FYI the trip announcement below, weather permitting….

While it may seem early for migrants, the first southbound adult shorebirds will be showing up any day now.  I’ll be checking the plumages to see if we make the claim that shorebird migration is officially underway in Lee County!

* June 30, Tuesday 5PM - 7PM (Evening walk!!) Bunche Beach
Guide: Charlie Ewell. Located in So Ft. Myers off Summerlin Rd: Drive south on John Morris Rd until it deadends. Experience one of the best birding sites in Lee Co. Bring binoculars, sun protection, shoes that can get wet, a bottle of drinking water. Meet in the parking lot. 239-707-3015 

FYI

FYI

Hi Birders,

I am looking for information on birding in the Philippines, and since I know many of you travel extensively, I thought I’d make an inquiry. I am planning a trip to visit a friend in Manila in September. If you have any advice about birding in that area, please respond off the list directly to me. If you know of any birding guides there, I would be most interested. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Good Luck and Good Birding,

Alan Knothe

The Birdman

All,

FYI re: the field trip announcement below for Bunche Beach, Ft Myers.  This is a great time to examine the plumage subtleties of adults that have returned from the breeding grounds vs. immatures that have summered in the area.  Walt Winton and I will be the leaders.  Please email me if you have any questions!

* July 25, Saturday 8AM Bunche Beach

All,

Here’s a link to a story on WGCU about the local Purple Martin roost in downtown Ft Myers that hosts thousands of birds this time of year:

http://wgcu.org/

Charlie Ewell

Cape Coral, FL

anhinga42@...

http://www.birdpatrol.org

Burrowing Owl Festival info at:

http://www.ccfriendsofwildlife.org/

FL Ornithological Society info

http://fosbirds.org

Charles and All,

I’ve seen a few Tri-colored Herons recently at Harns Marsh in Lehigh.  They are usually present at Bunche Beach (except at high tide), Little Estero Lagoon (south end of Ft Myers Beach), and Lakes Park to name a few locations.  Directions of the locations mentioned above can be found at the Caloosa Bird Club’s website:

http://www.caloosabirdclub.org/

Click on the “Local Birding Hot Spots” link along the left hand column of the home page.  Harns Marsh is not on the website yet, so directions are below:

From I-75, take Exit 136 (Lee Blvd) east to Sunshine Blvd in Lehigh Acres. Turn left on Sunshine Blvd and drive north past the Able Canal. Just beyond the canal, the road curves and 31st St. is on the left. Turn left on 31st and make an immediate right onto Ruth Av. Drive north on Ruth Av to 38th St. Turn left on 38th and drive to the parking area at the end of the road.  Snail Kites, Limpkins, and wading birds are present this time of year. Many times you can see the target birds from the parking area, but if needed you are permitted to walk along the gated dirt road.  No restrooms available. 

Charlie Ewell

Cape Coral, FL

anhinga42@...

Lee County Bird Patrol info:

http://www.birdpatrol.org/

Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife/Burrowing Owl Festival info:

http://www.ccfriendsofwildlife.org/

SWFL Birdline info:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SWFLBirdline/

FL Ornithological Society info:

http://www.fosbirds.org/

See below for the next Bunche Beach guided tour offered by the volunteer Lee County Bird Patrol!  Shorebird migrants have returned to the area, so this will be a great chance to check them out!  I won’t be co-leading this trip, but hope to attend and help out.

 August 22, Saturday 8AM Bunche Beach
Guides: Sue Moore and Elaine Swank . Located in So Ft. Myers off Summerlin Rd: Drive south on John Morris Rd until it deadends. Experience one of the best birding sites in Lee Co. Bring binoculars, sun protection, shoes that can get wet, a bottle of drinking water. Meet in the parking lot. 239-707-3015 

FYI Bunche and Red Knot fans….

Scroll down for a recent report…..

Charlie;
At Bunche Beach today there were several red knots. One was banded green and silver or white on the right leg; green on the  left leg. The bird was at some distance and I did   not have my scope with me so could not detect letters. Of interest one avocet flew in and stayed for 15 minutes so then headed south.
WEs Dirks

To: SWFLBirdline@yahoogroups.com
From: anhinga42@...
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:45:37 -0400
Subject: [SWFLBirdline] Red Knots and Reporting Banded Shorebirds

 

All,

The following email has a link to a new site for reporting banded
shorebirds, particularly the declining Red Knot. I haven't been out myself
recently to look for them, but I'm hearing reports that the knots are
returning and have been seen at Little Estero Lagoon, Bunche Beach, and
Bowditch Point. Many of the birds that return to SWFL have lime green flags
with lettering large enough that can be read at close range with binocs, or
from a distance with a scope. If you do happen to run across any of the
flagged knots, please let me know as I keep a spreadsheet of the local
resightings.

Charlie Ewell
Cape Coral, FL
anhinga42@embarqmail.com

Cape Coral Friends of Wildlife/Burrowing Owl Festival info:
http://www.ccfriendsofwildlife.org/
Lee County Bird Patrol info:
http://www.birdpatrol.org/

SWFL Birdline info:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SWFLBirdline/
FL Ornithological Society info:
http://www.fosbirds.org/



---Original Message-----
From: Birdbrains - Florida Birds/Natural History
[mailto:BRDBRAIN@LISTSERV.ADMIN.USF.EDU] On Behalf Of David Hartgrove
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 8:48 AM
To: BRDBRAIN@LISTSERV.ADMIN.USF.EDU
Subject: [BRDBRAIN] Reporting Banded Shorebirds

Hi All,
I recently got a response to a report of some banded Red Knots I
found last May while doing the NAMC Spring Count. The birds had been
banded in 2006, at Hog's Beach, Va.; 2008, at Cook's Beach, NJ, and
2008, Bahia Lomas, Tierra Del Fuego, Chile. Bill Pitts, the man from
the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife who responded, included a
link to a new web site for reporting banded shorebirds. Here it is:

www.bandedbirds.org

After entering your reporting information, you can
click on another tab and find out where and when the bird was banded.
Citizen science does indeed provide invaluable information.

David Hartgrove,
President & Conservation Chair,
Halifax River Audubon

FYI

Directions to Sugden Park at:

http://www.caloosabirdclub.org/HotSpots.html

Scroll down the page to Sugden Park entry….

This has never been a quick process, I know the section I wrote I submitted in 2002 I believe. So the info was already ~3 years old when the guide was new. That said most of this doesn’t change and moreover the need for these guides (and sales of) ha largely been destroyed by the plethora of real time and free info available online. For example, most states have bird trail programs as FL does these pamphlets and subsequent updates are easier and cheaper to produce, plus since these are free publications there isn’t that pressure of having to wait until you sell through the old stock either.

Also bird listserves like this one are VERY common and can be found for any locale with real time info and data. Same for e-bird! The data you can view here represents REAL-TIME current data, not a list comprised from handwritten checklists decades old. This has done much to all but destroy the market need/desire for these local bird-finding guides it seems. I know whenever I prepare for a trip I turn to the internet for my data.

Best,

Jeff

Dany,

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of these products and own no fewer than 20 varying bird-finding guides (ABA & other) dating back to the first one I purchased back in 1985. None-the-less, let’s use the aforementioned “ABA Birder’s Guide to Florida” as an example. Let me preface by saying that Bill Pranty has done a Fantastic job here and this is one of the best guides in its class. This is not meant at a dig at the guides but strictly as a comparison.

The ABA guide was last published in 2005 and much of the data included was written 2-3 years earlier so some of the data presented is approaching 8 years old. It’s 418 pages and chronicles ~75 birding areas or “loops” complete with directions, etc. for a total of ~320+/- individual sites (from a quick thumb through). Also included is an annotated list, information on other wildlife, a specialty species section, and other stuff. All to the tune of $25.95 retail.

Now let’s compare this to the “Great Florida Birding Trail”:

http://www.floridabirdingtrail.com/guide.htm

These guides are smaller regional pamphlets but like the ABA guide offer bird-finding tips, maps & directions, contact numbers for parks, etc. These are absolutely free for the asking and if you can’t find an agency office, etc. that carries them, you can download PDF versions that you can view on your handheld in the field, cell phone, or if you want the “real deal” you can print out all or just the sections you plan to visit. The four guides are ~32-40 pages long each and are broken into four regions East, West, South, and Panhandle. They include 71 “clusters” (similar to the loops in the ABA guide) which cover 487 individual sites. The eastern guide was the first produced 2002, but online there is a list of individual sites and an additional 46 sites are listed here. As names and directions change, the website adds updates (as recent as August 5^th 2009) to handle the changes.

So in direct comparison, for $26 I get a 418 page book that covers ~320 birding sites. For free I have the same quality site finding information on 487 (printed) or 533 (electronic) sites. I know personally I have had times where I couldn’t find a newer site in ABA and could on the birding trail site. One requires carrying the large 417 page guide (near the size of the full-sized Sibley guides), the other only requires a cell phone signal. In addition, I note that the Great Florida Birding Trail is synched with “Google Maps” so I can get direct turn by turn directions and even images showing landmarks, (e.g. what the intersection looks like).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the book is obsolete. Only that these new resource that are more inclusive of sites (40% more in this case), are more intuitive, and regularly updated are absolutely FREE. Plus, for anyone with an I-phone or Blackberry eliminates the need to print these or pick these up. This is more eco-friendly (no paper waste). Plus since many of these handheld devices also have GPS capabilities, one can simply access the site they want to go to, click the Google Maps tool, and their phone will guide them turn by turn to the site! It’s come a long way from when I bought my first “Lane” Guide (original name of this ABA bird-finding series) 25 years ago and felt like I’d been given the golden ticket, and these changes are ABSOLUTELY affecting the sales of these products which offer (comparatively) old and sometimes out-dated information on notably fewer birding sites.

The annotated checklists in these books was always one of my favorite portions of these but in this case this single checklist for the state requires a bit of guesswork depending where you are in the state. For example, Purple Sandpiper is listed from Late October all the way through June. from October to March it is listed as “Uncommon”, then “Rare” in April, and “Casual” in May & June. However, the first section of this graph is broken up into 5 geographic areas: Panhandle, North Peninsula, Central Pen., South Pen, & keys. In the Panhandle and Keys the listing is Casual, it is Rare in Central & South, and Uncommon only in North Peninsula. Meaning anywhere but the former you have to assume that abundance & likelihood is downgraded marginally to significantly.

Enter E-bird. Using E-bird I can create my own annotated checklists limited to exact sites or geographic areas as I dictate (county, area, township, state whatever). In addition, I can have it list only specific date ranges and the graphs represented include real time data that could include sightings as recent as yesterday from that site in some cases. The annotated checklist in the guide is based on review of 40 years of written checklist data that often includes information on species which are no longer seen reliably. For example, in the ABA guide Smooth-billed Ani is listed as rare year round, throughout the south peninsula region. While this may be correct by definition, the reality of this is that in the past 6+ years no one has reported any birds in the state except for a single family group that is seen near the Ft. Lauderdale airport.

A real time species checklist drawn from modern and recent data would not give a visiting birder the impression that they stand a fair chance of running into these as they bird the southern peninsula. Plus, once again, it’s completely free and you can customize it to the EXACT variables you are interested in!

http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

Best,

Jeff Bouton

Birder/Naturalist rep

Leica Sport Optics, USA

Port Charlotte, FL

jbouton2@...

The below was reported by Vince McGrath

I forgot to mention the report is for Wednesday 30 Sep 09

All,

Walt Winton found a Blue-winged and a Golden-winged Warbler at Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve during the Wednesday morning action, and he and I relocated the birds today (Thursday 1 Oct).  They were both along the boardwalk in the vicinity of Pop Ash Pond, which is the pond with the blind that is located at the south end of the boardwalk.  Many of the birds mentioned below were still present, although in lesser numbers.

All,

Here is a nice comparison between a Stilt Sandpiper and a Lesser Yellowlegs.  The Stilt Sandpiper is the smaller, paler bird with the slight droop to the bill.  You can see the different facial pattern nicely between the Stilt and Lesser Yellowlegs, with the Stilt showing the white supercilium (eyebrow) and chin/neck vs. the Lesser’s gray-brown face and neck area that does not contrast as much.  You will need to sort through quite a few Lesser Yellowlegs if you look for the Stilt!  I stopped by the Publix on the east side of Six Mile Cypress Pkwy (a short distance south of Colonial Blvd) that has a recently cleared field (that is still holding some water) between the store and Six Mile.  There is also nice shorebird habitat adjacent to the store on the south and east sides.  The birds move between all the wet areas.  You can park in the Publix lot, or all the way down at the south-end access road.  A Wilson’s Snipe was also reported previously by Vince McGrath, but I did not see it on this visit.  Shorebirds present today were:

Killdeer

Pectoral Sandpiper (2)

Stilt Sandpiper (1)

Lesser Yellowlegs (30+)

Greater Yellowlegs (~10)

Spotted Sandpiper (1)

Least Sandpiper (100+): Beware of the Least Sandpipers with mud-covered legs!  They look like Semipalmated Sandpiper at first glance.  There may be Semiplamated present, but I couldn’t be sure today!)