Blog Birding #38

Clare Kines at The House and other Arctic Musings is based in far nothern Nunavut, so his perspective on shorebirds is somewhat different from most other birders.  His discovery of a Baird's Sandpiper nest is a must-read:

The Baird's have begun to hatch, and make their way down to water. These appear to be very recently hatched birds (there were three). A visit to a Baird's nest in another location two days ago revealed that there were still three eggs, and these chicks were very small.  And very fast. Almost impossible to keep in focus, especially given that I wanted to grab a few shots and clear out quickly after I stumbled on them  while looking for a Long-tailed Duck nest.

Corey at 10,000 Birds finds some portlandica plumaged Arctic Terns on Long Island:

First we found the terns that were clearly not adults, but birds in either portlandica plumage* or 2nd summer plumage.  Then we looked for other field marks that would indicate that we were dealing with Arctic Terns rather than the much more common Common Tern.  The easiest field mark to use was the extremely short legs of Arctic Terns, though one must be careful because sometimes uneven ground can create the illusion of short legs.  We managed to find two Arctic Terns this way, and had the joy of watching them for quite some time, long enough for us to call Shai and Pat Lindsay, who were birding elsewhere, and get them out on the flats to join us and see the birds as well.

SpeedBirding's Anna Fasoli offers some fantastic photos of Peregrine Falcons at Cibola NWR:

While working near Cibola National Wildlife Refuge south of Blythe, California last year, Alex and I saw a number of juvenile Peregrine Falcons. The cottonwood/willow restoration plots attract tons of migrant passerines, but I think it is the nearby flooded fields that lure these young raptors in with their favorite food…shorebirds.  The fields are adjacent to the Colorado River, so birds are funneled down the valley, and pulled in by the prime foraging habitat within a few miles of the river.  We’ve also seen a number of Peregrines north of the refuge, including this subadult we found yesterday.  He is molting from juvenile to adult plumage, so he looks exceptionally awesome!

Laura Erickson considers Chickadees and their families:

I love watching chickadees every day of the year, through every season, and it seems especially fun in summer. Watching my neighborhood chickadees splitting into pairs and raising families is very fun. The males start out so solicitous of their mates, feeding them before they take a bite themselves, during courtship and while the female is incubating their eggs. Then the babies hatch out, and dad gets totally focused on providing food for the young. He may start ignoring his mate’s plaintive begging, knowing she’s perfectly capable of finding her own food. Some females don’t seem to mind at all—they are just as focused on feeding their young as the male is. But there’s a lot of individual variation in chickadee behaviors, and it’s fun to watch each pair work out their priorities.

Wildlife Biologist Rob Miller of Rob's Idaho Perspective has wrapped up some Goshawk field work in Idaho, and with a series of fascinating posts on raptor biology:

One of the new developments during this final field session was a significant increase in the number of sightings of goshawks. As the nestlings age the adult female goshawks are free to spend more time out hunting. This essentially doubles the number of birds visible. This is great, but it can also be frustrating. Visiting a territory a half a dozen times, finding an empty nest, performing multiple prey surveys, systematically searching for nests, performing call broadcasts covering a 577 hectare plot, all with no detections. Then, on the final visit to the territory while riding out on the motorcycle, I watch an adult goshawk fly into the nest stand. Unbelievable! Could I have missed a nest? Could this territory really be occupied? Should I go back and search some more?