Gainesville CBC 2012

Painted Bunting Playing Peek-a-boo

Yesterday was the Alachua Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count.  This is something I look forward to all year long, and it’s finished all too quickly.  You can call me crazy (many have!) but this is a great way to spend a day.

I’m part of Group 3 within our team and my area is, well, actually it defies a simple description.  Think of shopping and dining areas, apartment complexes, and a veterinary teaching facility and you begin to get the idea.  Then there is a section of woods that was taken over by invasive plants.  The invasive plants were killed off leaving a barren-looking wasteland that is just beginning to make a comeback.  Finally there are some woods that look very nice but also host a number of homeless “campers”.  It’s not an idyllic territory to be sure, but it has to be done … and it produced a 70-species day for me!  

 Here are a few vignettes from the day:

** I met my friend Rex at 4:00 AM and by 4:15 we were owling along Lime Rock Road, west of Gainesville ending in the driveway of my former principal.  During the hour we counted six Great Horned Owls, five Barred Owls and three Eastern Screech Owls.  By 5:30 we were at IHOP for breakfast and a meeting with the rest of Team 7.  We ate, we laughed, told a few ridiculous stories, and headed out for the main event.

** We had just dipped on a site where we found a Whip-poor-will last year, and a second site that usually produces a nice mixed flock was disappointing.   I stood there feeling disgruntled when another of my group called out, “Painted Bunting!”  I ran to the spot and there was a gorgeous male.  I’ve seen female Painted Buntings in this county before, but never a male, so this was wonderful!  Getting a photo was tough, but one of got the picture at the top of today’s blog.

Lesser Scaup in an Apartment Complex Retention Pond

**Later in the day we rode through an apartment complex planning to check out the retention ponds.  We were hoping for a Muscovy.  How’s that for low expectations?  We pulled up to the largest pond and were stunned to find 124 Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks!  While we were gawking at them, one lone Lesser Scaup floated by.  I whipped out my iPhone, attached it to my scope, and took the photo on the right. 

**We had a lead on a male Summer Tanager that has been hanging around our only old-Gainesville neighborhood.  We parked on the street and started working the area.  No luck.  Along the way I noticed a neighborhood nature walk with a Hermit Thrush calling away.  I took that as a good omen, so I headed off, following the winding path until it reached a dead end.  And there was a lovely female Summer Tanager.  That’s not the one I was expecting, but I was thrilled to find it.  By the way, later in the day I returned to the neighborhood and found the male!

**Behind a group of restaurants is a few retention ponds and a couple of dead trees.  On top of one snag was one of my favorite birds, the Red-headed Woodpecker pictured below.

**Our day always ends with a pizza-and-beer Count Supper.  John Martin puts on terrific slide show, that displays photos of each species, data for that species from all previous counts, and a running count of this year’s totals as each of the 11 team captains call out their numbers.  Nearly a hundred birders watch the display and “participate” with comments, explanations, memories of past counts and cheers when we beat an old total.  By the end of the tally, we could all see that our results had been terrific.  We listed 162 species for the day (I think that is a record high for us), Team 7 had 110 (our best total ever), and my group had 70.   The day was capped by the county’s first-ever record of SIX Black Scoters!

Of course, the Scoters were gone this morning when I went looking for them, but that’s birding.  You can’t win ‘em all.

Red-headed Woodpecker

He's worth a second look!