Black-backed Oriole: From Mexico to Pennsylvania, no Passport Needed

There aren't any walls blocking Mexico from the US just yet, but no matter how high Donald Trump tries to build them, some Mexican migrants will still find their way into America.  In this case, a vagrant Black-backed Oriole, endemic to Mexico and chief predator of the Monarch Butterfly, found its way to a quiet residential street in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, to the delight of over 800 - and counting - happy birders who have traveled wide and far to see a bird so rare in the United States it is not yet on the list of the American Birding Association.

I had been following the NARBA reports since it was first reported on February 3, but work and other commitments have kept me from chasing anything more than a Harlequin Duck here in Toronto.  There are birds in California and Arizona that I'd love to find time for, but at the moment, a one day there and back driving trip is all I can fit into my schedule.  So, I drove the 7 plus hours from Toronto, and arrived early Wednesday morning at Indiana Ave. in Sinking Spring, Pennsyvania and joined the 20 or so other birders on a driveway of a local resident, and awaited the Oriole.

Short wait, as it turned out.  Less than 10 minutes and the Black-backed Oriole alighted a top a tree in the distance and within another five minutes came closer and eventually landed on the feeder in the back yard across the road, where it enjoyed a lovely breakfast of fresh cut oranges.  After all the hours I've spent looking for and waiting to find other rarities, it was nice to just arrive and see the bird.  There was probably more socializing on the driveway than there was bird looking.  I actually recognized one gentleman, a birder and nature photographer whom I've run into at least one other time chasing rare birds, likely in Florida.

The bird was discovered by Susan and Richard Hybki and they quickly discovered it was not your average oriole.  It took a few days after she shared a photograph of the bird for it to be identified on an Advanced Bird ID Facebook page by a Mexican birder who was amazed that people in Pennsylvania were seeing a Black-backed Oriole before even he had seen one for himself.

 

The Homeowner across the street is happy to have birders come and use his driveway to view the Black-backed Oriole.  Just remember to sign in, please and not block the driveways.  And he is not, nor does he intend to become, a birder as a result of this experience. 

 

 

On the way to the oirole I had to stop to watch a flyover of somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 Snow Geese:

 

 

Tropical Rarities in South Florida

Last year in south Florida I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time for the Code 5 Zenaida Dove, an ABA Lifer and also have my second look at at female Black-faced Grassquit.  But I also experienced the frustration of not finding a Smooth-billed Ani, on about half a dozen attempts.  I also missed both male and female Wesetern Spindalis, though the spindalis would not be an ABA lifer and I have seen Smooth-billed Ani outside of the ABA Area in Costa Rica, 2014.

Last week was a different story.  I had time to scoot down the east coast from the Viera Wetlands to South Beach and pick up a trio of rare birds: 

Smooth-billed Ani, Western Spindalis and a Bananaquit.  The ani and Bananauit were ABA Lifers numbers 657 and 658.  The first day I stopped in Viera Wetlands, a short drive from Merritt Island and Cocoa Beach.  This was the easiest bird of the trio as it was hanging out near a brush pile on the entrance road, and was a 30 second walk from the parking lot, even though a number of birders just parked on the road.  However, the bird didn't seem to mind and posed for lots of photos, but objected to one photographer,(no binoculars, so not a birder), who actually walked into the grass and tried to get within a few feet of the ani, which, of course, flushed it from the brush pile for a while.

Smooth-billed Ani:

 

 

Next stop was Crandon Park in South Beach, a few miles north of Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.  It was at Bill Baggs late in 2016 where I spent a couple of hours along the bird trail, getting rained on and not finding a Western Spindalis.  I have seen the bird down in Key West, during my 2012 Big Year but wanted it for both my Bird and Blue Jays Big Year List and for the photograph I failed to get back in 2012.  This time around it had been seen frequently, likely the same bird from Bill Baggs, in the trees around the south parking lot.  My late afternoon visit failed to turn up the bird, but I arrived early the next morning and found it and got my photo within an hour.  That left me time to go back to Richardson Historic Park and try for the Bananaquit.

Female Western Spindalis:

 

 

From South Beach I drove drivectly to Richardson Historic Park, where the previous evening I stayed until sunset without seeing the Bananaquit, but had heard it was more of an early bird, so arrived by 10:30am and within half an hour the half dozen or so of us were rewarded by wonderful and close views of the Bananaquit.  Even better looks here than I had back in Costa Rica in 2014.

 

 

 

Now, where did I Leave Off?

So, I began writing my first Blog of 2016 before I new I was going to be travelling most of 2016 and started a new blog, birdsandbluejays.blogspot.com, and chronicled my 2016 year of travelling around most of the Lower 48, doing a different kind of Big Year.

So back to a slower birding pace.  In 2017 my goal is not to see hundreds of species.  Aside from submitting just one eBird List a day, as the folks ebird.com suggest,(there is a contest too), my two goals for this upcoming year are to take trips for Lifers only and try to get photographs of birds I've seen but failed to capture digitally, and get better photos of some of the birds that have eluded good focus or composition along the way.

So, away we go...

Panama: January 22-30, 2016

I didn't keep notes every day on our Panama trip for my blog, as I did in Florida, but took lots of photos, so here they are:

Florida Before Panama

On the way to Panama, we got slightly sidetracked by the Space Coast Birding Festival.  I've heard of this festival for years but have never been in Florida at the right time.  This year, we took a pit stop on the way to Panama and spent two days on the Space Coast, looking for Red-cockaded Woodpecker and other winter birds, and taking a morning to go horseback riding at Forever Florida.  By the time we were done, we had seen 68 species including the Red-cockaded Woodpecker.  We had to wade through some typical Florida Swampland on a chilly morning to find it, but when we did, we were able to see two of them, mostly spending time cleaning their nest holes, before heading off to work for a day of foraging for their daily diet of insects, berries and nuts.  There are only a few places left in the North American south where fewer than 11,000 individuals inhabit the pine forests of Louisiana and Florida.

One of the trees where the woodpeckers set up housekeeping:

Doing a little morning nest hole cleaning:

Last check before flying off for a day of foraging:

Nearby we found a couple of Florida Scrub Jays:

An organized outing led in part by Florida bird expert David Simpson, to a beach near Daytona, where an estimated 30,000 gulls, along with a bunch of Sanderlings, stage on the beach...

... before heading out to sea, only to be harassed by Jaegers.  In this case a Parasitic Jaegers:

At the Merritt Island NWR Visitor's Centre we got a close look at the Painted Buntings:

We also drove the Blackpoint Wildlife Drive and enjoyed many hundreds of birds, including a Reddish Egret and a Roseate Spoonbill:

Long-eared Owl

So, about a week into my quest to eBird each and every day of 2016 I was once again going down to Col Sam Smith Park determined to find me some owls, having finally given up on Purple Sandpipers. The previous day I was there and was looking for either Snowy, or Long-eared Owls with no success. Snowy are regular visitors to the park but I had not yet seen a Long-eared Owl there. However, there had been reports of Long-eared Owls on eBird.  By the time I got to the park the rain had stopped and it wasn't long before a Cooper's Hawk chased a Long-eared Owl out from the bush. Another 20 minutes of searching resulted in finding one in some leafless bush, and having a second fly over. Only my 3rd time in 4 years seeing Long-eared Owls, and my first in Col Sam Smith Park, and number 162 for my park list.

New Year, New Goals, New Camera and Scope

January 1, 2016

More so than most pastimes, hobbies and obsessions, the New Year for birders means the start of a new list.  Some years it's all about the total number of species, other years it is about birding in new places, discovering new habitats, or traveling to the rainforests of tropical countries.  For me, this year, it's a little bit of both.  For 2016 I'm not focussing on total species, but more on finding species I've never seen, both in North America and, this January in Panama, and getting photographs of the 40 or so species I've failed to get pictures of, or have taken lousy photographs of over the last four years.  In order to reach that goal I bought myself a new camera, a Cannon 70D with a Sigma 150-600mm zoom lens, and a Vortex Razer scope that is a huge improvement on my previous model.

January 3, 2016

I'll be saving my money and scheduling my time to chase more rare birds in North America over the next 12 months and will be building the World Life List in Panama later this month.  I did, today go out looking for a Townsend's Solitaire, hoping to get some good photos.  Back in October, closer to home in Col. Sam Smith Park I did get some great pictures, but alas they vanished from all my saved media.  Not sure how that happened, but I was given a second Chance this morning, and alas we were too late.  I'll give it a try again tomorrow.

January 4-5, 2016

Drat!  No Solitaire.  So I will have to wait for the next showing of this rare Ontario species to redo my photographs.  Meanwhile, I have been out shooting photos with my new camera...

The pair of Peregrine Falcons were taken on a very cloudy day, zoomed at 600mm way at the top of the lift bridge in Burlington, with no cropping.