A Good Weekend for New Winter Birds

Left: Fox sparrow

I birded both Saturday and Sunday mornings this weekend. Yesterday was warm and sunny; today very cool and overcast.

Yesterday, I walked the chat trail back to the barrow pit in Lake Wichita Park. Today I did the same and then drove over to the Lake Wichita spillway.

I've worked hard to learn the sparrows better over the past few years, and we definitely have a lot of sparrows in our area during the winter. These "LBJ's" (little brown jobs) are often ignored by most beginning birders as they often appear for just brief seconds before diving into the grass or shrubs. You have to know what field marks to look for and you have to see them quickly.

Yesterday, along the chat trail I did see my first two fox sparrows of the year. Fortunately, they attracted my attention by calling. Then it was a matter of continuing to watch the ground in a sheltered area, waiting for them to start scratching around. Today, I saw my first three field sparrows along the chat trail. These delicate little birds are among my favorites. Then over at the spillway, I saw one Harris's sparrow mixed with a flock of white-crowned sparrows. White-crowned sparrows are ubiquitous and it is tempting to go on to something else as soon as you see the first one, but anytime you see a flock of sparrows, do a quick scan of the group as there may be more than one species mixed together.

My bird list for Saturday: mallard, ruddy duck, bufflehead, northern shoveler, green-winged teal, northern pintail, greater yellowlegs, killdeer, ring-billed gull, double-crested cormorant, Cooper's hawk, American coot, pied-billed grebe, northern harrier, downy woodpecker, northern flicker (yellow-shafted), Eurasian collared dove, brown thrasher, northern mockingbird, Carolina chickadee, ruby-crowned kinglet, blue jay, cardinal, yellow-rumped warbler, song sparrow, fox sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, red-winged blackbird, and American goldfinch.

For Sunday: great blue heron, bufflehead, ruddy duck, northern shoveler, redhead duck, green-winged teal, double-crested cormorant, pied-billed grebe, American coot, killdeer, common snipe, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon, Eurasian collared dove, blue jay, cardinal, northern mockingbird, American robin, American goldfinch, red-winged blackbird, great-tailed grackle, common grackle, European starling, spotted towhee, Harris's sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, song sparrow, field sparrow.

This is also the second weekend of Project Feederwatch. Although the count isn't over for the weekend, so far I've had white-winged dove, Eurasian collared dove and Inca dove, as well as house sparrows, juncos, house finches and gold finches. One odd note. I had two white-winged doves were much darker than the others. There were a couple of other different things about them as well. It was the first time I have seen them. It would be nice if I could get a decent picture.

Good birding!

Hate It When That Happens

Every birder makes errors in identification, for a lot of reasons. But nonetheless, I hate it when it happens to me, especially when I do it so everyone knows. In an earlier post I put up some pictures of an alleged hermit thrush. Well, now that I look, it is obvious the bird is a fox sparrow. Still a good bird, but I see them a lot more often than I do a hermit thrush.

All I can say is that it happens to every birder and sometimes the difference is sooooo obvious, I want to smack myself in the head. But I am in good company. We joke at Wild Bird Rescue about our shapeshifting birds on occasion. Sometimes a bird comes in and during intake we identify it as one bird. Later you walk by the cage and it's like you're looking at an entirely new bird, and we end up changing the ID. Of course babies are harder to identify--they sometimes change into a different bird as they grow up and more adult features show up. There just isn't much in the way of baby bird ID guides out there. But that's more understandable than some of the blatant field errors.

Why do we make mistakes? It could be a number of reasons.

• Some birds just look a lot alike. Telling a western meadowlark from an eastern is iffy business if the bird is not singing.
• Sometimes there just isn't a lot of time to make the identification. Trying to identify a sparrow in the nanosecond you see it go from one place to another is a challenge.
• The lighting could be bad and you cannot see colors or identifying marks.
• No bird looks exactly like the field guide shows. That's why many show different views of the bird and most birders have more than one field guide--they all show the bird a little differently.
• Sometimes you "want" a bird and can pick out the field marks you want to see and not see the rest.
• Plumages change throughout the year and sometimes from one year to another.
• Some species have a lot of variation. Red-tailed hawks for example are notorious for the variation in their plumages.
• We're human. We just get it wrong.

So I confess to being human, but I don't have to like it.

Good birding!

Lake Wichita on Sunday

The weather was wonderful on Sunday morning--perhaps a little too warm to be perfect, but still much better than summer. The birds were loving the weather. With the leaves falling, the birds are becoming easier to see.

My favorites Sunday were some fox sparrows in the marshy area where the chat trail intersects with the trail over the dam and a few eared grebes on the barrow pit. I also saw two late barn swallows at the spillway. I hope they plan to move on by Thanksgiving--we are supposed to get a very cold front by then. But for now, the weather is nice and there are still plenty of insects around.

I noticed the giant reed and many of the reeds near the spillway had been removed, allowing better visabilty. I was glad to see the invasive giant reeds taken down and hope whoever was responsible keeps up the good work. There were still some giant reeds standing, but they were in an area that was not very accessible.

Other birds seen: American pipit, kestrel, great blue heron, lesser yellowlegs, rng-billed gull, gren-winged teal, American coot, mallard duck, white pelican, Bewick's wren, killdeer, some unidentified peeps, white-winged dove, house sparrow, dark-eyed junco, white-crowned sparrow, savannah sparow, song sparrow, cardinal, northern mockingbrd, blue-winged teal, American goldfinch, eastern phoebe, northern shoveler, pied-billed grebe, red-winged blakbrd, blue jay, canvasback, bufflehead, double-crested cormorant, ruddy ducl, American wigeon, sharp-shinned hawk, robin, mourning dove, Eurasian collared dove, yellow-rumped warbler, Eurpean starling, and great-tailed grackle.

Good birding!