Month: September 2024

Categories
Birding

350 +1

Today I crossed 350 species for the year. Folks who do ABA area big years consider getting over 700 species to be a good year. To do that one needs to go Texas, Florida, Alaska, California, and other places, and do some pelagic trips. I’m not doing that, I’m happy just birding South Dakota and Arizona and places in between. Anyway, I finally got the two sparrows that the Sparrow Patch is famous for.

The Sparrow Patch is an eBird hotspot, primarily because it is a good place to get Nelson’s Sparrow and LeConte’s Sparrow in the fall migration. They finally showed up! This is a Nelson’s Sparrow. The gray median crown stripe separates it from the LeConte’s Sparrow, which has a white to orange median crown stripe. There are other differences too, but in the field these are usually the easiest to see.
And here is a LeConte’s Sparrow, this image is a large crop so not the best quality. Both of these sparrows are difficult to photograph, they don’t like to stay out in the open very long. LeConte’s Sparrow was #350 for the year.
Later in the morning I went to Farm Island to check my sunflower seed stashes. I was hoping for a Fox Sparrow, but while watching for sparrows I got this Northern Parula! This may be one of the best photos I’ve taken of the species. Like all the other warblers, it was foraging in the Red-osier Dogwoods.
Another Sedge Wren in the Sparrow Patch.
Categories
Birding

More Birds

The weather has been very nice for people but it has not helped with birding. This has been the most dismal warbler migration I can remember. Last spring was bad too and I was hoping to make it up this fall, but it did not work out. I’m missing many species that I should have got, like Northern Waterthrush, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Palm Warbler, to name a few. I guess there is still a chance of seeing some warblers I need but time is running out. Sparrows are starting to pick up though. I’ve added a few more species to my year list, I’m up to 346 species now.

Swamp Sparrows have arrived in numbers. Always difficult to photograph well, I was very happy with this shot.
I finally added Sedge Wren to my year list!
Not a new species for the year, but I like how this Marsh Wren posed for me!
A Spotted Towhee coming in for the sunflower seeds I placed on the ground.
White-throated Sparrows are moving through, this one was at my sunflower seed dump.
An Orange-crowned Warbler with a crab spider. The bird was in the shade against a bright background, difficult processing but I guess it came out OK.
Orange-crowned Warbler in nice light! At this time of year, the warblers love to feed in red-osier dogwood, the leaves harbor lots of aphids and other insects.
Here’s one picking the aphids off the underside of the leaves of red-osier dogwood.
Categories
Birding Photography

More Birding News

The migration continues, but here in the Pierre area warblers have been few and far between. I think most of them have passed through already and the next wave of warblers will be mostly Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumps. I missed many migrant warblers last spring that I was hoping to find this fall. This will hurt my year list but there is not much I can do about it. The good news is the Corp of Engineers opened two stilling basin tubes for two days and that attracted a lot of gulls, including at least two Sabine’s Gulls.

Here’s one of the Sabine’s Gulls. It happened to fly by very close to me! There were thousands of gulls feeding on the dead fish coming through the stilling basin tubes. Go to this LINK to see what the stilling basin looked like in 2011 during the big flood. For my 2024 year list this is species #342.
This morning I was watching a large group of gulls on a causeway when they all took off in panic. This Peregrine Falcon was the cause of the panic. It landed on the road then took off, circled around and flew right over me.
This Merlin was also a new bird for the year. It has an unidentified prey in its talons. It seems like Merlin are getting harder to find every year.
Lesser Black-backed Gulls are arriving in small numbers, the first ones I saw were two adults that were too far away for good photos, and this 2nd cycle bird I found on the Legion Beach, easy to get close to! This morning, I saw five in the Oahe Downstream area.
Not the best photo but a good bird, a dark morph Broad-winged Hawk. I haven’t seen one of these since 2017. See the LINK for the last one I saw, I got better photos of that one.
While hiking on LaFramboise Island a week or so ago, I found some fresh Moose tracks. This isn’t the first time a Moose has shown up here. The local Game, Fish and Park game manager said there was a Moose photographed in western Sully County just a few days before. Perhaps it is the same Moose.
Another gull with fishing lure attached. It is probably doomed to a long, slow death.

Categories
Birding

Fall Birding Report

It has been almost three weeks since I’ve made a report, I will have do better than that! I’m back in Pierre for the foreseeable future. It is not truly fall yet but the birds don’t know that. Migration seems to be in full swing but the weather has been so nice that it is hard to find them. Most of the warblers seem to be just passing through. We need a period of bad weather to ground them. The only new warbler for my year list has been Black-and-White Warbler. Other new species for my list are Blue-headed Vireo, Ruddy Turnstone, and Sprague’s Pipit. I got two Sprague’s Pipits this morning, number 339 for the year.

At my usual spot for fall Sprague’s Pipits, a prairie dog colony in the Fort Pierre National Grassland. These birds respond well to playback during fall migration. They will fly right in and land.
Another Sprague’s Pipit, in the same area.
While I was looking for the pipits, a Ferruginous Hawk flew overhead.
It was almost two weeks ago when I got into a nice flock of migrants, there were two Blue-headed Vireos in it. All I could get were photos of this bird straight overhead.
This Black-and-White Warbler was almost overhead too. I have seen quite a few of these but they are always difficult to photograph.
Another new one for the year, a Ruddy Turnstone. It was on a Missouri River sand bar maybe 400 yards from the road. I had good views through the spotting scope but it was too far away for a good photo. I tried anyway and got lucky with this take-off shot, clearly showing the black and white wing and tail pattern of a Ruddy Turnstone. This is the first Ruddy Turnstone I’ve seen in many years.
A juvenile Caspian Tern. I rarely see the species in this plumage.
Here’s an unusual sight, for two reasons. One, this Great Blue Heron is swimming in deep water, at least 8 ft. deep. I don’t recall ever seeing that before. The second reason is it has caught a paddlefish! I wish I had seen this entire event, but this is all I got and I can verify that it was able to fly away with the paddlefish.
I see this too often. Gulls (and other birds) with fishing lures caught in their beaks, or wrapped up in fishing line. I have a collection of photos like this.