Big Days and late spring migrants

  • By Bruce Glick
  • May 21, 2014
  • 374
                        
Big Days and late spring migrants Columnist Bruce Glick summarizes happenings in the local birding world. This week Bruce writes about birding in the wonderful month of May. Read more about it in the "Gone Birding" column. Birding teams were busy on May 17, both in the Wayne/Holmes area and in northeastern Indiana. The Bobolink Area Big Day took a traditional approach - 24 hours on Saturday. The Indiana event started at 4 pm on Friday and concluded at 4 pm on Saturday, followed by a haystack, pie and ice cream event at a Shipshewana farm. According to Robert Hershberger, the Bobolink count resulted in somewhat lower totals than last year, but the top team reached an excellent total of 160 species for the day. The overall total of different kinds of birds found among all the teams was a very respectable 184. I don't have more details at this time. I participated in the Indiana Big Day for the first team, joining team leader Perry Miler and Gary Chupp and his son Jonathan. Both the Ohio and Indiana big days included biking teams and teams using cars. Some people like the Friday/Saturday format but not everyone agrees. I found it interesting and managed to stay awake despite only getting three hours of sleep on Friday night. Overall it seemed to be a good weekend for migrant birds. Our team found a respectable 27 species of warblers, 12 different ducks and 12 shorebirds. We failed to find a number of birds such as Mockingbird, Belted Kingfisher, Cooper's Hawk and some of the sparrows. We ended up with 146 species, which turned out to be two more than the second place team. As expected the bikers did very well, with three teams in the 130s, led by 138 for the top group. The bird of the day was a singing Worm-eating Warbler, a species that is rarely found in northern Indiana. It was a life bird for many, and to everyone's credit, word passed quickly to the different teams so that almost all the birders were able to see the cooperative visitor. My other favorites were a lovely Philadelphia Vireo and a fly-by Black-crowned Night-Heron. As always, much of the fun was spending time out looking for birds in May, never knowing what might show up next. This count was very well organized. The weather was cold and damp, with some sleet at times on Saturday, but perhaps this was responsible for keeping migrants around for us to find. Here in Goshen where Helen and I live, it has been a wonderful spring for local birding. Just today (May 21), we had a number of warblers singing around the property, including just the second Bay-breasted Warbler that I've encountered in May. Four or five Blackburnian Warblers were singing throughout the day. Our first Scarlet Tanager and Red-headed Woodpecker showed up (we live in a residential neighborhood where such birds don't normally occur). I heard two different Swainson's Thrushes singing, and a Least flycatcher was calling next door. Earlier this week we had a Red-shouldered Hawk perch on a post in our back yard - only the second one I've seen in the area since we arrived last September. The end of the very special spring migration is coming, but there are always other birds to look for. Tomorrow I'll head out to see if I can find the Loggerhead Shrike and Blue Grosbeak that were reported in the area this afternoon. Good birding! Bruce Glick birderbruce@yahoo.com 330-317-7798


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