Today is Polar Bear Day. None in Wisconsin, of course, but I did get to see them in far northern Alaska a couple of times, including during my ABA big year (2008) and when we lived in AK (2014-21). This painting, done a few years ago, is from one of my photos. Happy Polar Bear Day!
Sometimes birding is not about chasing birds, or even about seeing them, but is about watching for and waiting for them. Right now, while we still have the residents, such as Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, most of our summer birds have left for southern climes, not knowing we were going to have a mild fall, and basically no winter yet.
Our normal wintertime birds are mostly somewhere north of here in Canada, with only a few having finally drifted down to the northern part of the state recently. Although we’ve had a few light snows, right now there is no snow on the ground. It’s mid-December in central Wisconsin!
So birding now is more about watching squirrels eat bird seed in my yard than it is about watching birds.
Winter is coming they say- it’s supposed to dip below zero (degrees F) at night two days from now and to barely rise above it during the next day. And maybe there will be an inch of snow. Slowly, slowly. Maybe more birds will arrive soon…
When I restarted my blog a couple of months ago, I intended to keep my blog limited to Wisconsin bird topics, but birding in Arizona and Texas is so special, I just need to include a few highlights in my blog from my recent trip there. It was both a wonderful and a horrible trip. The birds and the birding, of course, were wonderful, but at the start of the trip when I had just been in Arizona a couple of days, I learned that my beautiful longtime Texas friend, Debra, whom I was going to visit and stay with and bird with the next week, had just died of a very unexpected heart attack! Deciding that changing my travel plans would do nothing to bring her back, I kept on keeping on with my previous plans.
After I birded with a Wisconsin-Arizona friend south of Tucson, the Arizona portion of the trip was primarily a great night-birds tour offered by Field Guides to southeast Arizona birding hotspots. We visited places on the tour that I had birded many years ago with my Texas friend. Each day where we went and the birds we saw brought memories of her. On this year’s trip, we saw many southern Arizona birds including five owls plus another owl that we only heard. After Arizona, I flew to Texas and birded places that she and I had birded together and had planned to bird again. I also went on my originally scheduled trip to the King Ranch, especially with the goal of seeing the Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl. A photo sampler of my trip follows.
The first set of photos is from days 1-2 of the Field Guides tour. The birds shown are in order from top left across each row and then going downward and across each row of photos: Verdin, Vermilion Flycatcher, Broad-billed Hummingbird, Yellow-eyed Junco, Arizona Woodpecker, Acorn Woodpecker, Elf Owl, Whiskered Screech-Owl, and Red-faced Warbler.:
The next set of photos is from days 3-5 of the Arizona guided tour showing a Montezuma Quail (bad photo that still shows its distinctive silhouette), Elegant Trogon, Green-tailed Towhee, Western Screech-Owl by flashlight, Spotted Owl (back), Buff-breasted Flycatcher, Black-chinned Sparrow and Lazuli Buntings at a feeder.
The last set of photos is from the Texas portion of my trip taken along the Gulf coast and along the Rio Grande Valley, showing a Great Kiskadee, a perched Greater Roadrunner (they aren’t always running on roads), and a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (two back views – top photo shows the feathering on its back that looks like eyes, and the bottom photo shows one real eye and part of one of its fake eyes on its turned head).
This morning I saw my first Ruby-crowned KInglets of the year at McMillan Marsh about 45 minutes south of my Wausau home. There was a little flock of them singing and chattering, some of them coming down to bushes along the path, ignoring me entirely. Every now and then one of them would excitedly raise his red crest and chatter even more vigorously, apparently at another kinglet that came too close. There were also a couple of Golden-crowned Kinglets that stayed higher in the trees. I spent about half an hour trying to get a photograph of the ever-moving Ruby-crowned Kinglets. Many many of my photos showed only branches, but finally one of the kinglets stayed near enough for long enough that I was able to get some pictures of it.
For many years, every time I have seen a Ruby-crowned Kinglet I have been suddenly reminded of a day long ago in North Carolina. After we moved to Raleigh in the late 70s, the heat and the ever-present numerous wood ticks mostly had kept me mostly indoors for weeks, maybe months. I had been a birder before the move, birding in the much cooler climates of Wisconsin, Alaska and Oregon, but now I just could not face the muggy frighteningly ticky out-of-doors. One day as I was taking trash out to our backyard garbage can, a sudden explosion of chattering came out of a sapling near the can. Just at eye level was an extremely tiny, extremely agitated bird, with the top of his head bright red. A beautiful little Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I was stunned. Why had I abandoned birding? Just because of heat and bugs? Really. There were too many birds waiting to be seen. I had to face it. I would face it. I would go back to birding! And I did! Since then I have never not been a birder. It is too much fun. There are too many remarkable little (and big) birds, and too many remarkable things to see them do. Thank you little Ruby-crowned Kinglet!
We have had a very dry, snowless winter so almost all the people are happy about today’s snow. The birds are busily scrambling to eat my new deliveries of birdseed before everything is again covered with snow. We are expecting a couple of inches yet today and more tomorrow apparently. We all will be busy.
Over the winter the American Goldfinches and Pine Siskins have regularly gone from being omnipresent to disappearing and back again. With this snow the goldfinches are up to over 50, but there are only a few Pine Siskins around our yard. Every now and then there is a small flock of American Robins in the yard, but mostly just one or two right now. The Mourning Doves are down to a few pairs from being a huge flock during the winter.
While there are at least two Northern Cardinals around, they do not come down to our feeders as often as the goldfnches, robins and doves. Today, however, there was a pair. The female was briefly at the feeders, but the male sat up high in the trees, first in a deciduous tree across the street, and then hiding toward the top of our front yard spruce.
The snow just keeps coming down. An unphotographed Tufted Titmouse called to me a little while ago as I was typing and then was quiet. For now all the birds have disappeared, probably hiding in the trees to get out of the wet, never-ending snow. I expect they do not admire the beauty of it as much as I do (or maybe not at all).
