Hi Labirders, Took two quick trips yesterday to Stoner woods on Red river
in Shreveport. I was rained out on first trip (but got my first SWTH), then
made it back in afternoon and found several interesting things. A male
Blue-winged Warbler giving an odd-ball song was the first thing. I recorded
it and will share later- but way behind on those.
This morning's survey (from memory) showed the biggest movement of
Chimney Swift since count was begun back in the mid/late 90's. Four
Chipping Sparrows high n/ n-w were interesting, too. Woods were quite slow,
though. The bridge area also had 18 of 19 Savannah Sparrow- also high!
Speaking of notes- ABBREVIATIONS in the lists correspond to areas within
the surveyed area, such as- P (parking lot) N (northwest opening), Br
(bridge) W (west woods) C (central opening) S (south end) E (east woods),
then n,s,e,w= North, South, East, West, n/n-w =north/ northwest and so
on..... F, f or fem= fem. M m= male, g= song, c= call.
Years ago I stood in wonder and amazement in a Neeses, South Carolina
winter soybean field, watching as likely hundreds of thousands (if not a
couple of million) Common Grackle flew uni-directional over my head one
morning. The solid stream blackened the overhead skies for several minutes.
Years later, that spark was thankfully rekindled after seeing Dr Van Remsen
post snippets of his "Dawn Skywatch" via Labird. While the depth of this
endeavor likely pales compared to that of our list emperor's, after a
couple years of fine-tuning (admittedly, some directional dyslexia was hell
in the beginning- and still occasionally rears its head), I finally
tailored down to writing the time of first flyby occurrence of each
individual species, followed by a system of commas and different
time-length pauses, as follows- p (~0-3 minutes) double pause= pp (~5-8
minutes), long pause lp (~10-15 minutes) then very long pause (~ > than 15
minutes) noting time lapse between groups or individual birds of each
species recorded. I also noted direction which birds are traveling. It
often became really tough on days with high traffic but I found myself
keeping up, at least somewhat, although there's always quite a few that
likely get by on days like that- even on slow days, for that matter. One x
one counts can be fun on slow days as well as also keeping one in practice.
On days when tired from work, etc, I often abandoned the pause system. I've
now entirely abandoned it- in favor of mini-watches= shorter periods of
time with commas after groups of individuals and numbers only. Although
I've never actually sat down to take a serious look at the data, there have
often been some interesting comparisons after briefly mulling over it. On
slower days (as today), singles and groups were individually counted as
best as possible, then block-counting on days with notably high numbers and
traffic. Here's the three lists from past two days at Stoner-
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S22864274
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S22864691
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S22867543
More on numbers- something that's been bugging me for a long time! People
often wonder after seeing other's bird counts and question, such as the
following, for example- "Why did you have 2,463 individuals for that
species- instead of 2,450 or 2,465? Simple answer. This is also somewhat,
but not fully explained in last/ longer paragraph above- When you're
watching 2,000 female Red-winged Blackbird streaming high over, then you
see several males (even other females, for that matter) commuting locally
earlier on- or even afterward, it's often likely that those birds weren't
even part of the group that was commuting- sure... one cannot always be
entirely sure. These odd numbers will also nearly always correspond to the
field sheets, which will show these numbers as separate when recorded. That
is, unless one is estimating all or most of their numbers afterward, which
I personally find to be much less reliable- again, that's just my opinion.
Then again, during high activity levels and movement, if one doesn't
revert, at minimum, to block counting many that are seen, the forest often
becomes hard to see through the trees. There's times to do it, times when
not to. Another example- a kettle of Black Vultures rises early from roost,
then moments later, you see others circling higher. Personally, I don't
count them- unless it appears that the birds are surely rising up from a
separate roost nearby. When one is in the field often, they will get a
general feel for day-to-day behavior and movements of individual bird
family groupings and species, then be able to make better decisions
regarding their counts. if I'm wrong, I'll happily discuss what others
might have to say on the subject.
Lastly, some have questioned why I add some species in the woods after
doing the morning watch- That's also simple. Most long-time birders (many
newer birders grow fairly quick at this as well) are quickly able to id
certain species at quite some distance by shape and flight giss (general
impression, size, shape) With that said, not only do the major groupings of
birds have the well-known major migration flyways such Eastern, Central and
Western flyways- but locals often have areas where commuter routes are
sandwiched fairly closely. I made my decision to do morning watches at
Stoner, even though the lighting wasn't so good when ones is often looking
somewhat east toward the sun, due to this. However, one could often look
several hundred yards both to the southeast and northwest and ascertain
other groups of Cattle Egret, Common Grackle, Cedar Waxwing (latter less
consistent due to circling nature, among others more/less) American
Goldfinch and others due to their distinctive shapes, flight patterns.
While I did not count those distant flybys even then, these sightings
affirmed to me that for the most part, my counts were either fairly close
or even low for what is really there.
That's it for my soapbox, birds only in next post! (:
Good birding, y'all!
Terry
