An Eastern Warbler I Had Always Wanted to See

The North Dakota trek was a tiring one and a long one, but it was one that was worth it.  Six life birds came out of the trek as well as my main Short-eared Owl target for the entire trip.  Once I made it back to the Wallestad's home on the night of June 11th, we had some preparing to do for our next trip.  The upcoming trip would take us into the heart of central Wisconsin where there are some epic birds to go along with some epic birding locations.  Josh and I were mainly thinking about two endangered birds that we could land on our life lists, the Whooping Crane and Kirtland's Warbler.  As both would seemingly require some luck to see, Josh and I did some studying before we would leave on June 12th for both species.

Once June 12th came, Josh, Evan, and I left early to start our 5.5 hour drive to Wisconsin.  Yes, the trek was long and you rarely see three dudes last for 5.5 hours straight without getting out of the vehicle and doing something cool.  That was solved when we went for a 1.5 hour birding outing at Carver Park Reserve in Carver County, Minnesota.  If you remember back to the first day of the trip, June 9th, we made a stop at Carver for nearly an hour.  That first visit here saw me lifer with Sedge Wren and Field Sparrow.  And now I was hoping to lifer on an extremely cool bird, in fact, this cool bird is an eastern warbler that I had always wanted to see, the Cerulean Warbler.  We were thinking about trying for the Cerulean Warbler on the first day on June 9th, but because Falls Creek State Natural Area was great and took up a lot of time, we didn't have time for the Cerulean search.  As the conclusion to that, Josh came up with the alternative of looking for it on June 12th while en route on our way to Minnesota.  With this alternative, it made more sense.  It was early in the morning, and the bird along with many other birds, were likely to be more vocal.  Josh, Evan, and I arrived at Carver Park Reserve at 7:35 A.M. and started to walk towards where someone had seen and heard a Cerulean Warbler.  The location was along a bike trail through Carver Park Preserve, and it was just southwest of a lake in the area.  We felt like the warbler wouldn't be too hard to locate if we found the right habitat.  Josh was telling me during the morning about the Cerulean Warbler's main habitat preference, which are thick deciduous forests highly made up of oaks that fall on hills and slopes.  As we got to the area of the sighting, Josh looked up the trail and pointed out some habitat ahead of us that looked good for Cerulean Warbler.

I've read that Cerulean Warblers can be very tough to see and that they really cling to the treetops.  One such example that I heard of this was that people would wait for hours to catch a glimpse of this warbler.  They would even take blankets with them to lie and the ground and look up for a good chunk of the day before the warbler would finally come into view.  I was hoping that we wouldn't have to wait too long.  As we approached the habitat where there were many oak trees on a hill along the bike path, I felt good about our chances.  These oak trees weren't tall to the intimidating degree, and a moving warbler wasn't going to be too difficult.  Minutes after getting into this area, the Cerulean Warbler sounding off, giving it's distinctive buzzy song.  Sibley describes it as, "tzeedl tzeedl tzeedl ti ti ti tzeeeee....".  This song is high in pitch and it was awesome to hear the bird!  At first it was well back in the woodlands, and then it moved a lot closer.  And before we knew it, it was then above us!

Cool looking warbler, huh!?!  The Cerulean Warbler is distinctive, and the females are distinctive too.  This male here is easily identified by his solid white underparts, dark blue breastband, white throat, sky blue back and head, and two white wingbars.  Josh, Evan, and I all took every advantage that we could to get good looks and pictures of this epic warbler.  It's a great feeling to look in your field guide with a relaxed mindset and see that awesome bird like the Cerulean Warbler and want to see it for years, and then to enjoy it live on a trip like this and to enjoy it by hearing and seeing it sing in front of you.

Josh and Evan were just as excited about the Cerulean Warbler as I was.  Josh has seen this bird before, but hasn't had the views that this guy was giving us.

At 4.75 inches in length, the Cerulean Warbler is a very small warbler.

For several minutes, the male Cerulean sang above us in a smaller tree just off the trail.

While deciduous woods were on one side of the bike path, an open marshy field was on the other.  To our surprise, the Cerulean decided to majorly switch things up and fly into the marshy area a few times!  His blue back really stood out as he flew around in the open.  At one time, he even perched briefly on top of the grass and right as Josh and I tried to get a picture of his weird flight path, he flew back into the woods and into the oaks where we originally had him.

Trip wise, the Cerulean Warbler also came at a great time.  It was my 20th life bird of the trip.  When I told my friends in Phoenix about my trip, I said I'd be lucky to reach 20 life birds on the trip.  With Cerulean being the 20th and more targets to go, I guess I underestimated how many lifers I would get.  Getting warbler lifers is something that is great, and on this trip, lifer "slots" were filled in many different families.  As my lifer Cerulean flew into the woodland, he continued to be obliging for the three of us.

The Cerulean Warbler is now one of my favorite warblers.  I snapped away.  Heck, here's a few more!

Here's two pictures of Josh and Evan celebrating the warbler: one in front of the marsh the bird flew into and the other in front of it's appropriate woodland habitat.

As we started to work our way back, the Cerulean continued to sing in the woods above us.  What a great bird!

In addition to the Cerulean Warbler score, there were some other birds that were highlights for the Carver Park Reserve expedition also.

A Blue Jay popped into our path.  Although these birds are common, they can be challenging to see sometimes!

We then heard a Blue-winged Warbler singing.  For the second time of this trip, we had some awesome views of this species, which I lifered on during the trip's first day.  This second bird was very obliging, just like the Cerulean Warbler was.  Dang!

This Field Sparrow also popped up into close view.  It seemed to have a nest nearby.

A close up Tree Swallow was also pretty cool.

At Carver, other highlights among 40 species we had included a Common Loon vocalizing on a lake as well as flying over the area, Chimney Swifts, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Great-crested Flycatcher, Yellow-throated, Warbling, and Red-eyed Vireos; Sedge Wren, Eastern Bluebird, Gray Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Bobolink, and Baltimore Oriole.  It was a great 1.5 hours at Carver.  Thanks Josh and Evan!

After Carver, the trek to Wisconsin was officially underway.  Stay tuned...

Birding Sipe and South Fork-Two of the White Mountain's best

There are many, many, many, many, many, excellent birding locations to be found within the large range of northeastern Arizona's White Mountains.  Whenever I go on vacation here, it is easy to become overwhelmed with picking out places to go and bird on the trip.  After all, I do like to fit everything in.  Over the last two years, that has become harder and harder to do.  I don't want to spend my entire vacation birding, there are other important things.  So now, I try to cover several different areas once and go to the spots that I really like time and time again.  It's weird how things work out.  This year, I've had a lot of luck without going too far around the map.  The birding has been great and I've had my personal best for a list for Apache County while being on vacation, which has numbered over 130 species on this trip.  There were several other birds I could've gotten very easily and didn't, but it's not about the listing efforts on a trip as compared to the experiences that really make the trip.  One can see 200 species of birds on a trip and not really have a super duper highlight.  On this trip, I have had many standout highlights, which beats a knock-out bird list any day.  As I've entered in most of my sightings to eBird, I have been happy with the results.  On one of the last days of my trip, I had to run into the city of Springerville to do grocery shopping.  Before and after the groceries, I visited two birding locations, the Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area east of Springerville before grocery shopping and then the South Fork Recreation area, which is shortly west of Springerville and shortly east of the Greer turnoff from the Route 260.  These two areas are two spots that I love to visit on every White Mountain vacation that I take.  Both of them also have a variety of different habitats and species, and they can really boost the trip list up quickly.

The above picture is from Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area.  In the background, the tall mountain is Escudilla Mountian.  This mountain is one of the top peaks in the state of Arizona, and it was once one of the prettiest places.  Sadly, most of this spectacular mountain was charred in the 2011 Wallow Fire.  Escudilla was a place I visited several times, and every visit was great.  Arizona used to be home to the Grizzly Bear in good numbers before they were hunted, trapped, and eventually extirpated completely outside of Arizona and the southwest for that matter.  The last wild Grizzly Bear in Arizona was shot on this mountain.  Back to Sipe, a lot of Sipe's surrounding area was burned up in the fire too, but Sipe remains to be a great birding place.  In all of the White Mountains, I think the Sipe Wildlife Area is the best place to visit if one wants to have a big list and a variety of birds on a hike.  It's one of those easy places to view birds and other wildlife, and it really caters to the birders.  In Phoenix, there's Gilbert Water Ranch, in Tucson, there's Sweetwater Wetlands, in Yuma, there's Yuma East and West Wetlands, in Flagstaff, there's Kachina Wetlands, and in Prescott, there's Watson and Willow Lakes.  So here in the White Mountains, there's Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area.  There have been times I have visited this place and have recorded about 60 species in only several hours of birding.  Sipe has a little bit of everything habitat wise.  It has riparian plants and habitats, hummingbird feeders, open meadows, hummingbird feeders, fences for birds to perch on, pinyon-juniper habitat, ponderosa pine forest, and several small lakes.  A three mile and easy hiking loop takes the birder through these habitats, where birds are easy to see and observe.  This makes Sipe a fun place for many.  When I came on my trip, I enjoyed Sipe's scenery along with some awesome monsoon clouds in the background!

After a stop at the visitor center, I began my walk and birding at Sipe by hiking on a three-mile trail that goes through the area.  Sipe stuck to it's usual ways of it having abundant birdlife.  In only 1.5 hours, I tallied 49 species, from 2 P.M. to 3:30 P.M.  This place has abundant and active birdlife even in the down parts of the day, which is quite similar to those other locations mentioned throughout Arizona.  Sipe caters to birders and makes life easy for them!  Hummingbirds were abundant at the hummingbird feeders, with there being many Rufous and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, and several Calliope Hummingbirds.  This female Broad-tailed Hummingbird was the only one that I was able to get a photograph of.

At Sipe, you may find Bullock's Orioles perched on the fence wires and up on bushes.  I had several during my walk.

This Pine Siskin favored the fence lines too.

So did the Chipping Sparrow.

So did the Say's Phoebe.

So did the young Barn Swallow.

And so was the female Tree Swallow.

Sipe had many birds in just the short while, and it was a great stop.  Most of those birds I wasn't able to photograph.  I'm sure if I was here at 7 A.M. in the morning, my count would've been 10 or more species higher.  Other highlights included numerous Lazuli Buntings in reedy areas along the creek, and a flock of Wilson's Phalaropes in Sipe's McKay Reservoir.  On my next long vacation to the White Mountains, I hope to visit Sipe at a much earlier time in the day.

Up next was the South Fork area.  It is named South Fork due to the south fork of the Little Colorado River flowing through the area.  Like Sipe, South Fork also has a diversity of habitats that include open grassland, rocky bluffs, riparian habitat along the Little Colorado River, juniper and pinyon pine woodland, ponderosa pine habitat, cottonwood riparian, and mixed conifers above the picnic area.  This is another place where one can have an amazing diversity of birds in a short while.  I got here in the evening and had close to 40 species near the end of the day and in less than two hours.  The highlight was a flyover flock of gregarious Pinyon Jays.  Pinyon Jays are always fun to see, and last year while birding at South Fork, I happened to stumble upon a flock that was actively foraging.  This time, the flock was moving on very quickly.  During this trip to Sipe, the lighting wasn't very good so my bird photos are minimal.  A migrant Willow Flycatcher was perched up high, and I also had a Sora and two Gray Catbirds along the river.  The Gray Catbird is another local breeding species in the White Mountains.  It was once very scarce and South Fork was "the place" to see it, but now the species has really spread out throughout several other areas in the White Mountains.  The Catbird isn't so hard to find anymore.  Here is a picture of the Willow Flycatcher.  Actually, nevermind, it's actually a Western Wood-Pewee.  It's a screw-up I made on here.  There never ceases to be a learning experience in birding!

There were many active birds close to and at the picnic area of South Fork, which is dominated by ponderosa pine woodland.  The Little Colorado River flows through this part also, and it is quite peaceful to listen to.  Despite there being many active birds such as a young female Williamson's Sapsucker, Bushtits, Steller's and Pinyon Jays, Clark's Nutcracker, etc., this Townsend's Solitaire was the only bird I was able to get a photograph of.  

Walking around South Fork, I looked down into a valley below and saw this female Elk.

As it was getting dark, I heard the distinctive calls of the Common Nighthawk.  Although I was hearing them, it took me awhile to actually visually see one.  Finally, I looked up and saw one flickering up high and above.  I managed to get a few poor, but most importantly, diagnostic photos of the bird.  The white bar on it's wings is lower in placement from the wingtip than a Lesser Nighthawk would be, which the Lesser's white bar is very close to the wingtip.  Here is a new bird "photographed", the Common Nighthawk!

Birding at Sipe and South Fork was a lot of fun, and I'll have to bird them more on the next trip than the one single time that I did on this trip.  As the sun was going down, the monsoon clouds were once again breathtaking, and couldn't go on without me photographing them.  Here's a good way to end this post.