Ciblek Mania

On Monday, June 27, at approximately 7:55 am Central Standard Time, I saw my life golden-cheeked warbler—an adult male—at a small cluster of ponds below a windmill-powered pump in Friedrich Wilderness Park, north of San Antonio, Texas.

This was my 684th North America life bird.

I'll tell the entire story about this lifer quest soon. Just wanted to share the news with my bird-head peeps out there in Interweb-land.

We get a lot of telephone calls about birds at Bird Watcher's Digest, as you might expect. People call in with all kinds of questions (I found a baby bird, what do I DO? There's a weird bird at my feeder! What is it? How do I attract more Kirtland's warblers to my bird feeder? What are the Baltimore Orioles going to do about their horrible relief pitching?).

And we get lots of calls with bird sightings. Some of these calls are about birds returning in spring (hummingbirds, for example) or arriving in fall (juncos). In fact for years I got an annual call from a woman up the Ohio River to let me know she'd seen "the first robin of spring." This seemed to give her such satisfaction that I did not have the heart to tell her that American robins often spend the entire winter here in southeastern Ohio.

Every so often we get a call about a strange bird and it turns out to be an awesome sighting. Back in the early 1990s we got a call from a non-birding acquaintance who had seen "a large white pelican-like bird" up at Newell's Run. Sure enough, she'd found Washington County's first-ever (or at least the first-ever recorded) American white pelican. We've gotten calls about rufous hummingbirds, peregrine falcons, tundra swans, black terns, bald eagles, and even earlier this spring—a Bullock's oriole. Some of these sightings are more unusual than others and for some odd cosmic/karmic reason a lot of them come in when I'm away on a trip.

I've never been much of a rarity chaser—oh there were a few years when I lived in new York City when my friends Bob, David, Starr, and I chased quite a few vagrants around the East. But we missed a lot of them and I kind of lost my taste for the chase. Now that I own some land of my own (80 wooded acres in southeastern Ohio) the list I most love to add a bird to is our property list (currently hovering somewhere around 186 species).

Still there are some sightings that you've just GOT to check out. This was the case yesterday when the phone rang and a longtime Washington County resident told my mom that she had a weird bird that was hugely tall and she was "pretty sure it wasn't a great blue heron." My mom talked her through a few possibilities and they came to the conclusion that it was probably a sandhill crane. My mom told me about this bird about 4 pm and handed me the directions to the farm field where the bird had been seen. Daughter Phoebe was working with me at the office and I was entangled in a few projects, so we could not break away until 6:15 pm to go after the bird.

At 6:15 pm yesterday, as we were leaving the BWD offices, a big thunderstorm was arriving. We found the farm, picked up Donna, the woman who reported the bird, and went looking. Rain, rising mist, and imminent nightfall all conspired to keep the bird from our view for about 45 minutes as we drove along a cart path through a neighbor's corn and barley field. No joy. We turned around and started back toward the main road. Donna and the neighboring farmer had seen the bird that same day and the day before, so I had a hunch it might still be around.

As we drove back out the path, I stopped the van and told Donna and Phoebe that I wanted to climb to a high point in the field to scan the one section we'd been unable to see from the path. I did this and scanned, finding nothing. As I turned to go, two small birds flew up from an adjacent field that was contour planted in alfalfa. They turned out to be eastern meadowlarks, but as I followed their flight path with my (crummy) office binocs, a large gray and rust bird came into view!

SANDHILL CRANE! My first-ever sandhill in Ohio! I looked back down the hill and gave the gals the thumbs up. The crane was feeding and preening leisurely. And then it called once, which gave me goose flesh! Such a wild-sounding bird!

Sandhill cranes have bred in northwestern Ohio in one or two places for a few years. And they migrate over Ohio in spring and fall, though I believe their path takes them farther to the west than our corner of the Buckeye State. I've dreamed of adding this species to our farm property list, and as the eastern population (nesting in Michigan and to the north and west) expands, perhaps my chances at this are increasing.

[A disturbing side note: Kentucky and Tennessee have recently tried to establish hunting seasons on sandhill cranes. Tennessee has put a two-year moratorium on the hunt. Kentucky pushed the hunt through hastily. You can read more about this whole issue on Vickie Henderson's blog here and on Julie Zickefoose's blog here. I'm not anti-hunting, but I DO feel there are some species we should not hunt because they are so special, so wonderful, so inspiring to see. And sandhill cranes are among the most inspiring of all creatures.]

Having spotted the lone sandhill, I knew I needed to spread the word among my birding pals. It was too late in the day to get them out immediately, so we made plans to return early today (Friday, June 17).

Steve, Shila, Cheryl, Sage, Julie, and I met at the Berg Church in the dewy sunshine and started scanning. We drove back to the spot I'd seen the bird last night and walked up the hill. Halfway along, Julie blurted "It's calling! I can hear it!" Sure enough, just as we crested the hill, Steve spotted the crane foraging in a strip of still-standing barley. Not a single one of us had grabbed our cameras as we got out of the vehicles! Major bummer!


The sandhill noticed us and walked off, then flew slowly, calling, to the far end of the complex of fields. We relocated ourselves and then re-located the bird and were able to get long, satisfying looks.

We watched the crane, making notes about its red crown, its rusty gray body feathers, its apparent lack of leg bands. It seemed perfectly healthy, which was good.

Since it was a life bird for a few of our group, we celebrated with a Life Bird Wiggle. This was an amazing bird to see in southeastern Ohio in mid-June. And all thanks to a phone call from a kind, curious acquaintance. Thanks Donna!

On the Monday following the British Birdwatching Fair, David Tipling, my kind and generous host in Holt, took me birding at Cley, the famous bird watching hotspot in Norfolk. I'd known about Cley for years and had recently finished Mark Cocker's excellent book "Birders: Tales of a Tribe" which depicts Cley as the epicenter of the U.K. bird watching scene in the latter part of the 20th century. Though it is less of an epicenter now, Cley was legendary for its rare and vagrant birds, and for the legions of birders who congregated in the hides, homes, cafes, and pubs of this small coastal town.


Out first stop was a pull off near the beach, some images of which I've already shared with you. On the way in, we had a close look at a European kestrel (which the Brits call, simply "kestrel"). I was sorry for the first (but not the last) time that I'd left my big rig Canon camera at home in Ohio. David, a world class bird and nature photographer had kindly left his gear at home, too. Today we were merely watching birds, not shooting them with cameras. I tried to convince myself that this felt liberating.


After the kestrel and a look at some black-tailed godwits and a smattering of other waders, we drove back to the main road and stopped at a site known as Salt House Pond. We were hoping to find a little gull that had been seen here recently. On this day is was being seen elsewhere, not here. As we were turning to leave, I spotted a bird teed up on a nearby bush.

"Hey look! A shrike!" I said with a modicum of amusement. This caused David to spin around and glass the bird himself.

"That's a good bird, more than likely" he said. And it was. It turned out to be a juvenile red-backed shrike, likely a wanderer from The Netherlands across the North Sea from Cley. We never did get a great look at the bird, but enough to confirm its ID. Of course we got no photos—just my crumola images here.

David reported the bird by cellphone to a local contact and minutes later the sighting rang through on his rare bird alert pager. Soon other birders were on the scene, sending in updates about the shrike's whereabouts. David commented that it was probably the best bird of the day along the Norfolk coast, which made me quite the happy lad.


We spent the rest of the morning walking Cley's paths, down to the sea, along the shingle dunes, between the pools with strategically situated hides (what we call blinds). These hides are masterfully designed. The doors, floors, and benches do not squeak. The viewing slots have tension hinges that keep the slot doors from banging shut. And the bird watcher is rewarded, thanks to this ingenious design and forethought, with amazing view of waders and ducks and herons and gulls.





I selected the cod and chips. David and I moved out of the chip shop queue (pronounced cue), and across the street to the quay (pronounced key) and ate our lunches while talking about the birds we'd seen at Cley (pronounced Kly).

Here, as promised, is one of the three short videos I digiscoped of the McCown's longspur in Montana. The other two involve lots more grass and the annoying noise of my hand fumbling for the zoom button.

This short clip of a male McCown's is pretty sweet. It'll be a nice thing to look at when I'm old and gray and only able to go birding vicariously—from my Lay-Z-Boy recliner. In a few years.

I hope you like this short clip, too. I can certainly see how, if you had the right equipment, you could get heavily addicted to shooting video of birds. It's harder to do than taking still images, but the pay-off is so much greater.

Along North Dakota's State Route 36, headed west from Pingree, ND, the slightly rolling landscape gently lifts itself onto the coteau, where glaciers dropped their heavy load of ice, rock, and sand millions of years ago. The landscape in every direction is dotted with water. This water is in ponds, lakes, prairie potholes, sloughs, wet meadows, streams, and roadside ditches. And in every place where water collects there are ducks. Some of these ducks are nesting, some are still courting. Some are resting and foraging, and some are just passing through.

A bird watcher can scan his or her optics across a small prairie slough and see eight or more different duck species in the time it takes a western meadowlark to sing a single phrase. Gadwall, wigeon (American), teal (blue and green), scaup (lessers), ring-necks, redheads, canvasbacks, mallards, shovelers, pintails, ruddies, hoodies, all are there... The possibilities make it worth checking out any chunk of water you encounter.

While scouting west along Rt. 36 for our upcoming field trips at the Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival, Zick and I (and the kids, somewhat less willingly) stopped by a large lake on the south side of the east-west heading road. There were lots and lots of ducks: on the water, along the shore, in the reeds, flying overhead...

As I scanned with my binocs, checking off the familiar forms of the species we expected to see, I came upon a bird I did not recognize.



"Holy CARP!" I said—or something to that effect!

"What is THIS? It's got an bright orange bill!"

Julie got on it and we began to speculate (read: taking wild guesses at what this bird was).


We spent the next hour studying the bird, taking regular digital and digiscoped digital photos and video. What WAS this creature?

At least one of us was sure it was some rare Asian stray, blown off course by the season's final Alberta Clipper and deposited in our laps for this, our seventh P&PBF in North Dakota.

To be continued tomorrow.....

It's always a bit dodgy when you're asked to lead a birding festival field trip that is dedicated to finding one particular bird species. This is exacerbated by the following additional factors:

1. It's a rare bird, known for skulking in rhododendron thickets.
2. Lots of people sign up (and pay money for the privilege).
3. It's pouring rain.
4. It's the last day of the festival and everyone is COUNTING on seeing this bird.

And so it was last Saturday morning when my friend (and festival founder/raconteur) Geoff Heeter and I loaded 12 or so brave and eager souls onto a Ford Econoline van somewhere near the New River Gorge in West Virginia. This was the Swainson's Warbler Trip and it had but one target bird.

As we drove across WV 19 onto a country road that would take us to a spot that had at times hosted a Swainson's warbler, I was already drafting my apology for the trip participants in case we totally dipped out. The rain pounded on the van roof, pouring down like silver over the windshield, visibility nil.

"Well everyone, we tried our best. Some days you get the bird. Some days the bird gets you. Some days you feel like you've been flipped the bird. Sorry we missed it, but that's a great reason to come back next year!"

or this:

"Those Swainson's warblers are harder to find than a working microphone at a Milli Vanilli concert!"

or this:

"If I had a nickel for every time I've missed this bird, we'd be birding from a stretch limo instead of this rattletrap and eating caviar for lunch instead of flat meat."

Little did I know, I was wasting my time thinking up disappointment-softening excuses.

At our first stop Geoff and I heard two distant Swainson's singing along the creek in separate directions. Neither one was close enough to see or to lure in with a taped call. I decided to walk the group down to a nearby bridge while Geoff and Ned Keller got the vehicles.

From the bridge, one singing male sounded lots closer. Then he moved even closer, but was still out of sight in the thick rhodies, 30 yards upstream. I filled Geoff in about this new development and we motioned to the group to stay put while we carefully moved up the road for a better vantage point. Barely 150 feet farther along, I spotted the bird, teed up and singing against the trunk of a giant hemlock. Within seconds I had him in the spotting scope. Geoff beckoned our group forward and we all took turns drinking in this very rare sight. And the male Swainson's warbler sang and sang and preened and sang....

It felt SO great to show more than a dozen birders this cool and hard-to-find bird. It felt even better to locate a bird that was relaxed and singing from a favorite perch on its territory. No audio luring necessary! No trying to get bird watchers onto a het-up, moving bird. Just us, this beautiful male Swainson's warbler, some nice optics, and the rain, still falling down, but completely unnoticed.

After we all got great looks I realized, in one of those I-could-kick-myself moments that I had ABSOLUTELY NO CAMERA WITH ME to take this bird's photo. No digiscoping rig. No 30D with a 300mm lens. Nope that stuff was warm and dry in the van. Hearing my remorseful cries, Geoff handed me his camera phone. I held it up to my Swarovski spotting scope and here's what I got!

I had grandiose plans to make this new shorebird's identity a mystery—to make y'all guess about what species it was. I had still images and a short video clip. I had a clever, April-Foolsy write up baking in my tiny mind. Then the problems started....

First of all, I've been under the thumb of a debilitating virus/cold/disease and it's a difficult thing even to think straight. Mind you, I'm not asking for pity. I'm just completely unused to being this mentally and physically out of commission.

Secondly my computer is as full as a June wood tick on a fat puppy. So the programs I normally rely upon to help me post video to my blog (QuickTime, Final Cut) are not cooperating. I think it's a disk-space thing....but who knows. And I can't make the new (frustrating) YouTube work, either....

So this post will be decidedly straight forward.

Here's the rub. The new bird was a really cool, medium-sized shorebird with an upturned bill, called a Terek sandpiper. One of the very first articles I worked on as a cub-assistant-editor the first week I joined the staff of Bird Watcher's Digest, in 1988 (!), was about the discovery of a Terek sandpiper in California, and the mad birding dash that ensued. That bird was North America's first record for the species.

Terek is the name of a river in Russia, and I believe that's where the sandpiper gets its name: it breeds from Finland through Siberia.

So I had a longtime desire to see this bird. Now here I was at a huge expanse of shorebird habitat in Asia, looking for my lifer Terek sandpiper. During our orientation, the local guide showed us a poster with common shorebirds of the Olango Island Wildlife Sanctuary. Prominent among the birds shown was the Terek sandpiper. I asked the obvious question: "Are there Terek sandpipers here now?"

The answer came: "Oh yes, we should see them!"
When I replied "Ossum like a possum!" no one understood what I meant.
My friend Steve Rooke, one of the many Brits on this birding trip, said by way of explaining: "Don't mind him. He's American!"
Like that cleared things up....

As mentioned in yesterday's post, I spotted the Terek sandpiper up close to our observation blind, and I drank the view in. Everyone got good looks at it, but those in our party who had Asian birding experience (nearly everyone but me) were more interested in spotting rarer birds among the clouds of waders in the distance.

I focused on the Terek and took some photos and video. In the video you can hear my fellow birders picking through the other distant shorebirds. Then you hear me announce the Terek sandpiper—in semi-dorky fashion. If I could figure out how to edit the sound on videos in iMovie, I'd de-dorkify the clip. Alas, you gets what's there, sans edits.

It's great when you spot your own lifers, especially when it's a bird you've wondered about seeing for a long time. Twenty one years after I first read about the "Terek sand" I finally got to see one!

I took a few digiscoped shots, in spite of the limited light. In between scope views, the falconet took off in a buzz after passing insects. They will also eat birds if they can catch them. And as if to prove that size and feistiness do not always come in equal measure, the Philippine falconet has been observed mobbing the Philippine eagle, a bird that is seven times larger.


From a distance, with the unaided eye, the falconet looked like a wood swallow perched in the treetop. But a zoomed-in view shows a more shrikelike or raptorlike shape to the head, bill, and body.


It was quite a treat to see this tiny bird. Even though the field guide lists them as being common, I did not see another one during the entire two week trip. Or perhaps I merely overlooked them, but I'd hate to think I was THAT oblivious!

My sister, Laura Fulton, is the circulation director at Bird Watcher's Digest. She is many wonderful things (cook, numbers cruncher, mom, Wii player—and not in that order, mind you) but she is also a self-described non-birder. Sad but true, such people DO exist, and a few—a very few—even work at BWD.

So it was with a bit of wonder that I stood in her kitchen a few days ago, looking out the window at 50+ white-winged crossbills!

No lie!

Laura noticed them, realized they were something different, and IDENTIFIED THEM. Then she called me to come see them, figuring I'd be interested. Heck yes I was interested!

The last time I saw a crossbill in Ohio was in 1979, when I was in 11th grade! This was a special occurrence, so I called my local birding pals to come see the crossies.

Now I'm wondering if this will be Laura's spark bird?

It's a great thing when an avid bird watcher finds a rare bird. But it's even better when a non-birder finds one, because that's how new bird watchers are made. Contrary to popular myth, new bird watchers are NOT made by the transfer of a virus via a bite to the neck. That's only true for the Transylvania Bird Club.