A veritable torrent of birding news

(There’s a frequently-used abbreviation on the internet: TL;DNR, which means “Too long; did not read.” That’s all I seem to write anymore, TL;DNR stuff. You’ve been warned.)

The wind and the rain have knocked down most of the remaining wild plum, redbud, and dogwood flowers, so that part of spring is over.

The Snail Kite hasn’t been seen since March 23rd.

Trina Anderson found a White-faced Ibis at Chapmans Pond on March 24th. It was seen again by Adam Zions on the 25th but has not been reported to eBird since then, either because higher water levels at the pond have driven it elsewhere or because no one has been looking for it.

Yve Morrell, visiting from Naples, found and photographed a single Gray-headed Swamphen at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on March 27th. It was the first time a swamphen had been seen there since February 21st. It showed up again for the Wednesday Wetlands Walk on March 30th, along with a beautiful white-morph Short-tailed Hawk.

A Black-throated Blue Warbler reported by Karl Miller at San Felasco’s Moonshine Creek Trail on March 29th was heard only, which is too bad; it was the earliest recorded in Alachua County since Frank Chapman shot one on April 5, 1887.

Migrating loons are still flying over on fair mornings, from the Gulf to the Atlantic en route to northern nesting grounds. I counted 38 going over my back yard this morning between 8:26 and 9:00, 29 of them in the five minutes between 8:40 and 8:44.

Lots of locally-breeding neotropical migrants have arrived in the past two weeks:

Sam Ewing heard a Red-eyed Vireo singing in his NW Gainesville neighborhood on March 19th. Caroline Poli reported 7 at Camps Canal on the 26th, and on the 27th Bryan Tarbox and friends reported 10 at Bolen Bluff. Keep in mind that Blue-headed Vireos sing at this time of year and can be mistaken for Red-eyeds.

Hooded Warblers have been here since at least the 20th, when Mike Manetz found 3 along San Felasco’s Moonshine Creek Trail. Caroline Poli had 6 there on the 24th. But in migration they can show up anywhere; witness the one seen by Bryan Tarbox in the Duck Pond neighborhood on the 28th and the one seen by Geoff Parks at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the 29th.

Lloyd Davis photographed the spring’s first Eastern Kingbird at Cellon Creek Boulevard on March 22nd. Andy Kratter saw another during a SE Gainesville loon watch on the morning of the 26th.

Single Indigo Buntings appeared in NW Gainesville, SW Gainesville, and along the western shore of Newnans Lake on the 22nd.

Only a couple of Prothonotary Warblers have shown up so far. Caroline Poli found one at San Felasco Hammock on March 24th and Adam Kent found one in NW Gainesville on the 30th.

Summer Tanagers wintered here in large numbers, and some of these wintering birds continued to be seen through the end of March. The first spring arrivals were one that Caroline Poli found at Camps Canal on March 26th, and then several reports on the 29th: Jonathan Mays reported one from his SE Gainesville home and another while running on the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail, John Hintermister reported four at San Felasco Hammock, and then there were two reports from visiting birder Simon Tam, including one bird at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens and four at Paynes Prairie.

Great Crested Flycatchers are extraordinarily frustrating to track. The first of the spring *normally* shows up about March 25th. Birders report lots of heard-only Great Cresteds in early and mid-March, and repeated reminders that White-eyed Vireos can mimic a Great Crested Flycatcher’s wheep! rarely motivate them to track down these heard birds to confirm their identities. This year the eBird filter somehow got reset to mid-freakin’-March, meaning that people who recorded Great Crested Flycatcher prior to March 25th were not even prompted to write down details of their observations. Did they hear it? Did they see it? We don’t know! Great Crested Flycatchers shouldn’t *normally* be here before the last week in March! If you hear one, track it down! Okay? Okay! And yet I know I’ll be saying the same thing next year, because no one seems to remember this. Anyway … looking at the increasingly-dubious eBird output, the first date on which there were *several* reports of Great Crested Flycatcher was March 27th, when they were seen or heard in four locations.

Listen, develop your own knowledge and expertise of local birds. Don’t depend on the eBird filters to tell you what’s early and what’s late. The filters often seem to be messed up anyway. And there’s lots of bad data in eBird. Lots and lots and lots. Really, lots. You’d be surprised.

Carol and Ching-Tzu Huang tell me that there’s a family of Great Horned Owls in the pines behind Trinity United Methodist Church at 4000 NW 53rd Avenue. Evening is the best time to see them.

As of March 21st there were still Vaux’s Swifts at UF’s Dauer Hall, but according to Ben Ewing they were mixed in with about 40 Chimney Swifts that were spending their first night in the chimney. Ben wrote, “Heard calling among the Chimney Swifts. It was impossible to pick out how many birds there were, though I suspect all were still there. Some of the swifts seemed to be slimmer and smaller, these may have been the Vaux’s.”

Saturday’s walk at Watermelon Pond fielded only a couple of local participants, as well as a group of traveling birders from Bradenton. We hiked from the boat ramp along the firebreak toward the Fox Squirrel Loop, but a light rain began and the satellite showed a huge mass of green, yellow, and orange bearing down on us from the west, so we turned back to the parking lot. We’d seen nothing more remarkable than a trio of Prairie Warblers in a single waxmyrtle bush – my first migrants of the spring – but we assumed that we were about to be drenched with rain, so the Bradenton folks headed home. Alan Shapiro then suggested that he and I could keep birding as long as the rain held off. So we drove up to the north entrance of the Wildlife and Environmental Area and had a very nice couple of hours, because the rain never materialized after all. We saw the usual birds there – American Kestrel, Eastern Bluebird, Red-headed Woodpecker, Eastern Meadowlark, Yellow-throated Vireo – but we also found two singing Bachman’s Sparrows and a Loggerhead Shrike sitting on a nest, so it turned out to be an excellent day.

It’s cam time! Every spring various organizations put up nest cams, which show adults brooding eggs and feeding chicks, and then the chicks fledging (if everything goes well, which it doesn’t always). This year you can choose from the DC Eagle Cam, situated in a tulip tree in the National Arboretum – http://dceaglecam.eagles.org/ – or the Kestrel Cam in a nest box in Boise, Idaho – http://kestrel.peregrinefund.org/webcams – or the two Barn Owl cams, in two nest boxes in Stockton, California – http://www.portofstockton.com/daggettrd-owlcam

If you’re not joining the Alachua Audubon walk to Fort White Wildlife and Environmental Area on April 9th, you might be interested in the annual Alligator Lake Spring Festival in Lake City: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/banners/41a484be824484a11b12083a379b6f37

Also, Alachua Conservation Trust is holding a Moth Night – blacklighting for moths – at the Prairie Creek Lodge on Sunday, April 3rd. More information here.

Alachua Audubon has a new front page: https://alachuaaudubon.org/ Also, check out the Best Birding Sites page, which now features photos: https://alachuaaudubon.org/best-birding-sites/