8/31/12

Today started out with the strongest winds of the count (code 4), but they were SW. It was a surprisingly good day, likely due to the alleged approaching cold front (that never arrived)

4 MALL
35 NOPI
27 NSHV
22 GWTE
1468 BWTE (a impressive first three hours (743 in the second hour), only 65 in the last five hours of the count. This is a new day highcount for Tiscornia (it beats out the 1004 on 9/21/11)
7 DCCO
1 GBHE
1 AGPL (adult in moult)
2 SEPL
3 RUTU
10 SAND
2 LESA
1 SESA
1 RNPH (a juvie offshore, a excellent spot by Warren Whaley who also brought muffins)
38 BOGU (mixed in with presumably the same offshore gull flock from the last three days)
1 LIGU (a cracking adult that spent the day offshore with the gull flock)
46 FOTE (new highcount)
457 COTE (352 in the last hour of the count)

17 BLTE

8/30/12

Code 4 SE winds started the day off and slowly died and shifted due south throughout the day. Needless to say despite the blue skies and warm temps this was a uninspiring day of counting, until the last half hour when I heard a Whimbrel flying by, I whistled in response and soon had it circle and briefly land on the pier before walkers flushed it and it headed south.

36 MALL
2 NSHV
1 BUFF (female type, really early)
3 DCCO
1 BBPL (moulting ad.)
5 RUTU
17 SAND
2 LESA
27 BOGU
730 RBGU (working offshore)
250 HEGU
11 FOTE
8 COTE

Also has a Common Nighthawk come in off the lake (third fall record), at 1/2 mile out it sure looked like a jaeger...

8/29/12

Code three east winds started the day off, but by the end of the count they had died and switched W.  Good verity, but low numbers.

9 CAGO

4 MALL

1 GWTE

7 BWTE

21 DCCO

1 GRHE

1 GBHE

1 AGPL (really early for here)

2 SEPL

2 RUTU

16 SAND

3 LESA

1 BBSA

1 PAJA (int. morph juvie, spent the last five hours of the count working the offshore gull flock)

12 BOGU

580 RBGU (large mixed flock feeding scope distance offshore all day)

230 HEGU (ditto)

17 FOTE

8 COTE

26 BLTE (one flock)

--

Nonwaterbirds

2 PEFA (one buzzed the shorebirds on the pier ten feet from where I was standing!)

1 WHIP (by far the best bird of the day, and maybe the season, it buzzed the end of the pier and spent the next 10 minutes flying along the pier, freaking the shorebirds out and briefly landing before heading inland. I was initially stumped by what the hell it was (this is the second whip Ive ever seen), as its flight style and gizz was like a SSHA, but so clearly not a SSHA)

MOWA, WIWA, MAWA, NAWA, PAWA, YEWA, RBNU- a nice flock working around the parkinglot in the mid morning. 

Also had a Silver-haired Bat spend several hours sleeping behind my chair at the base of the lighthouse.

look at the eye shine, you don't see much off that in normal waterbirds!

 

 gliding, get the accipiter gizz?

 In some places this would be called a CONW....

8/28/12

Not quite the level of movement as the day before, but there was some quality birds and the best duck verity so far this fall (woo!).


Highlights

3 CAGO
4 GADW
1 ABDU
20 MALL
16 NSHV
9 GWTE
9 BWTE
1 PBGR
110 DCCO (biggest flight of the season, 102 were one flock though)
1 GBHE
1 SORA (this one was trying to pull a murrelet and was floating off the end of the pier. It eventually drifted further offshore and was eating by a HEGU. What the hell though, after never seeing a Sora in the water here, two in 2 days is just wack)
1 KILL
3 AMAV (one was flushed by a photographer before I could get a pic, it flew south and spent the rest of the count south of the south pier where it was joined by two more) 
2 RUTU
18 SAND (starting to build)
3 LESA
1 SESA
2 BASA
3 phalarope sp (distant)
1 LTJA (baller light morph juvie worked its way north through the offshore gulls early in the morning. Good looking bird through the scope)
20 BOGU
12 FOTE (numbers starting to drop)
66 COTE
144 BLTE (bam, another good day. The total was made between two groups-17 and 126!)

Also, in the 7th hour a freighter came in and a Song Sparrow and A Blackpoll Warbler flew off it.

8/27/12

 Rain all night, and a light cold front that passed through mid-morning set the stage for the biggest push this season. Over 1900 birds for the day!

2 AMWI
10 MALL
1 NOPI
20 NSHO
40 GWTE
851 BWTE (a surprising early season flight. Three solid hours of teal)
3 PBGR
2 EAGR (2 in basic plumage well offshore, but what the hell? There had been NO August records for this species in at least the last ten years, and now three in a week?!?)
31 DCCO
1 SORA (dropped in on the riverside of the pier, and the proceeded to swim up river along the edge of the pier!)
1 BBPL
8 SEPL
1 PIPL (first count record, briefly present on the beach before a fricking douchebag ran his dogs though the gull flock flushing everything including the PIPL. Then he pulled out a pair of swaro's and scanned the flying birds. EFFING JACKHOLE. Photo below. If you know who this is, please kick him the balls)
1 RUTU
2 GRYE (first of the season)
2 SPSA (hard to get in the fall)
20 SAND
3 SESA
1 BASA
2 RNPH (juvies, one in the first hour fed off the pier, one in the 6th was seen in flight well offshore)
37 BOGU
27 FOTE
540 COTE (record flight, equals a quarter of last seasons total!)
233 BLTE (record flight included three adults
 still in breeding plumage. 84 in the 5th hour!)

 

This is the tool (I mean "birder") flushed the PIPL when he ran his dogs through the gull flock. He has swaro's so you know he's serious and legit. And a asshole, he's probably a FIP too.  

8/26/12

SE winds going SW, as a frontal line slowly moved across the lake. Over all there wasn't much movement today, however 8 species of shorebird and the first ballin LIGU of the season made things interesting.

26 BWTE
13 DCCO
2 GRHE (record highcount for Tiscornia) 
1 GBHE
1 SEPL
2 RUTU
1 WILL (juvie, last seen getting chased be a FOTE)
1 WHIM (present on the beach for all of 5 minutes.)
25 HUGO (5th hour, buzzed the beach before going south. New county high count. HELL YEAH)
6 SAND
2 LESA
5 SESA
1 LIGU (BALLER)
9 BOGU
12 FOTE
17 COTE

5 BLTE

8/25/12

 East winds going south and dying throughout the day resulted in the best movement off the season, and the first (and early) teal flight of the fall.

    4 MALL
    1 NOPI
  15 NSHV (? right code?)
    1 GWTE
376 BWTE (178 in the 5th hour)
  27 DCCO
    1 GBHE
    1 KILL
    1 SEPL
    2 AMAV (on the beach at dawn)
    1 RUTU
    5 SAND
    1 LESA
    3 SAND
   1 Jaeger sp (immature PAJA type)
 12 BOGU
   1 CATE
 26 FOTE
 32 COTE
 69 BLTE (record day count, 5 flocks ranging from six to 24)

 there was also a decent amount of warblers coming in off the lake and while most were just chip notes in the sky, I was able to pin ID's on 1 BTG, 1 Maggie, 1 fe B&W, and a few TEWA.

 
  
   

8/24/12

The 24th came through again!

East winds at dawn shifted to south slowly dropping from a 3 to a 1.
The day ended with 8 species of shorebirds!

 3 BWTE
26 DCCO
 1 GBHE
 1 BBPL (ad in breeding)
10 SEPL (including a flock of 8)
 1 LEYE
 1 RUTU
12 SAND
 1 LESA
 5 SESA
 1 RNPH (juvie spent 4 hours feeding off the end of the pier)
18 HUGO (a flock of 2 and 16! A year to the day since we had the last HUGO's out here! Also, I think the 16 represent a new county highcount!)
22 FOTE
21 COTE (flocks of 2, 18, 11) 
 3 BLTE

Oh, hey

8/23/12

 Rather slow, however with 27 FOTE today, I've now broken the the entire season total from last year!

 Other then that, in the second hour two pale rumped swallows were seen feeding 1/4 mile or more out over the lake. In the next hour they came inshore and made a couple passes past the pier so I took some crappy photos. And then they departed (along with the Barn Swallow flock) inland.

Bird A was a classic adult CLSW, except for it having a red patch on the forehead (SW US?). 

Bird B (pictured below) was slightly wrong for a CLSW.  

 

If this was November this would be a easy ID. But its August, sooooooo things get complicated. Going off the ratty plumage, and (what looks like to me) wing moult (compare to this juvie CLSW from the 10th), Pyle says this is a adult bird (assuming I'm reading it right), so we can eliminate allllllllllllll the  variations within juvenile CLSW and go straight to adult pale rumped swallows. 

 Which leaves us with two options, adult Cliff or adult Cave Swallow. The pale throat, face, auriculars, and lores all point to this bird being a Cave Swallow!

 The only problem with that is all the CASW records from Michigan are from Oct. 16-Nov. 21 (the only Tiscornia records are five on Oct. 27 2010, and one on Nov. 9, 2011). And Indiana's only records are from November.

 So now what? 

 Well, I got a pizza.

The pier really sucks when you've got to pee.

8/22/12

yup. the winds went south today.

Highlightz

2 BWTE
2 GWTE
6 GBHE
2 SEPL
1 RUTU
7 SAND
2 LESA
5 SESA
1 PESA (far rarer in fall the BBSA, 1 vs 5 last fall)
1 BBSA (rather confiding, see below)
1 Jaeger sp. (probably a LTJA, but needed to be 1/2 mile closer to be certain)
4 BOGU (on par with last fall, buuut what happened to the late August flocks from a few years ago?)
2 CATE 
33 FOTE (with the 31 yesterday we're now less then ten away from matching the ENTIRE TOTAL FROM LAST FALL. BOOM.)
25 COTE (third day in a row with a double digit count, not too shabby considering that none were recorded in the first four days of the count last year and we're still a week+ away from the big push)

Now granted, I've already racked up 24 count hours this season and while that is diffidently boosting the overall count, the vast majority of the terns have passed by in the morning. So yeah.

8/21/12

I hate it when my tripod legs are loose.

Why is she straddling him?
Why are his shorts on his head?
Why are they doing this at 2:00 in the afternoon?

8/20/12

 woo, the count started today.

 

   1 EARED GREBE (swam in around 1230, spent the rest of the count feeding 200-300yds off   
     the pier. first count record, and the first August county record in at least TEN YEARS)

   7 Great Egrets

   4 Baird's Sandpipers,

   4 RN Phalaropes (flyby flock)

  21 Forsters Terns

  31 Common Terns

 and 8 hours worth of other crap

Tomorrow marks the start of the 2012 Fall Waterbird Count at the University of Tiscornia! In the meantime, here's the Fall 2011 Waterbird Count report.

end of July