The Heart of Darkness: the next episode of the St. Louis series

Having searched in vain for any lowland forests along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers in the vicinity of St. Louis, I turned my attention and the focus of my search for Fish Crows and Yellow-throated Warblers to the smaller tributaries, namely the Meramec River which harbors the wonderful Castlewood State Park on its banks.

Yet again, the Birder's Guide to the St. Louis area had been the driving force behind driving me there. Here's what caught my attention:

"Castlewood Park is a good location for seeing (...) Yellow-throated Warblers. "

And then, two sentences further on:

"This stretch of the Meramec River is also a good spot to hear and see Fish Crows."

Excellent reading, I tell you, not even Poe could have put it any better. And that is saying something when, after all, Poe's writing is so sublime it makes Shakespeare's works read like an early experimental comic series that's lacking illustrations.

Lifer No. 6: Fish Crow

Following the book's directions, I drove all the way through the park to the last parking lot, stopping only shortly en route to watch a Broad-winged Hawk soar above as you can see below.

Once there I switched off the engine, grabbed my birding gear and got ready to enter the - grasp - beautiful lowland forests, when I was immediately distracted by a goose-like call of a crow. Surely not the mature call of a grown maxima Canada Goose, but reminiscent of the puppy-like call of a White-fronted Goose. Oh come on, it just can't be that easy again, can it?

Sure bet it can, Fish Crows, and judging by the calls a small group of them right at the banks of the river.

As the parking lot was separated from the river by just a small line of trees, I decided to leave the forests for later and check out the river first, quite understandably for fellow birders reading this.

But then I encountered difficulties, distractions of the most severe kind, just before reaching the river.

First up, a gang of Carolina-chinned Black-Chickacaps for the serious birder, or Carolina Chickadees for someone who just wants to have some fun birding and doesn't give too much of a toss about hybridization zones or rather seeing those birds just a handful of miles away from such a zone.

The pictures of those - and of course I had to take some - were shown in my first chapter of the St. Louis Story and will not be repeated here, but still the crows were calling.

I had just reached the small beach section of the river and started scanning for the crows which were calling - not visible to me just yet - from a few trees right on the opposite bank when again, distraction hit me on the back of my head, and so I turned around to see this...

The Warbler.

Wait, make that: the Warbler.

Or rather: THE Warbler.

This could go on now, with adding adjectives like "ultimate", highlighting it all in colours or printing it in huge letters, but I'll just leave it at this and continue, shall I? You surely must know what I am writing about anyway:

A pristine amazing male Prothonotary Warbler, the most dangerous animal in North America, the one bird that has killed more innocent and young birders than any other, by demanding so much brain power from an observer who is trying to comprehend the sight that maintaining a regular heart beat is simply forgotten and people just drop to the ground, stone cold, stiff, and dead.

Scary, right?

Scary may be, but amazing as well.

But as dizzy and entranced as I was, I remembered there was something else, a higher goal I had come here to achieve, yes, it all came back to me now, slowly: seeing Fish Crows!

I closed my eyes just in time, re-started my pulse, turned my head, shook it a little, opened my eyes again and was back on the bank of the Meramec.

Having danced with Death and escaped as well as taken this crappy shot for future generations, I turned my full attention to the bunch of crows to finally catch a glimpse of them...

just to notice that all of a sudden, they had turned silent.

Hmmm, this was not how I had intended things to go when the crows had started calling 15 minutes earlier. Maybe I should have gone directly ... immediately ... neglecting the chickies, the Prothonotary and the Indigo Bunting (I haven't even told you about that one as there were so many everywhere, but I still looked at all of them, just like White-tailed Eagles: no matter how often you have seen them, it is impossible to turn away), ... but I got distracted again.

Where was I?

Yes, you see, even now I lose my focus on the crows!

There I stood and watched, waited, scanning for movement through the silence of the crows.

Then suddenly, a silent crow emerged from the trees and flew across the river, deep and wide, flew across the river to the other side, and then another one, silent as well, and a third crow, not uttering a sound.

Great.

Now, were those the Fish Crows that had called earlier? Or by a nasty twist of fate a bunch of ordinary American Crows that just so happened to fly along here innocently where some Fish Crows had called just minuted earlier?

We might have never known were it not for me getting a lucky photo of one of the crows in flight, and for one of the few distinguishing field marks being the wing formula.

First up, the pic from St. Louis, followed by an American Crow photographed at Ann Arbor's Arboretum in late April this year.

Comparing both wing tips, we can see that the outermost primary of the St. Louis Crow is clearly shorter and that the 5th primary (counted from the tip towards the body) of the St. Louis crow is relatively (compared to the other primaries) shorter, and that is exactly what distinguishes a Fish Crow from an American Crow, as was nicely illustrated here.

Indeed, I do not find the differences in wing formula very obvious in my flight shots, and still have some doubts that those were really Fish Crows. Maybe and by unlucky chance, those were indeed - and as I had speculated - just American Crows flying past a spot where Fish Crows had been calling earlier.
Opinions welcome.
However, I later saw 2 Fish Crows in flight that were calling diagnostically, so at least those had been my first ever Fish Crows.

Not bad, I can tell you so much: not bad at all.

But I had come for more:

Lifer No. 7: Yellow-throated Warbler

As I have mentioned earlier, my trip to St. Louis happened around my birthday. And no other bird reminds you of an advanced age as much as a Yellow-throated Warbler on the breeding grounds.

It's not that I had to venture into the Heart of Darkness, the impenetrable lowland forests of the Meramec seen below (incidentally, "The Heart of Darkness" is also a neat song by Iron Maiden, in case you didn't know...).



It's also not that the Yellow-throated Warbler is a small bird in a big tree, nope...
The problem is that the Yellow-throated Warbler is a blinking canopy dweller.

You see, when you're 16 or something, it may not bother you to walk around a forest for hours throwing your head backwards just to the point where you think your neck might snap any moment. But when you've reached an age when hair density becomes an issue, this is not something you commit to light-heartedly.
Indeed, I did feel my neck in an unpleasant way after about two hours of canopy scanning, but at least I was entertained once in a while by not-so Northern Parulas and Red-eyed Vireos, so I also knew- aside from the pleasure of seeing these birds - that generally my method for spotting canopy birds was working.
But each method has its limits, and when I eventually located two Yellow-throated Warblers, it was not by sight but by sound, as there were two males singing on both sides of the trail.

I was a happy chappy.

However, especially when it comes to wood warblers, hearing is only half the fun - at best - as I knew all too well from having only ever heard Palm and Worm-eating Warblers.
So I stood there and scanned as the day wore on. The birds were singing alright, on both sides of the trail, but far off and I wasn't even sure about the tree they were singing from, let alone the rough area of the canopy to give me a better chance of spotting them in the sea of moving leaves - it was a bit windy. Besides, the canopy level was full of magnificent and large butterflies, and as much as I appreciated them, the constant false alarm because of "a hopping warbler in the canopy" was becoming more and more of a nuisance.

Eventually, I gave up.

Yes, it is true.

I simply walked away with the birds still singing, regarding my chances of actually seeing them too slim to be anywhere near reality. Besides, they were so far off that a sight would have only meant a small moving dark dot against other moving green dots (leaves).
This was simply not the day to see and experience the beauty of the species and I knew I had to leave it for another trip to the East of North America, some other day, maybe on a Florida vacation, who knows, at a time when the leaves weren't out yet.

To say I gave up isn't quite right though. It all happened for the greater good, a higher goal as it was getting a bit late and I still had another plan, something I wanted to try before leaving St. Louis.
What that plan was however will be the next chapter of the St. Louis story.

Great News!!

Brilliant news indeed!!

To celebrate the return of Cindy "WoodSong", here's a small gallery of WoodSong... I mean Woodcock pictures I took on several visits to Ohio's Crane Creek.

All the very best, Cindy!!

Test the West around St. Louis

When I depart for Germany in a few weeks, I will have spent a total of around 2 years in North America:
One year in a small town east of Toronto, Canada, as an exchange student in 1987/88 with a short trip to New York City,
4 weeks in Michigan/southern Ontario in May 2005 with a short trip to New York City and
almost one year in Michigan now with a few short trips to Northern Ohio and southern Ontario.

Two years, that's quite a mighty long time actually, but if you quickly check your map of North America, you will not fail to notice that basically all of this time has been spent in the same corner of the continent: the North-East.

It is getting quite difficult for me nowadays to still see new birds around here (about which I am not complaining) but I have noticed for quite some time now that those bird names I have on my life list are quite uniform with regard to their geographic description. Here are a few examples:

Northern Shrike
Eastern Wood-pewee
Northern Harrier
Eastern Phoebe
Northern Mockingbird
Eastern Kingbird
Northern Bobwhite
Eastern Bluebird
Northern Flicker
Eastern Towhee
Northern Cardinal

Spruce but not Sage Grouse, Cape May but not Colima Warbler.

You see what I mean?
Monotony in their names, always the same North-East-North-East-North-East...

What I think about this?

I'll give you one more bird name: Mourning Dove!

But then came the short trip to St. Louis!

No, I am NOT talking about Eurasian Tree Sparrow to break the American Robin, American Tree Sparrow, American Crow,... routine.

I am talking about this little bird here: The Western Kingbird.


Lifer No. 5: Western Kingbird
The normal range of the Western Kingbird is quite a bit to the West of St. Louis as can be seen here, but there has been a small breeding population around the city for quite some time now.
And the temptation of seeing something that bears the word "Western" in its name was too much to resist: that guy was on my most wanted list for sure!

An inquiry on the local Missouri birders forum was met with a precise description by Mike Grant, and I sincerely hope a few Sharp-billed Sandpipers will fly his way this fall:
A pair with young had been seen on the utility wires of a nearby Municipal Athletic Complex, a mere 10 minutes away from my hotel.

Well, as the title has already revealed - or rather has never helped in concealing - I drove there first thing in the morning of day three and found it.
One bird, with another one calling nearby, were found and have thus taken their place in honour and glory on my life list, the great first "Western" North American bird species to have achieved this mile stone.

Okay, it wasn't too easy as I actually had to drive around the athletic complex for five, maybe ten minutes until I found it, and it was indeed on the last stretch of utility wire, so I did feel a certain amount of anxiety until it appeared, but yet again, seeing it was pure decadency and I was starting to feel a bit guilty about not having to work hard for a lifer.
I will however get back to this particular topic later.

Looking around, it was easy to see why the Western Kingbird had chosen this particular stretch of landscape.




Couldn't this very easily be part of California's Central Valley, with a few Yellow-billed Magpies just around the corner?

It sure felt very Western to me there between the fields and the athletic complex.

And here finally are the pictures of this very magnificent creature.
I do like it when birds not only appear as I had planned them to, but when they also pose like this for a few nice pictures.
Decadence all around... and beauty.

This, again, is how not to scratch your ear if you're not a Cardinal or a Kingbird but an airline employee

Oh yeah, in the background around a few greenhouses, there was also a bunch of Eurasian Tree Sparrows.
Thought some might be interested, but I'll soon see plenty of those again.

Easy at Last, another St. Louis lifer

The Bell's Vireo - one of my main "target species" or rather one of the species I had sincerely hoped to see - had been very easy once I had gotten into the right habitat. This habitat however had been just a large expanse of fallow fields with a few bushes and not the precise reason one might consider driving 8 hours for if one is not a birder but a person in their right state of mind.


Lifer No. 4: Mississippi Kite
The next day was my third day in St. Louis, my second day birding there and I had not really been on the banks of the Mississippi yet, in those surely overwhelming lowland forests of this most majestic of North American rivers, a wilderness that was even a former haunt of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, so it must still be overly impressive for sure. And you know what? Chasing after birds certainly is a nice thing to do, but some landscape elements should also be taken into account when traveling, and so I decided to head for the Mississippi valley on this second birding day.
Okay, of course I was hoping to find a few lifers there as well, like Mississippi Kite, Fish Crow and Yellow-throated Warbler. But experiencing the wild side of the Mississippi was surely going to be an immensely satisfying adventure as well.

Oh boy.

Well, you see, the Mississippi valley around St. Louis ... how shall I put it ... might indeed be more comparable to New York City's Battery Park than the Bayou deView or Cache River, if you know what I mean?
To say I was disappointed would be a bit harsh, but honestly, I was.
Anyway, after a bit of driving around and searching for anything even remotely similar to a natural landscape, I finally got to the so-called Horseshoe Lake, one of the prime birding destinations of the St. Louis Area.
A small cut-off section of the lake was drying out or rather the water was being pumped out and what was left was a huge mass of mud, puddles and dead/dying fish, bordered by reeds and cattail.
The smell itself was already an experience for itself that is not easily described, but the assembly of wading birds was truly outstanding, and I am dead serious about this: unimaginable if told, barely realizable when seen.
Here are my rough estimates:

Great Egret: 1,000 I would say is a conservative estimate
Little Blue Heron: 250
Great Blue Heron: 70
Snowy Egret: 50
Green Heron: 30
Black-crowned Night-heron: 2

Add to this around 300 Pied-billed Grebes in a tight flock and 26 American White Pelicans and the smell is barely noticeable anymore.

Oh, I see you raising an eyebrow in disbelief, surely it was the heat and the foul smell of rotting fish that hindered my realistic perception, you are thinking?

Seeing is believing, I know, so here are a few images of the scene, sadly taken against the light...

A truly and believe me very tiny fraction of the heron/egret assembly

The big dead fish and the Little Blue Herons that do have a sense of smell

Florida? Where's Florida and who needs it anyway?

Black-crowned Night-heron, not liking the heat - or was it me?

Spot the difference:

Snowy Egret

Immature Little Blue Heron

Adult Little Blue Heron, this time with a decent hair do

It had been a nice day so far, and no doubt about that, but even though seeing 250 Little Blue Herons when you've only ever seen one before was rather pleasing, it wasn't precisely like seeing a new species. And search and seren... pity-me, there was neither Fish Crow (despite all the dead fish!) nor Yellow-throated Warbler nor Mississippi Kite around.

Good thing I had been given the St. Louis guide to birding sites. So at the end of the day before I had to return to the hotel, I consulted it again and shock and awe: Mississippi Kites - it read - were frequently seen over suburban areas of St. Louis, e.g. over University City.

University City?

Not bad, as this part of town was right in between Horseshoe Lake and the hotel I was headed for.
So I turned off the highway onto one of the smaller roads leading through University City, checked the sky and after about 30 seconds was treated to this:




After a bit of a struggle at first, it had been easy again.
I like it when a plan works out.
And I particularly liked the shape of the Mississippi Kite's tail.

Finally...

...he's back!

Next time, Charlie, don't try to scratch your ear the Cardinal way, please?
We couldn't bear bird blogging another 6 weeks without you!

Belltower Birder's Birthday Bell's, the next Chapter of the St. Louis Story

As a matter of fact, and I might not have told you before but I'll tell you now as it makes for a nice introduction, the first birding day around St. Louis just so happened indeed to be your humble Belltower Birder's birthday.
Before you ask: I am frankly glad to be one year older because it makes coping with an increased resemblance to Bald Eagles (by name) much easier.


Lifer 2: Bell's Vireo
It sure was nice and highly appreciated to have a Carolina Chickadee as my first bird-thday gift, but always striving to achieve a stylish life, I wanted something else:

Your BELLtower Birder had come to St. Louis ... because his wife had to attend a meeting there if we're honest, but if we are not, just for a short moment ... only to be able to add BELL's vireo to his life list right on his birthday.
That sure sounded like a cool idea, something you can tell your grandchildren one day to make them laugh at how weired grandpa is!

I had not expected to find Bell's Vireos at Shaw Arboretum because the birder's guide to the St. Louis Area doesn't mention it as a likely species there. But this is what it said about a certain part of Weldon Spring Conservation Area [L1 in the book]: "The weedy fields are good for Loggerhead Shrike, Bell's Vireo, Blue Grosbeak, Dickcissel, and sparrows."

It does sound quite tempting, does it? Particularly so when you're only a 15 minutes drive away.

So, this is what greeted me 15 minutes later. There surely are more attractive landscapes to go birding in, but as long as these don't hold Bell's Vireos, they'll have a hard time competing...

Weldon Spring Conservation Area, more widely known as "The Place where Bell's Vireos Rock"

So I got out of the car, walked fifty metres along the gravel road, saw a Field Sparrow and then some movement in a bush, checked it out more closely and this is what I got:

Dull Brown with a hint of a white eye ring...

...two white bars on the folded wing...

... could this innocently looking...

...conspicuously inconspicuous little critter really be...

... a Bell's Vireo??

I shall very much think so, indeed and thank you very much!

This was so easy it made me laugh! Admittedly, there was no Loggerhead Shrike and I also didn't find a Blue Grosbeak there, but Dickcissels put up quite a show and actually seeing a Sedge Wren was also more of a treat this time than the nasty tricks it had played on me in 2005 at Michigan's Upper Peninsular.

A Dickcissel doing its dickcisseling

The prefect birthday present! Man, did I feel good doing my job exploiting the planet on that particular day.


Lifer 3: Northern Bobwhite
This one will be rather short: as if the place described above, with Bell's Vireos (8 in total), Sedge Wrens, Dickcissels and a whole lot of other neat birds like Orchard Orioles, Hummingbirds and Purple Martins hadn't already revealed itself to me as a fabulous birding destination, there was more to come.
On my way back to the car, and while it was getting late in the afternoon, I was brought to a full stop by a distinct call, best describes as "Bob-white", "Bob-white".
Some birds really make identifying them easy.

Identifying maybe, but catching a glimpse?

Well, that finally was too much even for such a neat area, and I never managed to see the Bobwhites themselves (there were actually 2 calling) as they were calling away from the gravel path in an extensive field with a few scattered trees and bushes.

Not complaining though, just something else to pursue next time...

Birding the St. Louis Area: a Tale in 8 Lifers and 1/2

So I am back from St. Louis.
I have actually been back for a while, but then there was work to do, a book to read, a spam-rating to overcome and all these other little snacks that spice up our daily dish of duties. So I am blogging a bit late - again - but am in good hopes of catching up. Not so much because I'll speed up my blogging (you see, work and all these things), but because now that I am back, there won't be that much birding and subsequently not much news to blog about.

Therefore, I have decided to split the St. Louis Story into different parts instead of packing it all into one long, long post, and it is therefore my pleasure to now present to you ...


Lifer 1: Carolina Chickadee
Well, well, the North American chickadees. We, in Europe, might not have wood warblers and the bird species we call "warbler" would be called "sparrow-stuff", "gimme-a-break" or "what-the-heck" in North America.
But then again, we have our tits, real beauties.
You see, the members of the family Paridae are called after their calls, and while the North American species all call "chicka-dee-dee-dee" or "Tufted-tit-mouse-mouse", the European members just call "tit, tit, tit".
And while European tits are great to look at, the North American forms are somewhat less attractive at first sight.
These are the main differences.

However, the North American species fall into a category that has its very own and peculiar attractiveness to birders and due to falling trees while eating mushrooms, a nice essay has been written about this category here which makes further explanations on my blog unnecessary for the moment. Just a few words: some of those chickadees are truly birder's birds!
Like the Caroline Chickadee, about which I will tell you a few things now.

There I was in Missouri, freshly arrived and full of hunting spirit for a few lifers, when I ventured out into the immense artificial wilderness of the Shaw Nature Reserve / Arboretum. Mind you, this really is a nice place when you just forget it wasn't born this nice but made this nice by man, and the birding was quite exquisite, as will be seen in a later post as well.
I had entered a small wooded ravine that would lead me down to the lowland forests along the larger river of which I have forgotten the name, and it was there I hoped to seek and find my main target species of the day, Yellow-throated, Kentucky, Prothonotary and Worm-eating Warblers. Little did I realize that my first new bird would be of a different kind and lurking just around the next corner of the path, when I went around the next corner of the path and was confronted with my first new bird for the trip by following a familiarly unfamiliar song. This indeed is not contradicting myself, it just means that I had never heard that song out in the wild but had familiarized myself with it through listening to bird song CDs.
So I knew what was coming my way, but still enjoyed a moment of great astonishment: all winter long I had tried to find a Carolina Chickadee amongst the Black-capped Chicks of Michigan - in vain of course or I would have chosen another headline - and always imagined it to be really hard to identify.
Well, it really wasn't, to be honest: at the first sight of the birds, a small party, it was clear and obvious that I was looking at something completely different: smaller, shorter-tailed, drabber etc., all the field marks were there, obvious and easily perceived and in combination with the song, there was no doubt I was looking at Carolina Chickadees for the very first time in my life.

Nice.

But to every story, there is a "but"...

Here is the breeding bird survey data for the Carolina Chickadee, and as can be seen, St. Louis is right on the edge of it, still inside its range, but just marginally so.
According to this, however, St. Louis and the Shaw Nature Reserve are right inside the zone of overlap or even within the range of the Black-capped Chickadee.
And if you look at the breeding bird survey data of Black-capped Chickadees here, this latter picture of its distribution is really the truth.

When I got back to the car and re-listened to the Carolina's song on my CDs again, I noticed that typically Carolinas have a four-syllable song. The once I had just seen and heard however had only a three-syllable song. An intermediate song however doesn't necessarily mean I had seen a hybrid as songs are learned in chickadees and a rather pure Carolina might therefore still mumble intermediate songs.

Sometimes, frustration can be an unpleasant thing to feel.

A few days later, while birding Castlewood State Park, I encountered a few chickadees again and was able to secure the following documentation - I won't call them pictures as I had to use ISO 1600 to get somewhat sharp images.



Now, if we check our copy of Sibley's or do some reading on the Internet, e.g. here, here or here, it seems that at both places where I encountered chickadees closely enough to take a thorough look, they were closer to Carolina than to Black-capped.
In fact, I had difficulties even finding a single typical Black-capped feature on the birds except for their intermediate song.
So for the sake of my own personal satisfaction and as this is a blog about a hobby birdwatcher and not a scientific publication / research project, I have decided that those chicks were good enough to appear as Carolinas in my book.

So this was it, the tale of lifer No. 1.
A bit fishy maybe, but i was fun and that's the most wonderful thing about birding anyway.