Stunning News

There's no global warming.
Dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago.

What do these two statements have in common?

They are utterly untrue!

I will leave the global warming talk to others but would like to mention here that my wife and I were recently able - after years of research and expeditions - to provide definite proof of the Dinosaur's survival until this present day at Michigan's Lake Erie Metro Park.

How did they go undetected for so long?

Well, they spend all year in the rotten and muddy swamps of North America's most vicious wilderness areas where they hide in the mud to prey on unwary fish, amphibians and toes of reckless swimmers, only to emerge each year in early June to lay their eggs on dirt roads or other places no one would think of searching and prepare to get back what mammals had taken from them so long ago: world domination!

You don't believe me?

Well, seeing is believing and here are the pictures...





On that very same day, we were also able to prove why European Starlings are so successful in North America. They simply have adapted to mammalian food and prey like hawks on small rodents and other mammals up to the size of Rabbits.

As hard to believe as it may be, yet again we have photographic evidence that no one can deny!



Aren't you glad you read Belltower Birding?

Normal blogging about Extraordinary Birding

I promised that normal blogging would resume in June.
Well, point taken: I promised to try and establish something one might consider normal blogging on this blog by June.

Whatever I promised, here it is:
I am blogging again.

However, the fact that migration is basically over and normal blogging may resume does not imply that anything even close to normal birding would resume here in Michigan in June, as can be seen by the following report.
Okay, you got me again: admittedly, the following report is about half a day's birding with Laurent on the 31st of May and not June 1st, but I think it is close enough to June to make it count and it is not so much about migration than about breeding birds.

Oh, this is getting boring, so I'll stop the introduction and start heading out towards the real post:

Grassland birding!

Migration may be (largely) over but this is the Great Lakes. Most people will have you think this name relates to the lakes' size. Well, sorry, they are wrong.
Then it would be the "Big" Lakes or the "Extensive" Lakes, but nope, it clearly says "Great" Lakes on the maps.
A few people however know why they are called "Great" Lakes.
I am one of them.
They are called Great Lakes because the birding here is always great, even when those migrant warblers have left us for the juicy spruce budworms up North (silly!).

With the end of bird migration came a significant change in bird-related email exchange. Suddenly no one was talking about woods and warblers anymore, it was all about Dickcissels and all sorts of Sparrows while names like "Point Pelee", "the Arb" and "Crane Creek" had given way to "Scio Church Road", "White Barn Lot" and "Sharon Valley Road".

On May 31st, Laurent and I finally couldn't resist the call of the prairies any longer and we followed the numerous hints and observations of other local birders to the south-west of Washtenaw County where the grassland birds dwell.

After a 20 minute drive, we arrived at Scio Church road which is nice in itself but basically leads to the highlight roads, which are Meyers and Sharon Valley. Upon getting there however, we were greeted by a grim sight.

From the outside, this may seem like an ordinary house, and it might be, indeed.



But someone somewhere nearby was in serious trouble, as we could easily tell...



On the other hand, there were so many Eastern Meadowlarks around that we did not take the misfortunes of others as a bad sign.



Meyers Road was supposed to have Dickcissel and Grasshopper Sparrows, so this is where we were headed. After checking all the telephone wires and power lines for perched small brown birds with grey on the head and a yellow throat - in vain - we eventually stopped at the southern end of Meyers to give it one last intensive try.

One could say this was a good idea. Brilliant to be precise or rather: one of the best we've had in a long, long time.

Sure, there were two Grasshopper Sparrows singing, of which we were able to scope one nicely. A Savannah Sparrow was not a rare but still nice sight, and a total of two Northern Mockingbirds also were a pleasant surprise. But what was truly outstanding was a little blue bird perched 120 metres away in a small bush: neither a Blue Jay, nor an Indigo Bunting! Well, not much left then and indeed, we were amazed to see a nice male Blue Grosbeak!

This was not only a nice bird, it was not only a bird neither of us had ever seen before, it turned out to be only the (roughly) 10th record for Michigan - ever - if accepted!

Can you believe it? I hope the Michigan rarities committee can.
Well, we couldn't at first, I mean the bird was easy enough to identify, but only the 10th or so record?
Unfortunately, the bird was not relocated by other birders in the days following our observation, but as birding is all about sharing, here is a little manual on how to find great birding spots in south-west Washtenaw County:


As the Blue Grosbeak eventually flew out of sight, we gained our consciousness back and managed to re-focus on the grassland birds we were still missing: Henslow's Sparrow, Bobolink and Dickcissel.
Those, we knew, could be found along Sharon Valley Road just off Meyers (well, actually Meyers is just of SVR), at the so-called White Barn Lot just before the border to Jackson County.

Strangely, Jackson County came before we were able to spot a white barn. At first we considered turning back but then we remembered that a) we weren't County listers after all and that b) the spot where I had watched Henslow's Sparrows way back in May 2005 was just a few miles further down the road.
So on we drove to Fishville road and my heart rejoiced with lovely memories of times long past and the expectations of a repetition: back then I had parked the car because I thought the meadow looked good for Henslow's, had switched off the engine and there they sang. I walked around the hedge row to the edge of the meadow and immediately was treated to prolonged views of a singing Henslow's just 10 metres in front of me and could watch the feathers on its throat vibrate in song.
It had been very easy.

But would history repeat itself?
Would lightening strike twice?

Okay, so we got there and switched off the engine [check]
We heard a Henslow's sing [check]
We walked around the hedge row [check]
We immediately were treated to prolonged views of a Henslow's Sparrow [aaaand ... check]

This time though, the sparrow was roughly 50 metres off in the meadow but still the scope views were horrifyingly awesome. I did manage a photo documentation which I have included below. You may not get the complete feeling of watching a Henslow's, but you might get an idea - if you are lucky or have maintained a child's fantasy.


Back on Fishville Road we checked another fallow field to the west where I eventually managed a few rather decent pictures of a grassland special: a Grasshopper Sparrow. There were quite a few singing and we also spotted some of them, which is quite good.

Nice sparrow, but unfortunately not a Henslow's.

All right, calm down, I won't say it again, promise.

Another unexpected find on that particular field was a Turkey that was just a wee bit too large to be turned into a Bobwhite.


Driving back into Washtenaw County we had the most unspectacular great bird of the day, which is why I will only mention it as unspectacular as it was to convey the complete picture to my inclined readers: a Dickcissel had perched on a fence right besides the road but immediately took off as Laurent slowed the car down and flew on and on and far away out of view.
Hmmm, no comment, and that was that, no more Dickcissels for the day.

But we did find the White Barn lot on our way back and boy, was this a nice and pleasant piece of grassland. Look for yourself and you'll agree, just plain very nice:


Henslow's may be good - and there was one Henslow's Sparrow singing there too which we didn't see - but Bobolinks can be quite showy as well and sure enough, it only took the time needed to put up a scope until we had excellent scope views of a pair of Bobolinks, our last grassland target of the day.

Very nice birds, cool song

A small wood land preserve nearby had produced reports of a Louisiana Waterthrush and we therefore decided to end our day's birding there. It was remarkably quiet in the woods around noon and most of the birds we heard were Red-eyed Vireos. The woods however were lovely, dark and deep enough to host quite a few Acadian Flycatchers of which several were heard and one seen nicely, so all in all it was a nice addition to our grassland day and we headed back to Ann Arbor at 1 p.m. quite satisfied and with great news (Blue Grosbeak) for the local email forum.

Michigan rocks!

I and the Bird # 50

I and the Bird is back again with its sparkling 50th edition! For those who like to surf the waves of global birdblogging, check it out here on A Blog around the Clock.

"I and the what" is up? Am I missing out on something?

Keep your cool, buddy, and relax, it's just "I and the Bird", hear me? Just those birds again!

Man, always birds, birds, birds. I really don't know what all the fuzz is about. If it was "I and the Squirrel", okay, but birds? Highly overrated if you ask me...

Doin' the Britney

Music and Birding: One of the great and most incredible harmonies this world has to offer!

And I am not talking about the wonders of a morning's bird concert or the song of a Red-winged Blackbird. No, I am indeed talking about human-made music and the pleasure we receive from watching the feathered creatures of this earth.
This interwoven and inspiring relationship however is often little realized by today's birdwatchers and I have thus decided to shed some light onto the subject in form of a blog post.
For starters, here are a few examples:

Many of us have probably picked up their first pair of binoculars and subsequently this fantastic hobby just to finally know what Iron Maiden were talking about in their epic Rime of the Ancient Birdwatcher.
And walking the trails at the migration hot spots of North America's Great Lakes would surely only be half the fun if it wasn't done to the tune of AC/DC's Warbler Struck.
Or - to give you more examples in case you aren't entirely convinced yet - just look at the huge impact Styx had on global birding tours with their song Come Bird Away.

But it isn't just Rock or Heavy Metal that have shaped and been shaped by birding, this fertile symbiosis goes far beyond that. Historians have now agreed that one of Jazz' most eternal songs, Tick Five, was inspired by a weekend's twitching in Cornwall, or possibly Manchester. I am not entirely sure about that but Tom would know...

Amazingly (when we consider factors like creativity and quality) pop music also had a shaping influence on birding. One of the most fundamental and recent interactions between birding and pop music can be seen in Britney Spears' first real hit, you know, the one where people still didn't mind that she can't sing because she looked cute in her school uniform. I don't particularly like it, especially as it stands for an unpleasant situation encountered once in a while when birding, but okay, here's the link to her song, to maintain fair play on this blog: Baby one more time.

Where is the interaction with birding? Ha, you see, that's where the quality-thing or the lack thereof in comparison to Rock kicks in, so I need to explain.
What are lovely Birtney's first words at the very beginning of the song? Exactly:

"Oh baby, baby [she only sang that to sell more records and also reach the non-birding crowds] how was I supposed to know that something wasn't right?"

Ah, now it dawns upon us, clearly she is singing about the subspecific identification of North America's wood warblers!

Here's the classic situation: you see a warbler that looks somewhat strange and you think it might show characters of a subspecies that normally shouldn't be where you are seeing it right now, e.g. a Western subspecies around the Great Lakes. So you take some pictures and compare them to the information provided in the leading warbler guides of North America and surely, it indeed seems to be a strange bird, not a typical Western but also not a typical Eastern, and you remain clueless. What to do next? Easy, you post your pictures on a local birding Internet forum and seek advice there.
And what do you get as an answer by experienced birders (like long-year ringers/banders) who really know their birds and what they are talking about? Nothing unusual about it, just a rather normal Eastern, and field guides can't always show the full range of individual variation.

Yet again, you have nurtured a "stringy" reputation and are forced to do the Britney ("How was I supposed to know?").

The following warbler is the most recent example of a bird that had me do the Britney:

Female Yellow-rumped Warbler, Dolph Park, Ann Arbor, May 2007

It was a female Yellow-rumped Warbler that lacked an obvious white supercilium, showed no dark mask on the auriculars and I found the yellow on the flanks quite reduced, which - according to my field guides - all seemed to point towards the bird showing some characters of Audubon's instead of Myrtle's. Sure enough, all other features of the bird clearly were pure Myrtle, so my guess was it might be just a strange Myrtle or a bird from the introgression zone between the two forms.
But boy, was I mistaken - again. Just an ordinary Eastern Myrtle's Warbler, these things, like the lack of a supercilium, just happen to happen once in a while.
Oh baby, baby...

I have a few more birds that could easily get me into the Britney trouble again, but I sometimes learn from my mistakes, and since I don't like to see myself seen as a stringer (although I do like strings, especially when they are attached to a bass guitar and are played by Steve Harris - yet again, a remarkable correlation between birding and music), I won't say they show characters that might point towards unusual subspecies. I won't even say they could suggest one may be lured into doing the Britney by these birds, nope, they are just a couple of warbler pics and if someone has commented in the captions about possible characters of other subspecies or whatever, it wasn't me, it was a stringing hacker!

Common Yellowthroat, showing a rather white band across the forehead and a yellow breast that's quite reduced, which might have one think it could be the more western subspecies campicola instead of the Great Lakes regular trichas.

One of the characters of western (chryseola) Wilson's Warblers are supposedly, according to the literature, the almost completely yellow cheeks. These should be greenish in the regular Eastern pusilla. How's your judgment on the cheek colouration of the following Wilson's Warblers?
Would you dare a guess and risk having to do the Britney?

Wilson's Warbler at Ann Arbor's Dolph Park, showing slightly greenish cheeks, but not really greenish if we are honest.

The same Wilson's as above, suddenly not so greenish anymore...

This Wilson's at Ohio's Crane Creek State Park was rather -easterly - dull.

This bird however, seen on the same day, is not so dull after all, as can be seen on the following portrait, a cropped version of a picture posted earlier on this blog.


It's a good thing the Western subspecies of North American wood warblers can be recognized by a characteristic introduction to their song:

Hit me baby one more time

Mighty cool Mimid challenges East Coast dominance

A few days ago, Bruce took me along to another day's birding in and around Crane Creek State Park, Ohio.
Shortly before we got there, he casually mentioned if I wanted to see a Northern Mockingbird.

Now, did I?

Well, to answer that, two stories need to be told.

Story No. 1
Northern Mockingbirds are somewhat special. Sure, they are neat birds and sing nicely and do all sorts of nice stuff, but there's something else you only notice when participating in the blogging game:
In the virtual world, they are almost unique to the East Coast of North America. Bird Blogging is the domain of the North-Eastern US. Yes, it may be bitter to swallow for others but we have to admit or rather acknowledge this fact. Just look at the number of blogs from that area or check out the Clustr-Maps on bird blogs: East-coast North American birders are everywhere, they rule. They (as a community, on average) write the most, comment the most on other blogs and often see good birds. And one of these birds is the Northern Mockingbird. The species has a very wide distribution that covers almost the entire southern half of the USA, but it is almost exclusively - frequently- mentioned on East Coast blogs. No one else seems to be blogging about Mockingbirds as much as East Coast birders. And when you live on the Northern edge of the species' range where it is not commonly seen and you have in fact not seen it in a long, long time, this can somewhat hurt. Especially when you are generally spoiled by warbler migration and all the other goodies the Great Lakes have to offer. This, the Northern Mockingbird, is the emblem of East coast bird blogging dominance, and when they write on their blog they have seen "a couple of Mockingbirds again", they are really saying "we won - again".
So there he was, Bruce, asking me if I wanted a chance to show all these New Yorkers and their allies where the real good birding is happening...
My answer?
Hmmm, maybe we should look at story No. 2 first.

Story No. 2
During my time as a high school exchange student in southern Ontario, way back in 1987/88, we - the four excessively cool German "exchange boys" - were sent on a short trip to see the Big Apple, commonly known as New York City. When you're 16 years old and basically have a year off in another country, you tend to neglect birding somewhat and go for the more socially orientated attractions in life. However, one can't deny their roots entirely.
Cruising through the streets of Manhattan we ended up at Central Park and decided to take a break from the concrete. And while we unsuccessfully tried to get a (well, how to call that) double-double date with four female exchange students we met there, amazingly also from Germany, I still remembered to check for other birds as well in the trees and bushes and I managed two lifers, a Tufted Titmouse and a Northern Mockingbird. The titmouse was easily seen again around Ann Arbor in May 2005 and especially since we moved here in November 2007, but that one Mockingbird in Central Park remained alone on my list and the observation now dates back almost 20 years.
And that's a long, long time, as I had mentioned earlier.

That was story No. 2 associated with the Northern Mockingbird and we are back at the beginning, with Bruce asking me casually if I wanted to see a Northern Mockingbird.

Now did I?

Oh, this is obvious, of course I did!

So he simply pulled off the main road at a lonesome farm building somewhere besides the highway in the middle of nowhere, we got out of the car and there it was, my second-ever Northern Mockingbird!
Local knowledge and the exchange of information, I tell you, nothing surpasses local knowledge and information exchange!

Vital.

The following pictures of the bird were taken on the way back when we were joined by Laurent...

A Northern Mockingbird playing hard to get

A well-maintained lawn, the realm and prime habitat of the Mockingbird

As drab as it may be when perched, it's looking pretty good in flight

But when you're a Northern Mockingbird in Northern Ohio, you know what you owe to the birding crowds: some spectacular flying!

And a bit of a riot: take that, East Coast!

Help from fellow Bloggers: I and the Bird # 49

Ooooh, conditions are currently not good for birding, the are excellent!
So I am basically off while writing this. I have a few important things not even remotely connected to feathers on today's agenda: even in May, life is unfortunately not only about birding, as even a birder must gather food, keep the nest tidy or visit the Secretary of State, just to sound important after mentioning all the uncool household stuff. But if I am really quick, I might fit in an hour or so of birding.

Yes!!

"Oh!" you say? Birding again? But you were promised something to READ, and yet again I don't deliver but choose to be away?

I know, this is hard.

But you see, this is why birders embed themselves in the sheltering community of the bloggoshere: a shoulder to lean on and firm support in hard times like these. Right on time and with a precision regarding the achievement of excellency that's almost frightening,
I and the Bird is back, this time edition Number 49!

If you feel the need to read, visit this astonishing edition here on Via Negativa, a spectacularly unusual perspective on birding! Well worth the clicking around.


By the way, the last post - if I am not mistaken which is actually not likely as I often am, especially when I think I am not mistaken - was the post number 100 on Belltower Birding.

Frankly, I was not paying attention, I had only realized that long after I posted or else I would have taken this as yet another opportunity to write something intelligent, at which I would have failed again. I like traditions.

Here are a few pictures of yesterday's trip to Crane Creek with Laurent. It was really cold and sometimes we even walked away from a good warbler spot just to increase our body temperature through moving our muscles, but we eventually logged 21 species of wood warbler (missing out "only" on three different Prothonotaries others saw but seeing two Mournings), watched a Sora walk around freely and un-skulkingly on a mud flat and had a Woodcock 5 metres besides the trail. Other highlights were three species of Empidonax-flycatchers, a Merlin and ... you get the picture ... just a whole lotta birds!

I still haven't gone through all of my pictures (conditions are good for birding, remember?), but here are two for your valued visual enjoyment!

American Redstart

Wilson's Warbler

Gone birding...

...normal blogging will continue next Friday.

Maybe.

If the conditions aren't good for birding.

If they are, normal blogging will continue next week.

Unless of course, conditions are good for birding.

If that's the case, normal blogging will continue ... well ... in June.

Come to think of it, there's never been anything that was close to "normal blogging" on this blog.
Not that I'd know of at least, and as it is my blog, I should know...
So what the hay am I talking about!?

Anyway, here are a few of the reasons why blogging is not what it used to be in March and when I still didn't have a camera. You might enjoy it and come back when there's stuff to read again.

Which will be Friday.

Maybe.

Or perhaps next week.

Well, June for sure.


Some of the highlights today and yesterday at the Arb:

American Goldfinch

This may be heavily crapped or cropped, but it is still an Olive-sided Flycatcher!

Carolina Wren

Scarlet Tanager

And a few pics from the Crane Creek tour of May 10th:

Black-throated Green Warbler

Northern Parula