Other Oklahoma Birds Besides Prairie Chickens

For the record, I did see other birds besides lesser prairie chickens in Oklahoma.  As a matter of fact, while I was focused on a pair of male chickens in the middle of a stare down, a yellow blur moved in front of them.  I adjusted the focus of my scope to reveal a meadowlark.  I'm not sure which one this is.  We heard both eastern and western meadowlark singing around the prairie chicken lek and I'm not bold enough to call it based on plumage.  The bird did not sing while I got its photo.  I love this shot of the meadowlark with the chickens blurred in the background.

If you are new to birds and have never heard a meadowlark call...or not sure if you have, check them out at Xeno Canto.  Here is the western and here is the eastern.  I grew up with eastern meadowlarks in Indiana (a beautiful evening song) but the westerns are quite striking.

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I have to say that there was quite a bit of adventure to our birding--one day about 4 different vehicles toting participants to birding spots got stuck in mud along the minimum maintenance roads.  There had been quite a bit of rain beforehand.  I heard through the grapevine that many vehicles got stuck on the way to the lesser prairie chicken leks.  A tractor was required to get the vehicle out.  Since that road was blocked, the field trip leaders cut a barb wire fence (with the fence owner's permission and the understanding it would be repaired) to get the vehicles to the blind--that's dedication to get birders to the birds! And what a great adventure to see the bird.

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I really dug the sparrow action at the festival--check out this feeding station.  Harris sparrows (dudes with the black beards) and a white-crowned sparrow.  Harris sparrows are just amazing little birds.  First, they look cool with the beard, but second, I was just reading on Cornell's newly revamped All About Birds site that they are the only sparrow that breeds in Canada and nowhere else.  Here I was in Oklahoma watching these little brown birds, they still had thousands of miles to go to the breeding grounds.

lark-sparrow

Another incredibly common bird in Oklahoma was the equally striking lark sparrow.  Just about anywhere there was a barb wire fence, you could find one of these guys perched nearby.  Lark sparrows have an interesting nesting history.  They are capable of building nests, usually in a shrub or tree, but they have been documented nesting in old woodpecker cavities. This species has also been known to reuse old nests of mockingbirds and some notes suggest that there is a bit of nest sharing going on--perhaps unintentional.  Field studies have found eggs and young of both mockingbird and lark sparrow in the same nest.  Oh, lark sparrow, please do not go the way of the cowbird.

Lesser Prairie Chicken aka Jets vs Sharks

I'm wrapping up my time in Oklahoma.  The Leks, Treks, and More lesser prairie chicken festival is still going on with a cool post tour to Black Mesa, but I have to return to the Twin Cities to do some park rangerin' tomorrow. The festival had birding trips surrounded the Woodward area, but the main thrust of the festival was the lesser prairie chicken.

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My first morning at the festival, I met the group at 5am to ride out to the Selman Ranch to get to the blinds.  There had been some concerns about the rain that had recently fallen, making many of the unpaved roads we were taking a bit treacherous, but our experienced drivers got to us the area with the blinds.  We had to scale two step ladders over a barbed wire fence...only this is a photo of when we were leaving, when we were on our way to the leks, we had to do this in darkness, the sun was not up yet.  The leks we visited were on private property, cattle ranches.

blinds

These were the portable blinds we sat in on the prairie.  Winds in Oklahoma are fierce and the blinds were staked deep into the ground.  We sat three to a blind and I actually ended up in a blind with two fellow bloggers: Drawing the Motmot and From The Faraway, Nearby.  I was a tad nervous, I discovered that morning that I forgot my deodorant and my toothbrush, I was going into the blind and hoped it would stay cool enough so I wouldn't stink up the joint.

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It did stay cool, it felt like it was in the 40s, which was a treat for me, some greater prairie chicken viewing has been in 10 degree weather, so above freezing was a pleasure.  The birds were so close, that we really did not need binoculars.  I took this photo from the window without my scope.  We arrived in the blinds in total darkness and sat waiting for the birds to start their display.  I huddled beneath my layers, listening to all the sounds around us.  Cattle waking and beginning their deep mooing.  Turkeys gobbled in the distance, then we heard the gobbling of the chickens.

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As the light in the morning grew brighter, I could get some photos of the male.  Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes this interaction as, "Males display by exposing and enlarging the superciliary eye-combs, elevating tail to highest extent, erecting pinnae and positioning them forward and parallel to the ground, drooping wings and spreading primaries, extending neck and head in forward position, stamping feet on ground and moving forward, and expanding esophageal air sacs and producing Booming vocalization"

If that was hard to read or understand, Non Birding Bill made this animated giff of a "Before and After" of a male lesser prairie chicken displaying:

animated-lpc

You can also watch a video I took of the behavior too (and more importantly, hear the sounds of these crazy dancing chickens).

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The males went at it for a good hour.  The danced, fluttered, squabbled, and stamped their feet in their individual territories.  Periodically, a male would run over and challenge another male. They would bow and display to each other, almost like the start of some odd square dance.  Some times there would be a display and the birds would walk away or sometimes, things would escalate into full on fighting with a few feathers left hanging and falling in the aftermath.

tired-prairie-chicken

The males displayed themselves into utter exhaustion. I know how winded I can get on a dance floor and I'm just doing it for fun.  These birds are doing it...sort of like the guys in the musical West Side Story.  They are dance-fighting out their issues, nonstop without eating for several hours.  These two males were bowing to each other and the male on the left, appeared unable to keep his eyes open, as if we were saying, "Dude, I'm too tired, let it go."

lesser-prairie-chicken-pair

However, as soon as a female appeared on the scene, every male immediately woke up, it was as if all them were instantly injected with Red Bull.  Their displays became more frantic and they ran back and forth around the female displaying their virility.  We saw about three or four females approach the lek throughout the morning, it was interesting to watch their behavior.  When a male approached, the female would hide in grasses and preen.  If a male gave up, she would stop preening and watch the displays, I wondered what in the displays she was hoping to see--the size of the yellow pouches?  The droop of the wings? The sound of the gobble?

I only saw one female select a male and attempt mating. That was the video I posted earlier...where we had some "male chicken blocking" going on.  Considering how quick bird mating goes, that second attempt was probably successful in fertilizing on egg.

punctured-pouch

I did notice one male who apparently had some pouch issues.  Do you see it?  He has a hole.  This most likely occured during one of the many fights we witnessed.  Lesser prairie chickens have a sharp beak, so a good solid peck would damage the pouch, affected the gobble sounds and reduce this male's chances of mating with a female.

chicken-on-warpath

All in all it was a pretty cool experience and I loved hanging out in the blind and just watching one bird and absorbing its behavior.  It was a treat sitting next to an artist and watching her sketch the lesser prairie chickens. I admire the ability to do what looks like a few simple strokes and capture the essence of a creature.  Her sketchs also capture the movement and mood of the chicken.  Here is a link to Drawing the Motmot's lesser prairie chicken sketches that she made in the blind--so cool.

Crap, I just looked at the time, I need to pack for my flight back to the Twin Cities, more Oklahoma adventures coming later!

Lesser Prairie Chicken Attempts At Mating

This has been a very popular video at the Leks, Treks, and More Festival in Woodward, OK.  It's a video from the lesser prairie chicken lek.  I female has found a male she likes and attempts to mate with him.  The other males in the lek are not happy about this. 

Quick & Dirty Post From Oklahoma

First, Penn Jillette has a segment on Crackle.com called Penn Says.  This time he's talking beekeeping and Mr. Neil and I are referenced in it (Mr. Neil more so than me), but still super cool to hear someone in the mainstream talking about a subject I love.

There's really nothing quite like sitting in a cold dark box on the prairie watching birds flirt.  I'm currently at the Woodward, OK Leks, Treks, and More aka a Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival and this morning, I met our group at 5am to go to a local  ranch to watch the lesser prairie chicken males dance for a mate. How close were we to the birds?

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At certain points the lesser prairie chickens were so close, I could only get a head shot.  This is the first year for this festival and the town of Woodward is so dedicated to this crazy dancing bird. Lesser prairie chickens are in a bit of trouble conservation wise, their habitat is threatened by fragmentation and development (more on that later).  But the big highlight of the festival is getting up close looks at these elusive birds.  I took over 500 photos and over a dozen videos at the lek, so expect some prairie chicken coverage.

Here is a video of the male in his display. If you've ever heard greater prairie chickens booming, these guys sound different.  You will also hear a western meadowlark in the background and a camera:

Pelagic Birding In San Diego

Hey, do you notice anything different?  We've changed from blogger to word press for blogging software.  All the   are there and hopefully in the next few weeks as I get used to this we'll be able to organize things so you can find answers to bird questions easier. If you think of a category that would be useful, let me know and I'll talk to my trusty web master, Non Birding Bill.

So, I'm going to test out this bad boy with a blog entry from the San Diego Bird Festival.  One of the field trips I was super excited about was a pelagic trip to the Cornado Islands to watch seabirds.  I really enjoy any bird trip by boat--a day in a boat is automatically an adventure.  I must say that this is was one of the smoothest pelagic trips I've ever been on.  The seas were calm and the weather started chilly, but I was down to a t-shirt by the afternoon.  I don't think anyone got remotely ill and we would have been fine without any Bonine.

It was a different set of gulls following the chum off the back of the boat on this trip compared to what we saw on the pelagic trip in Florida.  One of my favorites was that dark gull with the white head--a Heerman's gull.  Actually, the others are Heerman's too, just immature birds.

There were several birds I was hoping to get.  Some I had seen before like the sooty shearwater above, but there were several new birds for me including Xantus's murrelet, black-vented shearwater, rhinoceros auklet and Cassin's auklet.  You might think that getting these new birds are pretty darned easy out on the open water, but looking for dark birds about the size of a nerf football, is a bit tricky.  I've always chuckled about birders say when pointing out birds:

"It's there in that tree," they shout while point to a woods.

Well, it's not much better on the ocean.  You can try the clock, "The murrelet is at about 1 o'clock, about 200 meters out."

I'm not very good with meters and yards, I struggled.  But fortunately, we had some excellent guides on the boat and the captain even made sure to pass as smoothly as possible so as not to spook birds.

Speaking of guides, did I mention that Steve Howell was one of our guides?  Steve has been part of some the largest and most hardcore books out there including illustrations for Pyle books and he co-authored A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America--a hefty book that rivals Sibley in weight and is considered a dangerous weapon in some states.

The most exciting new bird for me  on the trip was a brown booby.  I have been waiting over thirty years to see one of these things, ever since I read about them as a kid and discovered there birds with dirty names.  Plus, they are just a cool looking bird anyway.

I can't really bring a scope on a boat trip, but I did try to get shots by hold my camera to my binoculars.  They are not the best photos on the planet, but they make good souveniers for my lifer boobies.

We had some fun mammal action on the trip too, there were many sealions...

This one came right up to our boat just as we were docking.  It apparently has some eye problems and gets a few handouts by many locals.  It was swam up to the ship and when fish was not tossed to it immediately, went looking for more generous humans.

One of the craziest things we saw was a pod of dolphins on the move.  There looked to be between 150 - 200 hundred, close the surface of the water.  They were moving fast and jumping out of the water.  The moved quickly and our boat followed them a bit.  I don't know if they were migrating or what, but was amazing to see so many dolphins on the move.  Other maring mammals observed included Risso's dolphin and gray whale.

Okay, now let's see how this entry posts in the new blog.

Laughing Gulls

Heads up: I'm going to Guatemala at the end of February. Mike from 10,000 Birds and Patrick from Hawk Owl's Nest should be there too. Since it sounds like internet access might be iffy while I'm there, Swarovski is going to help me hold a guest blog contest! More details are coming but if you are a blogger who would like to introduce some of your material to my readers or if you have read my blog and thought, "Hey, I can do this, I'd like to give that whole blogging thing a try," this contest will be for you. Details will be up tomorrow (Friday).

I'm wrapping up all my coverage of the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. I think I have about 2 or 3 more things to blog about. It was an action packed festival, I was there for a full seven days. Even if you can't do a full festival schedule, just doing 2 days gives you a lot of bang for your buck. Right now, I'm compiling all my photos for our pelagic birding trip (birding by boat to look for seabirds)!

Here's a video of some laughing gulls that were following out boat out to sea. The crew was tossing out chum and what amazes me is that even as we're bookin' it out, and the gulls are pumping their wings to keep up--they still manage to catch fish chunks thrown at them:

Pelagic Birding Off The Florida Coast

NOTE: I just noticed on the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival that they have some items that attendees left behind. If you attended the festival, check it out. My final day at the Space Coast Bird Festival in Florida involved a 12 hour pelagic birding trip with the Explorer Fishing Charters. Above is a photo of our boat heading out to sea with a large flock of gulls following us (because we were chumming the water). Pelagic bird trips involve taking a boat out into the ocean to try and see birds that only come to land for breeding. You watch for birds with crazy names like petrels, jaegers, fulmars. Pelagic birding isn't for everyone--and yet for many people, it' the only way to get certain birds on your list. Even if you're not prone to seasickness, watching birds through your binoculars on a bobbing boat can make you barf. It's also a challenge for me because I can't really digiscope from the boat and we have to rely on what ever my little point and shoot can do all on its own.

The other challenge to pelagic is that there is a lot of gross stuff around. You need to attract birds to the boat and a great way to do that is to dribble some fish oil behind the boat. If you do feel yourself getting sick on a pelagic trip, it's best to go to the back of the boat and blow chow there. If you do it in front or from the side, people behind you could get some residual spray. But it you go in back, you barf can contribute to the chum, but if you're back there with the oil and the fish, it might make you vomit some more.

Also, along with the fish oil, the crew chops up chunks of fish to toss out. Once you get a large flock of common gulls following you, it attracts the attention of other birds. There are several thing you can do to ward off from seasickness. One, the day before don't go out drinking lot alcohol. Have a good dinner--you may think having an empty stomach will make so you have nothing to hurl, but you need a good dinner so you body can function at it' best. The night before take a Dramamine or Bonine. About an hour before you're on the boat, take another Dramamine or Bonine--you need it in your system before you're on the boat for the med to work. If you take it on the boat, chances are good you could just barf it back up. There are also patches, ginger chews, ginger ales that you can use too.

I myself like to tempt fate on a pelagic. I was going to get a shot of me holding one of the frozen fish, when one of the crew put one in his mouth and dared me to do the same. He said not to swallow any ice on the fish and I would be fine--so I went for it. I actually take Bonine, it makes me less drowsy. I do have some motion sickness issues - I can't read in a car or I get nauseous. But I'm fortunate in that the few times I found myself getting woozy on a pelagic, I notice that if I focus on the horizon for a minute, it goes away.

We got some fun birds mixed in with the gulls. Above is a young northern gannet. I love these guys, especially when they dive for food. I have a dream of someday visiting their nesting colony in Newfoundland. I tried to find video of them diving (there's great footage on the Life of Birds). But I found one homemade video here (you may need to hit mute if you're at work, there's a fun little song along with it) and there here is a video of a crew watching sardines. About a minute and twenty-five seconds into it, you see the gannets from underwater--I didn't realize how much they swim once they dive in!

We also saw sandwich terns - note how this tern has a black bill (with a yellow tip) and not orange like some of the others you may have seen in the blog.

I was hoping for some jaegers and we got them. We saw quite a few pomarine jaegers. These are predatory birds that only come to land to nest up in the Arctic and spend the rest of the time out at see. On their breeding territories, they eat mostly lemmings, but when out to sea they will follow ships for scraps and steal fish from birds like black-legged kittiwakes.

Part of the fun of a pelagic trip is seeing other species besides birds, like the sea turtle above. We did see one leatherback and some Man O' Wars, so it wasn't all about the birds. Unlike birding in the landfill, it was a little more challenging pointing out critters on the ocean--there weren't too many landmarks. The Man O' Wars look almost like blue plastic bags floating on the surface--"Hey see what looks like a blue plastic bag at about 2 o'clock? That's a jellyfish!"

We had a big pod of dolphins, both bottle nose and spotted come check out boat out. I'm sure they were interested in the bit of fish trailing out boat. It was fun to watch groups of about seven line up side by side and swim along with out boat.

They came in quite close to the boat, you could almost see them smiling.

As we started the day, it was still chilly. As the boat got closer and closer to the Gulf Stream to look for birds, it got a bit warmer and some of us shed our layers. Most people kept them on. The front of the boat was very crowded and being short I headed towards the upper deck to get a view of the birds. We were lucky in that the seas were quiet and we didn't have too much rocking, blowing, or waves crashing.

But periodically, waves would splash up--especially if the captain was turning to get a the group a better look at a bird. Notice how wet Leica Rep Jeff Bouton got. He loved it, it's a chance to demonstrate how Leica bins can take a water beating and appeals to his adventurous spirit. Jeff also brought his young son, Austin along for the ride. Austin was my savior at a couple of points when he would head down inside to get me coffee. I paid him in donuts. It was and awesome partnership. If you read WildBird Magazine, Jeff has a column about his birding adventures with young Austin.

As it got warmer, I too shed some layers, one being my earmuffs, which were more for keeping my hat on. Now that I have short hair, I don't have the long ponytail to help hold the hat in place. Two minutes later, the wind blew my hat and gave it to the ocean.

I was a tad bummed, it was a hat from the Rio Grande Valley bird fest--black with an embroidered green jay. I have twenty other hats, so it wasn't that big of a loss, but I felt terrible about accidentally littering the ocean. Before I knew what was going on, the boat turned around...the captain was going back for my hat!

We went around, both Bouton from Leica and a shipmate tried to fish it out with long hooks. They missed, the captain circled again for the hat. I was shocked at the effort that was being put forth for my hat. I didn't ask for them to go back, they just did.

On the second turn, the got my hat! I was stunned. I think I now have an official lucky hat. It was dripping wet when they handed it to me...

Here's the crewman who fished out my hat. I put it on right way for a photo. I told the captain, "I can't believe you went back for my hat." He said that I looked so sad when it flew off that he had no choice. Bouton told me that he has lost several hats on pelagics and no captain has ever fished one out for him.

Pete Dunne asked, "Hey, Sharon, are you going to blog about the carbon footprint left from going back for your hat?"

I asked, "Would you rather that I littered the ocean there, Pete?"

*On a side note, I just noticed that Pete Dunne has an entry on wikipedia--who knew??? Birder making strides in the mainstream.

After a full day on the ocean of great sea birds and no vomiting, the group headed back with a large parade of laughing gulls following us.

The brown pelicans started following us in too. I love this shot, it looks like the pelican is standing right on the water's surface.

As we got closer, the captain announced that we had to stop chumming the water. We couldn't go into harbor with hundreds of birds following us, no matter how cool those gannets are. They were a great crew and worked really hard to get us better looks at the fast moving birds on the water. We were all exhausted from the adventure at sea, but it was a great time. To me, any day that involves a boat on open water seems like an adventure.

The Gulls At Daytona Beach

I got to debut one of my favorite new birding shirts while at the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival. Can I say how much I love the shirts at Magnificent Frigatebird? I blogged about some of these shirts around the holidays. I love the sense of humor that the company has and I love that they don't just carry the Hanes Beefy Tee. On behalf of female birders every where, thank you for carrying a variety of sizes and styles and for not making female birders look like a sack of potatoes with a bird logo. Check out their shirts, there's something for everybody. If you can buy a shirt, please do, we need to support companies that add some hip to the birder wardrobe, because Tilly hats are not helping. FYI, the new way to id a birder is not by the vest with pockets, but by a Tilly hat with the cord strapped firmly under the chin). Above I'm wearing the Birding Slut t-shirt (I got lots of compliments for it--even from a Dunkin Donuts employee). Speaking of Dunkin Donuts, some may remember my rant a couple of years ago about how many Dunkin Donuts quit making the flavor I loved. When I'm in a new state, I usually stop at one. I love the coffee and a small part of me hopes that I'll find the one DD still carrying the vanilla creme donuts. After birding at the landfill and taking a break before heading to Daytona Beach for some hot all-gull action, I found a Dunkin. I walked in and found that they had both vanilla creme and chocolate creme. It took a photo and sent it to Twitter. I even got a reply from for the Dunkin Donuts Twitter Feed: "@birdchick, we are glad, when you are glad. Please report back when you see a White-tailed Tropicbird or an Antillian Nighthawk."

Wait, DD watches birds?? No wonder I love their coffee and their donuts! Probably just as well that the creme donuts are harder to find, makes it easier for me to fit in the cute birding t-shirts.

Word on the street among gull watchers was that Daytona Beach in late afternoon was the place to be. It's near the Tamoka Landfill. I'm sure many of the gulls we saw there ended up on the beach. The gulls are staging along the beach before flying out to the ocean to sleep at night. Rumor had it that there could be 50,000 gulls coming into the beach. And if you were in the mood for a game of Where's Waldo, you could pick out some interesting gulls among the many common ones like the ring-billed gull above.

Some were easy to pick out right away. Above is a tern and not a gull, this is a royal tern. Other fun ones we picked out included that famous lesser black-backed gull and also the Iceland gull that I blogged earlier.

One of the challenges of birding along the beach was the public. We had joggers plowing though the gulls oblivious to the dozen or so people with scopes aimed where they ran. Kids also thought it was a great time to run through the gulls to watch the flock swirl around them. I can't say that I blame them. Having walked through a few clouds of birds myself, I can totally understand the excitement.

I did have one tense moment. I could see a girl who looked to be about 8 - 10 years old running down the beach scaring up birds. She was running towards us and we had just gotten the Iceland gull into our scopes after working the beach for some time. I tried to signal to her to stop. The two older women with her (I assume one was her mother) were oblivious. The young girl slowed her pace at my hand signal, but got a mischievous glint in her eye stopped right in front of where my scope was aimed, blocking the gull. I turned my scope to the side and stared at her. I figured if I moved my scope, she would move on. She had slowed enough so the flock wouldn't move, but she stayed, and the battle of wills had begun. I heard one of the women call behind me, "Baby, you keep dancin', ignore those people, it's okay."

A confrontation was out of the question, the two women could have easily pummeled me had I said, "Oy! We're trying to photograph a bird here." The young girl stayed put, smiling at this odd game of wills. I was surprised she stayed, "Seriously, you just gonna stand there and be a stinker?"

Then, it suddenly hit me, "Duh, Sharon, now is your chance!" I called to the girl, "Hey, you want to see a super rare bird through my scope?"

She smiled and shook her head yes and ran over.

I got the Iceland gull centered in the scope. I told her that this bird came all the way down from the Arctic to Florida and it was very rare to see one here. She peered through the scope and turned to look at me with wide eyes. She seemed genuinely wowed. The two older ladies came over and looked too. They were very excited. They said that they had noticed many people with scopes and wondered if we were a photography club. I told them about the different gulls and they were surprised.

I also pointed out the glaucous gulls. There were a couple and they were such a stand out to the naked eye. The women took down the name of both the gulls and told the little girl that they would have to learn more about them on Google when they got back home. Who knows, maybe that little girl will be a future birder, or worse, gull watcher. I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner when she first came down the beach. I came dangerously close to being the cranky old woman who shakes her fist at the young kids who don't understand and didn't do it as well as when I was a kid.

The glaucous gulls were quite helpful for our gull watching. Since there were so many birders out with their scopes and some of us were digiscoping, many people on the beach came up to ask what we were doing. Since the glaucous gulls stuck out even with the naked eye, I just said, "See that big white gull, it's not supposed to be here."

That almost always did the trick. It's so much easier to point to a big white bird and say, "See that one that's obviously different, we birders are really excited about that." It's the young first year gulls where you say, "See all those brown looking gulls that are all the same size? Well, the one in the middle has wing tips that are slightly less dark brown than all the others. We birders are really excited about that one!" That's when a non birder backs away with that frightened look in their eye that they have just encountered someone who is either high or relatively unstable or both.

I must say, I had a lot of fun with the glaucous gulls, there were two of them and both were fairly light. It had finally warmed up at this point and we were enjoying the breezes on the beach. What a difference to watch a glaucous on a balmy beach in a t-shirt instead of bundled up in sub zero weather on a patch of open river near a power plant.

As the tide started to come in, the gulls came closer to us. This glaucous gull got so close, I couldn't fit the whole body in my field of view. I took the opportunity to take some head shots. The glaucous gull really is beautiful. You have the white frosty look, and the beak and feet are a pretty pink. See it in the bill?

I don't know if I'm going to be jumping onto those hardcore birding listservs where they discuss an unusual gull for about three weeks, but I'm not going to shy away from them either. I once met someone who said he tried to learn 3-4 warbler species each spring. Then after ten years, he'd have them down. Perhaps I should treat gulls the same way. Just learn a few each year and then in a decade, I might have them down.

Certainly having them up close did help.

More Birding Fun At Viera Wetlands

We take a small break from gulls to talk about a few other species. I have a few more birds to share from our second field trip that we led to Viera Wetlands while at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. One of the funny things was after I got my lifer limpkin earlier in the week, I kept getting them again and again and again. I could not escape the limpkin. It's funny how some birds are like that: so tough to get in the first place and then once you have them on your list, they're everywhere! I even got to hear their crazy loud calls, which was a bonus.

I was doing a bit of reading on limpkins on Birds of North America Online and I must have been making sounds while reading because Non Birding Bill asked what was so interesting. I read to him, "Limpkin has previously been allied with a wide range of bird families, including with ibises and spoonbills based on bird lice. Relationship of finfoots and sungrebes to other gruiforms and Limpkin has caused confusion."

To which he started laughing. I'm not sure if he was laughing about birds having allies, or birds being classified based on lice, for the idea that there is a bird species out there called finfoot or just laughing at birding in general (as is his usual fashion). Anyway, the bottom line is that no one can seem to agree as to where this apple snail eatin' bird fits taxonomically. Is it a rail, is it a crane? Who can say?

Oh, I've been asked to clarify something about Viera Wetlands. It's not a sewage treatment area, but the wetlands filter for the St. Johns River. Years ago, this area was drained for crops and cattle. The wetlands' plants absorb metals and other contaminants, a cheaper way to filter waste water than mechanically at the sewer plant. Whatever it is, if I were going to introduce someone to birding, this would be a great place to take someone, great birds, crazy looking birds, close and easy to see. Many bird photographers love it because the birds are accessible and the lighting is fabulous.

Check out this little sora. It crept out of the reeds and put on a show for a good portion of the morning. I couldn't take my digiscoping equipment off of it. How often do you get a sora posing for you out in the open. They're nothing but a bunch of Lurky McLurkLurks up in Minnesota. These are amazing little rails that walk about in marshes eating mostly vegetation, although they do eat some invertebrates. Their feet are about as big as their bodies. It's legal in some states to hunt them, but I can't imagine that you would A. get very much meat to eat and B. that they would not taste very well.

We had a film crew that was out with this particular field trip and they even got some sora footage. Not being birders, they didn't have an idea of how hard it can be to see a sora, much less film one. While watching the sora, I looked up and noticed some movement in the reeds not too far away...

...low and behold, it was an American bittern. I think I've been to Viera about four times now and every time I go, I see a bittern. This was kind of a bonus bittern, we saw one earlier in the morning but didn't get a great look. We only saw it when it flew and then it buried itself proper into some reeds. This one had the sun right on it and was easy to get in the scope. The American bittern was nice, but when we asked our group in the morning what bird they'd like to see, almost the whole group answered, "least bittern." Word had spread through the festival about our success earlier in the week at finding a least bittern and this group hoped for the same. While our group was going around the ponds, we ran into my buddy Clay Taylor. I told him to give me a call if he happened to see the bittern so we could bring our group over.

Later in the morning we got the call. Clay had the least bittern and our group should drive over. After a few missed directions, we made it towards Clay, he had stayed on the least bittern for us. He instructed me to stop the bus an for all of us to get on the opposite side of the bittern and approach him slowly, the least bittern was a bit nervous. The group snuck over about as well as a group of anxious 20 twenty birders could sneak and we got he scopes on the least bittern.

And there was the tiny bittern yet again. It was nice of Clay to stay on the bird for us, even though he wasn't part of the field trip. I joked to everyone that if this was a life bird, it was sponsored by Swarovski. I made sure to treat Clay to dinner at Dixie Crossroad later as a thank you. Check out the crazy yellow eye that least bittern has going on. Awesome bird!

The whole trip wasn't just about rails and herons, we did have some sparrow action. If you had never experienced a savanna sparrow, Viera wetlands was a great place to go, these birds were everywhere. If you stood in one spot, you could easily find one foraging near you in less than two minutes. As we were winding up our trip, we noticed Clay had his digiscoping equipment up on another bird...

...he loaned me the photo of the great egret trying to eat a huge frog, isn't it awesome?! And now that I think about, Clay has a knack of digiscoping birds trying to eat food that's too big for them. There was the recent anhinga vs fish and a while ago there was the ring-necked duck trying to eat a large snail. I didn't get to see the egret finish eating the frog, too many eyes were watching it. It's hard enough to eat large food, but this egret must also contend with other birds that would want to steal the food from it. I kind of giggled watching the egret. When you looked at it without binoculars or a scope, it looked kind of like it had a little man in its beak.

One of the pleasures of this trip was that we also had Jonathan Rosen along with us. He was a keynote speaker for the festival. I unfortunately missed it, I had to meet a field trip at 4:30am the night he spoke and went to bed way early. He was very understanding and it was great to spend some birding time with him. I haven't read Life of the Skies, but I really want to now. I hope we get to see him more on the bird festival circuit.

Alvaro Jaramillo On Learning Love Gull Watching

Alvaro Jaramillo one of the field trip leaders at the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival speaks on learning to love watchin' the larids (aka gulls):