As this spring comes to an end in a few days, I was fortunate enough to add not only two more warblers to my 2020 list, but two new life birds! I’ve birded throughout the western US, but haven’t done much of anything in the Southeast. Therefore when people started seeing a Hooded Warbler and a Kentucky Warbler in Newton Hills State Park this spring, I tried three times to try to find them, to no avail.
Both are extreme rarities in South Dakota. The closest are where Hooded Warblers normally breed is Missouri or Illinois, hundreds of miles to the south and east. Kentucky Warblers are normally a bit closer, with small breeding populations in southeastern Nebraska and southeastern Iowa, but like Hooded Warblers, they’re just not found in South Dakota. Earlier this week, it was reported that both species were still hanging around Newton Hills, so Thursday night I made the trek down, not really expecting to see them.
The Hooded Warbler though was right in the same dead tree along a trail where he’s been often seen by others this spring! He sang a few times from the top of the tree, then flitted off to another more distant perch. I didn’t see him again after that initial sighting, but I heard his singing a few more times as I continued up the trail.
Success! A lifer! I would have been very happy for the day had that been the only bird I saw, but I kept going down the trail to where the Kentucky Warbler had been seen. From the reports it didn’t seem like he was quite as loyal to a given spot as the Hooded was, so I didn’t know exactly where to look for him. I was only 100-150 yards away from where I saw and photographed the Hooded Warbler when I heard it…a series of warbling phrases, somewhat similar to an Ovenbird, but without the Ovenbird’s rise in volume an intensity as the song went along. It was a sustained, loud series of phrases, repeated multiple times. But where? It seemed like after initially hearing the bird, it retreated further into the forest, as I heard the song again, but seemingly quite a bit more distant.
I didn’t hear the song for a few minutes, so thought I’d continue down the trail. After going down the trail for 20 minutes or so and not seeing or hearing anything interesting, I started heading back, and as I approached the area where I’d first heard the Kentucky Warbler, I heard it again. MUCH closer. And again! And…there he was, practically right above my head! I initially got some really good binocular views of him, then set out to try to photograph him. He wasn’t particularly shy, flying from perch to perch, foraging a bit, stopping to sing, then moving on, but he was always pretty high up in the canopy, and often moving. Finally I did manage some decent long-distance record shots that clearly identified it as a Kentucky Warbler.
Two lifers! Within just a hundred or so yards! The two warblers also brought up my warbler total for the spring to 26!! A terrific warbler migration by any measure. I know some other birders saw a few additional species this spring, but all are pretty good finds in South Dakota (Cape May, Black-throated Blue, Connecticut).
Here are a few pics of the Hooded and Kentucky Warblers (not great but hey…lifers!), as well as a montage of the 26 species of warblers I saw this spring.
Hooded Warbler, perched at the top of a tall dead tree at Newton Hills State Park.Kentucky Warbler, moving along a branch and foraging.A montage of the 26 warbler species I saw this spring, in just two South Dakota counties (Minnehaha and Lincoln)
Well, I said I’d not blog for a few weeks…the reason? We had a 3-week family vacation in Australia! It wasn’t a dedicated birding trip (my wife and son would rebel if it were!), but I certainly did fit in some birding while there. There’s always something magical about birding somewhere new, whether it’s just in another state or halfway around the world. Birds that may be common are strange and exotic to a new visitor, and your life list increases with almost every bird you see.
I had done some research before leaving, and while any Australian bird was a welcome sighting, there were two things I really wanted to see. First was the incredible variety of birds in the parrot family, something we just don’t have a correlate for in the US. Secondly? I REALLY wanted to see a Southern Cassowary. More than any other bird, a Cassowary is the walking manifestation of “strange and exotic” for a US birder, a living relic that looks as if it’s straight out of the days of the dinosaur. Southern Cassowary are hard to miss if you come across one, given they are the second heaviest bird on earth (up to 190 pounds) and can be over 6-feet tall! However, with loss of their rainforest habitat in Australia, Indonesia, and New Guinea, the total wild population is only 10,000 to 20,000, with only 1,500 to 2,000 in Australia (where it is considered endangered). Still I was hoping against hope that we would be able to catch of glimpse of the massive birds.
Over the three weeks, we visited three general locations: 1) Sydney and the surrounding area, including Blue Mountains National Park, 2) Bellingen area, including Coffs Harbour and Dorrigo National Park, and 3) Port Douglas/Cairns, in the tropical northeastern corner of Australia. The visit to the tropics was the last part of our trip, and it was there where we’d potentially have a chance to see a Southern Cassowary. For our first day in the Port Douglas area, we drove northward into the famed Daintree National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage sight. A description of Daintree from Wikipedia:
Daintree National Park is valued because of its exceptional biodiversity. It contains significant habitat for rare species and prolific birdlife. The name is derived from the Daintree River, which was named by George Elphinstone Dalrymple, an early explorer of the area, after his friend Richard Daintree. Much of the national park is covered by tropical rainforest.[ The Greater Daintree Rainforest has existed continuously for more than 110 million years, making it possibly the oldest existing rainforest .
We wanted to make a day of driving as far north into the park as you (reasonably) can, to Cape Tribulation. We left early that morning, arriving at the Daintree River and taking the only mode of transportation possible to get into the northern section of the Park…the Daintree River ferry. Once across the river, the road remains paved up to Cape Tribulation, but it’s a very narrow road winding through the rainforest, with little traffic for most of that stretch. It’s a hell of a drive through some of the densest, most ancient rainforest on the planet. We took our time driving up to Cape Tribulation, stopping at any point of interest or short hike that we could find.
That morning at about 11:00 we pulled into an area that provided a small parking area and a short hike into the rainforest. Unfortunately part of the trail was being worked on, and we were only able to walk half a mile or less before returning to the parking area. Up until that point, I admit I was a little disappointed in the birdlife. In one of the most revered rainforest habitats on the planet, I’d seen little birdlife on our short hikes and stops, and this stop was no different. We got back into the car, and started to leave the parking area to continue the drive to Cape Tribulation. However, as we rounded a corner heading back to the main road, we saw it…Cassowary! There in front of us at the edge of a clearing near the road was the massive bird, a mere 20 yards away! A Cassowary is considered to be just about the most dangerous bird on the planet, with the size and disposition to quickly spoil the day (and life!) of a careless birder. However, I admit upon sighting that bird that caution was the last thing on my mind. I pulled over, grabbed the camera, and got out to try and grab some photos.
We watched the bird for perhaps 20 minutes. For most of that time, it was slowly moving through the rainforest just off the road, obscured by thick vegetation. I followed on foot, staying on the road and trying to maintain a healthy distance, hoping at some point to get a better look. Finally we were rewarded when the Cassowary started to move towards the road…it was going to cross right in front of us! It casually stepped out of the forest in front of us and slowly walked across the road before disappearing into the vegetation on the other side. That was the last we saw of the bird.
I was so excited and into the moment that I didn’t really think much about what was happening…until after the bird disappeared. CASSOWARY! We’d just seen a living dinosaur at incredibly close range! Then came the goosebumps and appreciation for what we’d just witnessed. Even if the trip had ended at that moment I would have come home a very happy birder. Below are some photos of the encounter. It turns out the Cassowary’s of Australia weren’t done with us on this trip (more in a later blog post).
The best look we had of the Cassowary while it was foraging in the forest. For most of the first 15 minutes of the encounter, the bird was moving through rather thick vegetation, with few unobstructed views. I was thrilled when it briefly moved across this small clearing, offering a relatively clean view. However, just a few moments later it was clear that it was about to cross the road right in front of us. The Cassowary first poked its head out of the forest, looking out across the open space and giving us a glance. Was it going to come out, or head back into the vegetation?The Cassowary emerged from the forest, paused and pecked at a few things along the side of the road, and then slowly walked across the road, disappearing into the forest on the other side. A perfectly clear, unobstructed view of a Southern Cassowary! Given how much my hands were shaking during the encounter I wasn’t sure if any of the photos would turn out. Was thrilled to see I did manage to capture some sharp photos to help document the encounter.
A new state bird! Not a super-rarity, but not one you see in South Dakota much. It’s always nice to have a fellow birder in the area find a rarity, report it online, and have it be within 10 miles of your home! It’s even nicer when you make the short drive and the bird is still in the same place.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to easily tell it apart from all the mallards in the area, but it stood out from the moment I got there. Darker, more evenly colored plumage, and a bill that really distinguishes it from the female Mallards. One reason to love birding…I sure wasn’t expecting a new state bird when I woke up this morning!
American Black Duck, the first I’ve seen in South Dakota.
Comparison with a female Mallard. Pretty obvious when you see them side-by-side, with the darker, more evenly colored plumage, and that distinctive yellowish bill.
Eurasian Tree Sparrows! In my freakin’ yard!! News at 11:00! More later!!
EDIT: The story…I WAS going to go work in the office today, but woke up in the middle of the night with a massive headache. I thought I’d take it easy and work at home today. About 10:45 this morning, I looked out the sunroom window. I saw a bird in the back of the yard that looked…odd. I grabbed the binoculars, and as I started to focus on it, the bird flew…right towards me, landing in the crabapple standing 10 feet from the window. Immediately you could see it was something different…it was NOT a House Sparrow! It was a Eurasian Tree Sparrow!
I gawked for a few seconds, and then grabbed my camera that fortunately was only a few feet away. As I started snapping photos, ANOTHER Eurasian Tree Sparrow popped up in the same tree! One seemed to be following the other. At first, I thought they were both male birds, but only because I assumed they had a sexual dimorphism similar to House Sparrows. Only later did I find that no, both males and females are similar in appearance. Given the way the two birds moved together, with one always following the other, my best guess is that they were a male and female.
They stayed in the tree for perhaps 1 1/2 minutes, during which I took as many photos as I could. During the rest of the day, there were only two other, brief sightings in my yard (one bird each time).
Why is this a big deal? They DO look somewhat similar to our everyday House Sparrow. However, Eurasian Tree Sparrows have a unique history. A small number were released near St. Louis, Missouri in 1870 by a landowner who wanted to replicate the bird life of his native Europe. IN the 148 years since then, Eurasian Tree Sparrows haven’t expanded their range much beyond their original release location. They have still almost exclusively been found in far western Illinois, far eastern Missouri, and far southeastern Iowa. In recent years, stray sightings have occurred outside this range, including areas as close as Minnesota.
But until the last 2 weeks, no live Eurasian Tree Sparrow had ever been seen in South Dakota. A couple of weeks ago, the Small family in Vermillion saw an individual bird…the first live Eurasian Tree Sparrows ever seen in the state (a deceased bird was once found)!! The two birds in my yard today thus represent only the 2nd time the species has been seen in the state.
Pretty cool!! Here’s hoping the two are a mating pair, and that they stick around my yard for the summer.
Yeah, a month since a post. It’s been a bad month on multiple fronts, wasn’t in much of a mood to bird, rockhound, or blog. It HAS been a really nice year for some of the more uncommon winter bird visitors in South Dakota though, so this morning I went out and about, just around Brandon and Sioux Falls.
A nice morning! The highlight were a number of White-winged Crossbills. They are a nomadic species, found in one place one year, gone the next. They are pretty rare visitors to our neck of the woods, but one place they can occasionally be found is Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Sioux Falls. It’s an old cemetery, with some really huge, old spruce and other evergreens. The spruce have a really thick crop of cones this year, which is what attracts the Crossbills. A really busy morning for birds in the cemetery, not only the rare White-winged Crossbills, but scads of Pine Siskins, and at least a dozen Common Redpolls as well. There are entire winters that go by where I don’t see those 3 species, so it’s been a really nice treat this winter.
Some photos, including a few from around the yard recently…
A White-winged Crossbill hanging out in a spruce tree. They were really active this morning, moving from tree to tree in mixed flocks with Redpolls, Pine Siskins, and a few nuthatches. The problem was their preference to forage near the top of the massive spruce trees! I had to be patient to get one low enough for a photo.
Another White-winged Crossbill, foraging in the same place as the previous photo.
The male Northern Cardinal that visits my yard every day. Like clockwork, both a male and a female show up in the last 20 minutes of daylight, and occasionally at other times as well.
A Common Redpoll eating the seeds in the catkins that dangle from my paper birch in the back yard. They LOVE paper birch catkins, and already this winter have pretty much finished all the catkins of the tree. This is only the 3rd winter (in over 20+ years in Brandon) where we’ve had Redpolls visit.
The female Northern Cardinal that always visits in the evening.
One of the scads of Pine Siskins in my yard. I’ve occasionally had 1 or 2 come to the feeder in winter. I’ve NEVER had them like this. They have been by far the most common bird in my yard, even outnumbering all the goldfinches that love my thistle feeder. There have been times I look out and there are 50 or more, hanging out in my paper birch, and foraging at my feeders.
Great Kiskadee sitting on a roosting box the landowners built. Alas, even such heroic efforts weren’t enough to save this tropical bird from a South Dakota winter.
Not exactly surprising, given its normal habitat, but the Great Kiskadee that was found hanging around a farmstead near Volga, South Dakota since at least August, was found dead yesterday. The landowners first noticed one, and maybe up to three, in August. They weren’t aware of how rare a find it was, so it wasn’t until November that the birding community found out. One Great Kiskadee was once found in central Kansas. A few have been found in Oklahoma. But South Dakota? In winter?
The bird hung on into the new year, which is by itself a minor miracle for a bird of the tropics. We’ve had a very snowy winter so far, but the Kiskadee survived thanks to the heroic efforts of the landowners who fed it mealworms, minnows, catfood, suet, and anything else it would eat. In the end though…it’s damned hard to expect a tropical bird to survive a South Dakota winter. It hasn’t been THAT cold, but no matter whether the bird had food to eat, there are basic physiological tolerances that were no doubt exceeded.
Bummer…I do feel bad for the family who tried to keep it alive. They were very proud of “their” bird and did a nice job keeping it alive as long as they did. People from all across the region got the chance to see this incredibly rare tropical visitor, right in the heart of a northern Plains winter.
This is a range map for the Pine Siskin. The closest they’re supposed to be to here this time of year would be northern Minnesota or the Black Hills.
My office has been under construction for nearly 2 months now, and my temporary office is, uh…not ideal. It’s an open cube, shared with 2 other people, 6 feet from the bathroom doors. Lovely…and hard to work when you’re used to your own office with a door you can shut. Because of that, I’ve been working at home most of the time.
I had an unexpected surprise today while working at home. I went into the kitchen to get a drink, looked out the patio doors at the thistle (niger) feeder, and saw a Pine Siskin. June 2nd? A Pine Siskin in southeast South Dakota? It wasn’t even something on my radar, so I had to do a double take, and check it out at close range just to be sure. Pine Siskins are something you’d only expect in the winter around here, and even though they can be pretty locally common, I rarely get them at my feeders.
The map above shows the supposed range for a Pine Siskin. Strange! A nice surprise, and actually after checking my eBird list for the year, I hadn’t seen one yet this year. June 2nd…not the date I’d expect to see my first Pine Siskin here!
A Blue-winged Warbler seen at Newton Hills State Park in South Dakota. Most sources would consider it to be very rare for the area, or an out-of-range vagrant. Thanks to “citizen scientists”, I think our understanding of bird distributions is going to be much improved in the coming years.
I visited Newton Hills State Park this week. It’s a wonderful place to bird, and rarely fails to produce some interesting birds, particularly given that its an oasis of forest in a vast plain of corn and soybeans. While walking along a path I heard what is now a familiar song, a buzzy quiet song that sometimes sounds like half insect, half bird. Soon the source the song popped up on the top of a nearby cedar…a Blue-winged Warbler. I was able to take quite a few decent photos of him before I moved on to find other quarry.
What’s always interesting about that spot in Newton Hills, and that species, is that they’re generally assumed NOT to be there. Oh, among local birders, that particular spot is well known as “the” place to find a Blue-winged Warbler in South Dakota. However, if you look at field guides or other sources of bird information that provide range maps, southeastern South Dakota is either on the very extreme edge of the Blue-winged Warbler’s range, or it’s outside their normal breeding range. Despite that, most years you can find a couple of pairs of Blue-winged Warblers breeding in this corner of Newton Hills State Park.
As always, I recorded the Blue-winged Warbler sighting in eBird, along with all the other birds I saw on that day. If you’re not an eBird user, when you report a “rare” or unusual bird, the software flags it, and makes you enter a bit a detail about the sighting. To further verify the identification, you can upload a photo that you may have taken of the bird. EBird flagged Blue-winged Warbler as rare and unusual for the area, so I added a blurb about the very clear sighting, and also later uploaded a photo to accompany the report.
I’m in the habit now of entering eBird sightings most of the time when I go birding, but I’m still surprised sometimes when eBird flags a sighting as rare and unusual. It does make you realize how incomplete our understanding is for even the most basic of characteristics of a given bird species…where they can be found. There have been a number of times where I’ve casually entered a species in eBird, and have been surprised when eBird has flagged it as rare for the area. Many times, it’s a species I’ve found in that area quite consistently.
I’ve brought up eBird here before, but as I photographed and reported what many sources consider to be a “non-existent” species for this part of the country, it does make you realize the power of “citizen science” and what a massive database such as eBird can do to improve our understanding of bird species distributions, migration timing, etc.
Upland Sandpiper, how you always see them around here, on a fence post. Unfortunately they’re not a common sight any more in my part of South Dakota
The new kid on the block, a Cattle Egret. I’d pretty much expect to see these guys more commonly than Upland Sandpipers in my part of South Dakota.
I spent Sunday morning birding in Lake and Kingsbury counties, to the northwest of Sioux Falls. Early May, certainly a great time to get “First-of-Year” (FOY) birds, and I certainly saw quite a few new species for the year. It wasn’t a great day for photos though, as there were really only about 3 species of which I got decent photos. Two of those species, Cattle Egret and Upland Sandpiper, were FOY. Both are species I don’t see all that frequently in this part of the state. As I was driving home I was thinking about the photos I got for the day, and it struck me that right now, in this part of South Dakota, I’d probably expect to find Cattle Egrets before I’d find Upland Sandpipers. How things change…
In Minnehaha County, the county that contains most of Sioux Falls, I’ve only seen Upland Sandpipers on a handful of occasions, and only once during breeding season. Given their preference for grassland for breeding, that’s not a surprise, given that we’re mostly corn and soybeans around here, with little prairie/grassland. Cattle Egrets however, are very well named, as pretty much every time I’ve seen one in South Dakota, they’ve been in a pasture and in close proximity to cattle.
Upland Sandpipers are obviously the natives here, and there’s little doubt that they were once vastly more numerous in my part of South Dakota than they are today. You could say the same for a heck of a lot of grassland species, birds that were once seen in southeastern South Dakota that have now all but disappeared. Cattle Egrets are the newcomers. They were unknown in the New World, until a few ended up in South America in the late 1800s. By 1950 they had spread all the way to the United States, and for quite a while they have now bred up here in South Dakota. From all indications, Cattle Egrets were natural invaders with a handful somehow making it to South America unaided, they weren’t introduced.
It does make you wonder what birds you’d find around here today, had people never settled the area and converted nearly all grassland into agricultural land. Upland Sandpipers would definitely be around, but given the Cattle Egret’s desire to hang around cattle (for the insects they kick up as they graze), you’d bet they would have likely found Bison herds an acceptable substitute. In other words, had nature taken her course, in today’s southeastern South Dakota, it’s likely both birds would be around.
As it is, the “native” Upland Sandpiper is a rarity, a true delight whenever I should happen to find one around here. Even though I have, oh, a few hundred photos of Upland Sandpipers sitting on fence posts, most are from elsewhere in the state, so when I see one around here, I can’t help but stop and take photos.
