Birding, backyard and beyond, is great
Events cancelled and the weather got you down? Just take a gander out your back door
The wind had a nasty bite to it as I stepped out the back door smack into a north wind late Friday. I endured it for just shy of an hour and returned with a surprising list of finds, even if I was remarkably raptor-less and peculiarly pecker-less.
Not a hawk or a woodpecker to be seen, that is.
With winter dropping in for a serious visit and better choices made on what likely were bad ideas due to the cold I turned to birding late this week and, as usual, am thoroughly enjoying the outcome.
It’s something I simply do not do enough.
It’s easy to hit the back door with the weight of a binocular strap keeping my warm coat collar snug to my neck and 6 pounds of telephoto lens and camera cool my hand. Stuff my mobile phone in my coat pocket to record the results, tuck a field guide under my arm, and I’m good to go.
There are no worries about whether I have the right flies or leader materials. No special waders or camouflage or orange garb required. No guns and ammo to keep straight and safe. The dog can come along and pee and sniff and run where he wants and just be a dog, not a working dog. Heck, I just pulled some sweatpants on over my long handles put on a hat, thin gloves and a heavy coat and went for a walk with no goal beyond just seeing what’s out there.
It’s not a bad way to spend an hour and around Oklahoma, birding wise, there is plenty to see even on a frigid, raptor- and pecker-less afternoon within a rock’s throw of your house.
As an added bonus The Great Backyard Bird Count began Friday (and continues if you’re reading this on or before the end of Monday the 15th) and I had discovered this worldwide bird counting effort has rankings so, naturally, I pulled up the Oklahoma Top 100 and thought “surely I can make the Top 20.”
On my short walk—in spite of the absent hawks and woodpeckers—I logged 54 minutes, 1.13 miles and, as the eBird app notes “# of Taxa Reported” at 23. That put me at 24th among Oklahoma’s Top 100 participating on the first day. The group has, as of late Saturday, notched 140 species statewide.
After another couple hours I spent on Saturday—birding almost entirely from my vehicle around Bixby—I ranked 9th with 43 species. To be fully honest as I write this I’m thinking of how I can get my weekend total up over 50. This is like that fly-fishing challenge to catch as many species as I could over the summer all over again. I can’t help it.
My count got a pretty strong head start on bird species before I even left my back porch courtesy of an extremely busy bird-feeding station due to this winter onslaught we’re all enjoying, and some real surprises were within 300 yards of the house.
I expected the flood-control waterway behind our place to be frozen solid but two open sections remained. One held a small flock of gadwalls, one of my favorite ducks, in their understated gray-duck suits. The other held the real bonus surprise species with killdeers, Wilson’s snipes and rusty blackbirds.
Now, before folks start thinking I really know something about birding, be advised that the snipes and the rustys both came with back-up beyond using that telephoto and my Sibley Field Guide. The “call a friend” option is priceless.
Having joined Jeff Cox for Christmas Bird Counts nearly every holiday the past 11 years, I’ve watched him and Bill Carrell pick out rusty blackbirds from among flocks of red-winged blackbirds and European starlings dozens of times. I can pick them out, too, but they’re usually pointing them out first. So, it was natural to take a photo of the display on the back of my digital camera and text it to Cox for confirmation that I was indeed seeing a rusty blackbird.
“Correct! Nice bird!” he replied.
Speaking of participating in organized events like the CBC, it was because of that event this year that a few little sparrows that popped out on the edge of the brush on the other end of my afternoon walk were easy to identify.
Song sparrows were plentiful on our Christmas walk a couple months back and—while I regularly get stumped on sparrows—I knew exactly what these little critters were as soon as I got them in my binoculars. Those were a first for me in my neighborhood.
While sorting out the shorebird I had not seen in this area before, I called Jim Arterburn, who has photographed countless shorebirds in my neck of the woods the past two decades. I asked if it sounded right to him that a Wilson’s snipe would be in my area this time of year—especially after eBird alerted me that sightings of that species were “under reported” in my area.
“Oh yeah, you’ll see them around those areas this time of year,” he said.
That’s all I needed to hear.
The snipe, the song sparrows, the rusty blackbirds, a phoebe that had to be the coldest little one of those dudes I’ve ever seen, the gadwalls and a great blue heron were nice surprises on that relatively short walk out my back door.
Even though I didn’t see a single hawk or owl or woodpecker in those first 54 minutes, which are critters I see in my neighborhood almost every day, those bonus sightings were a treat.
Not seeing the others just gave me an excuse to go out again.
Might as well, it’s easy enough to do, you never know what you might find, and it really is something I should do more often.
What was on Kelly’s list so far?
Following are the species I logged in the Bixby area logged Friday and Saturday for Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology Great Backyard Bird Count:
Blue Jay
Carolina Chickadee
Carolina Wren
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Mourning Dove
Northern Cardinal
American Goldfinch
European Starling
Eastern Phoebe
Eastern Meadowlark
Red-winged Blackbird
Rusty Blackbird
Northern Mockingbird
American Robin
Eastern Bluebird
House Finch
Lapland Longspur
House Sparrow
Harris’s Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-throated sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Lincoln’s Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Wilson’s Snipe
Killdeer
Ring-billed Gull
Belted Kingfisher
Great Blue Heron
Canada Goose
Northern Shoveler
Gadwall
Mallard
Canvasback
Ring-necked Duck
Bald Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
Northern Harrier
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Red-headed Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Tern. Not sure type?
Titmouse.