Hello Birders,
I went to look for a Purple Martin roost that was registered on radar over
the last 8 years. I just found out about the possibility earlier in the day
when Joe Siegrist (Purple Martin Conservation Association) contacted Marion
Schiefer to see if anyone could check out the area. Apparently, there have
been radar signatures of a larger roost beginning at the end of June
through August 11th or so in the last several years. I wanted to find the
roost. Joe says that they suspect that birds were bedding down for the
night in this area from a radius of up to 200 miles away. Probably tens of
thousands of birds!
I was surprised by two things. First, the cotton plants were in full bloom,
and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds were all over the fields. I just never
thought of cotton as a hummer food source. Second, there was a high number
of Lark Sparrows - probably the most I have seen anywhere. I easily saw
several groups of 5 birds or more, and it seemed like the groups included
adults and recently fledged youngsters.
I did find Purple Martins streaming into the area almost immediately after
turning north onto Greenbrier Rd. from HWY 14. However, the numbers never
reached levels that I had hoped. I could see several hundred Purple Martins
over several fields and ponds as darkness approached, but I never found a
definitive power line or tree roost. Instead, it almost seemed like the
birds were diving into the corn, but I could not see them very well at this
point. I called Joe this morning, and he thinks that I may have just the
stragglers and that the big pulse of birds has already traveled southward.
Hopefully, we can try for the birds when the radar shows the large staging
group next summer.
Here's the eBird checklist:
Great Blue Heron 5
Great Egret 40
Green Heron 4
Turkey Vulture 4
Killdeer 35
Spotted Sandpiper 1
Least Sandpiper 7
Pectoral Sandpiper 8
Mourning Dove 25
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 200 Again, I made no real attempt to count
the birds. However, every time I looked across cotton fields, I easily saw
15-20 hummers in my field of view through my binocular. So, this cotton is
likely a gross underestimate of the density in these fields.
Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
Eastern Wood-Pewee 2
Eastern Kingbird 5
Blue Jay 6
American Crow 5
Northern Rough-winged Swallow 40
Purple Martin 1000 This is probably an underestimate, but it was
difficult to estimate the birds scattered over thousands of acres.
However, it was not a large enough group to create a radar signature. I
put this total to flag this spot as a potential roost spot for future
scrutiny, but I suspect that this count is low even for my first try to
guesstimate.
Barn Swallow 30
Northern Mockingbird 12
Yellow Warbler 10
Lark Sparrow 20 I found several groups of 5-8 birds. Some were on
power lines; others were on the gravel road in front of me. I saw the bold
face pattern in many birds, and the white outer retrices were visible as
they flew from me. I video recorded a few to document the species.
Northern Cardinal 10
Blue Grosbeak 12
Indigo Bunting 5
Red-winged Blackbird 100
Brown-headed Cowbird 60
View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/
checklist/S30970114
This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (http://ebird.org)
Sincerely,
Jeff Harris
