This morning I decided to sit in the truck by the Farm Island feeders and do some photography. I was actually hoping for a Fox Sparrow to come in, but after a few minutes I briefly saw another bird, from the back, that looked very unusual. I could see it was more brightly colored than the Harris’s Sparrows that were also present, but then it flew off. I sat there wondering, could that have been a Brambling? Nah, couldn’t be. I sat there another 15 minutes or so when all of the sudden there was a Brambling! Wow! I managed to get some photos, despite the thick clouds and low light. I put out some alerts on eBird and the local birder hotline, and within 20 minutes almost every birder I know in the Pierre area was there. Everyone got to see it.
The Brambling is a widespread species in northern Europe and Asia during breeding season. It is migratory, wintering in southern Europe, North Africa, southern Asia and Japan. It frequently strays into Alaska during migration and there are scattered records across the northern United States and southern Canada. In South Dakota, there are two previous records, and hardly anyone got to see either of those. Brambling in the fallen leaves. This makes 603 species of birds on my ABA area list. I was at 605 but there were some taxonomic changes so I lost three species so now I have to find two more to get back to where I was. For South Dakota, my life list is now at 374, Hughes County 318. Here’s one more. The light was pretty bad and I had a lot of blurry photos, so I’m glad a few came out OK.
I’m still here. The weather is getting colder and the days are shorter. I will need to head south soon. I’m getting my drivers license renewed on Monday and then at the first break in the weather, I will depart. I’m up to 367 species for the year now. Lately, I’ve added a Northern Shrike and a Rough-legged Hawk, both with only poor photos taken. A few days ago, I got three Surf Scoters, also with very poor photos taken from a great distance. I do have some better bird photos to show.
One of my favorite birds, a Golden-crowned Kinglet. My sister Sally was with me and she picked them up on Merlin, it didn’t take long to find them, three Golden-crowned Kinglets. As always, they are very active and difficult to photograph, this one turned out well. One morning, while driving down the Farm Island causeway, a Merlin smoked a robin right in front of me. This behavior is called mantling, guarding fresh caught prey by spreading the wings over it. The Merlin flew a short distance with the robin and began to pluck it. Here’s another new bird for the year, a Purple Finch. This female and few other females and one male are feeding mostly on Green Ash seeds. A Blue Jay in the fallen leaves. A Red-bellied Woodpecker peeking around the trunk. On the left, a Red-necked Grebe, another new bird for the year. I was hoping to get one before I head south and here it is. While walking on Farm Island this morning, I found this dead Northern Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina brevicauda). The saliva of this species contains a toxin used to paralyze and subdue its prey. The toxin is strong enough to kill small animals (up to mouse sized) and results in painful bites to humans who attempt to handle the shrew. I often see dead shrews like this and sometimes voles and mice, laying out in the open and I wonder what it is that kills and then leaves them there. Possibly the shrews are not very appealing as food, but that doesn’t explain the mice and voles I see like this.
