Springtime at Popham

Popham Beach is lovely this time of year, if a little cold. Last Saturday, AB and I took a long hike over Morse Mountain and onto Sea Wall Beach, which is connected to Popham. It was about a 5-mile hike, all told, and my little muscles were tight after that.

Sea Wall and Popham are great places to see an endangered bird, the Piping Plover, in all its cuteness--and to hope to catch a glimpse of their ridiculously precious babies. I didn't see any babies yet (it's probably a little early), but I did see some adults and some other birds, in their fresh breeding outfits, looking to get lucky.

A Yellow-rumped Warbler, looking very dashing.

A whole lot of Glossy Ibises looking glossy.

The aforementioned Piping Plover, looking cute.

The same little plover, scratching an itch. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I do so love living so close to the beach. Popham is about 40 minutes away, but the actual coastline is only about 5 minutes down the road. But Popham--or in this case, Sea Wall Beach, is lovely. At low tide, it's an enormous stretch of sand--which is a bit of a rarity up here on the rocky coast of Maine.

Looking to my left, toward Popham.

Looking to my right, back toward Brunswick.

This afternoon, I sat out on my deck and watch Pine Warblers, Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, and Black-capped Chickadees eat suet and seeds from my feeding station. It was a thrill to see the Piney stand on the very metal hook that I forged myself a couple of weeks ago! I wish I'd gotten a photo but I wasn't fast enough and I was too awestruck to care.

You can keep your 95-degree spring days, Texas. I'll take my 57-degree days up here anytime (as long as the sun is shining--otherwise, it's nippy!).

National Moth Week blowout?

How can I possibly write a post on my amazing week of mothing during National Moth Week when stupid Blogger won't upload any photos?????

Almost time for National Moth Week!

And boy, is the mothing heating up around here! Just in time for NMW2014, I'm starting to get some real moths out in the yard. Temperatures have warmed into the 70s and sometimes 80s in the day, and it's as warm as the 60s at night--which has brought out the moths!

The last two nights I've gone out, I've been putting my sheet on the front of the house (perpendicular to the street) instead of on the shed out back, and WOW--moth city! Who knows if the location is contributing, but the warm temps have definitely helped.

A few examples, including my first giant silkmoth!

Callosamia promethea (Promethea Moth)

 One that really stumped me:

 

Macaria transitaria (Blurry Chocolate Angle Moth)

There was a lot of back and forth on mothy facebook page I belong to, but that's the consensus on the species. Moths are sooooo much more variable than birds, and with four wings to work with, the field marks are still harder to figure out. I'll think, "okay, reddish head, three spots on the leading edges of the wings, some stripes barring across the wings..." and then come up empty after staring at my Peterson's moth guide and the Moth Photographers Group website for like an hour and a half. Thank goodness bird IDs are not this hard! This blog might've been titled "forget those stupid birds!" But somehow I find the patience.

The other day, AB asked me how long I'd had this desire to classify and identify; did it start with birds, or was it always there? I remember separating out my Skittles by color on a sheet of paper, and then drawing a circle around the groupings of each color, and then labeling each color. 

That was in college.

I guess it was always there. I always liked butterflies, though I wasn't as concerned with their names as I was with seeing as many as I could, up close--observing their colors and shapes, comparing them to each other. Way back when, my big brother had to put together a collection when he was in junior high, so he recruited my little sister Mary and me to get the required "specimens." I enjoyed that, though not so much the killing of them.

I know I tend to be quite meticulous and ultra-focused when I like doing something; I can do one thing for hours at a time without looking up. (AB also marvels at my ability and desire to play game after game of Rumikub or SkipBo.)

So I guess it was just natural that I'd see a bird that sparked my desire to see more and more birds, or I'd see a moth that sparked my desire to see more and more moths. And then the little anal retentive part of me that needs to have names for things just kicked in, and I began to search for names for each of those birds or those moths.

And I am now starting to compile a lifemoth LIST. AB just sighs and says, "I guess I'll be going to bed alone again tonight...."

But enough of this introspection! Back to the moths! There was this little powdery-soft beauty:

Antaeotricha schlaegeri Schlaeger's Fuitworm Moth

And for the first time since waaaaay back in July 2008, I got a Luna Moth!

Actias luna

When that big moth flew in, I thought it was a bird! He was so huge and so fluttery, whipping around in the hostas and bumping into everything. He never landed, but he did pause just long enough for me to snap this picture before he fluttered off again. Most of the pics were just blurry shots of the grass or the house. In the three or four years I've been mothing, this Luna and the Promethea are the first two big moths I've ever gotten at the light. Pretty exciting!

An interesting thing about mothing here is that I'm seeing very few of the moths I saw back in Maine. Most of the moths I've seen up here have been new to me; I never saw them in PA. I guess I'm really a lot farther north, and I'm no longer near the mountains. Lots more trees in the vicinity of my light rig here too. I do miss seeing my PA regulars--things like Hypoprepia fucosa Painted Lichen Moth or Xanthotype urticaria False Crocus Geometer Moth. I saw those all the time back in PA.

Here, though, I get a lot of these:

Caripeta piniata Northern Pine Looper

and these:

Rheumaptera prunivorata Cherry Scallop Shell

I also get about 20 moth species that I can't identify. I have folders of literally hundreds of unidentified moths (similar to Mitt's binders full of women? You decide.), and it takes hours and hours of looking online at moth pics, looking at my Peterson's, etc. to figure them out. That's IF I figure them out.

It's only viable to moth in the summer up here, though--so at least AB will have me back in the fall, when the nights get chilly again and the winter begins its inevitable return.

Until then--MOTHS!

Return to Moth Mania, Maine-style!

It's been an entirely different experience mothing here in Maine, as opposed to the salad days of mothing in Central PA. For some reason, I just haven't had the success here that I had in PA, but I keep trying!

A couple of weeks ago I went to Lowe's to buy a mercury vapor bulb, but I found out you need a special ballast (insert electrician mumbo jumbo here), and of course they didn't sell that. I went home with a 175-watt flood lamp, completely forgetting about how I needed the UV light that only the MV bulb can produce. Results with the admittedly blindingly bright flood lamp? NADA.

I then did a little more reading online and found a mention of "self-ballasting MV bulbs"--NOW they tell me! So I ordered one online, knowing that spending $45 on a moth lamp wasn't going to go over too well with AB, but she was cool, of course.

I've tried the new lamp three times. Here's the sheet on the first night:

That's right: ZERO moths. Still, you can see my little light standard I made, as well as the white cloth hanging on the shed out back.

In the next few nights (lots of rain and cold temps have foiled me), the results did get better, though it's still pretty slow. Nights have remained quite cool here; even when day temps climb into the 70s, night temps can be in the 30s. Not exactly conducive to moth success.

Still, I have had a few moments:

 

 Caenurgina erechtea, Forage Looper

 

a new favorite, Diacme adipaloides, Dark Diacme

 Argyrotaenia mariana, Gray-banded Leafroller

Of course, there were another couple that I couldn't ID, but that's pretty much par for the course. I got these three! (with help from the Mothing and Moth-watching Group on facebook)

A couple more beauties from other nights:

 Cladara limitaria, Mottled Gray Carpet (I think)

Morrisonia confusa, Confused Woodgrain Moth (what a great name!) 

Not even a tiny clue. Help?

So of course, now that I have my long-cherished bulb, I feel like my camera is now the weak link! (It's always SOMETHING.) The macro just isn't that good! I got the camera waaaaaaayyy back in 2010, so it's a good 4 years old. Isn't that like 30 in human years? It's like an antique! I'm surprised it's even digital!

The sell job on AB will begin soon.... (rubs hands together) Wish me luck!

Trying again... Success!

I DID IT! I posted a photo! This crazy Blogger. This time, I obsessively clicked the "Upload" option on the left and then hit the okay button. This seems to help, though it's still taking a few times of doing it to make it work. Sheesh. But hey--here are some pics from my trip to Texas!

Anyway, this is a photo of my Golden-cheeked Warbler! I went to San Antonio to visit my parents for a while, but I resolved I was only going to bird locally so I could spend more time with them. (Usually, my sister Mary and I head down to the Rio Grande Valley for a few days to get some crazy lifers.) Dad's had some health issues of late, and I just wanted to be with him and my mom. Got to see all my siblings except for my baby sis who lives in Ohio. A great trip!

Still, Mary and I did get out a few times, and we scored the Golden-cheeked. We went to Friedrich Wilderness Area near town. We'd gone there a few years ago but had no luck. This time, we nailed it! I was also hoping for Black-capped Vireo, but no such luck on that one. Still, it was pretty exciting.

Saw some other western birds:

A nice Lesser Goldfinch, almost in full breeding plumage. His back isn't quite all there. His cousins the American Goldfinches were still a ways from their spring coats:

 I love how they're in midair there, but I think someone else was a little annoyed:

Get off my lawn!

We also saw some nice sparrows:

A bad pic of a Lincoln's Sparrow! This was at Crescent Bend Nature Park in Schertz, near San Antonio.

And a good pic of a Savannah Sparrow, taken at Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory near Austin. (I flew into Austin and then we drove to SA.)

Also seen at Hornsby, my FOY peeps:

A bunch of Least Sandpipers and the obviously bigger Pectoral Sandpiper. He's a giant among the little guys.

Also saw this Funereal Duskywing:

and this Red Admiral:

Up in Maine, I haven't seen any butterflies and only one moth. And it's been rainy and cold today. But spring is here, because it hasn't snowed in two whole weeks! (holding breath)

Here's an Eared Grebe. One of these days, I'll see a male in breeding plumage...

This day was cool and overcast, so the lighting was terrible. But we found a great new spot to bird, Mitchell Lake Audubon Center in south San Antonio. What a great place! A lot of ponds, some elevated paths (better looks into the treetops!) and great birds.

Black-chinned Hummingbird--this is the best pic I could get:

Great looks at a Verdin, though the photo is awful:

I was so proud of myself for recognizing the song. After I obsessed over them last year at Big Bend National Park, I guess that song stuck with me.

Also had some Ruddy Ducks, but no one with a blue bill:

These Scissor-tailed Flycatchers were everywhere:

But can you ever get enough of such a bird?

Sadly, this is as close as we got to seeing my nemesis bird, the Painted Bunting:

Grrr. Just a little too early. But I didn't see one when we went in June last year either!

Some Northern Shovelers at Hornsby:

These guys were feeding nonstop. I never saw their bills!

Well, this has taken about two hours, and it's time to go to Reny's (a Maine advenchah!). I couldn't find one with a Mainah accent, but you MUST click on this link to see what life in Maine is all about!

A picture of a framed photo of my wonderful parents, on their wedding day!

Annoyed

I've been trying from time to time to post new stuff, but for some reason Blogger refuses to upload my pictures. That's why I haven't posted in forever. I've tried switching from Firefox to Google Chrome, and even Explorer (Explorer!), but it just won't upload the photos. And without my often horrible/sometimes identifiable bird photos, this blog is pretty much a boring narrative of my eBird checklists.How will you know how bad a photographer I am, all while looking at amazing birds?

2013: The year in review

So it's almost the end of 2013, and it's been quite a birdy year!

According to eBird, I've seen 220 birds this year, with 127 of them from Texas, 121 here in Maine, and 19 in Canada (during the pelagic puking trip). There are duplications in those figures (between states) of course, but (unless a miracle happens and I get to go birding before the new year) I'm finishing the year with 415 lifebirds. Wow.

So how many lifers for 2013? Let's review:
JANUARY

Harlequin Duck (finally!), Dyer Point, ME
Glaucous Gull, Bath Public Landing, Bath, ME
Ah, the month I got my concussion while working. Sigh. It's always nice to get a lifer gull; it's never easy, as gulls are so incredibly hard, but Glaucous and Iceland gulls hang out in Bath every winter, and that day I got lucky. As gulls go, these two are easier to spot because they're "white-winged" gulls, so all those Herring and Ring-billed gulls disappear when you see the blazing white. I'm hoping to see Iceland Gull in January 2014.

FEBRUARY
Down the entire month with a concussion. No reading, no TV, no writing, no nothing. Though I will confess that I sneaked outside and played in the four-foot snowdrifts (over two feet of fallen snow):

Do I look a little dazed here? I was pretty out of it. I shouldn't have been outside, but I had cabin fever and AB agreed to let me go out for a little while. She still shakes her head at this.

MARCH

 Phainopepla

Prairie Falcon
Clark's Grebe
Canyon Towhee
Montezuma Quail
Black-chinned Hummingbird
Mexican Jay
Phainopepla
Scott's Oriole
Black-chinned Sparrow
Rufous-crowned Sparrow
Green-tailed Towhee
Plumbeous Vireo
Bell's Vireo
Brown-crested Flycatcher
Red-naped Sapsucker
Black-throated Sparrow
Lucifer Hummingbird
Scaled Quail
Black-throated Gray Warbler
Verdin
Canyon Wren

 Black-throated Gray Warbler

The annual big trip to Texas yielded all sorts of amazing goodies, as sister Mary and I traveled to the Big Bend (her favorite part of Texas). So much greatness there; I'd love to spend a full year there, just to rack up the lifers and experience that gorgeous desert and those mountains in every season. Still, it gets pretty hot there, so we went early in the year!

And look at that list--probably my favorite (that I got a photo of, anyway) was probably the Black-throated Sparrow. Or the BTGray. Or the Verdin. Or--

APRIL/MAY
Nothin'. I did see a Chukar, a probable escapee from someone's flock (raised for hunting, sadly), but of course he didn't really count. Still, he was beautiful! He hung around for most of the summer, squawking from the tippy-top of the neighbor's chimney!

(dangit, Blogger is in a bad mood and is suddenly not letting me post photos)

JUNE/JULY
Northern Beardless-Tyranulet
Groove-billed Ani
Wood Stork
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Least Tern
Least Bittern
Magnificent Frigatebird
Red-crowned Parrot
Gray Hawk
Nelson's Sparrow
Back in Texas for my high school reunion and dealing with the HEAT! Another great trip to the birdiest state in the union, with all those great birds except for the Nelson's Sparrow, which I saw at Scarborough Marsh here in Maine.

AUGUST
Nothin'. That month was spent moving into our newly purchased home! No time for birdin'.

SEPTEMBER
Atlantic Puffin
Razorbill
Pomarine Jaeger
Manx Shearwater
Sooty Shearwater
Great Shearwater
South Polar Skua
Leach's Storm-Petrel
Wilson's Storm-Petrel
Northern Fulmar
Need we discuss the puking? Let's just focus on the birds I managed to see, NOT the ones I slept/puked through and missed.

OCTOBER
Nothin'.

NOVEMBER
Snowy Owl
My Thanksgiving owling paid off again, as I got my first Snowy!

DECEMBER
Nothin'.
I tried to get a Barrow's Goldeneye today but found only Common, which are beautiful of course--but I wanted a Barrow's. AB was with me and we were supposed to be headed to Bath to go shopping at Reny's, so after two separate stops (New Meadows Marina and the Sabino Rd. Town Landing in West Bath), I figured I shouldn't push it and ask her if we could go and look for Iceland Gulls at the Bath Landfill. I know--who wouldn't want to check out the dump?

Not a bad year! That's 45 lifers--fewer than last year, but still a decent haul. Next year, because we're getting married, there won't be a big trip to Texas (gotta save money!). Still, maybe we'll get some good birds in the spring migration, and who knows what the rest of this winter will bring.

Lifer Snowy Owl!

We've been having quite the irruptive year for Snowy Owls here on the east coast, and a bunch here in Maine. After going into a food coma yesterday and missing out on my Thanksgiving Day birding, AB and I went down to the shore near the Biddeford Pool (about an hour away) to look for a Snowy that had been seen there last week.

We went out to the shoreline at the end of Orcutt Road:

 It wasn't anywhere this green out there (image is a screen capture of Google Maps). You see the little island there in the right corner, the one on the left? That was easily visible from Ocean Avenue, where I parked. I walked a little path through the brush to the rocks, my eyes fixed on a white blob on the rock.

Once I got to the rocks, I set up my little scope, focused, and BAM:

I know this is an awful photo, but that white shape on the rocks is a SNOWY OWL! Bird number 415!

We watched him for a while, and we were joined by others looking for the same owl. After seeing some Ruddy Turnstones (beautiful!), Common Eiders, a Horned Grebe, Common and Red-breasted Mergansers, and a lone female Harlequin Duck, we headed home.

Sweet success!

FINALLY! A Brown Creeper photo!

I've been compiling a lifelist since 2006, and sometime after that point (when I got a camera) I started keeping a lifephotos folder as well. It took many, many sightings, but I finally got a good photo of a Brown Creeper for my file:

What a sweet little bird! He's up here in the frozen north, though I would think he'd have headed south by now. The weather's awfully chilly today (24 degrees, with gusty winds up to 28 mph; windchill in the low teens), so I hope he's okay.

Pelagic puking trip!

If you're a friend on Facebook, you know that I finally went on a pelagic trip. I was so confident that I would see tons of birds, a whale or two. And I wouldn't get sick! Of course not! I was going to take Dramamine or Bonine, AND I was gonna wear some of those Sea Bands.

It was all going to be fantastic, and I was going to see lots and lots of lifers! Amazing birds I couldn't see on shore, birds that all look alike but are different! Shearwaters and skuas and petrels and storm-petrels and I would see them all!

BIG PAUSE.
Big.
Pause.

So I did see a few lifers:  

Northern Fulmar

Great Shearwaters--so many they were trash birds by the end of it

Razorbills! I love them.

Sooty Shearwaters were mixed in with the Great Shearwaters

 

and Puffins! Atlantic Puffins! We saw three of them, and I managed a photo.

I say "managed," because most of the trip--all eight friggin' hours of it--I was puking my guts out or I was lying down, praying to be BACK ON LAND. Oh my sweet god, I can't even describe what it was like, other than THE WORST time of my life. I mean, I've been concussed, I've been sick, I've had broken ribs. But this... this was just awful. The most awful part was that I was TRAPPED. Trapped on that rocking rollercoaster ride from hell for eight hours. That little whte baggie is one--only one!--of my sick sacks.

Gretchen and Laura were on the boat as well. I will only say that one of them threw up even more than I did, and one threw up less than I. But suffice it to say that we were SO INCREDIBLY GLAD TO GET BACK ON LAND.

Okay. That's enough of that. So I did get some lifers. I didn't get many pictures because I was too dizzy to take pictures. Lifers:
Northern Fulmar
Great Shearwater
Sooty Shearwater
Manx Shearwater
Wilson's Storm-petrel
Leach's Storm-petrel
Razorbill
Atlantic Puffin
Pomarine Jaeger
South Polar Skua

I wish I could've gotten photos of all the lifers, but like I said--it wasn't possible. And I missed some others: Great Skua, Red-necked Phalarope, Parasitic Jaeger. And two Humpbacked Whales.

So I got ten lifers. Ten lifers for eight hours on a boat. Ten lifers for four sick sacks.

I'll take it.