Countdown

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With less than three weeks remaining in 2010, the countdown has begun in earnest--at least in my yard.  I had hoped to have 200 species on my current Year-in-the-Yard List by the end of the year.
I doubt we'll make that count,  but it's been a great year anyway. We've even added several species to our cumulative Yard List.  Among them are the Magnificent Frigate Bird that blew in with Hurricane Alex, the noisy Green Parakeet that flew squawking through the yard in October,  and the tiny Cerulean Warbler that flitted in the treetops one day during spring migration.

Pine Warbler?

Yesterday another first-time visitor dropped by for a bath:  a Pine Warbler in its drab winter plumage, reminding me of why Roger Tory Peterson's pages of "Confusing Fall Warblers" always intimidated me so much.  (If my childhood hero, author of my first field guide, most famous birder in the country, found these birds "confusing," how could I ever be expected to sort them out?)

Orange-crowned Warbler

Sitting in my "blind spot" under the anacua tree on Saturday afternoon, hidden by the camouflage of my little tent ,  I carelessly assumed for a minute or so that all the drab little warblers on the pedestal bath and saucers were Orange-crowned Warblers and the ones with wing bars were the White-eyed Vireos which had been hanging out with the Carolina Wrens.  I snapped photos for a while and then put down my camera.  When I looked closely without the  awkwardness of holding a camera, I realized that one of the birds most definitely was not an OCW or any kind of vireo.  Look at the photo at the top of this post--that little drab bird has distinct wing bars.  It has gray auriculars (side face area).  It is definitely a warbler, I decided. No streaks on back. definitely no yellow on rump.  Maybe Bay-breasted Warbler?  Pine?  I continued to question myself and wished I had looked as long through binoculars as through the viewfinder of the camera.

Fortunately I had three pretty good photos, from front, side and rear.  After consulting field guides I concluded that it was indeed a Pine Warbler, a first-time visitor to the yard.  (Well, really, I'm sure other Pine Warblers have visited, I just haven't identified them. It's no accident that unusual birds always turn up in the yards of good birders.  They are the ones who have the patience and birding skills.  I know I'm missing things I should be seeing.)

One valuable birding tip I've heard is not to waste time in the field looking at a field guide.  Look at the bird and when you can no longer do that, consult your guide.  I used to miss good views of the bird because I was flipping pages.  Now I'll add this additional memo to myself:  don't forget to use your binoculars as well as your camera.  I may miss a few shots but I won't miss the bird.

Here's another of the bathing beauties.  I like to turn the dripper up so that the sight and sound of the gurgling, plopping, bubbling water draws the birds like a magnet.  Water makes the birds look interesting--details that don't always show, like the orange crown of this Orange-crowned Warbler, are sometimes made more obvious.

I began writing this entry a couple of weeks ago and then didn't post it.  I got distracted with last minute preparations for a trip out of state to be with children and grandchildren for Christmas .  We left town a day or so after I took the bathing-beauty photos without seeing any additional species in the yard.  But that's okay.  I welcome all of our visitors, even the common and always multiplying House Sparrows and Great-tailed Grackles.  It doesn't have to be a new yard bird to interest me-- but the count is fun.  Blogging and keeping a Year List made backyard birding even more fun this year.

I'll finish the interrupted post now by adding the rest of the bathing photos. I'll keep  the original date  of December 12 on the post, but confess that it is actually December 30.    I'm writing the end of this in a hotel as we stop for the night on our trip from Missouri to South Texas after a lovely holiday.  I'm eager to get home for the last few hours of 2010 and especially looking forward to the first bird of 2011 to start my new list.

Here are the remaining photos from earlier in month:

Altamira Oriole and Great Kiskadee

House Sparrow and male Northern Cardinal

A delicately colored female cardinal seems to be anticipating the drop of water that comes slowly from the dripper in this bath. Just before I took this photo, I had adjusted the water so that it was no longer running as fast as in the previous photo.

This female Pyrrhuloxia is similar to the Cardinal but note the pattern of red around the eye and the yellow of the beak. (If you can't see her clearly, click to enlaarge. She's worth a good look.)

A pair of Great-tailed Grackles visit a ground bird bath.  The brown female lacks the blue-black glossy feathers of her mate but is still quite attractive in her own way.

This shot of the driveway shows the location of two of the bird baths. Note the Cedar Elm that is beginning to show a bit of fall color now that it is mid-December. My little blind is hidden in the brush along the right side of the drive in this photo, across from the pedestal bath.

Okay, this guy isn't bathing, but how could I pass up an opportunity for another Green Jay photo?  Sometimes I fill the water holders with seed since there's never enough for the ravenous jays.

A Long-billed Thrasher spends most of the day thrashing in dead leaves, but he hops to the saucer occasionally for a quick bath.

 White-eyed Vireos seem to be bright, inquisitive birds.  They travel around the yard with kinglets and warblers, eating small insects and singing cheerfully. This one was awaiting its turn at the bath below the fiddlewood shrub.

Who would ever tire of seeing the Yellow-throated Warbler? When they are not gleaning insects high up in the palm trees, they enjoy a quick stop at the bird bath. 

One final thing to add to this post is a list of birds seen in the yard (or from the yard or over the yard) for 2010. Starting Saturday I'll have my 2011 list in the side bar and this one will disappear from that location, so I'll put the final 2010 list here.   I'm a dozen or so short of my year goal of 200--but maybe some never-before-seen species are awaiting my homecoming tomorrow (Jan. 31) when  I should have a couple of hours of daylight left!

A Year in the Yard:  Birds of the Baughman Yard, 2010



As of December 12, there were 185 species on the 2010 Yard List. With the addition of the Pine Warbler to our all-time yard list, the total (1996-2010) is now 265! Here's what we've seen in 2010:

Pied-billed Grebe; American White Pelican; Brown Pelican; Double-crested Cormorant; Neotropic Cormorant; Anhinga; Magnificent Frigate Bird; Great Blue Heron; Great Egret; Snowy Egret; Little Blue Heron; Tricolored Heron; Reddish Egret; Cattle Egret; Green Heron; White-faced Ibis; Black-crowned Night Heron; White Ibis; Roseate Spoonbill; Wood Stork; Black Vulture; Turkey Vulture; Black-bellied Whistling Duck; Fulvous Whistling Duck; Greater White-fronted Goose; Snow Goose; Mottled Duck; Blue-winged Teal; Northern Shoveler; Bufflehead; Ruddy Duck; Osprey; Swallow-tailed Kite; White-tailed Kite; Northern Harrier; Sharp-shinned Hawk; Broad-winged Hawk; Cooper's Hawk; Harris' Hawk; Swainson's Hawk; White-tailed Hawk; Red-shouldered Hawk; Red-tailed Hawk; Northern Caracara; American Kestrel; Merlin; Plain Chachalaca; Wild Turkey; Northern Bobwhite; American Coot; Common Moorhen; Sandhill Crane; Killdeer; Black-necked Stilt; Willet; Spotted Sandpiper; Upland Sandpiper; Long-billed Curlew; Stilt Sandpiper; Lesser Yellow-legs; Laughing Gull; Franklin's Gull; Ring-billed Gull; Herring Gull; Gull-billed Tern; Caspian Tern; Royal Tern; Sandwich Tern; Forster's Tern; Least Tern; Black Tern; Black Skimmer; Eurasian Collared-Dove; White-winged Dove; Mourning Dove; Inca Dove; Common Ground-Dove; White-tipped Dove; Green Parakeet; Yellow-billed Cuckoo; Barn Owl; Eastern Screech-Owl; Great Horned Owl; Common Nighthawk; Lesser Nighthawk; Common Pauraque; Chimney Swift; Buff-bellied Hummingbird; Ruby-throated Hummingbird; Black-chinned Hummingbird; Rufous Hummingbird; Ringed Kingfisher; Belted Kingfisher; Green Kingfisher; Golden-fronted Woodpecker; Yellow-bellied Sapsucker; Ladder-backed Woodpecker; Willow Flycatcher; Eastern Phoebe; Great Crested Flycatcher; Brown-crested Flycatcher; Great Kiskadee; Couch's Kingbird; Tropical Kingbird; Western Kingbird; Eastern Kingbird; Scissor-tailed Flycatcher; Loggerhead Shrike; White-eyed Vireo; Yellow-throated Vireo; Warbling Vireo; Blue-headed Vireo; Philadelphia Vireo; Red-eyed Vireo; Green Jay; Purple Martin; Tree Swallow; Northern Rough-winged Swallow; Cave Swallow; Bank Swallow; Cliff Swallow; Barn Swallow; Black-crested Titmouse; Carolina Wren; Bewick's Wren; House Wren; Ruby-crowned Kinglet; Blue-gray Gnatcatcher; American Robin; Gray Catbird; Northern Mockingbird; Long-billed Thrasher; Curve-billed Thrasher; European Starling; Cedar Waxwing; Blue-winged Warbler; Orange-crowned Warbler; Nashville Warbler; Northern Parula; Yellow Warbler; Yellow-rumped Warbler; Black-throated Green Warbler; Yellow-throated Warbler; Pine Warbler; Cerulean Warbler; Black and White Warbler; American Redstart; Prothonotary Warbler; Worm-eating Warbler; Ovenbird;Kentucky Warbler; Hooded Warbler; Wilson's Warbler; Canada Warbler; Summer Tanager; Olive Sparrow; Chipping Sparrow; Clay-colored Sparrow; Lark Sparrow; Song Sparrow; Lincoln's Sparrow; White-throated Sparrow; Northern Cardinal; Pyrrhuloxia; Rose-breasted Grosbeak;Black-headed Grosbeak; Blue Grosbeak; Indigo Bunting;Painted Bunting; Dickcissel; Red-winged Blackbird; Eastern Meadowlark; Great-tailed Grackle; Bronzed Cowbird; Brown-headed Cowbird; Orchard Oriole; Hooded Oriole; Altamira Oriole; Baltimore Oriole; Bullock's Oriole;Pine Siskin; Lesser Goldfinch; American Goldfinch; House Sparrow


The best part of listing a Year-in-the-Yard is that it motivated me to begin blogging.  I won't have to find scattered bits of papers and try to find misplaced journals to know what happened in 2010.  And the world of blogging is a whole new way of keeping in touch and even making new friends.  I never expected that when I embarked on this blogging adventure a year ago!

Butterflies and Caterpillars (What Winter?)

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Yesterday I walked around the yard looking for signs of life in the plants that have looked sickly since the freeze. One especially bedraggled spot was the front-yard butterfly garden. The white plumbago, a favorite nectar plant for many of our butterflies, was a tangle of black leaves and black sticky seeds. The butterfly weeds, host plant to milkweed caterpillars, were mostly leafless stalks topped with dry, twisted black leaves. A cursory glance would make a gardener less lazy than I start clipping and clearing and pruning back. However, I am not that diligent a gardener. (I'd rather watch birds than clip and clear and prune.) So I looked more closely, and along the stalks I could see small green leaves just beginning to unfurl. On one plant I even found a Queen caterpillar. If I'd cleaned up my butterfly garden, I might have deprived this future butterfly of food!

Most plants in the yard don't show signs of damage by the cold weather. The mix of native and non-native lantana under the whitebrush, for example, looks better than ever. That's where I took this picture of a Red Admiral butterfly that flitted from flower to flower yesterday morning. Its wings are tattered and torn, but it was still beautiful in the sun. The Pipevine Swallowtail was nectaring on a fiddlewood.





Other insects I've been watching in the yard the last few days are the Red Harvester Ants that are busy carrying bird seed into their ant hole in the sandy soil at the end of the drive. In the photo below you can see the white round millet seeds and a black sunflower seed which I had scattered no where near the ant hill and which the ants had carried home. I like to watch the nest to see what the ants are up to. I've taken other photos when their hole is surrounded with little red pigeon berries and one series of photos that show a green caterpillar being carried to the hole by several ants at once and then disappearing inside. Bird activity today:

*Early this morning I heard an Osprey calling over the front yard and went out on the deck to watch. It was carrying not the usual fish in its talons but a stick about a foot or two long. It must be building a nest somewhere--wish I could find out where.
*The pair of Pyrrhuloxias were all over the yard today, bathing, eating seed from the ground, singing.

Back to the Back Yard (and the Front)

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Winter is not my favorite season in most of the country, but it certainly is in South Texas along the Arroyo Colorado! It was nice to sit on the little deck looking over the front yard yesterday and watch our winter birds. An Orange-crowned Warbler enjoyed the grapefruit we put out (fruit picked up from under our neighbor's tree). It was just one of three warblers in the yard. A Wilson's Warbler and a Yellow-rumped Warbler also flitted around.

Best of all, we were surprised by another visitor at the grapefruit--a Baltimore Oriole enjoying the fruit and the warm winter sunshine. I remember being surprised last February when a Baltimore made it a three-oriole day--along with a Hooded Oriole and the usual year-round Altamiras. Yesterday was only a

two-oriole day as there doesn't seem to be a wintering Hooded around. One spring we had a five-oriole day: Hooded, Altamira, Baltimore, Orchard, and Fuertes's. My favorite of course is the rare Fuertes's Oriole that spent a couple of summers in our yard a decade ago. I look for one every spring and keep hoping to see another.

Today is another warm day with temps in the mid 70's. The rest of the week should be in the 80's. We'll probably take the boat out to the bay--or

maybe just fish and bird in the Arroyo. Here's a picture of a Ringed Kingfisher fishing across the Arroyo. (Not a great picture since the camera was zoomed in ((or out)) all the way from my back porch. But it does show that beautiful red breast.)

We have all three kingfishers

(Ringed, Belted, Gre

en) at this time of year. The Green is my favorite. One used to stay in our boat house most of the time. Then we tore the boat house down and replaced it with a lift with no side walls. The little Green Kingfishers still fly by--always low, flying about a foot above the water--but they hang out in someone else's boat house.

The large Ringed Kingfishers nest along the river in holes they excavate out of the banks. About a mile upriver are some old kingfisher holes that are now inhabited by Barn Owls. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to get photos of the owls if we take the boat that direction.

My husband just called me away from the computer to look out the front window at a pair of cardinals. Beautiful birds. Yesterday there were two Pyrrhuloxias in the back. They look like caricatures of cardinals, beaks and crests comically exaggerated.

Other birds in the front yard: Blue-gray Gnatcatcher; Inca, White-tipped, Mourning, and White-winged Doves; Lincoln's Sparrow; Lark Sparrow; Kiskadees and Green Jays (of course); Long-billed and Curve-billed Thrashers; Mockingbirds; Black-crested Titmice; Buff-bellied and Ruby Throated Hummingbirds (maybe a Black-chinned: two of what I assumed were Ruby-throated hummers had dark green heads and another one had more of a grayish head; female hummers are hard to distinguish--at least for me)

Other birds in the back yard (river side): Great Blue and Tri-colored Herons; Black-crowned Night Herons; Great and Snowy Egrets; Osprey; Harris's Hawk; Laughing, Herring, and Ring-billed Gulls; Caspian, Forster's, and Royal Terns; Anhinga; Ruddy Duck; Double-crested Cormorant; Black and Turkey Vultures; Great-tailed Grackles, House Sparrows, Starlings (none of those my favorites); Red-winged Blackbirds. Of course the Brown and White Pelicans.

I'm sure I've left out some birds, but this list shows it was a good day on the Arroyo Colorado! I'll go back out for awhile and see what I can see. From where I sit right now (inside the living room) I can see the brown grass on the bank turning golden in the late afternoon sun. Now I just have to decide whether to sit out on the front deck to look for the Baltimore Oriole or to watch the riverbank from the deck at the top of the boat lift. (Retirement is so full of hard decisions!)