Today on December 14th, I decided to participate in the Christmas Bird Count for the Salt/Verde River as I wanted to help with the count and enjoy the area. I called my friend Kurt Radamaker, who is also the compiler of the count, and we talked about the birding areas in the count and it worked out that I would cover Area 3 within the count circle. This count is one that's awesome, and one that is largely on Ft. McDowell Reservation Land. Kurt gave me one of the permits and I was good to go, as the reservation gives permits to birders once a year during this time. It's a great place to explore, and with it being a once a year opportunity at most for access to the land, it's good to get out there. I got there at dawn, and went to the east side of the Verde River to access my area. After crossing the river going northbound on Highway 87, I took the first left onto a road, which is BIA 51 for several miles to get where I needed to go. I passed the popular Ft. McDowell Adventures turnoff, and I kept going when the road turned to dirt, was a little rough, and was narrow. I took my truck to my first stop, which was where BIA 51 intersected with Sycamore Creek. There were a few spots near the intersection to park, and after parking I loaded up my gear for the day and hiked 0.8 miles to the Verde River. From the start, the place was active with lots of birds to count, and I knew it would be a busy day. Once I got to the Verde River, I decided to keep on going north which would result in me being on foot all day. When I headed north I decided I would stay along the river for over 5 miles of hiking through a variety of terrain (from easy to challenging), and when I would return southbound I decided I would follow BIA 51 back for another 5-6 miles to where I parked at the BIA 51/Sycamore Creek intersection. With lots of new ground to explore (I've never covered this stretch of the east side of the Verde) and with having a few locations in mind that Kurt told me about within the area, I knew the day would be awesome.
From the getgo, I had fun when I got out of my truck and heard many American Crows calling. Crows are annual visitors to the Ft. McDowell Reservation lands during winter, and they are often found in the pecan groves and along the river in smaller numbers among Common Ravens. This year there are irruptions of different species throughout Arizona and the American Crows today where a similar example. As I hiked toward the river, I heard them calling constantly, and eventually I started to see flocks of them flying to the southwest. To my surprise, I counted over 300 of them quickly, all of which were birds headed to the southwest. When some birds flew in from the west side of the river, I wasn't sure if they were returning birds after they seemingly dispersed for morning flight. Throughout the hike, I saw more and more of them, but I left my count at 315 birds to prevent errors even though I believe there were at least 500 of them. At times there'd be random groups of them sitting in cottonwoods or flying around together in groups of close to 50 birds in mesquite bosque habitat. It was fun to observe, as my observations with American Crows today are now the best I've had of the species in Maricopa County.
As I hiked north and stayed close to the Verde River during my outbound hike, I birded in cottonwood and willow riparian groves along the river (which did have mesquite and tamarisk mixed in in a lot of locations), mesquite, and Sonoran desert scrub. My outbound hike ended at a mature and large mesquite bosque at over 5 miles of hiking north. The return hike on BIA 51 was in desert scrub habitat. I loved the area and hope to return again. More about the birds encountered, my total was 73 species in over 10 hours spent hiking in what was an 11-12 mile round trip overall. Other rarities I encountered was an adult male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a Golden-crowned Kinglet, a flyover Red Crossbill (who are irrupting this year), a White-throated Sparrow, and a Northern Parula. Another good bird for the count was 6 Woodhouse's Scrub-Jays. Kurt told me it's been years since they've been found on the count, and they've also been irrupting into lower elevations than usual this year. Among the other birds in the 73 species I detected were 7 Common Merganser, 10 Wilson's Snipe, 3 Bald Eagle (including a pair on a nest-very cool), Harris's Hawk, Great Horned Owl, 2 Dusky Flycatchers, 2 Brown Creepers, 120 Western Bluebirds, over 250 Yellow-rumped Warblers, and up to 7 Black-throated Gray Warblers. My full list is on eBird at the link here below:
The day today can be summed with approach of "field birding", which is my favorite. You park and walk for miles on foot all day and it rocks. I packed lunch, snacks, and 8 bottles of water. When I started birding I used the eBird application for everything. In under an hour my phone battery went from 100 to 75%, which was gonna die fast with keeping tallies. A handy tool I brought just in case was a pen and sheet of paper. I tallied the abundant species by 5's (example: Yellow-rumped Warbler, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, etc.), and the less abundant species by 1's. For any species that was new for the day, I would use the eBird app for that. It worked out well, and with cold hands it was easier to use a pen and paper for tallying lots of the birds. A fun one in the field, hopefully I'll get the chance to participate in this count again. To close, here's a few pictures of the area, as well as the forms used for our final tally to turn into Kurt for compilation.
On June 2nd after leaving Michigan, I made another stop at Rock Lake State Natural Area in Wisconsin. That was the spot that Gretchen and I went birding at, the location where I tried to get good observations of Black-throated Blue Warblers without luck but also the location where I lifered on my first Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. I went back to try and see more of the warblers. The trip had become a warbler obsession. Who could blame me? They are freaking awesome. On this go around at Rock Lake, the weather was very overcast and there were small rain showers. I spent my last hour of birding time for the day at the location without getting a peep from any Black-throated Blues. The time was limited and I didn't see the overcast conditions improving, and I went back to Gretchen's cabin with some daylight left. I sat out on the dock of her cabin for about an hour, and enjoyed that Yellow River until bed time. For the day that was ahead of me, I'd have to leave the cabin early. I had what I considered to be a great adventure ahead.
My plan for June 3rd was a big big deal. It would involve the first of many Northerly Treks into one of my favorite states for birding and one of my favorite states in general, the great Minnesota. My buddy Josh Wallestad is from Minnesota, and he would join me for some of these expeditions in the days ahead. I would stay in the northern parts of Minnesota during these anticipated treks like I was doing for the whole trip, which is referred to as the boreal region. The word boreal refers to the cold, the north, and also a very cool owl, and a chickadee too. My main bird target of this day was the Cape May Warbler. If I could find a Cape May Warbler and hopefully get some photographs to go along with the memory, it would be a big big deal. After seeing Kirtland's Warblers for the first time and getting some photos, the only regularly occurring Wood Warbler/New World Warbler I would need for the ABA area would conclude with Cape May Warbler. While good fortune has been along with me with getting rare Mexican warblers in Arizona: Fan-tailed, Crescent-chested, and Rufous-capped Warblers, and Slate-throated Redstart, it helped boost my US warbler list to 54 species, and if I'd land a Cape May, I would have 55 out of a possible 56. The other one missing is the primarily-found-in-Texas Golden-crowned Warbler. Someday, that will hopefully be a chase that I'll attempt.
The day ahead of me was one that I planned out carefully. I looked at Cape May Warbler reports from last year on eBird, and I planned on birding in the area near the North Shore of Lake Superior. After waking up and leaving at 3 A.M., I headed northwest from Spooner, into Minnesota and through Duluth, and then north to Two Harbors. At Two Harbors, which is a good birding area, would be a road called County Road 2. The county that I entered into to bird this road is called Lake County, and it's an awesome county that birders love. Anyways, County Road 2 is a well-known road for getting most birds that are found in the boreal region forests. It goes for 53 miles until it reaches County Road 1, another well-known road with similar birds and habitats. I got to County Road 2 early, but not as early as I would've liked. The road branches off from Two Harbors and goes in a northwest direction, and as I drove up the road, I passed through an endless amount of forests that had beautiful spruce bogs in the midst. At first, I was going to drive up the road for it's 53 miles in search of my lifer Moose. These large and massive members of the deer family are found in northeastern Minnesota, and County Road 2 is talked about for a great bet to find Moose. As I read about the wildlife of the region, I also read that the area harbors good potential for seeing Gray Wolves. Although the potential is good, a sighting is still rare to have. Before the trip, Josh told me that Cape May Warblers really thrive during spruce budworm breakouts, and that they like two different types of tree: balsam fir and white spruce. I looked up the trees on Google and took screenshots, and noticed that the two trees looked pretty similar to one another. As I was going up County Road 2, I started to see stands of trees that held plenty of balsam fir and white spruce. I was trying to focus on my Moose search, but when I saw the Cape May Warbler habitat, I couldn't help but think, "I'll stop for a few minutes, listen, and move on while it's still early". And then I heard a Cape May Warbler singing when I rolled down the window. And just like that, my Moose search was over.
A series of high, thin, and quiet notes, "tsee tsee tsee tsee tsee" was the indicator of a Cape May Warbler nearby. Things got even better when I heard a second and possibly a third start singing too. I pulled off the road at a place called Little Langley Creek, which was a dense forest of spruce that had a creek flowing through a bog area. It was beautiful, and it was good to be in Cape May Warbler habitat. I anxiously had my eyes out for movement, as Cape May Warblers tend to stick up up very high in the coniferous trees that they inhabit most. When a song got closer, I pished and a bird flew out of the trees and across Road 2. It landed in a dark shadowy area that had yet to have the morning sunlight hit. As I looked through my binoculars I could see a yellowish warbler with dark streaks across it's breast. The bird didn't stay there long, but I knew it was a Cape May Warbler. I decided to focus back on the sunlit trees that were back across from Road 2, and after a few minutes and looking near the top of a tree, there it was in perfect lighting-my first Cape May Warbler. Although it wasn't very close, the striking look of a yellowish bird with a yellow rump and yellow sides to the neck, black streaks across it's breast, a dark greenish back, a bold white wing patch, and bright chestnut cheeks on a yellow face screamed it all out. Cape May Warbler baby!
After watching this bird for a minute, I walked up Road 2 as it went across Little Langley Creek. There was another nice stand of spruce trees, and I caught sight of another male Cape May Warbler, as well as a quick look at a female. The male posed rather far away like my first, but the views were awesome.
Just like that I had my 55th Wood Warbler for ABA, and Cape May Warbler was a fun warbler to do that on. Like Connecticut Warbler, the Cape May Warbler is poorly named. In Cape May, the warbler is only a migrant, but that is where the first specimen had been collected in roughly 1811, twenty years before the bird was named in 1831 by Alexander Wilson who was the first to describe and sketch the specimen (Wood Warblers World by Hal H. Harrison-this line and the next few lines). It was crazy because Alexander Wilson and Audubon himself actually never got to see a live Cape May Warbler. The latin name of this bird is Setophaga tigrina, where tigrina means, "striped like a tiger". There's more to mention about the life of Cape May Warblers, as we go along and up County Road 2 further on this post when I look for more of them, I'll say more about their lives.
A lot of other songbirds were present along Little Langley Creek, and before I knew it, I had been there for over thirty minutes. It was awesome when I heard a Tennessee Warbler start singing and was able to get a looks and some photographs. While I've seen non-breeding, female, and first-year birds as Arizona vagrants, it was really fun to enjoy adult males on breeding grounds.
Here is a video of the Tennessee Warbler singing.
Evening Grosbeaks were another. Their call notes from this region, as opposed to what I have heard in Arizona, sound much different. Like Red Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks have their own types.
As I went north of County Road 2, I made a few short stops before going to White Pine Picnic Area, a place that has had a lot of good birds and a variety of birds. I parked at the picnic area, and walked in the north and south direction. The habitat was awesome and had a mix of spruce, pine, aspen, and other deciduous trees. Right off the bat I could hear several Northern Parulas singing. I focused a lot of my time on them in the hour that I spent at White Pine, and it was awesome. It was the first time I've seen this small and awesome-looking warbler on it's breeding grounds, where they seemed to like trees with mossy substances growing off of them. I got some awesome looks at a few Northern Parulas.
I had to photograph the Canada Warbler I heard too.
Among the 25 bird species present at White Pine, 11 of them were warblers.
What was funny about me wanting to get Cape May the second I heard them was that there ended up being probably close to a dozen of them in total throughout the combined locations that I stopped at along County Road 2. At a spot close to White Pine, I had much better looks at this male, who sang right along the road!
Heck yes. As Cape May Warbler breeds in boreal forests that contain a spruce-tree dominance, they also have a strong food preference during breeding season, which is an abundance of moth larva that is called the spruce budworm. Outbreaks of these budworms mean much a much higher and more numerous population of Cape May Warblers, as their numbers go up and down based on budworm availability. Cape May Warblers may be anywhere from uncommon to very common based on this food source. While it is important for Cape Mays, it is important to a lot of other warbler species too.
In that book, Wood Warblers World, author Hal H. Harrison described the difficulty of finding the nest of a Cape May Warbler, and that the nest is concealed in a spruce tree from anywhere from 35 to 60 feet up. And he described in his book how clever the female warbler is, and how she can ward off potential predators by distracting them away from the nest. When Hal was doing his research, he was trying to find the bird's nest, and Mrs. Cape May doesn't fly to the nest with someone nearby, but she goes to the tree below the level of the nest and makes her way to the nest by sneaking up from branch to branch close to the trunk. Hal also notes something else about Mrs. Cape May. She not only cares for her family, but she really cares for her family. While other warblers fly out of their nests in a horizontal fashion, Mrs. Cape May jumps toward the ground, swoops up right before hitting the ground, and flies out of sight. I find this freaking incredible about Cape May Warblers, and it makes me want to experience the behavior for myself.
Cape May Warblers are also notoriously aggressive toward other birds, and will chase off birds that get in the way of their food source on their nesting grounds. During migration and winter, the diet of these warblers becomes quite the assortment of food items that include more nectar and fruits than other warblers. The Cape May is not only aggressive during breeding season, but they will also chase off others over food source in migration and winter. Like it's latin name means "stripes of a tiger", I guess the name holds true to it's behavior, as it can be tiger-like when it comes to securing it's food.
The song of the Cape May Warbler is pretty muted and quiet, and it can make it challenging to locate the singer. As I had an eye on one of the male Cape Mays that I saw, I watched it go into a dense spruce, where it was hard to see. Fortunately I was pretty close to the bird, and I decided to get a recording of it singing.
As my exploration continued, I got out of the truck and walked along a fun habitat that consisted of a bog, as well as a stand of spruce trees along the road. I saw a bird chasing another bird. The chaser landed in view and I quickly raised my binoculars, already knowing what the result was going to be.
This Alder Flycatcher was nearby and was singing: Rhhe-biierr or Free Beer!
This Blackburnian Warbler out of several Blackburnians was awesome to see.
Here are a selection of scenes from County Road 2.
When I woke up and made plans, I had a plan in place that I would head back to Gretchen's cabin earlier in the afternoon and go to bed early. The original plan for June 4th was going to be going south of Spooner for a three hour drive to central Wisconsin near a town called Wisconsin Rapids to target prairie species such as Greater Prairie-Chicken, Henslow's Sparrow, Upland Sandpiper, and possibly Short-eared Owl. As the time reached noon, I started to head back toward Two Harbors after that exploration of County Road 2. I added a place called Tettegouche State Park to my route, which is right along the main Highway 61 that parrallels the western shoreline of Lake Superior. My goal was to search for Black-throated Blue Warblers on a trail at Tettegouche. When I got to the trail, the birds were active, but I didn't get a peep out of any Black-throated Blue Warblers. It was frustrating, and I wished I had stayed on County Road 2 longer and went for a longer hike in that epic area. But Tettegouche was pretty cool, and I hoped to cross paths with a Philadelphia Vireo there too, but I didn't have success.
Going back toward Two Harbors, I knew about a vagrant Eurasian Tree Sparrow that was found there. Josh mentioned it to me earlier in the trip and while I had other targets that were being more highly considered for the main goals of the trip, the Tree Sparrow was enticing too. The bird was found with House Sparrows in a parking lot area on a street in Two Harbors. I decided to go for the sparrow and give it a shot. This species is very closely related to the House Sparrow, and they have similar behaviors and habits. Eurasian Tree Sparrow was introduced into the United States in St. Louis, Missouri, from Germany in 1870. They didn't spread too far, and are primarily in east-central Missouri and southern Illinois. But vagrants do happen. It was weird to chase this bird, but it was also cool when I got it after waiting for about thirty minutes.
This Clay-colored Sparrow and Chimney Swifts were fun to see too.
Once I started to head back to the cabin, I realized I was a bit tired and decided I was going to put the central Wisconsin trip off until later in the trip. I decided I would go to the Rock Lake State Natural Area during the following morning of June 4th to try for Black-throated Blue Warblers, and from there I would then start a camping trip through many areas in northern Minnesota. I contacted Josh and we made plans that we would bird two very awesome state parks in Minnesota most of the day on June 5th. That will be the next post on Northerly Treks.
After a great evening and night at the cabin, I woke up and went back to Rock Lake State Natural Area pretty early, which was an hour northeast of the cabin near a small Wisconsin town called Cable. Unfortunately, the weather was very cloudy, but I heard Black-throated Blue Warblers singing their lazy, Blues-like songs. These guys have the bulk of their population in the south, where Blues music is from, but fortunately for northern birders in some of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the Black-throated Blue Warbler does extend itself to the northern part of it's range. I caught up with a few of these awesome birds as they sang, and while my shots aren't great, they did top what I previously.had. My first Black-throated Blue Warbler was in Pinal County, Arizona and had to be viewed from about 100 feet away as it was hanging out on private property and was on someone's line of Christmas lights. What a cool bird, and a good bird to close this post off with!
