We got out a couple times this week but the species count hasn’t gone up much. This weekend we got blackpoll warbler and gray cheeked thrush. Lise was down in Indiana and got Carolina chickadee. She probably got Carolina chickadee in Delaware but we didn’t record it. It’s hard to believe she got the brown-headed nuthatch without getting a Carolina chickadee. So now the counts stand at 308 for me, 295 for Lise, and a combined count of 310. I’m at 88% of the goal and Lise is at 84%. Old Man Time is closing the gap though. As of today 71% of the year is history.
Percentage of our goal compared to percentage of the year gone by.
We need to be doing better than two species a week to hit the target. We’re paying for not getting more warblers in the spring. We have been getting out but it’s a lot more work for way fewer species. This is the peak of the fall warbler migration here. It’s a lot tougher than spring migration though. In the spring they’re all spiffy in their courting plumage. Males are nice and gaudy, and they vocalize. A lot. Makes it much easier to find and identify them.
Now their plumage is a lot less distinctive and they don’t vocalize. Beaten down by parenthood I guess. To add to our woes, they have foliage to hide behind and there are first year birds with yet another plumage variation. You see a flash of motion and have a split second to hopefully get enough details for an ID. I should have stuck with sudoku as a hobby. Granted, fall warblers would be a lot easier if we were more familiar with the fall variations. That’s a nice way of saying we’re lousy fall season birders.
So we spent the weekend, wandering a few local haunts with our friend Barb. One of our target species was gray-cheeked thrush. They migrate through here, on their way to parts north or south, depending on the season. People have been seeing them in the area, usually right before we got there. Saw a lot of Swainson’s thrushes but try as we might, we just wouldn’t turn into a gray cheeked. They all had “buffy spectacles,” something missing on a gray-cheeked. After a frustrating and fruitless morning we threw in the towel. While fressen down lunch Barb called with the news that she was watching a gray-cheeked in her yard. A quick ten minute ride to her house, followed by about two minutes of waiting, and Boom Baby, a gray-cheeked thrush. Our day would have been a lot easier had we just done a breakfast brunch at Barb’s.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 