Diario de davems

I discovered something nobody else knew. At least not birders. (snark alert - everybody knows this) Texas, south of San Antonio, is a birding paradise. Lots of Central American species make their way up into the southern tip of Texas. I saw some of them.

Taking a long weekend before Christmas, I flew to San Antonio the evening of the 13th, drove south until I could find a cozy dark sky spot to tuck my rental car into to get some rest - and to see the Geminids meteor shower, which was peak or near peak. There were some good ones, but I had to get some sleep. I had already booked a guided birding tour at the King Ranch for the morning of the 14th. The guide, Jim, drove me and a married couple around the Ranch, where we saw caracara, Sprague's pipit, white-tailed kite, white tailed hawk, least grebe, Couch's kingbird, olive sparrow, green jay, golden-fronted woodpecker, bronzed cowbird, fulvous whistling duck, neotropic cormorant - bam, bam, bam - all these life birds with photos in one morning. That didn't count the numerous other bird species that weren't new. Pretty amazing and hard to keep track of it. I even got sick of seeing vermillion flycatchers. Just kidding.

From there I had to go to Aranasas to find another life bird, whooping cranes. Which I did. A flock of 12 whooping cranes were in one spot waiting for me to find them. Other places visited were Laguna Atosca, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park, and Estero Llano Grande State Park. Highlights were a Texas indigo snake, plain chachalacas, harris' hawks, gray hawk, long-billed thrashers, white-tipped dove, Inca dove, Altamira orioles, great kiskadees, great tailed grackles, green kingfisher, lincoln's sparrow, more green jays, and thousands of black bellied whistling ducks.

This was the best and most vertebrate-intensive bioblast I ever experienced. So far, that is.

This weekend (9/4/21) I visited Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area, NW of Baltimore for the third time. This area, noted as serpentine barrens, has thin and magnesium-rich soil that many plants do not like very much. It is also noted as the only place in Maryland with fringed gentians (Gentianopsis crinita). They are found there, not exactly thriving with limited numbers, but hanging on because of limited competition on the serpentine soils. The first fringed gentians (same species) I ever saw were in 1989, alongside a small pond in south central Michigan, somewhere between Jackson and Albion (where I went to Albion College). I thought they were incredible. The next time I found fringed gentians (Gentianopsis thermalis) was in Yellowstone in August of 2010 with my, then 7 yo, son. This trip to Soldier's Delight, I knew the gentians wouldn't be blooming yet, but it was worth the trip. Lots of foxglove spp. and liatris were blooming, and the prarie grasses were magnificent. I really need to learn my grasses better. I should take a class.

Check out Willam Cullen Bryant's poem, "To The Fringed Gentian: at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55340/to-the-fringed-gentian

I spent the week of June 7-11, 2021 counting Kirtland’s warblers (Setophaga kirtlandii) in northern Michigan. This bird, one of 119 species of New World warblers, was nearing extinction 50 years ago and nested only in a small area in northeastern Michigan. Kirtland’s warblers winter in The Bahamas, where they are not habitat-limited. Habitat changes from intensive forestry and fire suppression, along with nest-parasitism pressure from brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) had reduced the population of Kirtland’s warblers to about 167 pairs in 1974. Kirtland’s warblers prefer young (~5-15 year old) jack pine (Pinus banksiana) for breeding, nesting on the ground underneath or near the lowest branches of a jack pine at the edge of a clearing, well-hidden among the grasses (Poaceae) and lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium). Since jack pines are practically worthless as lumber, forestry practices of the 20th century favored replacing jack pine with other, more valuable, trees. Fire suppression also limited jack pine recruitment, since the cones of the jack pine only release their seeds with the heat of a forest fire. Finally, brown-headed cowbirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, which then raise the cowbirds as their own and raise fewer of their own babies. Some species are able to defend their nests or recognize and reject the cowbird eggs, but Kirtland’s warblers do not.

Intensive management was required to bring the Kirtland’s warblers back from the brink of extinction, with a recovery plan first described in 1971. This included acquiring federal land for restoring young jack pine habitat, modifying fire suppression efforts, trapping of brown-headed cowbirds, exclusion of the public from Kirtland’s warbler habitat, and an annual census. Over time, this management has advanced into highly-engineered “warbler factories” of young jack pine habitat interspersed with diamond-shaped clearings. This design maximizes the number of warblers that can successfully breed in a given area. As the jack pines age past ~15 years old, few warblers can be found in these areas and some time beyond 20 years old, the areas are harvested for pulp and replanted.

By 2019, the recovery goal of at least 1000 pairs over each of 17 years was met (many of those years have had >2500 pairs), so Kirtlands’ warblers were “delisted” from Endangered to Near Threatened, and the annual census was changed to every-other-year. Paired with US Forest Service (USFS) personnel, I (Dave) and another volunteer participated in the 2021 census that was run out of the Oscoda, MI USFS office, covering 10-12 miles (total) of transects through thick cover over five mornings. Guided by GPS and compass, I marked ~168 (one more than the minimum ;-) singing males on the maps, over five days. Other team members similarly marked singing males on parallel transects, which were then compared at the end of the morning to get a conservative count by triangulation. I spotted and photographed several singing males and one nest, but only under conditions that would not perturb the census. Other areas of northern Michigan were similarly covered by other teams. In addition to meeting the recovery goal of >1000 breeding pairs, Kirtland’s warblers have expanded into Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and Ontario, Canada.

If you want to participate in the next Kirtland’s warbler census, you don’t have to have an advanced degree or even be a birder. Training to recognize the Kirtland’s warbler’s songs, and use of maps, GPS, and compass is all onsite. You just have to be willing to crash through and get torn up by brush and trees, stumble over stumps and slash and into holes, get pooped on by gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) caterpillars, and donate blood to blackflies (Simuliidae), mosquitoes (Culicidae), and deer flies (Chrysops spp.). Don’t miss it in June, 2023.

My digital archive is now pretty much caught up on iNat, dating from about 2008 when I got a digital (pocket) camera. I've got slides dating back to ~1988 until 2011 that I am finally scanning. I stopped taking (slide) film photos around 2011 when I got a digital SLR body. Since it takes so long to scan each one, I am only scanning the slides showing species I haven't captured digitally, along with some good-quality pictures of other things. Many of these photos aren't particularly good, but hopefully they are all identifiable. Right now, I am almost done with the animals. It will probably take me another month to scan in my plant photos.