First day of The June Challenge; also, the Burrowing Owl field trip

Mark your calendar: We’ve arranged a field trip to see Alachua County’s only (known) Burrowing Owls on Saturday, June 10th. We’ll meet at 7:30 a.m. at the gate to the property, where we’ll be admitted by Alachua County Environmental Protection Department personnel. More details will be forthcoming next week, but for now just put it on your calendar: 7:30 a.m., Saturday, June 10th.

A quick run-down of the first day of The June Challenge:

Early arrivals at the Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve parking corral this morning got a nice treat: not only did they see Common Nighthawks – which those of us who arrived at 6:15 missed altogether – but they saw one or two Chuck-will’s-widows hunting over the mowed area south of the corral.

Otherwise Longleaf provided a slow start to the day. We spent an hour and a half there, wa-a-a-ay too long, most of it trying to track down a Bachman’s Sparrow. As generally happens, when we finally located one, it was less than a hundred yards from the parking corral, a fledgling giving a strange call that no one in our group had ever heard before. We also managed to find a little flock of Brown-headed Nuthatches where the White Loop meets the White-Red Connector.

Our next stop was Owens-Illinois Park in Windsor, where Mike Manetz – the first one to the lakefront – pointed out a Spotted Sandpiper on the muddy edge of the boat channel. A Laughing Gull was briefly seen by a few birders, and Brad Hall, scanning with his spotting scope, picked out a Bald Eagle perched in a snag on the far side of the lake.

It was pretty late by the time we got to La Chua, so we restricted ourselves to Sparrow Alley, where we heard two Yellow-breasted Chats singing, and saw one of them way down where the Alley makes a big bend to the right.

At Sweetwater Wetlands Park we found two American Coots and a small flock of Northern Rough-winged Swallows.

Afterward, most of the crowd went home, but Danny Shehee and Bob Carroll and I went over to Tumblin’ Creek Park, where Lloyd Davis had heard a Gray Catbird singing earlier that morning. We found it still singing there, in the jungly wetland at the north end of the park.

That was it for this morning, but this evening Mike Manetz and I walked north from Palm Point and found a Gadwall that’s missing the flight feathers on its left wing. It’s been there for about a month and a half. Matt Bruce first noted it on April 14th. It’s apparently a drake, though its plumage is presently female type, so I’m guessing its in eclipse – but it still has flight feathers on the right wing, so I think it lost the feathers on the left wing traumatically rather than through molt. We also saw another Spotted Sandpiper, a Black-necked Stilt, and a few Black-crowned Night-Herons.

I ended up with 58 species on my June Challenge list.

If you missed this morning’s field trip, come out and join us on Saturday. We’ll do exactly the same thing, hopefully with more success. Meet at 6 a.m. (in hopes of seeing the Chuck-will’s-widow!) at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve.

And now for something completely different: Here’s Nathan Pieplow, author of the newly-published Peterson Field Guide to Bird Sounds of Eastern North America, talking about his book.