2021: Year of the Snow Bunting

2021 is turning out to have a theme, but before I get to that, here’s what’s happened so far this year.

Hermit Thrush

I participated in two Christmas Bird Counts, Fort Wayne and Southwest Allen County. I was able to turn up Hermit Thrushes on both, which is notable this far north in the state. The one above was a cooperative individual among sparrows at Foster Park.

Purple Finch

The highlight of CBC season, though, was a pair of female Purple Finches at Payton County Park in December (I’m still waiting for these at home, despite this winter’s irruption).

“The Abandoned Golf Course”

In the beginning of January, before we got two feet of snow, I bike birded locally within my 5MR. I decided to check out a new-to-me place for birds: a spot I call “The Abandoned Golf Course” because it is an abandoned golf course. It sits right off the river greenway and was purchased by the city for flood control, so it’s technically public property. It has been letting go for a few years now, meaning that it has quite a bit of successional habitat consisting of new growth mixed in with a bunch of large mature trees left over from the golf course days. Every time I go, my brain screams “owls!” No luck on that front yet, but there have been plenty of hawks, plus a nice surprise in American Tree Sparrow which is great for my 5MR. Stay tuned for more updates from this spot this year.

The dam at Johnny Appleseed Park

Since February began, we were slammed with some brutally cold weather and tons and tons of snow. That resulted in all of my birding becoming super local. Thankfully, Johnny Appleseed Park is about half a mile from home and includes a large dam that keeps some of the water liquid even in below-freezing temperatures. It is a magnet for ducks.

Lesser Scaup

Jaime and I went a few times for some frigid hikes. She wants you to know that she took this photo of a Lesser Scaup (her lifer, among several others including many of the ducks below).

Redhead

Sleeping Ruddy Ducks

American Black Duck

Belted Kingfisher

Canada Goose with fish

On one occasion, Jaime found a Canada Goose fighting off Mallards and other geese for control of a rather large fish. The geese were slamming the fish around on the ice, probably to tenderize it. This is a behavior I have never seen, but it probably speaks to the scarcity of food during the major snow event.

Snow Bunting

The best birds of the year so far, though, have been Snow Buntings. One day while working at home, I got a text from a friend who told me that he found a flock of five of them in his parking lot at work. Ten minutes later I was also looking at them since they were only about a mile and a half away. County and 5MR bird!

More Snow Buntings

Last weekend we went to Johnny Appleseed Park as a family to take advantage of the sledding hill. As I pulled into a parking spot, the first thing I noticed on the ground not more than 20 feet away were more Snow Buntings! (The photo above is from the first time I saw them, but the scene was more or less the same the second time around). The birds were in a busy parking lot flanked by yelling sledding kids, and in the middle of the city next door to our hockey arena and even closer to home than the first batch. Not the typical location I would expect to randomly stumble across them. Prior to February 2021, I had seen a grand total of 1 Snow Bunting in my life. But this month I have seen 9 in my own 5MR, including the lone bird I re-found yesterday while visiting Johnny Appleseed Park again on my bike to also get the species on my green list! I didn’t add any new birds to my green life list last year, so this one becomes #199! Hopefully I can get #200 this year as well. We’ll see!…

One Third of the Year 2020

2020 has been weird. To cope, I have been birding.

Salomon Farm Park

In February (I think), I went to an event at Salomon Farm Park on the north side of Fort Wayne. I had never been there before, but it offered some good birds.

Eastern Bluebird

Hairy Woodpecker

Mourning Dove

Lesser Scaup

Horned Lark

In March, I had to travel to Warrick County in the southern part of Indiana for work (before everything blew up). I stopped by Blue Grass Fish & Wildlife Area one of the days I was there.

The Lord of all Killdeer

I think this is my first ever photo of an Eastern Meadowlark

Northern Mockingbird

Swamp Sparrow

In April, I started going to Franke Park a lot, hoping to pick up migrants.

Hermit Thrush

White-throated Sparrow

Yellow-throated Warbler – my favorite warbler

Working from home, I was able to pick up my second ever county Pine Warbler from my living room window one morning.

Pine Warbler

I took a family hike at Bicentennial Woods yesterday.

My son is the one who first spotted this Swainson’s Thrush

And finally to get caught up with the present, today I had an incredible 50-species, 20-FOY day at Franke Park.

Louisiana Waterthrush

Super random but incredibly exciting flyover Osprey

That’s all! I am still green listing and 5MRing. I am not on Facebook, though. I had to get off for my own mental health between news of viruses in the white house and elsewhere. So, I have had less motivation to share bird photos, which is why they have built up for four months.

 

Weekend Update

I went birding this weekend, and now I’m going to blog about it. So if you thought you would be spared another post of me stretching my puny zoom to the limit across the expanse of the Fort Wayne water treatment ponds, then you are sorely mistaken.

Horned Grebe

Despite my best efforts, this is not a Common Loon. HOGR had the honor of being my last 2015 motorless bird, so now I don’t have to sweat it out in November.

Lesser Scaup

A raft of Lesser Scaup that actually aren’t Ring-necked Ducks! Even from this atrocious distance, the lack of a pointy white thing creeping up from the flank is absent. A bird not seen enough, and not at all last year.

White-breasted Nuthatch

WBNU posed nicely.

The Salmon of Capistrano

I tallied six new green species on Sunday, the scaup being the highlight. All of the early migrants are back, including Golden-crowned Kinglet, Eastern Phoebe, Wood Duck, and Tree Swallows doing what swallows do.

Monthly Update…

For the past several months, I have been averaging one birding outing and then blogging about it. Let’s keep the tradition alive with the month of March.

Red-Necked Grebe

Indiana has been experiencing a particularly brutal winter, as I have written about previously. But one of the unexpected bonuses has been an influx of deep-water waterfowl. Lake Michigan has been completely frozen over, which has caused problems for some of the birds that typically prefer deeper, larger expanses of water.

Red-Necked Grebes

These Red-Necked Grebes (lifer!) are among those birds that have been driven inland in search of open water. They found it in Fort Wayne at the terminal pond of the water treatment plant. While not exactly the best-sounding place for me to spend a relaxing Sunday morning, this man-made lake was the best habitat for waterfowl, because it circulates and is heated by whatever they do to it at the plant. Other atypical ducks that have seen surging numbers away from the lakeshore include Long-Tailed Ducks, White-Winged Scoters, and myriad Loons, none of which were also present. But I did get one more lifer.

Common Merganser

Somehow, the Common Merganser (lifer!) was the only Merganser that I had not yet seen. This male was one of the individuals present that let me complete the trifecta. Even from considerable distance, their shape and color blocking made identification easy.

Gadwalls

There were hundreds (thousands?) of other birds on the water, too. These Gadwalls represented only the second instance of the species I have seen, and they were in full-on courtship mode, chasing and shoving each other around in the lake. From a distance, the best field mark to identify these ducks is the white spot and black butt.

Lesser Scaup

The river had a few birds as well, like this Lesser Scaup, which can be separated by the shape of the head from the similar Greater Scaup. The Mallard in the background offers an interesting size comparison.

Muscovy Duck

Okay, so this final duck was not present in Fort Wayne, and if you are a long-time reader you may recognize it. I saw this Muscovy Duck on the University of Miami campus (hence the White Ibis behind it) in 2012 when Jaime and I were in Florida for my sister’s graduation. At the time, I counted it, but later on I took it off the life list after learning that the South Florida population is descended from domestic stock. In the mean time, I read a great article on 10,000 Birds arguing the case for birds like this, since they are obviously self-sustaining and breeding in the wild. They are basically in the same boat as the ubiquitous European Starlings, House Sparrows, and Rock Pigeons found in every other city that are also descended from feral individuals. So, I have decided that since it’s my list, I will put it back on. With this armchair tick, my life list now stands at 223 species.

Magical Bird Wonderland

Today I was fortunate enough to have a meeting for work in the small city of Linton. For those of you not familiar with Indiana birding locations, Linton is the home of the Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area, also known as Magical Bird Wonderland and the state’s premier birding location not located on Lake Michigan. I made sure to arrive at the meeting extra early to get in some quality birding time. Despite the driving rain, it was a more than great day!

#054 Sandhill Crane

If Indiana does one bird well, it is the Sandhill Crane, and Goose Pond does the Sandhill Crane very well. Since its establishment, Goose Pond has actually altered the migration route of these birds, causing massive swarms of the four-foot-tall beasts to gather there in the winter. There were literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of cranes. They covered the corn stubble fields, grazing like massive herds of avian cattle. They passed overhead in wave after wave of unending V’s. The cranes here may actually be the most incredible natural phenomenon I have ever seen, and a highly worthy year bird #054

#056 American White Pelican

Also among the impressive flocks of birds was the continuing mass of American White Pelicans that had taken over many of the muskrat lodges in the main pool. These are a rarity in Indiana at this time of year, giving me a very good year bird #056. Not that #055 Common Grackle wasn’t also good, but I will probably not be seeing pelicans every day this spring and summer in my neighborhood.

#058 Redhead

The waterfowl kept coming with several species of ducks, many of which were lifers for me. Redheads were year bird #058 as well as life birds. I came home to show Jaime my photos, and the first thing she said was “Redheads!” I told her I was impressed that she knew the name of them, only to be informed that she was just talking about their red heads. This is an appropriately named duck.

#059 Ring-Necked Duck

Year bird #059 was the Ring-Necked Duck pictured above (the male is the top center bird in the photo). A few of these small ducks were hanging out in a large group of Redheads, Lesser Scaups, and Gadwalls on a very small pond.

#060 Lesser Scaup

Here is one of the aforementioned Lesser Scaup. In addition to being year bird #060 (which was my target number to get to today), they were also life birds.

#061 Gadwall

The last bird I was able to identify was the humble Gadwall (bottom center bird above). Year bird #061 (putting me over my goal) and yet another lifer as well.

For those of you keeping track at home, you may have noticed that I skipped year bird #057. That is because I didn’t get a picture of them. However, as I was marching to the duck pond to take photos, I accidentally flushed a flock of Sandhill Cranes that was out of sight over a rise. As the birds lifted off, I saw three large white forms fly away with them. My heart literally skipped a beat as I thought “Whooping Cranes!” The total global population of Whooping Cranes is only in the triple digits, so they would have been a very exciting sight. Their rarity also contributed to my not seeing them, because the white birds in question turned out to be Snow Geese. Still exciting for me, though, because they were lifers! I ended the day with a life list of 192 species.

Goose Pond was incredibly impressive, despite the stormy weather and the fact that I missed many of the most impressive migrating flocks of waterfowl (sadly missing from my day list were Greater White-Fronted Geese and Northern Pintail). I will definitely try to make another trip back here some time despite the distance, and I will recommend that if you are even in the vicinity of southwest Indiana, Goose Pond is well worth a visit.