Angry Birds

The new Nature's Classroom facility at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

I was down in the Florida panhandle a while ago, helping to open a wonderful new building at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge called "Nature's Classroom." This facility will serve as a resource for area residents, teachers, students, birders, photographers, and nature enthusiasts, giving them a place to meet, learn, explore, and a base from which to enjoy St. Marks NWR.

Some of the team responsible for the new Nature's Classroom building at the ribbon-cutting.

While there I gave three talks and lead a couple of bird walks, one of which was on the Plum Orchard Trail behind Nature's Classroom. We had 30 or so folks along, including some keen young bird watchers, and the birding was fairly good, considering it was a hot, muggy afternoon. We had lots of red-eyed vireos, eastern kingbirds, a green heron, immature white ibis, little blue heron, tricolored heron, pine warbler, four woodpecker species, and a noisy flock of brown-headed nuthatches. But the most interesting sighting happened right at the end of the walk on the sandy pool of water behind Nature's Classroom.

As we returned on the loop trail, one of our group spotted two shorebirds out on the pool. We initially thought they were spotted sandpipers because there were lots of spotties around and because they were teetering their tails the way that spotted sandpiper often do. But as they came out of the vegetation and walked closer it was clear that they were the larger solitary sandpiper. And they were really behaving weirdly: running around excitedly, bobbing almost constantly, looking into the grass.

Solitary sandpipers doing their best Angry Birds impression.

That was when the object of their attention slithered into view: a banded water snake came gliding toward the birds. The birds seemed to be conflicted about this: should they run or should they fight? As soon as the snake would head away from them, the solitaries would chase it. If the snake came toward them, they scampered away. Certainly the snake was too large for them to kill and eat, and I'm not sure that the snake could have subdued the sandpipers, so they were left to perform pantomime parries and thrusts with no actual attacks.

The whole scene lasted just a few minutes, but it was interesting to watch. I guessed that these birds might have been youngsters migrating south with the fall, and this might have been their first snake encounter.

Solitaries and the water snake.

This was my first trip to St. Marks—one of our oldest national wildlife refuges. What a fantastic place it is! I'm certain I'll be back again for another visit.

Stilted Haiku

Pied marshland dainty
Lady in a tuxedo
striding on pink stilts

Guyana Part 2: Shorebirds at Dusk

After getting back off the boats from the Mahaica River in the late afternoon, we enjoyed a few minutes of air-conditioned comfort on the bus as we drove to our next destination: a tidal area of mangroves and mudflats that was a good shorebird spot. This was a somewhat unexpected stop in that it was not on the itinerary, but our Georgetown-based birding guides wanted to show it to us, and we were glad they did.

In the tropics, near the Equator, the sun cycles of daylight and night are 6 to 6. Day ends and night comes on with a suddenness that is alarming. The sun sets and rises at the sixes: 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. As we stepped out of the bus at the shorebird spot, we were already losing light. Still there was time and light enough to climb up onto the sea wall to scan the mudflats. Oh my this place was birdy. Egrets and night-herons dotted the mud. Lines of shorebirds scampered back and forth. I got the sensation that anything could should up here, and the nagging thought that we'd only have a few minutes here now.

Clapper rail.

Several clapper rails called from the vegetation. Then one and another strode out into the open giving us all fine scope views.

Scanning from the sea wall.

Standing on the sea wall we could see over the mudflats and clumps of vegetation and mangroves. Picking through the shorebirds and wading birds was quite fun. We added numerous species to our growing trip list, including semipalmated sandpiper, willet, short-billed dowitcher, both greater and lesser yellowlegs, and whimbrel, plus osprey and black skimmer. According to a couple of our guides, there had been a possible sighting of an even more exciting shorebird here recently: an Eskimo curlew! No images were captured, but there will be extra attention paid to all large, brown shorebirds in the future during the regular surveys conducted at this site.

If you look closely, you can see a whimbrel and a willet in this image.

As the light faded and the colors receded, we took our last looks at a couple of scarlet ibises foraging with some yellow-crowned night-herons and a tricolored heron. It was a nice way to end our first afternoon of birding in Guyana.

Two of these seven birds are scarlet ibises.

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.

The Hope-to-See List: Part 1

The whole famdamily and I are leaving soon for the rolling prairies of North Dakota. This is an annual trip we take to be a part of The Potholes and Prairie Birding Festival, held this year in Jamestown, North Dakota. If you've never been birding in North Dakota, you are missing quite an avian spectacle: loads of rare breeding grassland birds, thousands of white pelicans, ducks on every puddle, shorebirds on every third fencepost. And more...

I have a wish list of the things I am hoping to see out there in the middle of the Great Plains. These are all things I have seen before, but like touchstones, I always want to visit them again.

Among these hoped-for sightings are the following:

A chestnut-collared longspur singing his best imitation of a western meadowlark's song.


A male bobolink showing off his pat o' butter head patch, leaning into the ever-present breeze.


An upland sandpiper keeping watch over its chosen bit of prairie. I also love hearing this species' high-lonesome whistled song.


A Le Conte's sparrow—just one of the rare sparrows of the potholes region we'll be seeking. What it lacks in musicality of song it makes up for in the subtle beauty of its plumage.

Bison in large herds. Nothing evokes the pre-settlement Great Plains more than a shaggy, dusty herd of these large mammals.


This year I think the kids will be more interested in watching these wonders with us. Phoebe has promised to start her life list, which made Liam want to, too. With all the amazing things we hope to see, how could I say no?