Herring Gull and 2012 preview

Today was the first time I made it out to MNR in the new year. What is wrong with this year’s winter?? Where do you have to go these days to get a decent day of winter birding with crisp sub-zero temperatures? Winter birding is all about the sadistic pleasures of numb hands, frozen naughty bits and wiping snot off your nose with those new gloves you got for Christmas - what happened to all that? Anyhow, enough of this! The birding was slow, so slow I was tempted to count the Barred Owl that is kept in the rehab enclosure by the Visitor’s Center. Things picked up at the usual stop by Lake Needwood. Good numbers of ducks on the lake: Ring-necks and Hoodies. A pleasant surprise were 3 Black Vultures and 1 Herring Gull soaring over the lake. Both welcome additions to the patch list, which stands at 65 currently. By the way, Herring Gull was a new entry to the site’s ebird list – who would have thought. Let’s take a look at 2012 – what can realistically be expected from MNR this year. Well we still have a couple of weeks to turn up a Snowy Owl, of which many have been found pretty much everywhere in the nation apart from Maryland. The main resolution is to keep birding the site as regularly as work allows. If that means I get out there at least 2-3 times a month and I can crank up that rate during migration we should see some nice stuff and keep building that patch list. Apart from MNR, Montezuma in Upstate New York will be visited around once a month during the year. Montezuma is one hell of a place for birds and never disappoints. The site's personal list already stands at 113 and it will be interesting to see what we can add over the year. I am not sure if a trip to Germany will work out this year, but since I haven't gone over last year I should really try this Xmas. How great would it be to add some birding sites from Deutschland onto the blog.  A new year's resolution for the blog itself will be to keep the blog child-friendly and vulgar-free during those days of eventless summer-lull birding. Yes - we can!

Birds, weed and reggae

Ovenbird at Hope Gardens

Yellow-billed Parrot

... are the 3 prominent impressions that I took from my visit to Jamaica, although I would have preferred more birds and less of the weed smell and blasting of reggae music from our loitering neighbors.
Getting around on a (my) budget turned out to be problem, especially since car rentals were booked out and ridiculously overprized. So the little time I had spared for birding was spend in the Kingston area, the  Hope Gardens in Kingston to be precise. I will put information for this birding spot on my blog shortly. If for whatever messed-up reason you happen to visit Kingston (not exactly a hot spot for tourists), the Gardens are relatively easy to get to and safe to bird.

Jamaican Oriole

Streamertail

Hope Gardens are great for neotropical migrants in winter and some of the more easy to find endemics. I birded there twice just past the turn of the year and had BLACK-THROATED BLUE, PALM. CAPE-MAY, PRAIRIE AND YELLOW-THROATED WARBLERS, OVENBIRD & NORTHER PARULA and the very common AMERICAN REDSTART.  At Fort Clarence, a beach, south of Kingston in the Greater Portmore area, I picked up YELLOW WARBLER and NORTHERN WATERTHRUSH, both relatively common winter visitors in Jamaica, bringing the total for warblers to 11 species. Among endemics I found BLACK-BILLED STREAMERTAIL, YELLOW-BILLED PARROT, JAMAICAN EUPHONIA, JAMAICAN ORIOLE, JAMAICAN WOODPECKER, WHITE-CHINNED THRUSH and SAD FLYCATCHER. All of these are relatively easy to find. A nice bonus was the NORTHERN POTOO that snoozed in a tree along the entrance road; they are common but always hard to spot. The total tally of endemics, including my previous visit 3 years ago, stands currently at 13 or 46% out of a 28 possible Jamaican endemics. So plenty more birds left to see on another visit...

N. Potoo