My final Breeding Bird Survey route of the season was Tiptonville, which begins just south of Black Bayou (just north of Tiptonville) in Lake County, winds along the south shore of Reelfoot Lake into Obion County, then cuts east up the bluffs in to the hill country. This route has one of the longest cumulative species totals of any Tennessee BBS -- 112 species after I added yet another new one this year. I believe only the Pawpaw route matches this; Pawpaw actually runs just a few miles south of Tiptonville, the two routes being only a bit more than 1 mile apart at one point. I actually wonder about Pawpaw this year, as it loops by Island 13 and when I drove by this weekend parts of that road were still closed.
This long cumulative list (for both routes) is mostly a function of a whole lot of uncommon species and water birds, only a modest subset of which actually turn up any given year. In the case of Tiptonville, my totals for each individual year are usually somewhere around 75, though I did hit 81 once. This is not much different than I get on the various highland rim routes I run closer to home. Flyovers are a big thing in Tiptonville, with an eye-to-the-sky absolutely essential to catch the herons, egrets, eagles, terns, or whatever else might drift by. Once in the bluffs, a sharp ear becomes important as well, as many warblers and other songsters will only show up in ones or twos if they are found at all.
This year (route run Sunday, 6/5/2011, in oppressive heat), the tally was 75 species, more or less average. Not surprisingly, one big thing was an abundance of waders from the recent high water. I had a record count of Great Egrets at 96 and Double-crested Cormorants at 13, plus the first-ever Snowy Egrets for the route -- 21 of them. Among the land birds, I had record counts for Mourning Dove (69), Ruby-throated Hummingbird (11), Red-bellied Woodpecker (23), Pileated Woodpecker (8), Warbling Vireo (20), Wood Thrush (5), Northern Mockingbird (38, tie), Northern Parula (9, tie, twice before), Prothonotary Warbler (13), Louisiana Waterthrush (2, tie), and Dickcissel (33). The Dickcissels were indeed abundant, turning up at many stops that had not normally yielded them in past years. It is also interesting to me that 6 of those species also yielded record high counts on one of my middle TN BBS routes this year.
Other interesting notes included 2 Mississippi Kites behaving as though a nest was nearby right up on top of the bluff, and a pair of Killdeers trying to distract me from their 4-egg nest situated about 2 feet from my truck at stop 21 in Samburg. A single Bald Eagle flew by, but no Osprey this year. My quasi-regular Worm-eating Warblers on the bluff above Samburg did not reveal themselves, but a couple of Scarlet Tanagers did. Also missed was Northern Flicker, for the third consecutive year. It is my impression that this bird has declined rather sharply as a breeding bird in Tennessee in recent years.
The day before the route (6/4/2011), a visit to Black Bayou WMA yielded lots of calling Common Moorhens and Least Bitterns (one Moorhen actualy glimpsed), as well as singing Pied-billed Grebes. As Jeff noted, elsewhere in Lake County migrant shorebird numbers were pretty low but not quite zero. There was no sign of the White-faced Ibis that was seen by multiple observers in May, nor was there a squeak to be heard from the spot near Cates Landing where a Bell's Vireo put in a brief appearance in 2010.
Bill Pulliam
Hohenwald TN
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