FreeLists / birdky / [birdky] RPT: West KY, December 30, 2003 -- long

[Brainard.Palmer-Ball@xxxxxx]

As in the past, I apologize ever so slightly to those who wish to glean
concise observation information from this post; it is intended to be modest
entertainment rather than an official report . . .

Matt Stickel and I did a west KY big day on December 30th. Our day began
about 5:45 CST in Central City with the discovery that one of our party who
will remain nameless realized that he had forgotten to pack his scope! Was
it to be a good omen or bad??? 

Our first species of the day was somewhat unexpected, two Virginia Rails
that answered a tape on the Gibraltar Unit of Peabody WMA where they seem to
have lingered all fall. A Great Horned Owl was calling at the next stop;
then we headed for the Sinclair Unit where we expected to be able to add
Short-eared Owl. It took quite a long time, but as a beautiful morning
dawned, we finally saw one or two plus a Northern Harrier coursing over the
hills. Otherwise the predawn was surprisingly quiet.  

We birded around the Sinclair Unit for about an hour, adding several good
species including a dark morph Rough-legged Hawk, another Short-eared --
this one in broad daylight, what sounded to be a sizable flock of cackling,
gobbling, squabbling Wild Turkeys (heard only), American Tree Sparrow, Fox
Sparrow, what turned out to be our only White-crowned Sparrows on the day,
and the most surprising among the lot, at least 5 Palm Warblers that seemed
to be associating loosely with some American Goldfinches and Savannah
Sparrows.  The aquatic habitats around Paradise were not very productive,
but we did see three Double-crested Cormorants and scattered Pied-billed
Grebes. 

We needed some pine birds, so we left the open grasslands of Sinclair for
the Riverqueen Unit of Peabody WMA about 10 miles to the northwest. There,
the birds were slow to show, but persistence finally yielded Brown Creeper,
both kinglets, Hermit Thrush, ONE Red-breasted Nuthatch, and a colorful male
Pine Warbler. At one stop, a gorgeous adult male Sharp-shinned Hawk zoomed
in and perched closeby in perfect light for a couple of minutes. Perhaps our
best luck of the first part of the day was kicking a Long-eared Owl out of a
patch of pines, but the 4 Sandhill Cranes that flew over while we standing
there was pretty neat luck, too, as was Matt spotting a Merlin perched in a
roadside tree as we exited the WMA, having totally given up on the species
after scanning trees and poles for most of a half-hour!

We then decided to make a quick stop at Lake Peewee at Madisonville rather
than heading right to the lakes/dams. As it turned out, this stop yielded
only one species we did not get elsewhere on the day, but two female Common
Mergansers were a welcome addition; other good birds included the more than
300 Ruddy Ducks previously reported by Ann Morgan, an immature Bald Eagle,
and 3 Horned Grebes among commoner divers/dabblers.  

The drive down to the lakes failed to add needed soaring birds like Black
Vulture (where's Mark Monroe when you need him?), but a stop by the Eddy
Creek embayment on Lake Barkley yielded several Common Snipe and 2 American
Pipits as well as a female Wood Duck. A quick stop in Kuttawa added a
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a flock of Cedar Waxwings, and some House Finches.
Time was passing too quickly so we did not go to several additional spots on
Lake Barkley, instead heading to the Green Turtle Bay marina where light was
good and radiation waves nearly absent. A few minutes of scanning the lake
above the dam failed to produce hoped-for American White Pelicans, but both
scaup, Canvasback, and Common Goldeneye were added to the day list.  A stop
at Kentucky Dam yielded nothing other than the 3 common gulls, and the only
thing we could add was a single Common Loon above the dam.  Then it was off
to Ballard County, where expected birds from the count the day before would
bring us to the high 90s on our species count for the day if all went well.


Taking an indirect route through La Center gave us Eurasian Collared-Doves,
and farmland near Oscar yielded Brown-headed Cowbirds.  A field that had
been full of Horned Larks and Lapland Longspurs the day before produced none
of the latter (ugh), but when Matt asked me to check a group of
suspicous-looking blackbirds in a tree-top with MY scope (uh, I mean our
scope), we added a nice substitute -- 19 Brewer's Blackbirds!  A loop
through the public-accessible portion of Ballard WMA yielded Greater
White-fronted Geese and almost filled out the dabbler list with American
Black Duck, Northern Shoveler, Northern Pintail and American Wigeon, and a
Barred Owl even gave us a full "who-cooks-for-you . . .
who-cooks-for-you-all" to boot.  I had told Matt that I thought we could get
all the woodpeckers at Ballard fairly easily, but by the time we were there
all we needed were Red-headed and Pileated. Red-headed was a piece of cake,
but we were only spending a few minutes at every stop out of the car by then
and Pileated looked like it was going to become our worst miss on the day.
In the last woodlot we passed before exiting, we were scanning ducks when a
Pileated called nicely, wiping out that nemesis.  I was really peeved at
missing the longspurs and foresight was portending of a possible day-ending
99 species total, so we detoured back to the field. Ugh . . . no luck again,
although the Brewer's Blackbirds put on another good show for us.

Our final segment of the day entailed returning to the edge of the West Ky
WMA in western McCracken County, where there had been several nice birds the
previous day.  By chance we blundered by Ingleside Road, on which Scott
Record lives; Scott had told me the day before that a resident Loggerhead
Shrike was often in or near his yard. On a lark, we turned onto the road and
about 3/4 of a mile down there he was, perched on an open wire, our 94th
species on the day.  As we approached the WMA, the sun was about to set, but
within a few minutes we were able to find one of the Le Conte's Sparrows
that had flushed up the day before. I had failed to point out to Matt a
Field Sparrow that I had seen many hours ago at Sinclair (who'd have thought
we wouldn't have seen another?!), so we were also able to clean up our only
partial species on the day when a pair flew up giving us 96 species on the
day.  We were still missing Brown Thrasher, a species that I had seen the
evening before in the fenceline near where we had parked along Bethel Church
Road, but we pished several places and came up empty. At the end of the day
and tantalizingly near to a goal, you have to keep weighing options on what
to do next and hope for the best. The next choice we made turned out to be
the most fortuitous of the day. More good thrasher habitat was within view
down Bethel Church Road so we drove along slowly listening for chip notes.
At one likely looking spot, I turned off the vehicle and pished. As hoped
for, a Brown Thrasher immediately responded from my side of the road with
some harsh notes, but Matt could not hear the bird from the other side of
the vehicle so we got out.  Standing in front of the truck, I was
occasionally still hearing the notes of the thrasher, but Matt was being
distracted by a very noisy towhee about 10 feet away on his side. About the
time he was verbally abusing the bird, asking it in so many
BIRDKY-unprintable words to be quiet so he could hear the thrasher, it
dawned on us that the notes from the towhee were rather odd. We often are
not as thorough in our birding as we should be, but this time I decided to
take the few seconds it would require to make sure of its identity. You can
imagine our excitement when the odd sounding towhee turned out to be the
Spotted that has since been posted about several times! So as luck would
have it, our best bird was added nearly 1/2 hour after the sun had
disappeared behind the trees, while looking for something else, and despite
Matt's best attempts to will it away so he could hear the thrasher!
Sometimes things just work out :o)  Well, we both got great looks at the
towhee (#97) and a few minutes later Matt chased down good looks at the
thrasher (#98). That left us American Woodcock and Eastern Screech-Owl as
near guarantees with a beautiful sunset as a backdrop.  Right on cue Matt
spotted a woodcock spiraling into his calling grounds; a minute or two later
he began calling and then embarked on his first aerial performance of the
evening; that was our cue to depart and we were off to get a screech-owl
before it got completely dark. The spot where I had taped in a bird the
evening before yielded two birds this night, and we gleefully headed back
towards Paducah at 5:30 CST with 100 species, all seen and/or heard by both
of us.  

The story would now be complete if I had not copied our day list onto a KOS
Field Card a couple of days ago and realized that I had failed to write down
our first birds of the day (which had not been on my "likely" list we were
working from), the Viriginia Rails, which brought the list to 101. Then I
realized that Matt's late afternoon Brewer's Blackbirds also had not made it
onto the list as a "write-in" in our haste to get in as much birding as
possible in the day's last hour! So like adding lifers while sitting on the
couch thanks to the actions of the AOU Checklist Committee, poor record
keeping resulted in us adding two more species than we had thought we had at
day's end for a total of 102! 

So ends another effort at compiling monthly Big Day lists, December becoming
the last to yield a party day list of 100 species within the boundaries of
Kentucky.  As I have stated at some time in the past, these long days are
somewhat frivolous, but they are enjoyable to do every once in awhile. In
2003 alone, they yielded fun-to-find birds like Painted Bunting,
White-winged Dove, and the Spotted Towhee. They also yield much information
about when various species arrive and depart, and where they can and cannot
be found in a given season. Several years ago when this aspect of "listing"
began being reported in the ABA List Report, I wanted KY to be represented
by some good lists and now, as stated above, every month has a party day
list of 100 species or more. Thanks to those who have been crazy enough to
be willing to come along.

bpb, Louisville
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