Monday evening around 8 pm I had 100+ swifts in downtown Shreveport!
Jim
From: bsg-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bsg-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Terry Davis
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2015 8:57 PM
To: LABIRD-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; bsg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bsg] Stoner woods and morning watch/ Shreveport, Caddo Par. 04-13,14-
2015
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
