you see a Northern Cardinal? How do you recognize it? Is it the ornamental red of the males? Or the claxon orange beak contrasted against the soft brown of the females? Maybe it’s not with your eyes but your ears… the dawn song of these ubiquitous backyard companions is comfortingly familiar to backyards across the eastern US.

Look up in the sky!

It’s a bird! And another! And another! And… oh my! Fall migration is upon us, and there’s plenty to see as the birds head to their wintering grounds. With a little luck, we’ll have oodles and oodles of birds streaming through the Brazos Valley.

If you’re like me, when I hear migration, I instinctively think of spring. Bright colored warblers, orioles, and tanagers. High Island and the coast. Fallout! Watching the radar and wind charts! It’s still exciting just to talk about it!

But there’s another migration in the fall and it’s a little different than spring… and that’s good! Fall is full of drab or indistinctly colored warblers that were just hatched this year. While that’s not the best news for making your lists, it is hopeful news for the birds’ populations! Also, fall is not particularly known for it’s fallouts or volumes and volumes of birds. There’s no real synchronicity to the migration like there is in spring, with birds flying overnight from the Yucatan and arriving at the coast about the same time each afternoon.

Swainson's Hawk hanging out at Horizon turf farm

Fall is more of a casual stroll. Not driven by over-pumped hormones pushing them to go breed, the birds tend to go at their leisure. Flocking up, socializing, catching up with old friends (we assume). Our Purple Martin experience this year was a good example of that.

So where is one to find the birds in the fall? Well, there are the usual places like Lick Creek or Brison Parks, although the going might be a little slow. Shorelines and turf farms are usually good for migrating shorebirds, although our normally reliable Country Club Lake has been lacking a shoreline much of the year (where’d all this water come from!?!). Horizon Turf Farm, and Allen Farms usually have some interesting shorebirds running around, but much of that depends on the state of the farming.

Wait a second! This isn't a raptor! We'll call this Loggerhead Shrike an honorary raptor... certainly a bird of prey!

One place you may not have considered is simply look up! You know all of those kettles of vultures we see all over town? Have a second look… are they all vultures? Are any of them vultures?! Fall brings in the raptors, kettling from thermal up-draft to up-draft and soaring effortlessly in between. What’s interesting about our region is that we effectively serve as a funnel to the raptors’ wintering grounds. This is most apparent down at the coast.

Red-tailed hawk cruising over the old landfill south of College Station

Several organization- including Hawkwatch.org and the Hawk Migration Association of North America- operate or collaborate with hawk towers around the US- from Cape May, NJ, to Marathon, FL, Smith Point and Corpus Christi, TX, Brighton, CO, San Francisco, CA, and Veracruz, Mexico to track, monitor, and count diurnal raptors as they head south for the winter. As the hawk migration season peaks, tens of thousands of hawks can be counted in a day. Several hundred thousand to a million hawks are expected annually in the Texas locations, and Veracruz usually sees somewhere between four and six MILLION hawks go by in a season! Sheesh. I’m glad someone else is doing the counting.

A couple of tidbits I learned while looking up some info for this blog. 

The standard model of diurnal raptor migration is the birds hit the skies mid-morning, going from thermal to thermal for most of the day, and then put down in the evening and rest for the night. All while staying over land, riding the convection currents down the continent. Well, as they say: It’s only a model!

Daytime raptor migration as illustrated by the Florida Keys Hawk Watch: http://floridakeyshawkwatch.wordpress.com/about/

Radio tracking Swallow-tailed Kites, Peregrine Falcons, and Osprey can set out over the open waters- both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic- when they head south. Now our very own John and Helen Baines told us about European Osprey that fly over the Mediterranean Sea to reach their wintering grounds in Africa… but that’s not quite the same! Of course, the European birds have the Sahara to contend with, but we’re not worried about that right now!

Additionally, this whole business of flying only during the daytime may not hold true in all cases. There are published reports of Osprey [abstract only] and Northern Harriers [PDF warning] migrating… or at least actively flying in a direction that wasn’t north... at night! I don’t know how common this is amongst our classic diurnal raptors, but it’s safe to say there are nearly always exceptions to the rules- especially when it comes to biology.

Now, why have I spent all of this time talking about raptor migration?! I mean, I know people are pining for a shorebirds webinar or a small primer on identifying leg color on a 6-inch sandpiper at 500 yards in full sun! [By the way, the shorebirds webinar is really excellent- I highly recommend it!]

Bald Eagles over Gibbons Creek Reservoir at the 2013 CBC

Well, I’ve been talking about raptor migration because we’ll be heading to the Smith Point Hawk Tower run by our friends at the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory for our September filed trip! I think it will be an excellent and informative trip. And if we’re good, Bruce promised to buy us some local delicacy crawfish-flavored ice cream on our way past Anahuac NWR! Yay! More details to come!

Spring Shakedown 2014

Well, the calendar has turned, and we’re officially out of the spring migration season and into the summer breeding season. Of course, setting hard and fast calendar dates to define biology is really just for the fun of organizing things… birds have been on nests for sometime now, and I’m sure there are still migrants passing through the area.

But with the changing of the calendar, we certainly know what we can expect: fewer warblers to crane our necks at, fewer shorebirds to become flummoxed over, and more leaves to peer through something small and backlit singing it’s head off in the canopy. I started thinking about this year’s migration season, and how it might have compared to years past. Particularly last year- as these two migrations couldn’t have felt more different.

Maybe it was the numbers of birds we got to see as a group, maybe it was the excitement of the fall-outs, or maybe it was some other enigmatic or abstruse reason known only to the moon and stars. This year felt thin, like we weren’t seeing the warblers and tanagers we did last year. Certainly last year we were spoiled rotten, but this year seemed very lean, with just a few individuals at Brison or County Club Lake at a time. If they were even there!

Whatever the reason, I wanted to look at some data. Numbers always soothe my mind- or at least confound it. And sometimes I can glean little nuggets of interest for extra perspective. This year continued our recovery from the drought of 2010–11, the rainfall kept the lakes in town pretty full.

Look at the drop in rain in 2010 AND 2011! Bad times.

ID Challenge ANSWERS!

OK! Feel good about your answers?! Click the link to see how you did!

ID Challenge #6

This sparrow was seen out in a grassy, mowed field hopping around with several other of his friends.

ID Challenge #5

This bird was seen near a large field. It retreated to a distant tree when I got to close and peaked over the top of the branch to check on me.

Bonus photo! The chest is still a little obscured, but you can see a little more streaking. So two key field marks are a streaky chest and an eye ring.

ID Challenge #4

Good Friday morning! We'll cover a couple of more unknowns today in preparation for the trip on Saturday. I'll have a final post with the answers this afternoon.

This bird was seen in a wooded edge near a meadow in a medium sized flock.

ID Challenge #3

Alright, last one for today. Another bird seen in a marshy/reedy area. Work on this one- I have another picture that can help - leave me a note if you want to see it.

ID Challenge #2

Back for more huh? Now we'll work on some of the more tricky sparrows. This was taken in a swampy/marshy area on the edge of a wooded lot.

What say you RBASers?

Bonus photo! Zoomed in of the original...

ID Challenge #1

I'm going to post a picture of a sparrow taken in the Brazos Valley in the past month or two, along with a quick description of where it was taken. From there I'll let everyone run with the informed opinions! Maybe I'll blur the picture a little, or crop out part of the bird to make it a little tricky. Or maybe I'll post one of my many bad photos :(

Either way the point of this is to not just start yelling out sparrow names, but to look at the bird, notice the specific parts and colors and stripes, and come up with an answer. They may not all be right- IDing birds from photos is a different challenge and not always as cut and dry as you might think. Anyway, enough words, bring on the birds!

Sparrow #1
Taken at the George Bush Library pond- woodland edges with a pond and a creek running behind the woods.

OK good luck!

Sparrows! Part2

Sparrows! Cont'd.

For Sparrows! Part1, See HERE

MARKINGS

So, you’re going to half to break down and learn the parts of the bird… and I don’t mean just head, legs and wings! There are some specific parts to look at when you see an LBJ in the bushes or on the ground. You’ll need to learn a few new words so we’re all talking about the same thing. These will get you started:

Crown, Supercillium, Eye-line, Eye-ring, Lore, Cheek, Mustatial Stripe, Sub-mustatial Stripe, Malar Stripe, Throat, and Chest.

In the front of every bird guide, there should be some sketches like the one below pointing out all of these same things. Live it, learn it, love it. It will make these sparrows much less problematic!

Important parts of a sparrow

Sparrows! Part1

Ok, so I know I promised some sparrow ID challenges before our adventure to Washington on the Brazos this weekend, but before I get to that, I wanted to cover some of the basics about sparrows.

Despite their reputation for being boring, drab, brown stinkers that all look the same, sparrows have a fantastic variety of earth-tones and patterns. As a matter of fact, we should be excited for sparrows!

• No one ever got warbler neck from looking at sparrows all day

• Sparrows are our hearty winter buddies- they don’t go on vacation to the tropics when the weather cools down - they come and visit us!

• Gives you a better appreciation for all of the different shades of brown

• Makes you think about patterns, not just splotches of color

• They aren’t gaudy, like warblers

• At least they aren’t gulls!

Factors to consider when looking at a little brown job:

Habitat: Where are you? In a field? Near a swamp? Your suburban backyard? Your location can help narrow down the likely suspects.

Markings: Streaky or plain chest? Eye-line? Eye-ring? Crown? Cheek color or malar stripe? Any color on the lores? What about the color of bill and legs?

Behavior: Is it foraging along the ground? Is it in a big flock? Hopping or running? Does it flush to a tree branch or brush? Or does it duck into clumps of grass after it flies?

For the purpose of this crash course, we will stick with the Central Brazos Valley and we’ll talk

primarily about the sparrows we find here in winter. I’ve omitted some of the more vexing or less

common species in favor of ones you are more likely to bump into while walking through a park

or driving through an agricultural area.

The list: Chipping, Savannah, Field, Song, Swamp, Lincoln's, White-throated, White-crowned, Vesper, and Lark

RBAS blog!

After a bit of set up and a couple of numerous typos, I think we're finally ready to launch the Rio Brazos Audubon blog! The intent of this platform is to have a little more interaction with our members, local birders, or any one else that wants to come and participate. It's an extension of the website, Google Group, and Facebook page. We'll eventually try and tie it in with a group Picasa page so we can put some of our event pictures up.

This format will also allow us to do a couple of other things, like ID lessons or challenges! You know, we're going to have a field trip focusing on everyone's favorite little-brown-jobs next month: SPARROWS! at Washington on the Brazos State Park. I know everyone loves sparrows and I agree, they are pretty great. All of the different shades of brown and tan and black and rust and reddish brown and brownish red and mauve and beige and yellow... I mean who could ask for more colors!?!? Well maybe we can do a couple of practice runs with some pictures and talk about what we're seeing (and NOT seeing!). These little guys don't have to be such a thorn in our sides.

So leave me a message and let me know any hick-ups, requests, suggestions, or ideas you have for this format. I'll start working on some of the ideas that are already circulating... namely, SPARROWS! Thanks!

Good birds,
Rick