Something a little different -- Saturday birding

     I did a little birding in my local area yesterday, and had a lot of fun.  This post won't have any models in it -- just a description of the experience.

          If you put a dot at the intersection of Freese and Hanshaw Roads northeast of Ithaca, and draw a circle of about a mile radius around it, you get the picture of where I was birding.  Besides encompassing my own residence, I like this circle because it includes patches of woods (some rather contiguous with others allowing for some substantial amount of forested habitat from early successional stages up to woods that might be have at least 60-70 years worth of growth).  It also has agricultural fields (corn and soybean in particular) that have recently been harvested and are attracting lots of waterfowl and loafing gulls.  It includes the Freese Road garden plots and similar grassy and old field habitats.  It also includes a section of Fall Creek, the little pond at Liddel Bee Lab and the wetlands at the Lab of Ornithology. 

          I set out Saturday about 9am with the express purpose of trying to see if the NELSON’S SPARROW was still hanging around the little pond by the bee lab on Freese Road.  It had been reported just the day before, so I thought there was a good chance that I might run into it if I was careful and persistent.  I have to admit that I did look for this bird with my sons the day that Tom first reported it (it is only a half mile from my house).  I thought my fledgling birder boys might enjoy trying to see a bird that they had never encountered before.  I am fairly certain that I got two glimpses of the bird with enough diagnostic field marks to say that I saw the bird that day, but the only looks my boys got were of a small brownish bird, twice jumping up out of the tall dead grass, flying about ten feet, and diving back into cover. 

          So, yesterday I headed straight to the pond area.  It is becoming fairly easy to see where others are looking for the bird because of the human foot prints in the mud and the little paths that are now meandering through the tall, dead grass.  I really didn’t want to put on a one-man drive through the grass in an attempt to flush the bird for a quick view.  So, I surveyed the area from a little distance and decided to walk in to the bank of the pond and sit against one of the bluebird/tree swallow boxes to see if I could hear or see this sparrow without flushing it. 

Plans vs. Reality

           Of course I ended up flushing birds just getting to the bluebird/tree swallow box.  One of these was a largish sparrow with a longish, more or less rounded tail, that seemed relatively dark on the top side (do you like my scientific descriptions?).  Perhaps a lingering SONG SPARROW.  

          Another bird was smaller, plumper, but not fat, and not interested in flushing nearly as far as the first bird (which went well over 40 yards before diving back into cover).  This second bird only would go about five to eight feet before hiding again.  This bird decidedly was not the Nelson’s sparrow, however, as I did see it well enough to know it had a very clean, unmarked throat and breast, and a mostly unmarked face, with a couple, broad brownish stripes on its head, and a light-colored bill.  The rational birder in me was saying to pay attention to the fact that it is mid November, and that this must be a juvenile White-crowned sparrow.  But the guy looking at the bird through 10x binoculars at about 12 feet, kept saying that this bird is way too small and simply not the right proportions.  Plus, the face, including the entire area around the eyes and auriculars was unmarked in my view of the bird.  This birder in me kept asking the question, why can’t this be a really late Field Sparrow?  American Tree Sparrow also jumped into the rational side of my brain, and the shape and size of this bird was much more similar to that than a White-crowned for sure.  Still, the bill was all one shade of light (not two-toned like the rational birder in me would expect with a Tree Sparrow), and I did have a decent, straight-on (albeit brief) view of the breast, and saw nothing that looked remotely like a breast spot.  

Un-requited Inquisitiveness

          The inquisitive aspect in me certainly was piqued with this bird, but certainly was not ”peaked.”  I like it when the level of inquisitiveness I experience increases above that magical minimum level that I need to feel both satisfied, and like I have demonstrated to myself that, yes, I am a birder.  Yet another "sparrow spp". in my notebook. 

            I flushed a third sparrow just getting to the place I wanted to sit down to watch.  This little lighter brownish job (LLBJ) also only went about 10 feet at grass-top level before diving back into cover.  I couldn’t really notice anything else about this bird at the time.  So, I sat down to watch and listen.

Relaxed and Observant 

          There was plenty to keep my attention.  Small flocks of blackbirds (mostly RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS, with a few BROWN-HEADED COWBIRDS mixed in) were flying from north to south and then some coming back north again.  Over the almost square patch of woods to the west of this area, I saw a female AMERICAN KESTREL mobbing and rolling with a SHARP-SHINNED HAWK.  At different times, from one to four of the local AMERICAN CROWS would take offense to one of local RED-TAILED HAWKS perched nearby. 

          At one point about 15 twenty minutes into my sit, I heard a sharp, repeated call note approaching from above and behind me.  I turned around and found the bird in my binoculars.  It was fun to watch it come closer and ultimately land in a little bush just ten feet behind me.  This was without any doubt, a juvenile WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW.  I watched this bird in the bush for about a full minute until it flew to a different bush.  I feel like I got a good handle on its overall shape, and although it’s shape obviously changed as it altered it’s posture in the bush, it simply could not hide the fact that it is a relatively big, chunky, and longish sparrow.  This clearly was not the kind of sparrow as the second one I described above.

Like a Boy Scout -- Be prepared!

          At that point, I had not really seen or heard anything in the grass in front of me.  So, I decided to move on.  You can guess what happened.  I took just one step, and a sparrow flew up from in front of me, flew about seven feet, and landed on top of a little forb of some sort.  I got a really good look at it in profile for about 15 seconds.  A small compact sparrow, with a shortish tail.  Most striking was the orange wash on its breast, face, and even the undertones of its back feathers.  Substantial dark streaking on the orange breast, dark auriculars compared to the orange face, and thick stripes on its crown.  The last thing that seared into my brain before the bird jumped down into the thick over of dead grass was that its bill was decidedly un-sparrow-like.  It really reminded me of a meadowlark bill (and no, this was not a meadowlark!), sort of thick but long and pointed, not conical at all.  This really helped to accentuate a flat-headed appearance of the bird.  Think of a field sparrow or American tree sparrow with their rounded heads and little conical bills that come off of that round ball that is their head.  The NELSONS’S SPARROW has a really flat headed look, and then add this thick-based, but long, pointed bill to it and it gave a very different impression. 

Inquisitive and having a Sense of Discovery

          The inquisitive part of me was very satisfied with that observation.  Despite the fact that others found the bird and had reported it, I felt my own sense of discovery because I felt like I learned something new about a bird I had seen very, very infrequently before.  I walked on with a smile on my face.

          I was still relishing the experience only about 50 yards further on, when my subconscious mind started asking me what that BLUE JAY was squawking about.  I glanced to the north, and there only about 100 yards directly over my house (about a half mile away) I saw a huge, dark bird showing a slight dihedral as it soared/half glided into the south wind.  Even at a half mile it was clear that it was no turkey vulture.  The only question was which eagle it was. 

          The eagle closed the gap fairly quickly, and even flapped once or twice in the half mile between my house and where I was standing.  When I first put binoculars on it, I could see a lot of sunlight reflecting off the feathers on the top of the head of the GOLDEN EAGLE.  The bird ended up flying about 50 yards west of me and about 75 yards up.  I could clearly see a diffuse patching look to its underwing and undertail areas.  Not white patches as in a juvenile, but just the lighter patterns that occur still on older birds.  It’s flight feathers looked to me like a combination of a couple ages -- some brand new feathers and some older ones.  I think it likely was a second year bird although it is possible it was older. 

          When it passed at it’s closest it turned it’s head right toward me on the ground.  Through my binoculars, I almost felt like I could see my own reflection in the glint of it’s eye.  In his book “Birders: Tales of a Tribe,” author Mark Cocker writes about moments like this.  At least for some people, there is both the act of recognition (I know what the species is) and also an increasing sense of awareness and awe that you and this one bird have intersected while the bird is on an epic migration journey.  Cocker describes this as his sense of discovery.  It is as much about discovering something about yourself as it is in discovering the presence of a bird that isn’t common or abundant locally. 

          There are lots of different kinds of birds out there.  And, there are lots of different kinds of birders.  It’s fun discovering both kinds of diversity.

Jody Enck