Spring Birding Festivals 2013!

I love traveling, especially if I know where I'm going.

I had a momentary lost of cranial pressure a few minutes ago. I was sitting in an airport terminal, waiting on a plane, and I suddenly realized that I could not recall where I was about to go. I checked the gate screen and saw it was a flight to Detroit. No bells were rung by this. Then I walked my mental fingers through my recent travels. I'd been twice to Florida in the past two weeks, so not likely going there again. And then it came to me. I was not going to a birding festival, but to a business conference for publishers: more work-like and completely indoors. No chance to go birding. No wonder I'd forgotten it.

I can look forward to much great birding travel and adventure this spring and summer, however. Let me share some of the highlights with you.

In just a few weeks I'll be one of the speakers at the San Diego Bird Festival. This event takes place on scenic Mission Bay from February 28 to March 3, 2013. The featured speaker is Dr. John Fitzpatrick from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I am listed as a special guest and I'm leading a birding trip along the border with Mexico as well as giving a couple of presentations and playing some music for one of the evening receptions. 

The San Diego Bird Festival features many activities for young people and families.

The birding at this fest is excellent (including several pelagic trips), as is the vendor hall. There's even a post-festival tour south into the Baja Peninsula of Mexico. Find out more here: www.sandiegoaudubon.org.

Vermilion flycatcher (male). Photo ©Karen Straus

Later in March I'll be representing Bird Watcher's Digest as a host for the first-ever Birding Optics & Gear Expo in Columbus, Ohio March 23-24, 2013. Nearly all the major optics manufacturers will be on hand, showing and sharing their products. Ben Lizdas from Eagle Optics will be there selling optics. And we'll be joined by several other companies, too: Midwest Photo Exchange will be selling cameras and other photo gear, Clintonville Outfitters will bring outdoor gear such as boots, packs, and so on. Manfrotto will be there with their excellent tripods. Optics companies at the Expo include: Swarovski Optik, Leica Sport Optics, Carl Zeiss Sports Optics, Celestron, Kowa Optimed, Minox, Vanguard, and Vortex. Best of all, this event is FREE to attend. All outdoor enthusiasts are welcome, so I hope to see you there.

One spring event that I've been invited to in the past but have never been able to attend is the FeatherFest in Galveston, Texas scheduled for April 11-14, 2013. It might win the contest for longest birding festival name, since it's officially known as: The FeatherFest Birding and Nature Photography Festival. I've been birding along this part of the Texas coast and can attest to its appeal as a place where you get great, close-up looks at wonderful birds. Easy access to diverse habitats means you'll likely run up a huge list of birds. This year's speaker is Mark Obmascik, author of The Big Year. More details are available here: Galveston FeatherFest. One of these years I plan to get back to Galveston (cue the Glenn Campbell soundtrack).

In late April I'll be back down in south-central West Virginia at the New River Birding & Nature Festival, which is held in Fayetteville, WV from April 29 to May 5. This small event specializes in wood warblers, including cerulean, Swainson's, and golden-winged—and about 20 other warbler species, too. Mornings are spent birding the hills and hollers amid breathtaking mountain scenery of the New River Gorge. Late afternoons are a time to rest up for the evening, which might include a cookout, a cafe meal, or a stop at a nearby ramp dinner before the evening program and check list review. 

Life bird wigglers after finding a golden-winged warbler at the New River Birding & Nature Festival in West Virginia.

It's fun, friendly, a little wacky, and a must-add event to your bird-festival bucket list. On the festival's final night, The Rain Crows, the most-famous band ever to emerge from Whipple, Ohio will be playing a show at Opossum Creek Retreat, where the festival is based. Oh yes, and there is local microbrewed beer on hand, too. More info: New River Birding & Nature Festival.

At the end of April I'll be speaking and guiding for the first time at The Acadia Birding Festival on Mount Desert Island in Maine, which runs from May 30 to June 2. I'm giving two talks and guiding on two walks and a pelagic trip for the festival. Marshall Iliff is the other speaker booked this year for Acadia—a festival which is gaining quite a reputation for its combination of great boreal and coastal birding. Who doesn't like a birding event that can give you both warblers and alcids? For more info, head here: www.acadiabirdingfestival.com

Mid-June usually find me and my family out on the Missouri Coteau in North Dakota for the Prairie and Potholes Birding Festival. If you've been a reader of my blog or Julie Zickefoose's blog over the years, or a subscriber to Bird Watcher's Digest you'll know about "Potholes." Our dear friend Ann Hoffert serves as the de facto den mother for this festival which, despite its small size (about 80 people max), offers world-class birding. Highlight species we see most every year include Baird's, LeConte's, and Nelson's sparrows, chestnut-collared longspur, Sprague's pipit, and ferruginous hawk. 

Birders at the Potholes & Prairie Birding Festival looking for a Sprague's pipit.

Add to that alluring list the vision of nearly every breeding species of waterfowl, skeins of American white pelicans, and you get a feel for the wonderful birds we see. But there's more: hot lunches at cafes in tiny prairie towns, a prairie ramble that includes sites where Native American tepee rings are still present, and the biggest sky you've ever seen. There are even rumors that there will be a bit of squatchin' this year with Al Batt and Liam Thompson. We've been out there for 10 years running and we'll be back again: Visit Birding Drives Dakota for details.

Late June will find my family back at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Bremen, Maine for a course we'll be helping to teach called "The Arts of Birding." Julie and I and our fellow instructors (including...) will lead sessions on nature journaling, field sketching and painting, writing about birds, bird photography, and perhaps even a bit of nature songwriting, too. Hog Island is legendary for its setting along the rocky Maine coast, its proximity to birds such as black guillemot and Atlantic puffin, and its history of teaching people of all ages about nature. We hope you'll join us June 23 to 28, 2013 for The Arts of Birding.

A sunset view of Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine.

It's time to board my plane to....ummm.....uhhhh......HOME! Yay! What a long strange trip it's been! Hey, I hope to see you out there with the birds one of these days at one of the events I've listed above. Until then, stay birdy, people!

Beautiful Gull

On the pelagic trip I joined out of San Diego, California, in early March, I got a chance to take a few images of what just might be North America's most beautiful gull. Note that I said "gull" not "girl." And I suppose this is where, by law, I am required to insert the joke "I wish they all could be California gulls."

We did see Cali gulls on the trip, as well as western, ring-billed, Bonaparte's, and glaucous-winged. But the most beautiful, in my Humboldt (Current) opinion is the Heermann's gull. Breeding adults are sooty-gray above, white below, with a white head and bright red bill. They just appear elegant mixed in with the other, often larger, gulls.Like most pelagic trips, our was a chum fest. Bag after bag of bright orange popcorn kept the gulls glued to our stern. They were mostly westerns, but the Heermann's were the next most populous. Above you can see San Diego in the background as we leave the harbor.

Heermann's gull adult.

Hard as it was to get a decent shot of a flying bird while standing on a rolling boat deck, I managed one or two keepers.

Heermann's gull adult.

I'll post more about this trip in the near future. After all, I've just gotta share the experience of getting a handful of lifers.

Clean as a Rail

I believe I have discovered the secret of how the light-footed clapper rail keeps its feet so clean. After all, if you made your living striding around in the marsh mud, do you think you could live up to the name "light-footed?"

This sub-species of the clapper rail is found along the Pacific Coast of southern California, south of Los Angeles. It is critically endangered due to a number of factors: habitat loss, increased predation, rising ocean levels, and the effects of pesticides. Efforts to help the species to recover have been fairly successful where there is enough appropriate habitat.

Our "Birds Along the Border" field trip at the San Diego Bird Festival encountered this bird in the salt marshes in a park along San Diego Bay. A handful of us lingered to watch this bird after the rest of the group headed back to the bus and we were rewarded with a nice long view of the rail taking a bath.

Uncountable Alien

I've gotta give another BOTB shout-out to the most amazing bird I've seen in the United States thus far this year: the black-throated magpie jay. There's a small number of this species that lives along the San Diego/Tijuana, Mexico border. They are probably there as a result of some bird smuggling gone awry or as escaped cage birds. They are native to west-central Mexico, but have begun breeding in southern California. They are not countable now for North American bird lists, but methinks it only a matter of time....

Countable or not, this bird can make even the most jaded birder go "Wow!"

BWD 1978

While visiting a park (ahown above) along the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, California, I happened to look down and there, in the concrete right next to where I had parked, was this inscription carved 30+ years ago.
Now 1978 is the year my family started Bird Watcher's Digest in our living room, and we had a surprising amount of support from the birding community right from the start, but I'm not sure we were impressive enough to inspire someone to carve our initials in the wet cement of a California coastal town (which by the way, is pronounced La Hoy-ya—not La Jah-la—I discovered).

Pretty funny what you end up seeing when you take the time to look around.

Some Birds Along the Border

Anna's hummingbird, male, at Dairy Mart Ponds.

Digiscoped images from my Friday all-day birding field trip along the US/Mexican border. We saw some great birds, including—but not limited to—these.

Looking for the nesting night herons near the sports park ball fields.

A male hepatic tanager in the trees near the ball fields. This guy has been hanging around this coral tree for months.

A peregrine falcon has been roosting on the lights at the ball fields. I wondered if he'd was watching the hepatic tanager, just 50 yards away.

Black-throated magpie-jays are established exotics along the San Diego/Tijuana border. Not countable (yet) but stunners to see.

Sleeping Godwits

Along the Pacific coast, near San Diego, my birding group ran across this flock of sleeping shorebirds. The flock was mostly marbled godwits with a few dowitchers and a willet thrown in.

Our group tallied 100 species in our Birds Along the Border field trip. If you've never attended the San Diego Bird Festival, take it from me, it's a good one! It's amazing how many birds you can find when you've got ocean, freshwater sloughs, mountains, desert, and lush spring vegetation all in abundance.