Awesome birding day on Saturday, 4/28/07

I went down to southern Ohio with my birding group, the Avid Birders, on Saturday. We left Columbus at 5:30am and started birding at the marina/golf course just outside Shawnee State Forest in Scioto County. This was my first birding trip to this location, which is a forested set of Appalachian foothill-type ridges.

I picked up a life bird on this trip, Yellow-Throated Vireo (#346), which isn't actually all that rare but is one of those birds that just eludes you for a while. I'm sure now that I've seen one, I will now see them everywhere, like I did with Blue-Headed Vireo last year. I also picked up a state bird, American Bittern, at a little wetland northwest of the Pickaway County Airport on the way back.

I had 18 species of warbler, pretty good list. I only heard Black-throated Greens, Ovenbirds, and Northern Parulas. In addition, I missed a couple warblers that others saw: Golden-winged Warbler (@#$%%@#!!!) and Yellow-breasted Chat.

Besides the birds, we had a good day for wildflowers and reptiles, too. After the main group split up, 7 of us went over to a nature preserve in Adams county which features lots of rare plants, like Indian paintbrush and Pink Lady's Slipper orchids, and I saw a fence lizard and the snake guy in the group found us a couple of Black King Snakes, which were pretty friendly. I took a couple pictures on my camera phone.

Pink Lady's Slipper

Black King Snake

In all, I had 71 species and birded for about 12 hours (including drive time). I added 31 species to my year list and 34 to my state year list, for totals of 165 for the year and 160 for Ohio.

Here's my list for the day (year birds in bold, Ohio year birds in italics):

Wood Duck	2
Blue-winged Teal	2
Ring-necked Pheasant	1
American Bittern	1
Great Blue Heron	1
Turkey Vulture	12
Broad-winged Hawk	2
Red-tailed Hawk	1
Killdeer	1
Greater Yellowlegs	2
Lesser Yellowlegs	5
Solitary Sandpiper	1
Wilson's Snipe	5
Chimney Swift	2
Ruby-throated Hummingbird	1
Red-bellied Woodpecker	1
Downy Woodpecker	1
Northern Flicker	1
Pileated Woodpecker	1
Eastern Phoebe	2
White-eyed Vireo	2
Yellow-throated Vireo	1
Red-eyed Vireo	10
Blue Jay	2
American Crow	1
Horned Lark	10
Purple Martin	10
Tree Swallow	3
Northern Rough-winged Swallow	1
Barn Swallow	6
Carolina Chickadee	2
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher	3
Wood Thrush	3
American Robin	10
Gray Catbird	1
Brown Thrasher	1
European Starling	X
Blue-winged Warbler	11
Northern Parula	2
Yellow Warbler	2
Chestnut-sided Warbler	3
Yellow-rumped Warbler	1
Black-throated Green Warbler	6
Blackburnian Warbler	1
Yellow-throated Warbler	2
Pine Warbler	3
Prairie Warbler	6
Cerulean Warbler	1
Black-and-white Warbler	1
American Redstart	15
Worm-eating Warbler	1
Ovenbird	12
Louisiana Waterthrush	1
Kentucky Warbler	1
Hooded Warbler	2
Scarlet Tanager	5
Eastern Towhee	15
Chipping Sparrow	1
Song Sparrow	2
White-throated Sparrow	1
White-crowned Sparrow	1
Rose-breasted Grosbeak	1
Blue Grosbeak	1
Indigo Bunting	1
Red-winged Blackbird	X
Eastern Meadowlark	1
Common Grackle	X
Brown-headed Cowbird	2
Orchard Oriole	2
Baltimore Oriole	1
American Goldfinch	2

Blue Winged Teal and friends

I stopped by Glacier Ridge Metro Park this morning after checking out a project area for work. Since I had a nice little digital camera with me, I thought I would take some photos, and lucked upon a group of Blue-winged Teal. There also happened to be a Pied-Billed Grebe with them as well.


Besides the ducks, I managed to add a couple birds to my year list while I was there: Barn Swallow and Spotted Sandpiper. I couldn't get any photos of those birds, but did get this handsome Red-winged Blackbird.


Looks like the weather is going to be great for my big bird trip on Saturday to Shawnee State Forest. Should be loaded with neotropical migrants!

numbers 344 and 345

On Saturday, I added two birds to my life list: Black-Necked Stilt and Tricolored Heron. I went out with three guys from my avids bird group to see the stilt, which was reported on Thursday to the Ohio bird sighting list. The stilt was hanging around a lake in Hueston Woods State Park in Preble County, near Oxford. We got to the location and the bird wasn't there at first, but another birder pointed out a Tricolored Heron hanging out near a small island. We got great looks through our scopes at this bird while waiting to see if the stilt would show up. Finally, I saw it fly in. It landed on a spit of land and began feeding, walking about on its insect-like thin pink legs and picking food from the surface of the water. So, two for one!

I also added a number of birds to the year list on Saturday as well, including Savannah Sparrow, Yellow-Throated Warbler, Virginia Rail, Sora, Rough-winged Swallow and Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher.

After we got back to Columbus, I made a side trip to a local metropark that has a good wetland for shorebirds and ticked off Lesser Yellowlegs and Pectoral Sandpiper for the year list as well. Next weekend is our monthly Avids trip, and we will be going to Shawnee State Forest for migrants - should pick up an easy dozen or more warblers there!

Woodcocks

Last night I ended up working late, so I decided to head up to a local metropark after work to catch the courtship display of the American Woodcock, something I had yet to experience. I arrived about 8pm at the park, and waited around as twilight accumulated.

At 8:30, I heard my first peent calls. About four or five individual woodcocks were calling, and by 8:40, the calls became closer and closer together, about 4 seconds apart. Then at quarter to nine, I could hear the distinct whistling of the feathers of the male woodcocks as they took flight. I looked in vain to see them, but they quickly gain altitude and it was getting dark, so I headed back to my car. On the way back, I heard a woodcock calling nearby and then heard it take off. I craned my head to the sky looking for it, and then there it was, zooming back to the ground to again begin calling. What a treat!

The Onion sets its sights on birders

This piece appeared in the online edition of the Onion this week:
"The Sibley Guide to Birds Has Clearly Misidentified the Dark-Eyed Junco"
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/the_sibley_guide_to_birds_has

A disclaimer for anyone who still doesn't know: The Onion is satire.

The piece is laugh-out loud funny and had to have been written by a birder or someone who is in regular contact with one. I admit I almost reached for my Sibley's to check on juncos, but of course I don't have it with me.

weather woes

The cold front that has dumped snow over the Midwest just brought us flurries and cold temperatures here in central Ohio, but still put a damper on birding. I managed to get out late Sunday afternoon, with the goal being locating a Pileated Woodpecker for my year list. Unfortunately I struck out on that bird, but did see a Hermit Thrush and a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.

I've been following Michael Collin's Pearl River Ivory-billed Woodpecker page for a while (fishcrow.com) - he has a couple of blurry videos of what he says is an Ivorybill. I'm pretty sure he's seen the bird, but he's been stymied by low quality video that is hard to interpret from an outside perspective. I personally think that Mr. Collins should gracefully accept that his video is not going to convince anyone and keep the focus on acquiring a definitive image. He does have pretty good ideas for the search, such as mounting a camera on the midpoint of his kayak paddle, which means he can react very quickly to a sighting and record it. I wish him all the luck in the world in his quest, but I also hope he can tone down his rhetoric without losing his passion.

Best nest cam ever

The Old Dutch Tavern in Sandusky, Ohio, has an active bald eagle nest out back. The owner has installed a camera on his roof aimed at the nest and has a live feed playing on one of the bar's TVs. How cool is that?

Welcome to Semipalmated Llama, a blog about birding and related topics

Howdy! My name is Andy Sewell and I started this blog as a way to specifically share my experiences as a birder. The blog will mainly focus on my birding trips, what I've seen, and my thoughts on birding topics in general, along with some minor deviations from the topic.

I live in Columbus, Ohio and am a member of a group of birders associated with Columbus Audubon known as the Avids (short for Avid Birders). I'm an archaeologist, which gets me out in the field as part of my job, and I'm known to always have a small pair of binoculars on me.

I first started birding when I was in fourth grade, but dropped it as a hobby about the time I started driving. I birded infrequently off and on through the next 15 years, until a chance encounter with an enthusiastic birder at a conference in Oceanside, California, a few years ago re-ignited the spark, and I took to birding again with a passion.

To date, I have 343 birds on my life list, the most recent being Fish Crow. I am not a fanatical lister, but I do use the eBird application provided by Cornell for entering my sightings, which conveniently allows me to see ABA, AOU and World lists as well as state and county lists, which is fun.