8/23/13

Despite north winds today was slow, slowest day of the count, slower then the other day that was really slow. BUT THE WEATHER WAS BEAUTIFUL!

And it seems that BLTE have cleared out with zero seen today (note that the Indiana crew had over 1,000 before the front at Michigan City yesterday).

The big highlight of the day though was seeing one of the extremely rare Mitchel's Freshwater Sea Turtle-photo below! 

24 CANG
1 MALL (pictures available upon request)
7 GWTE
13 BWTE
122 DCCO (inc. a flock of 92)
1 KILL
2 SEPL
16 SAND
1 SPSA
1 LESA
4 SESA
1 BASA
2 STSA (two juvies that flew down the shoreline and almost landed before going south, only the second time Ive had STSA at Tiscornia!)
21 BOGU
3 CATE (a family group with a young one still begging food from the parents)
4  FOTE
40 COTE

Also had 1 OSPR when the winds went east for a hour.

                                                    Mitchel's Freshwater Sea Turtle!

8/22/13

Some birds flew by today.

But I had to end the count early due to thunderstorms, that whole end of a pier or standing on top of a dune thing really can suck during a storm.

8 MALL
3 NSHO
8 GWTE
35 BWTE
3 DCCO
1 KILL
6 LEYE
4 WILL (flock of juvies that never stopped, a really nice count for this late in the season)
16 SAND
 1 SPSA
2 LESA
1 SESA
1 BASA
1 PESA
11 BOGU
2 CATE
17 FOTE
182 COTE (while no big flocks went past, there was a steady flight of small groups)
102 BLTE (flocks of 36 and 40 carried the day's flight)

                                                                              B'wingers

 so fresh!

 

                                                                     Par-ty-tyme Willets!

                                                                                            Eastern Red Bat?
                                  A total of 15 bats came in today, including eight in the 7th hour!

8/21/13

sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

Rhoda did bring pizza.

 Pizza>Slow

Pizza>thewholeday

2 MALL
10 NSHO (one flock)
8 BWTE
2 DCCO
1 GBHE
2 KILL
1 GRYE
8 SAND
2 SPSA
1 LESA
4 BOGU
1 CATE
13 FOTE
15 COTE
97 BLTE (flocks of 10, 53, 34)

Hopefully the front thats approaching tonight pushes something new in for tomorrow

8/20/13

 Yay! The first day of the 2013 season!

 Sunny skies, temps in the 70's, and light S winds lead to what I was told was a "perfect day at the beach".

It kinda sucked for birds.

And I spilled peach crisp in my backpack....

2 BWTE

3 DCCO

1 SEPL

1 KILL

1 MAGO (a male that appeared in flight heading NW over the piers in the 7th hour, I dropped a whistle its way and got it to do a u-turn and make a pass past the pier before it headed SW. This represents the first MAGO for the count!)

1 SAND

10 BOGU

47 FOTE (a flock of 18 spent the afternoon feeding just off the pier, adults were a mix between full winter and ragged breeding plumage)

24 COTE

11 BLTE

Hello, is this thing on?

 

Season Two Begins!

Last of Winter

 Between birding and work, and sleep I've been neglecting this blog (oh the shame!). But here's a cliffnotes of the late winter. This late winter had one of the better duck flocks in the last few years, including the third highest count of WWSC (311!) in county history (the two higher counts both came from Tiscornia in the fall of 1965! Along with WWSC up the wazoo, LTDU had the highest count since the winter of 09/10, with a high count of 7,200+ offshore in late January. Several LTDU continue to spend extensive amounts of time feeding along the pier giving atypically close and fantastic looks. Up to two adult male, and two first winter male Surf Scoters were present in the flock, along with 1 ad. male Black Scoter and 1-3 females throughout the winter. Scaup, COGO, REDH, BUFF, and RBME had solid numbers as well, while the only Canvasbacks of the period were 2 in late February. RTLO were present in decent numbers all winter, while COLO were absent as expected. Gulling this winter sucked, with only 1 THGU and a couple different GLGU and GBGU the whole late winter period.

 

Oh, its 2013? Year Birdz!

 The first scan of Tiscornia this year resulted in a Western Grebe! It spent some time at the end of the piers, before (atypically) swimming up the channel and hanging out in the harbor area. Word has it the Holland WEGR was present today, and I doubt its one of the 3 seen yesterday along the Indiana lakefront. So it seems there's at least five WEGR on the southish end of Lake Michigan right now (where is the Clark's?). 

  The first vestiges of a duck flock is finally starting to form, but numbers and variety is still low. New to it were three adult male WWSC.

 Gulls sucked today. The GBBG and GLGU's that have been present for over a week were no where to be found, and numbers in general were down from earlier in the week.

  Ice has yet to form on the lake, and until that happens things will continue to be slow out here.

      haha! photos = no writeup!

 

     crappy RBME photo

      People Of Tiscornia 2013