Migration picks up as summer winds down

A couple new migrant warblers have checked in. Bob Holt saw the first Black-throated Blue Warbler of the fall in his NW Gainesville yard on Saturday the 27th, and on the same day Adam Zions found another in the Jonesville area. Also on the same day, Mike Manetz saw the season’s first Blue-winged Warbler near the La Chua parking lot. It’s about time, that’s what I say! Things have been too slow lately. On Friday the 26th Mike and I took a walk around the Bolen Bluff Trail to look for migrant warblers. We found them, but not in much variety. We saw only five species: 2 Black-and-whites, 3 Prothonotaries, 20 Northern Parulas, 1 Yellow-throated, and 8 American Redstarts. We’d done better the previous week, when Mike, Matt O’Sullivan, and I walked out the Cones Dike Trail in search of Alder Flycatcher. We saw no Alders – as of the 27th they still haven’t checked in – but we did see nine warbler species, including 6 Prothonotaries, 20 Yellows, and an extremely pale first-year female Blackburnian that we believed to be a Cerulean until Matt spotted the pale “braces” on its back.

But no. In fact, nobody has reported Cerulean, Golden-winged, or Canada Warblers in Alachua County this fall.

Mike saw some migrant shorebirds at the La Chua Trail observation platform on the 27th: “nearly two dozen peeps, plus Pectorals, yellowlegs, and best, 2 Semipalmated Plovers.” Blue-winged Teal are by far the earliest migrants among the waterfowl, and Mike tallied about 60 near the observation platform.

When did you last see a kite? I haven’t seen a Mississippi since the 20th, and eBird shows that daily sightings stopped in Alachua County on the 22nd. I don’t know when I last saw a Swallow-tailed – sometime in July – and according to eBird there have been only seven sightings in the county this month. However Jacqui Sulek wrote yesterday that she still has nine Swallow-taileds hanging around a field near her Ft. White home. Most kites are gone south, though, and with few exceptions North Florida birders won’t see another until next spring.

Donny Griffin, who lives in the Osceola National Forest, told me something I never knew: “We have a screened back porch and I keep the door open during summer for the dogs. We get a lot of horse flies in there, and since they prey on our cows I murder them every time I see one and mumble a pagan oath and obscenity over its grave. Well we get some Bald-faced Hornets this time of year, which like dragonflies and butterflies, I help them get back to freedom. No insect seems to be able to get out on their own but the hornets. I never noticed that until yesterday. I was about to put one off the porch until I realized it was stalking the horse flies, so I just sat back and watched. It made repeated trips in and out until it had captured all the horse flies, at least six.” This blog post by a couple of Penn State biologists describes the same thing. Read the last three paragraphs: http://sites.psu.edu/ecologistsnotebook/2014/07/29/signs-of-summer-8-bald-faced-hornets/

The Alachua Audubon field trip season begins on September 10th with a walk at Poe Springs County Park. Audubon will also provide leaders for the weekly Wednesday Wetland Walks at Sweetwater Wetlands Park, which begin on September 7th. You can see the entire Alachua Audubon field trip and program calendar here: https://alachuaaudubon.org/classes-field-trips/

And just for your amusement, here’s the Alachua Audubon field trip schedule for 1976-77 – that’s exactly forty years ago – showing date, destination, and leader. They offered 18 trips (compared with 40 on this year’s schedule):

Sep 11 – Ichetucknee Springs – Dr. David Johnston
Sep 26 – O’Leno State Park and Camp Kulaqua – Jim Horner
Oct 10 – Florida Ornithological Society pelagic trip off Jacksonville
Oct 17 – San Felasco Hammock – Helen Hood
Nov 7 – Santa Fe River canoe trip – Dick Franz
Nov 13-14 – Paynes Prairie – Wayne Marion
Nov 21 – Red-cockaded search – Jack Connor
Dec 5 – St. Marks NWR – John Hintermister
Jan 22-23 – Suwannee River, beginning backpacking – Rich Bradley
Feb 6 – Pelagic trip off Jacksonville
Feb 19 – Stardust and Kanapaha Ranches – Frank Mead
Mar 5-6 – Paynes Prairie – Steve Nesbitt
Mar 26 – Dr. Spain’s and the Ocala National Forest – Lucille Little
Apr 3 – Mullet Key [AKA Fort DeSoto]
Apr 16-17 – Kissimmee Prairie, Three Lakes Ranch
Apr 24 – Seahorse Key
May 7 – Anastasia Island – Frank Mead
May 15 – Wildflowers and butterflies on Cross Creek Road

Of the field trip leaders in 1976-77, UF zoology professor Dr. David Johnston went on to write the ABA Birder’s Guide to Virginia (1997) as well as Cedar Key: Birding in Paradise: Finding Birds Then and Now (2009) and Jack Connor went on to write the excellent The Complete Birder: A Guide to Better Birding (1988) and the even more excellent Season at the Point: The Birds and Birders of Cape May (1991). John Hintermister, who led the December 1976 field trip to St. Marks, will also be leading the January 2017 field trip to St. Marks. I figure he knows his way around the place by now.

I neglected my Gainesville Sun blog over the summer, but I recently put up a post about one of the prettiest wildflowers in Florida: http://fieldguide.blogs.gainesville.com/865/flowering-now-butterfly-pea/