Ciblek Mania

After taking some time off between book projects I'll be back on the road this spring and summer hitting several new birding/nature events as well as some old favorites. I'm really ready to do some field birding. I really, truly enjoy guiding people and showing them birds.

Here's a list of where I'll be and what birds one might see at each event. I hope to see you out there with the birds!

Santee Birding & Nature Festival
Santee, South Carolina.
April 26-29, 2012

This will be my first time at this event deep in the heart of the range of the painted bunting (and Bachman's sparrow, red-cockaded woodpecker, Wilson's plover). Much of this event is held on and around the Santee National Wildlife Refuge. I'm leading a bird walk, giving the Friday keynote, and playing some music during the social hour on Saturday.


New River Birding & Nature Festival
Fayetteville, West Virginia
April 30-May 5, 2012
This down-home bird fest is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, in the mountains along the New River in south-central West Virginia. It is famous for warblers, including golden-winged, cerulean, and Swainson's warbler, but the spectacular vistas, amazing wildflowers, and Mountaineer hospitality also contribute to bringing back many repeat attendees each year. I'm leading a different field trip each day and The Rain Crows are playing a show on the final night in The Meadows lodge at the charming Opossum Creek Retreat, where the event is centered.

Wine & Warblers
Grange Insurance Audubon Center, Columbus, Ohio
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
I originally thought this was a birding-by-ear event called Whining Warblers, but I was happily wrong. The title says it all: There will be wine. There will be warblers. The setting is the amazing "green" GIAC building in downtown Columbus and, given the early May date, there will be loads of warblers and other migrants streaming through the trees along the Scioto River. Did I mention there will be wine? Julie Zickefoose and I will be leading a bird walk or two, after the wine, which should be interesting.

Kenai Birding Festival
May 17-20, 2012
Kenai, Alaska
We're really looking forward to heading to Alaska in May for this relatively new birding event on the Kenai Peninsula. The bird life there is going to be refreshingly different from what we will have been seeing during spring migration in the Midwest—and I'm hoping for a couple of lifers (Aleutian tern and spruce grouse—a jinx bird for me!) We'll be doing bird walks (including a float trip!), evening talks, and some music. Best of all, this event is totally free and open to the public!

Canton Audubon 50th Anniversary Dinner
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Canton, Ohio
Julie Zickefoose is the keynote speaker for this celebratory event for one of Ohio's oldest Audubon chapters. But after she's done yakkin' we'll be playing some music for everyone.


Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival
June 13-17, 2012
Carrington, North Dakota
Sooner or later you've got to go to the northern Great Plains to see some of the specialty sparrows that live there (Baird's, Nelson's, and LeConte's sparrows top the list). Why not do it this year during this charming, intimate event? The birds are enough to draw people to Carrington, ND for this event, but once you get there, the breathtaking prairie landscape and the small town hospitality will enthrall you. Highlights include the Pipits & Pie tours where we head out in the pre-dawn to find Spargue's pipit, then celebrate with lunch in a small-town cafe featuring homemade pie (I recommend the strawberry-rhubarb!). Oh and there will be music, too! Here's a photo gallery from last year's event.


Hog Island Audubon Camp "Joy of Birding"
June 24-29, 2012
Hog Island, Maine
Hog Island is legendary for many reasons: famed naturalists such as Roger Tory Peterson and Allan and Helen Cruickshank taught there for many years; and it's the home of Project Puffin, one of North America's most successful species reintroduction/preservation efforts (restoring the Atlantic puffin to its historic nesting sites off the Maine coast). Julie and I and the kids will be there the last full week of June immersing ourselves in the splendor of the Maine summer.

The famous Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine is back in full swing this summer with a tasty menu of sessions for nature enthusiasts of all ages and interests. Julie Zickefoose and I will be instructors during the "Joy of Birding" week June 24 to 29. You can find out some details here.


If you look at an atlas of the state of Maine, you'll note that there are numerous islands named Hog. One can only presume that these islands were so-named because that's where early residents of Maine kept their swine—presumably safe from predators and, being on an island, naturally prevented from roaming. But there's only one Hog Island with an impressive history of nature study and education—that's the one in Muscongus Bay, Maine—and that's the one we're heading back to in June. Roger Tory Peterson and Allan D. Cruickshank are among the island's legendary instructors, dating back to the camp's founding in 1936.


Among this coming season's well-known instructors are Scott Weidensaul, Sara Morris, Pete Dunne, Lang Elliott, Donald Kroodsma, Sue Schubel, and Steve Kress who is the camp's director and is best known for Project Puffin, which helped to restore breeding populations of the Atlantic puffin (and other endangered seabird species) to islands off the New England coast.

I've written about Hog Island numerous times here at Bill of the Birds, including this post about visiting nearby Harbor Island, and this one about the last time we were instructors there.


The Hog Island experience is a unique one. The island is magically beautiful and just large enough that you can take a long hike around its perimeter and feel you are leaving the modern world behind. The sessions are informative and fun and the birding is really great, especially if you don't often get to see species that are common to the northern woods or to the northeastern Atlantic coast.

Every day is a new adventure. The food is great. The accommodations are rustic but comfy. And the air is clean and cool. We love going to Hog Island even more because our kids, Phoebe and Liam, get to come along. They play all day along the rocky shores and in the dark, mystical woods surrounding the camp, building cairns and imagining there are woodland sprites playing tricks there and pirates coming ashore to bury their loot. Like I said, Hog Island is magic.

Write it down, friends: Joy of Birding, June 24 to 29, 2012! Hope to see you there!

Whether or not you made the scene at the 2009 Midwest Birding Symposium, held in September in Lakeside, Ohio, you now have a chance to experience (or revisit) the MBS on the Web. Audio files for most of the speaker presentations, a photo gallery, comments from attendees, links to blogs about the MBS, and links to pre-register (as an attendee, sponsor, or vendor) for the 2011 MBS are all available at the event's new landing page: http://www.midwestbirding.org.

The audio files of the speaker presentations will only be available for a limited time, so take a few minutes to explore the offerings we've put together. And, if you like what you see and hear and read, make plans now to join us September 15 to 18, 2011 at Lakeside, Ohio for the NEXT Midwest Birding Symposium.

A final thank you to our fabulous sponsors:
Audubon BirdCam, The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Swarovski Optik, Field Guides Birding Tours, and RRI Energy.

Plus:
Leica Sport Optics, Wild Birds Unlimited, Eagle Optics, The Ohio Division of Wildlife, Lake Erie Shores & Islands, The Marblehead Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Scotts Songbird Selections wild bird food.

Their generous financial support made the 2009 Midwest Birding Symposium possible.

As the day came on and the fog lifted, we began to tally lots more birds from the top of the Indigo Hill birding tower. The feeders got busier and netted us our expected American goldfinches and white-breasted nuthatches, plus three woodpecker species, and both of the common red finches: purple and house. Either one of these could have been a miss.

The list zoomed up into the 50s. At 10:22 am I posted this on Twitter and Facebook:
Indigo Hill Big Sit is at 56 species, just in time for the mid-day doldrums

11:52: Cape May warbler is number 61 for the Indigo Hill Big Sit. Nine more and we break the record!More people began arriving, too. And Phoebe, the social butterfly that she is, came up top fully suited up for the cool air. Unfortunately for this year's Sit, mid-morning was also when we lost Julie as a participant. She had to drive across the state to Dayton to give a talk, so we waved goodbye to her about 11 am. Jules is right up there with Jim McCormac in the birding skilz rankings, so her departure made the rest of us redouble our efforts.
The raptors put on quite a show in the afternoon, as rising warm air made soaring easier. Kettles of turkey vultures, numerous red-tailed hawks, and nice numbers of sharpies and Cooper's hawks were spotted by our keen-eyed sitters. In the photo above, the crew is watching a PO'd male sharp-shinned hawk dive-bombing a large female Cooper's hawk. This show went on for about 10 minutes out over our meadow, south of the tower.

I should apologize here for the lack of bird images. I did not drag my Canon big rig out at all during the Sit. The birding action was too good and, well, with all the Sitters, it was kind of tight up in the tower. It'd be just my luck that I'd drop that expensive piece of gear over the side. As it was, I lost only a pen, a glove, and a few beverage bottles and cans over the tower's edge.

As afternoon surrounded us, the air warmed, a light breeze kicked up, and adding a new bird to the list began to get much harder.
3:00 pm: Species 64 is a fly-by osprey at the Indigo Hill Big Sit.

By late afternoon, the sun had swung around to the southwest of the tower and our shadow was getting longer, stretching out to the northeast.

4:17 pm: Wild turkey, ruby-throated hummer, yellow-throated vireo gets our Big Sit to 67--two from the record for this site.

Here's the view from the tower, looking north, during the afternoon.

Sun dogs appeared late in the day, giving us something to marvel at since the birding was incredibly slow.




And then, it was dark and everyone was gone. I posted one more update for the 2009 Big Sit.

8:09 pm: We'll man the circle 'til the bitter end but it looks like the final tally will be 67. Respectable, but two off the record.

I went downstairs, fixed the kids dinner, and got them into bed. After some clean-up of the kitchen and hauling down of gear, I felt the tower calling me back. So, at about 8:45 pm, I climbed up into the cold, damp night air for a little bit more listening, just in case three new birds for the list flew overhead, calling out their readily identifiable vocalizations.

In my quietude, I heard more Swainson's thrushes, a veery, a chipping sparrow, the barred owls in the east woods, a distant great horned—all birds we'd had earlier in the day. And I heard the echoes of my friends' voices and laughter, reminding me that this event—The Big Sit!—is as much about the people as it is about the birds.

Sixty-seven species is our second-highest total ever, topped only by last year's record-setting 69! It was a valiant effort and a great day of birding (but is there any other kind?)

You can see the results from dozens of other Big Sits from around North America and beyond by visiting the official Big Sit website.

Of course, the following morning there was a male ruby-crowned kinglet taunting me from the birches outside the kitchen window. A jumble of house sparrows took off from the forsythia, laughing that they'd skunked us on Sunday. And I heard the sweet sputter of an eastern meadowlark from the neighbor's hayfield as I walked Liam to the bus this morning.

And yet, I still love The Big Sit like no other birding event I've ever experienced.

There are two birding events I'm really looking forward to this fall.


The first is next week's Midwest Birding Symposium held in Lakeside, Ohio. Bird Watcher's Digest is one of the hosts (with the Ohio Ornithological Society and the Lakeside Association) for the event and we're expecting 800+ bird watchers there for a weekend of fun, birding, and bird-brain enhancement.

In a single 24-hour period it is feasible, at the Midwest Birding Symposium, to take a sunset boat cruise, watch a birding movie, catch fall warbler migration, hold an newly banded songbird, donate your old optics to a good cause, buy yourself some new binoculars, ride a Segway, book a tour to a world birding hotspot, enjoy an array of world-class speakers, get your favorite bird book signed by the author, learn about blogging, go digiscoping with a pro, enter a birding raffle, sponsor a bird on the conservation checklist, and meet several hundred new birding friends.

It's not too late to register, but you should not tarry. Get thee here for more details.

You can also call the MBS registration hotline: 800-879-2473. Or you can register at the MBS, which will be held September 17 to 20, at the Lakeside, Ohio that is on Lake Erie, near Port Clinton, Ohio.

Exactly one month from tonight I will be climbing the stairs of my birding tower to start the 2009 Big Sit. It goes from midnight to midnight on Sunday, October 11, 2009. The Big Sit has been called many things: Birding's most sedentary event; a tailgate part for bird watchers. What it really is is fun, exciting, and challenging. Basically the Big Sit involves staying put inside a 17-foot diameter circle in some birdy locale, and counting the species you can see or hear in a 24-hour period on the second Sunday in October. You can do your own Big Sit anywhere you like.

The concept has been around a long time, but was formalized (and trade-marked: it's officially called The Big Sit!) by the New Haven Bird Club in Connecticut. Bird Watcher's Digest hosts the Big Sit on our website and you can find details, including how to register your own Big Sit circle, by following this link.

I will be sitting again this year, the ninth Big Sit in our birding tower, along with 30 or so of my friends, birding and "normal," who will stop by throughout the day.

If you've never been to a birding festival, the Midwest Birding Symposium is a wonderful place to start.

If you like challenging your observation skills, and you like to sit around with your birding friends, try The Big Sit! You'll be glad you did!