From: Rex Rowan <rexrowan@gmail.com>
To: Alachua County birding report
Debbie Segal spied a Snow Goose at the Hague Dairy at 2:45 this afternoon. Go north on NW 59th Drive (the road running along the eastern border of the dairy) about half a mile beyond the dairy entrance and look left into the field with the big rolling sprinklers in it.
In other goose-related news, the Ross’s Goose was relocated early on Saturday afternoon in the field where it was originally observed. Some people have found it and some haven’t, though it stands out like a cue ball on a billiard table; it seems to move around the field and is sometimes out of sight behind a rise.
Saturday’s field trip to the Sweetwater Restoration Wetland found the three impoundments of the treatment wetland full of birds. Among other things, we saw 13 species of waterfowl, including American Wigeon, Buffleheads, one Canvasback, and lots of Gadwalls. Soras and a couple of King Rails were calling from the marshes, we spooked a couple of American Bitterns, two Roseate Spoonbills were feeding in the shallows, and more than a dozen Limpkins were seen in Cell Three. After everyone else had left, Adam Zions and Debbie Segal took a last turn around the dikes and found a White-faced Ibis associating with three Glossy Ibis.
Samuel Ewing reported a Pine Siskin calling as it flew over his NW Gainesville home on the 22nd, by one day the earliest ever recorded in the county.
I’ve seen Pied-billed Grebes eating fish, crayfish, even a Black Swamp Snake, but I’d never seen one eating a frog until I stumbled across this Tom Tompkins photo of a particularly ambitious grebe, taken along La Chua on the 20th: http://ttompkinsphoto.smugmug.com/Paynes-Prairie-Gainesville-FL/i-CCS47bG/A
For some reason, most birders don’t trouble themselves with the scientific (Latin) names of birds, though there’s a fair bit of insight to be gained by knowing at least which genus a bird belongs to (order and family are helpful too). Some birders may be put off by the unpronounceability of the scientific name, which is why I posted a pronunciation guide online. A few nights ago I found something similar that had been worked into a photographic field guide on the BirdFellow website. For instance, go to the page on White-faced Ibis. Right next to the bird’s name is a little triangle in a circle: a “play media” symbol. Click on this, and you’ll hear a voice: “White-faced Ibis. Plih-GAY-dis CHEE-hee.” I was a little nonplussed to learn that their pronunciations don’t always agree with the ones I posted, but more than one biologist has told me that there’s no right way to pronounce a scientific name (I don’t care about the right way; I’d just like them to be standardized). Anyway, while you’re on the White-faced Ibis page, click on “Identification Photos” and look over their (enlargeable) photo gallery. They have one of those for nearly all species in the BirdFellow field guide. It’s a pretty nice resource. You should bookmark it. Evidently BirdFellow was set up by Oregon’s Dave Irons to be a place where birders could post their sightings and photos, like eBird. However, unlike eBird, it would also be a place to network with other birders, compare notes, and ask ID questions. That aspect of the website does not seem to have taken off, unfortunately, but the online field guide is still quite good.