Arjan Dwarshuis is a Dutch birder who has spent 2016 setting a new World Big Year record. In Panama on November 3rd he saw a Yellow-crowned Euphonia, his 6,043rd species, topping the existing record of 6,042 species set last year by Noah Stryker. He continued adding new birds to his list every day, and on December 14th he came to Gainesville, where Mike Manetz found him nine more: Wood Duck, Henslow’s Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Whooping Crane, American Pipit, Carolina Chickadee, Red-headed Woodpecker, and Bonaparte’s Gull. By the end of the day Arjan was in Duluth, Minnesota, with 6651 species on his year list and many more to come in the last two weeks of the year.
While we’re on that subject, Noah Stryker’s video summary of his 2015 World Big Year is one of the best advertisements for birding I’ve ever seen. There’s just so much joy in it, and such a sense of the big wide beautiful world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2fFtIReVU
There’s a Common Tern on Newnans Lake. It was first noted by Matt O’Sullivan, I’m not sure when, and then seen on the afternoon of the 16th by Mike Manetz, Greg McDermott, and me. We all noted that the mantle was darker gray than a Forster’s Tern’s, that it had a half-hood rather than a black mask, and that the leading edge of the inner wing (carpal bar) was black. This is only the second winter record for Common Tern in Alachua County; Bryant Roberts saw one perched on the Powers Park fishing pier on December 21, 1989.
Frank Goodwin found a Fox Sparrow along the Cones Dike Trail on the 8th. It was not seen in that spot after a controlled burn on the 9th, but Mike Manetz found two of them a little farther down the trail while scouting on the 13th. From the visitor center hike out past the 2-mile marker, follow the trail as the elevation rises, go another quarter-mile or so, and then look for the flagging tape. Remember that Frank Goodwin also had an Ash-throated Flycatcher along this trail on the 8th.
Adam Zions found a Dickcissel, the fall’s third, along the La Chua Trail on the 10th, “in a low tangle of blackberry, saltbush, etc., opposite the first covered pavilion along the boardwalk.”
Lincoln’s Sparrows are being seen in fairly good numbers, by which I mean four birds in three locations on Paynes Prairie in the past two weeks. At least two are hanging out around the boardwalk at the beginning of La Chua. Matt O’Sullivan photographed one of them on the 9th: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/31635503926/in/datetaken-public/
Five Vaux’s Swifts are roosting in the chimneys at Dauer Hall on the UF campus. Andy Kratter noted that they showed up at 5:33 on the afternoon of the 15th and entered the chimney over the next two minutes, something to keep in mind if you’d like to see them yourself.
Sandhill Cranes are still arriving. I spent the 12th and 13th painting the front of my house and saw seven southbound flocks going over my NE Gainesville neighborhood: on the 12th I saw 20 birds at 2:00, 40 at 2:30, and 50-60 at 3:30; on the 13th I saw 21 at 12:35, 22 at 1:10, 79 at 4:40, and 56 at 4:45, a total of approximately 290 birds over two days. I still haven’t seen any at the Beef Teaching Unit fields off Williston Road.
A minor herpetological note. Bob Carroll and I were scouting our CBC territory on the 15th when we found a congregation of 48 turtles basking in a pond in an apartment complex. I was surprised to see that one of them was a map turtle, so I borrowed Bob’s camera and got a picture. Map turtles are a western group (from the Apalachicola River to Texas and up into the Midwest and Plains states), so it has to be an escaped or released captive. Jonathan Mays tells me there’s a small introduced population in the Santa Fe River, but this was the first one actually found in Alachua County: https://www.flickr.com/photos/74215662@N04/31535195392/in/datetaken-public/
Here’s my last appeal before Sunday’s Christmas Bird Count: If you live within the Gainesville Count circle – more or less the city limits plus Paynes Prairie and Micanopy – and you’ve got some interesting birds in your yard, please send me an email within the next 24 hours. We’re talking Dark-eyed Junco, Purple Finch, Pine Siskin, Summer Tanager, Red-breasted Nuthatch, any species of hummingbird, a big flock of orioles – something you don’t see every year, something that’s different from the normal run of backyard birds. If it’s sufficiently unusual, we’ll want it for the Count. So please email me right away.