Articles

Oct 15 2016

In the News – October 9 – 15

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments

A collection of bird, science, photography, and news links from the past week. Click on the links for the actual stories.

Eastern Screech Owl - Megascops asio

I think I’ve actually been pretty lucky, in that I’ve run across Eastern Screech Owls relatively often over the years, and have many good photos. What I can NOT do is attract one to my yard.

  • Attract Screech Owls to Your Yard!! — HAH!  I’ll believe it when I see it!  This piece from Birdwatching Magazine touts how easy it is to attract Screech Owls to your yard, by building and putting up a nest box.  Three years ago, I bought a box built specifically for Screech Owls.  Over three summers, many a young bird has fledged from that box!  Of course all of them have been House Sparrows, the one thing I do NOT need more of.  Hopefully some day an actual Eastern Screech Owl finds it, evicts the House Sparrows within, and justifies my purchase.
  • Coal Declines in the U.S. — One of the things that bugs me great is lying.  In the world of politics, it’s an art form.  This week, fact got in the way of rhetoric, with a study coming out that refutes those who try to pin the decline of coal, and mining jobs in the U.S., to government policy.  Coal started to decline in 2008, right when Obama was elected.  It’s his fault!! Well…no.  As this study notes, it’s basic economics and the rise of cheap natural gas.  People love to complain about cheap energy prices, but now that we have it?  They’ll find something else to complain about…
  • Get ready to add new species to your life list! — There’s been speculation for a while now that Crossbill species in North America may be split into as many as 6 or more new, distinct species.  This study provides more support for that move, using genomics to look at the rapid evolution of Crossbills that feed on pine seeds. It’s always handy when you can add a new species to your life list, without ever leaving your living room.
  • Hotter than Hell — Which, evidently must be around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, given 1) where people believe hell is likely located (think ‘down’), and 2) the estimated temperature at the center of the earth.
  • Caspian Terns Breeding near Arctic Circle — If you’re one of those that doesn’t believe in climate change, you might as well stop reading my blog altogether. As yet more evidence that strange things are afoot, scientists confirmed breeding of Caspian Terns north of the Arctic Circle…1,000 MILES further north than they’ve been found before. If it were just thing one piece of evidence…sure…could be a fluke.  Where there’s smoke, there’s fire though, and it’s getting damned hard to breath with so much “smoke” around.
  • Fires of Hell

    Ever wonder how toasty it will be when your tortured, evil soul rots for an eternity in hell? Evidently it will be around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Before you die, perhaps you should change into shorts…

    Getting away from it all (Noise, that is) — My son and I usually go fishing in the Black Hills of South Dakota once a year.  You wouldn’t want to be in the area in late summer, when the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is going on, and there are certainly tourist hotspots scattered throughout the area.  But what’s always nice about the Black Hills is that if you want solitude, you can find it. Think of the soundtrack of your daily life.  Think how rare it is to NOT have some background noise, be it street noise, a barking dog, etc.  That what struck me at one point this summer while fishing in the hills…how we were hearing…NOTHING. And it was fabulous.  As this story notes, it’s been darn hard to find a noise-free environment going back at least 50 years.

  • Hurricane Matthew Punches Above its Weight — Hurricane Matthew’s story was fascinating, because of the unusual path, its immense power as it tore through the Caribbean, and because it became an afterthought for many Americans once it avoided a direct hit on Florida. Of course, certain political stories overshadowed Matthew when it raged across the Carolinas, but more than that, it was the feeling of relief, the feeling that the U.S. had dodged a bullet.  Instead of Category 4 hurricane striking Florida, it stayed offshore of Florida and was downgraded to a Category 1 by the time it struck the Carolinas. As this story notes, perhaps we need a new rating system for Hurricanes.  Sandy too wasn’t the most powerful hurricane, but it certainly did some damage, and so did Matthew, with 18 inches of rain in parts of North Carolina.
  • Hummingbirds should listen to their parents!! — It’s rough out there for a lil’ wild critter!  Not only do they have to deal with other critters that may want to eat them, but sometimes they just don’t KNOW what they’re supposed to do to survive. That’s one takeaway from this story, that notes different individual hummingbirds use different feeding and migration strategies.  Hummingbirds that have made the migration before?  They are more strategic, Adding up to 40% onto their body weight right before making a long migratory flight.  First-time migrants? They are less strategic, tending to NOT pack on the pounds, but instead migrate south in short bursts and feeding in between.  The lesson overall…LISTEN TO YOUR PARENTS.  They know best.
  • Climate Change Doubles Western U.S. Fires — According to this study, fires overall have likely doubled in the western U.S. since 1984, due to climate change.  Overall fire increase has been even more than that, but due to other issues like fuel build up, beetle kill, ignition sources, and other risk factors.  I believe that fire risk overall has gone up.  As a scientist though, I do find it extremely, extremely difficult to attribute a certain percentage increase in fire due to just one factor, however.  There’s so many factors that drive fire risk, with complicated feedbacks among them, that I’d have a hard time stating “twice” as many fires are due just to climate change.  Good article though for highlighting the issue.
  • Dumbledore - Harry Potter

    Coming back to a movie theater near you…Dumbledore!! I’d certainly welcome it, but alas, for Michael Gambon, the actor who played Dumbledore in the last 5 Harry Potter movies, this will undoubtedly be Dumbledore when he was much younger.

    Captain Kirk was Brain Damaged — OK, maybe that’s not what this story is saying. But it IS saying that there’s a high risk of cognitive issues for astronauts spending time in space, due to cosmic rays and radiation.  Interesting study, given that this week, Obama said a government and private partnership would help us reach Mars by the 2030s.  That’s certainly a very ambitious goal, one that may be doable, but there are a lot of technical challenges to be solved.

  • Dumbledore Returning!! — Not exactly science.  Or birds.  Or really news for that matter.  But with JK Rowling’s “Fantastical Beasts” coming out as a movie in a month, it was announced that she’s working on at least 4 more scripts, for at least 5 movies in total.  There’s also talk of Dumbledore coming back to play some role in these movies!  My cynical side can’t help but scream out “MONEY GRAB!!!” with the announcement that they’re going to make 5 movies.  But my Harry Potter fandom side is loving it.

 

 

Oct 10 2016

Fall day birding

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Northern Flicker - Colaptes auratus

A Northern Flicker feeding on juniper berries. Hanging around fruiting juniper/cedar trees at this time of year is always “fruitful” (ha-ha), given the number of species that will feed on the berries.

I love fall in South Dakota.  It’s my favorite time of year, by far.  Yes, I know what’s coming in a couple of months, and I’m not exactly thrilled when the snow flies and it’s 10 below!  But nothing beats the gorgeous fall weather here, with cool nights and perfect fall days. I’m not particularly fond of heat and humidity, and while summers in eastern South Dakota are usually relatively pleasant, this past summer was an exception, with many more days of >90 degree heat and humidity than we’ve had in the past several summers.  The cooler fall weather is certainly welcome!

The birding is pretty good in the fall as well!  I’m a bit of an oddball, in that one of the big attractions for fall birding for me are the many varieties of sparrows that move through.  Yes, the primary color you’re going to see on most of the sparrows is brown, but there are some truly beautiful sparrows that move through in migration, birds that to me rival the more colorful songbirds in beauty. Today I was trying to find and photography Le Conte’s and Nelson’s Sparrows, two species that are generally uncommon here in migration.  I saw a Le Conte’s, but no Nelson’s and no photos of either.  It was still a beautiful and productive day.

One of the things that’s so amazing about fall migration are the concentrations of birds you run into.  There were gulls by the thousands in western Minnehaha County, mostly Franklin’s Gulls.  Huge flocks of mixed blackbirds (mostly Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds, but I also saw a handful of Rusty Blackbirds in a wet field) were gathering for the fall migration.  Sparrows were abundant in both variety and number.  No real rarities for the day (although I don’t see Rusty Blackbirds often), but a nice day nonetheless!

May 14 2016

Back in the saddle…

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: 1 Comment
Magnolia Warbler - Setophaga magnolia

Magnolia Warbler peeking out between the leaves.

Yeah, it’s been a while.  Almost 3 months since any blog post.  I’ve had rather major issues with Sjogren’s affecting my eyes, to the point that they’ve been so dry that my vision is affected.  It’s hard to take bird photos when you can’t see!  Thankfully I have some new “scleral lenses” that protect my eyes and keep them lubricated, and more importantly…I can see!

I dusted off the camera and went out for a couple of hours this morning.  It was one of those COLD May days that we often seem to get in mid-May.  32 degrees, with a stiff breeze when I left this morning. That actually turned out to be a good thing, because some birds were behaving in a manner that they wouldn’t behave had the weather been warmer.  We’ve had a wet spring, and there are a lot of wet fields and flooded ditches, so I was hoping for some shorebirds.  Not much luck there, but it was a “birdy” day.  Over a flooded grassy field west of Sioux Falls, I first came across a large flock of Black Terns. They’re not a species that seems to like the cold very much, and many were just sitting on the fence posts in the middle of the flooded field.  As the sun rose higher and things began to warm about, they started to forage, flapping and dipping over the water periodically.  They’ve always been one of my favorite species.  With that dark breeding plumage, they’re so unusual compared to any other gull or tern you see around here.

Black Tern - Chlidonias niger

Black Tern foraging over a flooded grassy field

Nearby at a very large grassy field, I was driving by slowly when I heard the familiar metallic tinkling of a singing Bobolink. Then I heard another.  And another.  The field was alive with Bobolinks, more than I’ve ever seen at one time before.  Both males and females were present, but it did seem the males were more prevalent.  At one point while I was stopped and looking around with my binoculars, I was able to see 15 male Bobolinks in 4 or 5 scattered little groups.  It was a nice sight, given the issues Bobolinks have with loss of habitat around here.

Given that I wasn’t having much luck with shorebirds west of town, I decided to head to the area near Beaver Creek Nature Area, near my hometown of Brandon.  It’s got some nice forested pockets, and in mid-May, it’s often alive with migrant songbirds.  Warblers are the main attraction for me this time of year, and Beaver Creek didn’t disappoint. I only stayed for about 45 minutes given the cold, but came across a quite a few warblers, including Blackpoll, Black-and-White, Yellow, Yellow-rumped, Magnolia, Palm, and Wilson’s Warblers.

A nice morning, and very good to get back in the swing of things!

Harris's Sparrow - Zonotrichia querulaBraod-winged Hawk - Buteo platypterusWilson's Warbler - Cardellina pusilla

Feb 18 2016

“Hunting” interests bringing handguns to a prairie near you!

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments

The South Dakota legislature has been working on a bill that would legalize the use of handguns for hunting gamebirds.  From a practical standpoint, it’s a head-scratcher.  The bill would authorize the use of handguns loaded with .410 shot shells.  As the article link above points out, such a light shell, shot from a handgun, might be effective up to a ridiculously close range of 10 feet, but beyond that, there’s little chance of doing anything other than inuring a bird.

To be blunt…I don’t think this bill has anything to do with hunting. If you’re going hunting for grouse or pheasant, you’re not going to grab a handgun.  This bill is about “legitimizing” handguns, pure and simple.  It’s a bill designed to show that handguns have some supposed legitimate use, rather than turning on other human beings.

A debate has started on the South Dakota bird listserver about the bill, a debate that has brought hunters out of the woodwork.  Of course the argument from the hunting crowd has absolutely nothing to do with the bill itself.  Hunters are ignoring the actual issue, and instead rushing to come to the defense of hunting overall.  The main argument being made is that hunting overall is a net benefit to birds, because of all the habitat that’s being protected by groups like Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, etc.

As for hunting itself, I have no doubt there’s more habitat due to the power and money of hunting interests.  Overall in the world we live in, that’s good, but again, to be blunt, there’s one very obvious difference between hunting and birding.  I have no doubt many hunters enjoy the habitat itself, but the one overarching reason that habitat is set aside is to ensure there are enough birds and other animals for people to harvest.   Someone on the South Dakota bird listserver said no “informed” birder would equate fewer hunters as a benefit for birds.  I would beg to differ, and I’m POSITIVE the birds staring down the barrel of a shotgun would beg to differ.  The habitat protection is great, but as with anything related to human beings, that habitat protection comes with a price.

Despite the benefits of preserving that habitat, it’s also impossible to ignore the motivation behind that habitat protection, what the real goal is for setting aside that land.  In my utopian world, we’d protect land just for the sake of conservation, not to ensure there’s an adequate pool of creatures to kill.   In short…birders love the resource, love the wild bird itself. For birders, it’s about the birds, and in my perfect world it would be nice to set aside land just to let nature take its course. For hunters, it’s about the ensuring there’s something to harvest.  For hunters, it’s about the hunter him/herself, it’s about using the resource for their own benefit and satisfaction, more than the resource (THE BIRD) itself.

When I drive on the grasslands West River, and I see a group of hunters lined up on a fence, popping off prairie dogs for no other reason than to have something to kill, it’s damned hard to see the “good” side of hunting. To be blunt (why pussyfoot around at this stage and hide how I really feel), in a situation like that, I see a sick desire to kill for the sake of killing.  When you see hunters clamoring to have the chance to kill a mountain lion, or a coyote, or any other animal that’s not being harvested for food or other actual purpose other than to satiate some kind of blood lust….it’s damned hard to see the “good” side of hunting.  When I’m driving around Presho in the late fall looking for raptors, and I see hordes of hunters slowly driving around, jumping out and blasting away when they see a pheasant or grouse, it’s hard to equate their activity with “enjoying the outdoors”, and much easier to see that it’s all about the desire to harvest as many birds as possible. When I’m in the same area and I see a shot raptor lying in a ditch…it’s hard to see the “good” side of hunting, and it’s awfully damned hard to see the birds themselves being put first.

Give me the habitat protection, by all means.  But hunters…don’t pretend it’s all about the birds. It’s all about YOU.

Feb 13 2016

Where have my songbirds gone?

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Cooper's Hawk - Accipiter cooperii

“Clyde”, the very fat Cooper’s Hawk who has slowly been consuming all birds in the neighborhood.

What shows up at your feeders is so unpredictable.  In winter, I always expect Dark-eyed Juncos foraging on the ground below my feeders.  Many winters, they’re about the only bird it seems I ever see, in my yard or elsewhere.  Not this year, where they’ve been scarce in my yard.  That’s been made up for with many more American Goldfinches than normal.  I have one very tall tube feeder, and most of the winter it’s been very crowded, with most perches full and other Goldfinches waiting in the nearby tree for an open spot.  It’s been a good year for Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, and I have at least two (a male and a female) gorgeous Red-bellied Woodpeckers who are quite regular at my suet. Despite the lack of Dark-eyed Juncos, it’s been a fairly “birdy” winter in my yard.

That “birdiness” level has been slowly declining all winter though.  Simple attrition from a snowy winter would probably explain it, but in my yard, there’s another obvious factor.  That factor is Clyde.  Clyde is the Cooper’s Hawk that has been frequenting my yard, and buzzing my feeders all winter long.  Why “Clyde”?  I dunno.  It starts with a C.  He looks like a “Clyde”.  Very workman-like and efficient, very “blue-collar”. Comes in regularly every day, punches the clock, does his thing, kills a bird or two…just the same hum-drum “Clyde” kind of a life for a Cooper’s Hawk.

My wife is not fond of Clyde.  My wife does not appreciate the “nature” occurring in the yard. Clyde isn’t exactly subtle when he buzzes the yard and grabs a songbird.  He’s also getting quite bold. Last week I opened the front door, and Clyde was sitting on the front step, munching on a goldfinch.  Normally, you’d expect a wild bird to immediately bolt.  Not Clyde.  Clyde looked up at me, paused a second, before seemingly sighing and reluctantly flying off with his breakfast, clearly put out that I had interrupted him.I do have one concern about Clyde.  He appears to be gaining weight at an alarming clip.  He’s had a well-fed winter in my yard!  It’s showing on his waist line, as he is one FAT Cooper’s Hawk!

Unlike my wife, I do think it’s very cool to have Clyde around. With the Big Sioux Recreation Area and a lot of forested habitat right across the street, Clyde may end up sticking around the area permanently.

Jan 23 2016

It’s a bird-eat-bird world

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Merlin (Falco columbarius) with prey (Horned Lark)

A Merlin munching on a freshly caught Horned Lark

It’s Saturday.  I went birding on Monday.  But as is typical, I didn’t even download or start to look at the photos until this morning.  Heck, this is actually FAST for me! I have folders upon folders of bird photos that await.  It’s a lot more fun to take photos than to process them and get them up on a website.  What I’ll often do is just process a few of the best ones and leave the rest for a “later” time period that often seems to never come!  Some day I’ll start my own personal digital birding adventure, where I’ll revisit all my old photos and rediscover ones I never knew I had.

But in the meantime, here’s a few from Monday.  As I like to do a couple of times I winter, I got up early Monday and made the long drive to the central part of the state.  It was a LOVELY day for birding, at a slightly crisp -17 degrees when I arrived at dawn.  One of my favorite birding locations and times in South Dakota is the area around Presho in the dead of winter.  There are many pheasant hunting operations in the region, and a fair amount of land managed for pheasants and grouse.  With literally hundreds of pheasants and grouse sometimes milling about, winter raptors are attracted to the area.  The density and diversity is usually spectacular.  It’s a guarantee you’ll find Golden Eagles, Bald Eagles, Northern Harriers, Red-tailed Hawks and Rough-legged Hawks, you’ll usually find Ferruginous Hawks and Prairie Falcons, and you’ll often find some of the more “fun” species, including Gyrfalcon, Merlin, Snowy Owl, or Short-eared Owl.

Northern Harrier - Circus cyaneus

A female Northern Harrier, feeding on the scant remains of a pheasant

By “Presho standards”, Monday wasn’t the greatest, as I “only” came across 75 or so raptors over the course of 7 hours.  No rarities, but I did get some very nice looks at nature in action.  Merlins are a species I don’t see very often, at least not in my part of eastern South Dakota.  But for some reason I often have luck finding them around Presho in the winter. It’s not just all the pheasants and grouse that attract raptors, ti’s also Horned Larks, Lapland Longspurs, and other small birds that often frequent the area.  The photo here is a Merlin munching on a freshly caught Horned Lark (they seem to be a favorite prey species).

The second photo is a female Northern Harrier. I came across her feeding on the remains of a pheasant carcass on the side of the road.  I’m not sure if Harriers take down full-grown pheasants or not…it seems like they’d be a handful.  But I have seen Harriers on carrion, so perhaps this one was feeding on the remains of a bird caught or killed by something else.  It was nice to get relatively close looks at her though, as Harriers around here are typically quite skittish.  For as many as I’ve seen, I don’t have all that great of photos of them.

It’s a rough world out there!  Eat or be eaten!

Jan 09 2016

New and improved “Hotspot” pages for South Dakota

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Screen Capture - LaCreek National Wildlife Refuge - Hotspot Page

Here’s a screen capture of part of the new “hostpot” page for LaCreek National Wildlife Refuge. The Google Map is clickable, allowing a user to see information and ground photos for actual locations within LaCreek. At the bottom of the hotspot page (not shown here) are also actual bird photos taken from the hotspot. All hotspot pages have been updated, and new pages are coming!

While I am continually adding new bird photos to my website, I admit I do often neglect to update the other pages on my website.  One set of pages that has long cried for updates are the “Hotspot” pages.  These are pages devoted to describing some of my favorite birding locations within South Dakota.  The pages I had contained a lot of information, but for a guy whose JOB it is to spatially map things, I was pretty far behind the technology curve on my hotspots pages.  The location maps and other maps were static screen grabs from maps I’d constructed in photoshop.

Time for an upgrade!  What I want to do with my hotspot pages is not only highlight a location on a map, but allow a viewer to “drill in” to actually look at ground photos for specific locations in and around a hotspot.  Using Google Map tools directly on the hotspot pages certainly allows for a much more dynamic and interactive environment than my old hotspot pages.  I’ve updated all my existing hotspot pages to include interactive Google Map tools. The main hotspot page provides an overview map of South Dakota, with little owl icons marking some of my favorite birding locations.  Clicking on an icon will bring you to a page devoted to birding information for that hotspot.

On each individual hotspot page is another interactive Google Map, showing specific areas of interest in and around the hotspot.  For example, for the hotspot pages for the Big Sioux Recreation Area, the map provides 8 more little owl icons, each of which depicts an actual ground photo from that spot.  The new pages thus allow a user to not only find the location of some of my favorite birding locations, but also allows a user to actually see ground photos of the area.  Each individual hotspot page also highlights a number of bird photos that were actually taken at that hotspot.

I only had 9 “hotspot” locations listed in my old pages, and I want to start adding many more of my favorite birding locations.  One new one that I’ve just added is a hotspot page for LaCreek National Wildlife Refuge.  It’s a long drive from my hometown of Brandon (about 300 miles!), so I don’t get there all that often, but I do just love birding at LaCreek.  Nothing beats curing the winter blues than going to LaCreek and seeing a number of massive Trumpeter Swans.

Hopefully this is just the start!  I plan on doing more augmenting of the hotspot pages in the coming days and weeks, with a specific focus in the short term of now adding additional hotspot locations.  I hope you find them useful!

Jan 08 2016

End of the Kiskadee

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Great Kiskadee - Pitangus sulphuratus

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.

Jan 03 2016

Fish in a barrel…

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Bald Eagle - Haliaeetus leucocephalus

A mature Bald Eagle hanging on a tree branch overlooking the Missouri River, below Gavin’s Point Dam on the Nebraska/South Dakota border

I usually spend part of New Year’s Day birding.  I admit one of the reasons?  Often my Nebraska Cornhuskers are playing in a bowl game that day.  In recent years (decades?) they have been too stressful to watch, particularly in a bowl game.  Hence, going birding gives me a reason to avoid seeing/hearing about the game. (Yeah, I know, that’s messed up..).

I missed New Year’s Day this year, going a day late!  I don’t go down to Gavin’s Point Dam on the Nebraska/South Dakota border all that often, perhaps once a year.  But it is a good place to bird in the fall and early winter.  The most obvious attraction are Bald Eagles.  Taking photos of Bald Eagles at Gavin’s Point Dam in winter truly is like shooting fish in a barrel at times.  Not only are there good numbers around, but they’re often perched in a strip of trees that’s squeezed in between the Missouri River and the road, on the Nebraska side.  With the steep bluff and cottonwoods lining the steep shoreline, the eagles like to hang out on branches that overlook the water, giving them an opportunity to swoop out and capture a fish (or sometimes unfortunate waterfowl) found right below the dam.

I have a lot of Bald Eagle photos,as they truly are a pretty easy to find species in South Dakota, but I would guess that about half of my photos are from the Gavin’s Point Dam area.  I didn’t stay long yesterday, only hanging around the dam area for about an hour or so, but as always, I was able to get a few Bald Eagle photos.  There were about a dozen hanging around, along with a few very big groups of ducks in open spots on Lake Yankton below the dam.  A nice first birding trip for 2016!

Jan 01 2016

Wrapping up Birding 2015

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Green-throated Carib - Eulampis holosericeus

A Green-throated Carib, one of 24 new “lifers” for 2015. This was in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

I told myself 2015 would be a “big year” kind of year for birding.  I started well!  I had intended to see how many species I could see within South Dakota during the year.  I started early, getting all the winter birds you could reasonably expect around here, then really hit it hard in spring.  During spring migration I did a lot of birding, and had reached 200 species in the state by mid-May.

And I ended with 221 species.  Part of it is the obvious…that it gets harder and harder to find new species as the year goes on. Part of it was health.  Starting in June, I started having all kinds of eye issues, and birding just wasn’t at the top of my priority list.  221 within South Dakota is still a nice year though.  Throw in a trip to Arizona in November for work, where I took a couple of personal days to bird, plus a week in the Virgin Islands on vacation, and my yearly list was closer to 300.  A mere 5800 or so fewer than Noah Strycker saw on his year-long quest to set a new world-wide birding record.

For the year in South Dakota, I only saw a handful of new species.  I’m not even sure how many I have lifetime in the state. Overall there have been about 435 species seen in the state.  For 2015, new ones included the incredibly strange Great Kiskadee that was found in November near Brookings, Violet-green Swallow (I don’t get to the western part of the state much), Gray Jay (see previous comment about traveling west), and a Black-necked Stilt.  Only the Kiskadee was a life bird, as I’d seen the others before out of state.

Photo of Lawrence's Goldfinch

Lawrence’s Goldfinch, another 2015 lifer.  They can be tough to find, even in range.  Sometimes they move into Arizona in winter, and I was lucky in finding several in Tucson in November.

Thanks to my birding in Arizona and the Virgin Islands, I did have several new lifers for 2015 other than the Kiskadee.  24 in total, with the new ones for 2015 including:

  • Elegant Trogon (Florida Canyon south of Tucson – HUGE highlight for me, particularly finding one in November when they’re tough to find)
  • Scaled Quail (SE of Tucson)
  • Hammond’s Flycatcher (Florida Canyon south of Tucson)
  • Plumbeous Vireo (Florida Canyon south of Tucson)
  • Lawrence’s Goldfinch (Within Tucson itself, a really nice one to pick up given how hard they can be to find)
  • Cassin’s Sparrow (SE of Tucson)
  • White-tailed Kite (SE of Tucson)
  • Rufous-winged Sparrow (SE of Tucson)
  • Hepatic Tanager (Madera Canyon south of Tucson)
  • Black-whiskered Vireo (Virgin Islands)
  • Caribbean Elaenia (Virgin Islands)
  • Magnificent Frigatebird (Virgin Islands)
  • Scaly-naped Pigeon (Virgin Islands)
  • Mangrove Cuckoo (Virgin Islands)
  • Zenaida Dove (Virgin Islands)
  • Green-throated Carib (Virgin Islands)
  • Lesser Antillean Bullfinch (Virgin Islands)
  • Antillean Crested Hummingbird (Virgin Islands)
  • Gray Kingbird (Virgin Islands)
  • Pearly Eyed Thrasher (Virgin Islands)
  • Bananaquit (Virgin Islands)
  • Black-faced Grassquit (Virgin Islands)
  • Antillean Nighthawk (Virgin Islands)
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