Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
800 up!!!
Phew, what a mission that was!!
7 days and 4000 miles later, and we're in Portland, Oregon. We arrived at Colin's parents place yesterday afternoon after a furiously paced trek across the country.
From Long Point, we drove non-stop for 24 hours to Kansas ,where we stopped for a short while at Quivira National Preserve for a bit of birding. This was an impressive wetland site, with large numbers of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese, along with smaller numbers of Canada and White-fronted Geese, and assorted other wildfowl. We had a few good smaller birds with Loggerhead Shrike being a nice lifer as well as a Harris's Sparrow at some other site back along the road.
From Quivira we carried on in to Colorado, seeing very little until the last few kilometres of plains before the Rocky Mountains started, where we had a stonking Ferruginous Hawk and Prairie Falcon perched up on adjacent telegraph poles, giving fanastic views. We stayed in the Rocky Mountains for a few days, picking up some quality mountain birds, like Pine Grosbeak, Clarks Nutcracker , Stellers and Grey Jays and Three-toed Woodpecker. Unfortunately the weather had been too good to push Rosy-finches down to accessible areas, i'll have to try again for them some time in the future.
We pushed on in to Wyoming seeing Barrows Goldeneye, Western Grebe and Trumpeter Swan on roadside lakes and pools and arrived in the legendary Yellowstone National Park. The only new bird in Yellowstone was an American Dipper, my 800th bird species of the year. The highlght of Yellowstone however, was the mammals ,we had crippling close views of grazing hordes of Bison and Elk, and hunting Coyotes and Red Fox. The only budget acommodation available in Yellowstone at this time of year was camping, so we set up at Mammoth Campsite expecting a freezing night, luckiy iy was surprisingly warm, though when we woke up there was 2 inches of fresh snow on the tent!!! A Great Horned Owl calling from a tree above the tent was a nice disturbance in the middle of the night.
Overall it was an excellent trip across the country, we managed to do it fairly quickly, and on a decent budget thanks to some unbelievably low gas prices (for a european at least). We also saw a pretty decent selection fo birds considering a total lack of planning, we pretty much decided where to go each day by picking a random spot on the atlas each morning!!
7 days and 4000 miles later, and we're in Portland, Oregon. We arrived at Colin's parents place yesterday afternoon after a furiously paced trek across the country.
From Long Point, we drove non-stop for 24 hours to Kansas ,where we stopped for a short while at Quivira National Preserve for a bit of birding. This was an impressive wetland site, with large numbers of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese, along with smaller numbers of Canada and White-fronted Geese, and assorted other wildfowl. We had a few good smaller birds with Loggerhead Shrike being a nice lifer as well as a Harris's Sparrow at some other site back along the road.
From Quivira we carried on in to Colorado, seeing very little until the last few kilometres of plains before the Rocky Mountains started, where we had a stonking Ferruginous Hawk and Prairie Falcon perched up on adjacent telegraph poles, giving fanastic views. We stayed in the Rocky Mountains for a few days, picking up some quality mountain birds, like Pine Grosbeak, Clarks Nutcracker , Stellers and Grey Jays and Three-toed Woodpecker. Unfortunately the weather had been too good to push Rosy-finches down to accessible areas, i'll have to try again for them some time in the future.
We pushed on in to Wyoming seeing Barrows Goldeneye, Western Grebe and Trumpeter Swan on roadside lakes and pools and arrived in the legendary Yellowstone National Park. The only new bird in Yellowstone was an American Dipper, my 800th bird species of the year. The highlght of Yellowstone however, was the mammals ,we had crippling close views of grazing hordes of Bison and Elk, and hunting Coyotes and Red Fox. The only budget acommodation available in Yellowstone at this time of year was camping, so we set up at Mammoth Campsite expecting a freezing night, luckiy iy was surprisingly warm, though when we woke up there was 2 inches of fresh snow on the tent!!! A Great Horned Owl calling from a tree above the tent was a nice disturbance in the middle of the night.
Overall it was an excellent trip across the country, we managed to do it fairly quickly, and on a decent budget thanks to some unbelievably low gas prices (for a european at least). We also saw a pretty decent selection fo birds considering a total lack of planning, we pretty much decided where to go each day by picking a random spot on the atlas each morning!!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
We're on a road trip to.........
Yes, thats right, we're on a road trip to PANAMA!!!!
possibly.
Later this morning, Oregonian birder Colin Woolley, fellow Brit birder Matt Slaymaker and I are leaving Long Point to drive back to Colins place in Portland, Oregon, from there Matt and I going to peel off (Colin has a job, boooo!) and the current plan is to head down South along the Pacific coast, and travel down through Central America, probably as far as Panama before flying home sometime early next year, depending on jobs, finances and crappy real-world stuff like that.
It has the potential to be a birding trip of epic proportions, and even if it doesnt wrok out as planned we should have an awesome time, and should see some spectacular birds.
We have 10 days to get to Portland from here, so the current idea is to 'properly book it' through the boring middle part to Colorado and then take our time birding back up through the Rockies, hopefully picking up some quality moutainish stuff like Rosy-finches, and Nutcrackers, and maybe some grousey/chickeney things.
It feels wierd to be leaving Long Point, i've been here almost 3 months and had a fantastic time. I've learnt more about birds during my time here than over any other 3 month period during my birding life, apart from the very beginning obviously, and had the opportunity to study some really cool birds close up.
Highlights have been many, and include catching a Great Blue Heron in a net strung up over a pond to catch Snipe (quite possibly the only time i'll ever handle such a dangerous bird), stumbling across the first Boreal Owl (Tengmalm's for all you crazy Europeans) for Long Point, while tape-luring Northern Saw-whet Owls into nets, a dazzling variety of new world wood warblers, even though most were in comparitively grotty fall plumage there were still plenty of gems, catching 6 Cave Swallows over 2 days (only one has been banded in Canada before) including one that I caught in the Heligoland trap, and banding a variety of raptors, the best of which was a stunning adult Red-tailed Hawk, caught on the last day of banding at The Tip.
Anyway, I really ought to pack my stuff up and work out how we're going to make it through USA border control later today.
I hope to be updating this blog fairly frequently as we make our merry way down South, and i'll try and get pictures up as often as I can.
Oh, and if anyone has any good birding gen for the Rockies over the next few days, or for anywhere else between Portland and Panama, particularly for California, please do e-mail me at joe_cockram@hotmail.com, any help will be much appreciated!!!
Friday, November 14, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Long Point pics
Finally, a few pics from Long point Bird Observatory. As you might imagine, i'm having a wicked time!!!
Friday, September 19, 2008
Epicentre
You're going to have to stick with me here, i'm far too busy to update this regularly. To sum things up, birding at Long Point is friggin brilliant. The fall (autumn) has properly got underway and we're starting to catch an average of 100 birds a day, so i'm banding plenty of exciting stuff. The highlights over the last few days have been a spanking male Connecticut Warbler, Blue-headed Vireo, several Northen Parulas, Hooded Warbler, heaps of other wood-warblers (blackpolls, bay-breasted, Magnolias, Orange-crowned etc).
A few days ago I had an epic vis-mig session here at Old Cut. I spent the entire day (0745- 1945) standing on a 2m diameter picnic table overlooking the marsh, with breaks only to fetch more beer and to help launch the boat taking supplies to The Tip, and recorded an awesome 93 species. An excellent variety of birds with lots of raptors, waders, ducks and passerines. Highlights were 19 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 16 Merlins, 9 Sandhill Cranes and 1 Red-headed Woodpecker, great stuff.
Other exciting birds have included a Whip-poor-will that we caught in the middle of the night a couple of days ago, a good haul of Northern Flickers (really cool birds to handle, if you dont mind having your fingers lacerated), the first Eastern Phoebe of the fall (they smell like fresh laundry/or, 'like spring' according to some people).
I'm still racking up the lifers and today i've recorded my 100th lifer of my trip over here, and pushed my world year list up to 726, not that i'm counting it religiously or anything sad like that.
Basically i'm having an excellent time over here and have come to the conculsion that birding on North America is heaps better than birding in England, and I don't want to ever come back.
P.S, I see all the birds I sent to my friends in Ireland made it over in one piece.
P.P.S, only joking (sort of)
A few days ago I had an epic vis-mig session here at Old Cut. I spent the entire day (0745- 1945) standing on a 2m diameter picnic table overlooking the marsh, with breaks only to fetch more beer and to help launch the boat taking supplies to The Tip, and recorded an awesome 93 species. An excellent variety of birds with lots of raptors, waders, ducks and passerines. Highlights were 19 Sharp-shinned Hawk, 16 Merlins, 9 Sandhill Cranes and 1 Red-headed Woodpecker, great stuff.
Other exciting birds have included a Whip-poor-will that we caught in the middle of the night a couple of days ago, a good haul of Northern Flickers (really cool birds to handle, if you dont mind having your fingers lacerated), the first Eastern Phoebe of the fall (they smell like fresh laundry/or, 'like spring' according to some people).
I'm still racking up the lifers and today i've recorded my 100th lifer of my trip over here, and pushed my world year list up to 726, not that i'm counting it religiously or anything sad like that.
Basically i'm having an excellent time over here and have come to the conculsion that birding on North America is heaps better than birding in England, and I don't want to ever come back.
P.S, I see all the birds I sent to my friends in Ireland made it over in one piece.
P.P.S, only joking (sort of)
Friday, September 05, 2008
LPBO
After a couple of weeks at The Tip, i'm back at Old Cut for a short while. Migration has been slow to get underway but we're catching a steady trickle of birds, not much of any interest to the locals but heaps of new birds for me, i've already had 70ish lifers, and my world year list has been given a welcome boost after stagnating over the summer.
Highlight so far were 2 Willets that I found on the beach at The tip. We even managed to catch one on a midnight spotlightlighting session, and it became the 3rd ever banded at LPBO, we also got a Sanderling and a Semi-palmated Plover that night. I also banded a Sharp-shinned Hawk, which was pretty cool, and not at all bad for my 5th bird extracted from a mist net!! I even have a couple of holes in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger to remind me to to be slightly more careful next time I band a hawk, which should hopefully be pretty soon. Other interesting birds banded here (but not by me) were a Great-horned Owl that was found waterlogged in someones garden having been sprayed by a skunk it was attemtping to eat and then falling into a navigation channel after being blinded by the acrid liquid. The banding lab still stinks. Also an Eastern Screech Owl that was tap lured in one night.
Apart from awesome birds like that, i've been badning plenty of common warblers, sparrows, vireos etc,which has all been educational for when/if I ever find one back in the UK.
I've got plenty of photos of birds being banded and real birds in the field that I might get around to posting up here soon, don't hold your breath tho.
Oh and also, I completely forgot to mention how the Little Terns at Kilcoole did this year. In the end we had 74 pairs, with 130 young fledged, the 4th most succesful year at the colony since the project begun. We were all very pleased with this score, and hopefully will result in decent numbers coimg back again next year.
Highlight so far were 2 Willets that I found on the beach at The tip. We even managed to catch one on a midnight spotlightlighting session, and it became the 3rd ever banded at LPBO, we also got a Sanderling and a Semi-palmated Plover that night. I also banded a Sharp-shinned Hawk, which was pretty cool, and not at all bad for my 5th bird extracted from a mist net!! I even have a couple of holes in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger to remind me to to be slightly more careful next time I band a hawk, which should hopefully be pretty soon. Other interesting birds banded here (but not by me) were a Great-horned Owl that was found waterlogged in someones garden having been sprayed by a skunk it was attemtping to eat and then falling into a navigation channel after being blinded by the acrid liquid. The banding lab still stinks. Also an Eastern Screech Owl that was tap lured in one night.
Apart from awesome birds like that, i've been badning plenty of common warblers, sparrows, vireos etc,which has all been educational for when/if I ever find one back in the UK.
I've got plenty of photos of birds being banded and real birds in the field that I might get around to posting up here soon, don't hold your breath tho.
Oh and also, I completely forgot to mention how the Little Terns at Kilcoole did this year. In the end we had 74 pairs, with 130 young fledged, the 4th most succesful year at the colony since the project begun. We were all very pleased with this score, and hopefully will result in decent numbers coimg back again next year.
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