Caption Contest #25 Winners!

Hey everybody! We have winners for Caption Contest #25! Yes that's winners—plural, with an s. Our judges were stymied at the prospect of choosing just one winner, so we divided the entries into two categories and we have two winners!

In the Dirty Minds category:
WINNER:

Nilpad said...
Optics for all your middle-aged guy needs!


FINALISTS:
Alyssa said...

Although the invite specifically said "bare-naked birding", Geoff didn't feel comfortable unless he brought along certain..."enhancements."

Erik said...
Looks like Geoff stores his Viagra in his optics case.

In the Funny and Clean category:
WINNER:
Leslie said...
OK, scan north until you hit Michigan, look for third jack pine from the left, halfway up the tree, eight o'clock, sitting on skinny branch against the sky, yellow breast, black streaking, split white eye ring..........

FINALIST:
kevbosnafu said...
Our new 'Pinocchio' binoculars will let your birding friends know when you are....exaggerating... about that ivory-billed in the backyard.

Congratulations to our two winners and all of our finalists! And thanks to all who played!

Leslie and Nilpad, please contact me via e-mail to give me your details and claim your prizes! bt3 AT birdwatchersdigest DOT com. Use the subject line BOTB Caption Contest.

Thank you!

Caption Contest #25!

It's been a while since we had a good old-fashioned caption contest here at Bill of the Birds. In fact it's been WAY TOO LONG! So here goes...

My good buddy and New River Birding & Nature Festival co-founder Geoff Heeter is using some impressive binoculars in this image.

Almost as impressive is your opportunity to submit a clever caption for this photograph and garner a fabulous prize if your caption is chose as the winning entry. The prize is a personally autographed copy of The New Birder’s Guide written by yours truly.

Here are the rules:

1.     Use the Comments section of this blog (below) to create and enter your caption.

2.     Make sure there’s a way for our panel of esteemed judges to identify and contact you by including your Blogger name, non-linkable e-mail address, Google+ or Twitter handle, etc.

3.     Get your entry (or entries, there’s no limit other than your time and imagination) in by May 22, 2014.

4.     Entries must be in English or in one of the other identifiable languages of Planet Earth (no Klingon or High Valyrian entries please).

5.     Encourage your friends, birding pals, social media contacts, and frenemies to enter.

6.     Sit back, enjoy the entries from others less clever than you

7.     Wait for the announcement of your BOTB Caption Contest victory!

Thanks for playing and let’s be careful out there.

—BOTB

Sweet Birding on Sugar Creek

A vista along Sugar Creek Road, Fayette County, WV.

Among the many trips I've lead over the past ten springs at The New River Birding and Nature Festival, the one we call Sugar Creek is right at the top of the list. There are three warbler species that are the most sought-after birds at this annual West Virginia birding event: cerulean warbler, Swainson's warbler, and golden-winged warbler. Sugar Creek has many breeding pairs of the first two species, which makes it a sell-out trip most every year.

In this post I'm going to take you along on our Sugar Creek field trip from this spring.

 Sugar Creek Road has some big timber. The road itself is about 1.5 car-widths wide and gravel. It is cut into a steep mountainside and at places the road is so narrow that the school bus driver and the folks who drive the vans and buses during the white-water rafting season call out their positions and progress on CB radios to reduce the chance of a head-on collision on a blind curve—of which there are many.

The severity of the landscape is what makes this road special for cerulean warblers. And it's one of the few places where you can see tree-top-loving warblers (like the cerulean) in the tops of the trees BELOW you on the mountain.

Looking down on a flitting warbler.

My strategy for Sugar Creek is to walk the roadway as much as possible. Birds we are seeking are often heard before they are seen, so we ask our bus driver (usually Hank, a veteran driver on this road) to drop us at the top and meet us at various spots as we walk down the mountain toward the bottom where the Gauley River rages.

 

 

This past spring I got to guide the Sugar Creek trip with New River Birding Festival co-founder Geoff Heeter. Guiding with Geoff is always fun and rewarding for a number of reasons:

1. He speaks the native tongue.

2. He knows where the birds are each year.

3. He's mighty handy in a pinch.

4. He cracks a good joke.

5. He always dresses for birding success:

Fresh off the runway from the birding fashion show: Geoff "Hotlegs" Heeter.

This year my Sugar Creek trip also had Katie Fallon along. Katie is the world's most passionate fan of cerulean warblers. In fact, she wrote a really great book about them called Cerulean Blues. You should buy and read this book immediately—especially if you love warblers and appreciate good writing.

Geoff Heeter (in plaid Bermuda shorts) points out a treetop cerulean warbler for Katie Fallon.

Male cerulean warbler.

 

 One of our two primary target birds on the Sugar Creek trip: the singing male cerulean warbler. We found at least a dozen territorial male ceruleans along the route.

Female American redstart nest building.

We also saw lots of nest-building activity during the field trip from a variety of species including American robin, American redstart (above), blue-headed vireo, wood thrush, and worm-eating warbler.

There are other glorious things to see along the way. Hooded warblers are thick in the roadside woods.

We found some morels right along the road as we neared the bottom, but we left them in place for the local folks to harvest if they wanted to...

Ernesto Carman (in the orange hat above) was super fast at finding birds in his scope. He's had years of practice birding in the rainforest of Costa Rica and it shows. He generated a LOT of smiles with his scope-wielding talent.

  Down at the bottom of the mountain, Sugar Creek Road goes through a scattering of small houses and takes a sharp bend to the left when it reaches the Gauley River. This area is owned by one of the rafting companies, so it's not normally open to the public. And this is where we get our very best looks at the Swainson's warbler!

As I got off the bus along the river trail, I heard a Swainson's singing and, after getting everyone else off the bus and ready, I slowly walked forward to see if I could spot where the male was perched. It's always best to find birds doing their thing naturally, without having to resort to song playback, pishing, or bushwhacking to find them.

And there he was, left of the trail, about 35 feet up in a tree. Singing. Preening. Oblivious to the 35 gasping bird watchers who were focusing about $20,000 worth of optics on him.

Male Swainson's warbler.

After a session with the Swainson's, we headed to the end of the trail and had a picnic lunch, followed by a stroll back out to a spot in the river where a collection of giant boulders makes a perfect setting for a photo.

 

The Sugar Creek Birders along the Gauley River.

A big thank you to my expert fellow guides! I'm already counting down the days until next year!

L to R: Ernesto Carman, BT3, Katie Fallon, Geoff Heeter.

Scenes from The New River Birding Festival 2013 Part 1

Every spring I make the trek to south-central West Virginia to help out guiding, speaking, and performing at The New River Birding and Nature Festival. Those of you who've read this blog over the past several years know all about why this event is special to me. And each year it seems to get a bit more special. There are lots of things about "the New" that appeal to me: the incredible natural beauty of the New River Gorge region, the amazing variety of nesting, migrant, and resident birds, the chance to eat ramps... but I think the real reason is the people.

I've become great friends with the folks who founded and run the festival—we're like family at this point. But it's also the people who come as my fellow guides/speakers—they are some of the most talented field birders and fascinating personalities on the planet. And it's the folks who attend the New River Birding Festival as participants. It takes a special person to see the intrinsic value in a small, friendly birding event run deep in the middle of a state that is probably not naturally on the radar of the average traveling bird watcher.

But that's changing...

I speak and guide at a bunch of birding festivals every year. And lots of times someone on one of my trips will say to me "Hey Bill, I see that you do that New River festival in West Virginia every year. What's that one like?" I always say: "Man, it's great! Low key. Great birds, food, people, scenery." But what I really should say is: "You've gotta be there to experience how great it is."

In this post (and maybe one or two others coming up) I'm going to show some images from the 2013 NRBNF to help you get a feel for what it's like.

The pre-festival guides' meeting (with local micro-brew) in the gazebo. Festival hosts, from left: Lynn Pollard, Bill Hilton, Jr, Geoff Heeter, Dave Pollard.

Most mornings we meet for breakfast at Burnwood, a picnic area and campsite near the gorge. After fueling up, we head to our vehicles—if we can find them in the fog that sometimes blankets the gorge.

The fog burns off and we're into the birds. This is a group I led early in the week this year, on a new route called Hunt Club Road. We were looking at this:

Male golden-winged warbler

When we see a good bird like this, we take a moment to celebrate. Here is a photo of a low-key version of The Life Bird Wiggle (we didn't want to disturb the bird).

Then we're off after more birds...

There's a lot for us guides to point out...

Ernesto Carman from Costa Rica came to guide this year. He has incredibly good spotting skills.

Keith Richardson, one of the festival's organizers and hosts, points out a worm-eating warbler on the Nuttallburg hiking trail.

There are so many great birds that we get long, binoc-filling views of...

Male Kentucky warbler.

Male prairie warbler.

Male scarlet tanager.

There's a lot more beauty to enjoy than the feathered kind.

Roaring mountain stream above Nuttalburg.

Flowering pawpaw tree.

Spidery grape vine.

Swirling stone. What made this pattern in the mountain?

If this post piques your interest, make plans now to attend The New River Birding Festival in 2014. I'll be there and I can't wait!

Happy Earth Day 2013!

 

Happy Earth Day!

Yeah, I know that Earth Day has already passed for this year...I guess I feel like there's a little bit of Earth Day in EVERY day. Or there should be.

I'm not going to get too heavy here. Just want to share some images and thoughts that remind me of Earth Day and how much I love being connected to nature. Like the plant fronds above. That's a shot I took on an island in the Philippines, where the natural resources are being exploited at a stunning rate. The endemic species there are disappearing... This image reminds me of a fossilized plant, which reminds me of coal and oil...and our consumption of same.

A double rainbow in fall, shot from our birding tower in southeast Ohio. Being up high like this lends us a perspective that we don't get from the ground. It shows the vastness of the habitat in some views, but it also reveals fragmentation and all the things that come with it. In our part of the world we're beginning to experience the impact of hydraulic fracking for oil and gas. I wonder if our beautiful vistas will be the same in 10 years.

Each spring I get to experience the miracle of the songbird nesting season on our farm. Monitoring our nest boxes is such a treat. To watch birds such as these Carolina chickadees go from eggs to hatchlings to flying tots in just a few weeks—well, it boggles the mind.

I took this image of Phoebe on Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine. It wasn't posed. She loved climbing out on the rocks as the tide came in and I couldn't resist the image. Maine may very well be the place that my kids connect most closely with the natural world because it is so very different from the habitat and landscape (or seascape) where we live. I'm just happy they're connecting.

 

And speaking of young people...one of the best things about Earth Day is all the various activities that are available for youngsters to experience—and to connect with—nature. But we don't have to wait to do that until Earth Day NEXT year. Why not invite a young person (or a whole classroom!) to go outside with you and your birding/nature club or companions. It's the very best way to keep the spirit of Earth Day alive.

Tomorrow morning I'll get up before dawn to lead a passel of people on a long hike down the New River Gorge in West Virginia. There will be nature fans of all ages—a few youngsters and a many young-at-heart bird watchers. I'll do my best to show them a good time and to let them know why I think this area is so wonderful and special. But, you know, that's true of anywhere, as long as it's outside!

 

Happy Earth Day!

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!

NEW NORTH AMERICAN BIRD SPECIES DISCOVERED!

The newly described Dun Mountain Warbler, Pseudoseiurus monochromis, as painted by bird artist Julie Zickefoose!

Dear BOTB Readers:

I’ve been holding this story in for weeks. I’m about to burst with excitement. How often does a bird magazine editor get asked to announce a newly discovered species—in North America?? It’s every bird magazine editor’s best dream. But enough of my yakkin'. Here's the big news!

Ornithologists from the National Bird Observatory (NBO) in Osprey Chalk, Connecticut, are pleased to announce the discovery of a North American bird species that is new to science. The dun mountain warbler (Pseudoseiurus monochromis) was recently discovered by bear hunters on all-terrain vehicles trying to reach forested habitat on the far side of a 10,000-acre mountaintop removal site in southern West Virginia. The species was described by ornithologists from the NBO, who were alerted to its existence when the West Virginia bear hunters (who were being filmed for a reality television show) remarked on camera that "it was the only thing we seen that was alive for miles around."

"This species has apparently moved into the expansive wastelands left behind by mountaintop removal (MTR), and is thriving there," said Patrick Fitzmichael, director of the NBO and chairman of the E. R. Hare Citizen Science Endowment at the NBO. "We found more than 35 nests in southern West Virginia in just one weekend of searching. We think that this population grew out of remnant bands of birds that were living and apparently breeding above the treeline in the Appalachians on scree slopes where no one in their right mind would ever go for birding or anything else."

The natural history of the dun mountain warbler is most unusual. It nests on barren, rocky ground in mountaintop removal sites, laying its eggs among the stones and exposed clay. It flips rocks and pebbles looking for invertebrates, colonizing recent MTR sites, scavenging prey from reptiles and amphibians to insects, even following earth moving equipment with an alert expression and pertly wagging tail, waiting to see what is stirred up by the digging.

The plumage of the dun mountain warbler is described as dirt-brown and gray—or dun—which helps the bird and its cryptically colored eggs to blend in perfectly with their surroundings. Little is known about the dun mountain warbler's courtship, but field researchers were able to catch a short recording of its song, which is described as "a loud beeping tone similar to a piece of heavy earth-moving equipment backing up."

A spokesperson for the Consolation Coal Company reacted this way to the announcement: "We've known for years that our efforts to turn unusable tree-choked mountain habitat into nice, flat, open areas would be good for the environment. If a bird lays a egg on a mountain, what happens? It rolls to the bottom and breaks. The baby bird dies. We're happy that nature is finally realizing that our mining operations not only mean jobs for the local community, but they also make good places for birds to nest. Now THAT's family values, which is what we've always stood for."

Thus far, the dun mountain warbler seems to find its center of abundance in southern West Virginia's coal country, and NBO is mounting expeditions to neighboring states of Kentucky and Tennessee to survey MTR sites there. The future looks bright for this specialized but opportunistic species as mountaintop removal proceeds apace. The Obama Administration has recommended a study to determine if the species needs more breeding habitat. "We're ready to approve more than 150 MTR mine site permits if it means we can help this rare warbler survive and even thrive in the future."

The birding community reacted with great enthusiasm. Jeffrey Giordano, president of the American Birders' Society said. "This is AWESOME! A new bird for our members to chase after. This will certainly be our Bird of the Year for 2013!"

Bill Thomas III, editor of Birders' Watching Digest said, "This is the feel-good birding story of the year! More habitat for an endangered species--and a NEW one at that!"

The Old River Birding Festival in Oak Harbor, West Virginia, will be offering customized tours to see the Dun Mountain Warbler from now through September. Contact the festival at www.birding-wv.com.