Winter is coming…

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It’ll soon be Christmas Bird Count time. Gainesville Count co-compiler Andy Kratter writes: “December 18: circle the date! The Gainesville Christmas Bird Count will be held Sunday, December 18. Co-compilers Bob Carroll and I invite you to join in the fun for some great birds, great birders, a great compilation with pizza and beer/drinks, and hopefully a record count this year. Last year we found 162 species and tied the highest ever count . All are welcome to participate. If you participated last year, you will be contacted. If you are new, send me a message (kratter@flmnh.ufl.edu) and I will find a slot for you.”

Don Morrow of Tallahassee witnessed a huge migratory movement from Bald Point State Park (Franklin County, in the mid-Panhandle) on the 22nd: “There was a mass flight of Yellow-rumped and Palm Warblers at dawn this morning, numbering in the thousands of birds heading East. The flight continued through about 9:30 am. Most were not landing and continued across the Ochlocknee River. Even the birds that dropped into the oaks (mostly Palm Warblers) continued moving to the East and many were crossing the river. There were small groups of Flickers also moving East….I saw a number of Harriers moving East….I also saw my first Orange-crowned Warbler of the winter season and a few Eastern Meadowlarks.” This an excellent illustration of what the Brits call vismig (VISible MIGration; nice pictorial Twitter feed here; my wife chose the September 30th landscape as her computer wallpaper).

Anyway, Don’s observation took place on the 22nd. The Yellow-rumpeds arrived here on the following day. No one had previously reported more than 16 on a single field trip, but on the 23rd Adam Zions counted 150 at the Cones Dike Trail, and on the 26th Mike Manetz and I estimated 200 there. Donny Griffin reported his first Eastern Meadowlark of the winter at his place in the Osceola National Forest on the 20th, two days before Don’s observation, and Mike Manetz and I saw a flocklet of four flying over Cones Dike on the morning of the 26th. Mike saw the first Orange-crowned Warblers of the winter at La Chua on the 24th, and one at the Hague Dairy on the 25th.

Flickers are arriving too, though their migration started at the beginning of the month. According to eBird there was one Alachua County report in July, one in August, two in September … and 98 so far in October, beginning on the 6th. Flickers were once the most abundant woodpecker on the Gainesville Christmas Bird Count, outnumbering every other species on 25 of the 29 Counts from 1957 to 1986 – sometimes outnumbering all the other woodpecker species put together! Beginning in 1987 the Red-bellied Woodpecker took the top spot and the flicker began to fall back. In the past five years it has run a steady fifth place, with an average of 52 individuals per count, outnumbered by Red-bellied Woodpecker (avg. 270), Pileated Woodpecker (120), Downy Woodpecker (119), and in four of the five years, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (81). The only less common woodpeckers are Red-headed Woodpeckers (avg. 21), which largely vacate the Gainesville area during winter, and Hairy Woodpeckers, which have been reported on only three of the last 20 Counts.

Golden-crowned Kinglets are moving into Florida right now – more than usual, and earlier than usual. The state’s first of the winter showed up in three northern counties on the 22nd, and the next day Adam Zions spotted three along Cones Dike.

Mike Manetz found a Bronzed Cowbird at the Hague Dairy on the 22nd. This is the 13th occurrence in the county. All but the first four of those were at the Hague Dairy.

Speaking of rare birds, of the 32 occurrences of Clay-colored Sparrow in Alachua County (30 of them since 1999), 14 have made their initial appearance in a three-week window – October 24th to November 14th – and half of those have appeared on October 30th. Hey, that’s just a few days from now!

Ten months ago today, Dale Birkenholz of Des Moines, Iowa, died. You probably don’t recognize the name, but if there were an Alachua County Birders’ Hall of Fame he’d be in it. By the time the Gainesville birding scene began to gel in the late 1960s he was long gone, having taken a position as professor of biological sciences at Illinois State University. He held that job from 1962, the year he received his doctorate from the University of Florida, until his retirement in 1991. But while he was in Gainesville (1958-62) he established an impressive number of bird records here. He discovered the county’s one-and-only White-winged Scoter lying dead under the power lines at Paynes Prairie on 25 October 1958 and brought it to the museum; he found the county’s first Fox Sparrow on 11 January 1959, the county’s first Chestnut-sided Warbler on 7 September 1959, the county’s first Brewer’s Blackbirds at Paynes Prairie on 2 March 1961; and the county’s first American Golden-Plover at Paynes Prairie on 6 March 1961. Most importantly, he was the first person to discover, in winter 1958-59, that Sandhill Cranes migrate to and from Florida. Prior to that winter, all the Sandhills seen in Florida were presumed to be the Florida subspecies, but Birkenholz is credited with noticing that 70 wintered on Paynes Prairie and then flew north in March. According to his obituary in the Bloomington (Illinois) Pantagraph, “he lived a life of kind optimism and service to others,” which is easy to believe after reading this heartfelt and admiring tribute from one of his younger friends, a paragraph of which I’ll quote: “Birkenholz was Illinois’ own personal Gandalf. He was ageless; timeless; and knew absolutely everything there was to know about everything. But for Dale knowing it was not enough. For Dale, sharing his vast amount of knowledge (which could truly never be shared in its entirety as it would short circuit any normal person’s brain) was his greatest joy and his greatest gift and almost certainly his greatest talent. With a twinkled smile worthy of St. Nick, a soft voice always full of passionate but gentle inflection, body language mannerisms that were completely mesmerizing as he spoke – in all of my life I have never met anyone like this, and I can guarantee that every else who knew him felt the same way.”

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