I, Too, Was a Patch Birder Once

September 6th was World Shorebirds Day, and as any local library or video store can attest, I am not always known for my punctuality.  So, I bring forth my shorebird offerings to the blogosphere a day late (or two) and few shorebirds short. Like any birder thinking inside the box, when August rolled around I was zeroed in on shorebirds as they are making their epic, transhemispheric migrations and occasionally stop over for a meal and a rest on their way south.

One always hopes for a classic mudflat on a drawn-down lake or a flooded field when shorebirding.  Sometimes those just can’t be found.  Sometimes one must bird the bottom of the barrel…or the top of a poop pond.  I scoured many a wastewater treatment facilities at small municipalities in the area.  Occasionally I came up with some solids, like this trio of Red-necked Phalaropes.

Red-necked Phalarope

Red-necked Phalaropes at Blomkest WTP

Red-necked Phalarope

Or some Semipalmated Sandpipers, which I pleasantly discovered was a new county bird after-the-fact.

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Semipalmated Sandpipers at Lake Lillian WTP

Once I even got some good looks at a nice year bird, the Semipalmated Plover.

Semipalmated Plover at Bird Island WTP

Semipalmated Plover at Bird Island WTP

Bad dad moment confession: the kids were with me for this one but in the car, opting to watch their video instead of shorebirds; half-way home I remembered this bird is one Evan had never seen and I had killer-no-binos-needed looks.  You might say I flushed that opportunity away. Amiright?

Semipalmated Plover

I was as red-faced as this Stilt Sandpiper, which isn’t much but the appropriate amount since Evan is a take-it-or-leave-it birder these days.

Stilt Sandpiper

Stilt Sandpiper at Bird Island WTP

Growing tired of the Tour-de Ponds, I kinda gave up on birding for awhile as work responsibilities took up more of my time.  Then one day while I was sitting at home I had a recollection that instantly morphed into an epiphany.  Near the end of July I remembered driving home with the family late in the evening after having spent the weekend in Duluth, and I recalled seeing a small, flooded spot in a soybean field not far from home with some sandpipery-looking birds even.  We were too tired to stop, and so this patch was soon forgotten and never thought about for weeks. Until that moment.  Instantly I headed for the door as I realized I had left a habitat-island of prime shorebird mudflats unchecked for all that time.  When I got out there and saw how perfect the spot was in a landscape bereft of optimal habitat, I was kicking myself.

shorebird spotThe flooded drain tile intake that created this spot was only about two acres in size.  When there is no other habitat around, that is all you need.  At first, there was nothing but Killdeer and the odd Lesser Yellowlegs or two, harbingers of good things to come.

Lesser YellowlegsSo this is the story of my accidental patch.  Having it so close to home gave me the opportunity to check it multiple times a day, day after day.  Before I knew it, I was becoming a devoted patch birder whose persistence started to pay dividends in things like a pair of dapper Baird’s Sandpipers.

Baird's Sandpiper

Baird's Sandpiper

Having spent a great deal of time with these birds in good light, I think it’s fair to say that the Baird’s is near the top of my favorite shorebirds list.Baird's Sandpiper

Baird's SandpiperOne of the benefits of a having a patch is that, in addition to looking for new birds that have joined the party, you can also keep tabs on the regulars, like the two Stilt Sandpipers that were there day in and day out.

Stilt Sandpiper

Stilt Sandpiper

It was always exciting when there was someone new in the mix.  This lone Semipalmated Plover was one of my favorites.  Every day I looked for it among the myriad of Killdeer and was always relieved whenever I found it had decided to stick around for just one more day.  I also made good on my previous failing and got Evan this lifer.

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated PloverThis patch I found turned out to be a great workshop on shorebird identification for myself.  I had these birds close (30 feet or less) and in great light when I visited in the morning.  I could clearly see subtle differences in coloration, differences in movements and behaviors, and relative size comparisons to other shorebirds.  Even the ubiquitous Killdeer would sometimes do something interesting.

Killdeer

Often I would put my binoculars and camera down just to see if I could notice these things with the naked eye. Something happened that I never expected to happen–my confidence in identifying shorebirds went way up.  And now I can concur with Nate the Machine that shorebirds really aren’t that hard after all.  I would add that they are actually pretty fun too.  In all, I tallied 11 shorebird species as an accidental patch birder.  The numbers of each species were small and consistent, which made counting the birds a fun, manageable task.

As time and hot weather went on, the water kept receding in the ephemeral patch until there was nothing but some wet mud which was enough to sustain the persistent Killdeer and my Semipalmated Plover buddy but nothing else. Presently the ground is dry, and my patch birding days are over for now.  But not my hopes.  After all, it could still rain cats and dogs and big Plovers this fall, and I’ll be back in business. Stay tuned!

This Crew Breaks for Lifers

It’s not done.  Nope.  Home improvement enthusiasts will be let down while birding aficionados will rejoice that we have not let some silly bathroom remodel stop us from birding rather than the other way around.  But I’ll throw a bone to the former group by saying that we are getting there.  Like a jigsaw puzzle nearing its completion, the bathroom’s starting to fall now with rapid, visible changes taking place daily.  The truth is that I used to enjoy such work, but now it’s a chore — a horrible, dirty, dusty, cementy, go-to-the-eye-doctor-to-remove-a-foreign-object-embedded-in-the-cornea kind of chore. Each day that I go to my little 7x7x7 cube to endure such misery, I secretly hope that call or that email will come in alerting us to a birding emergency.  Last weekend as I was getting set to start working on mudding and taping the drywall, such a call came in.  It was Joel.  He had a Black-crowned Night Heron for us.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Time to roll.

Our list of life bird needs for our area is so short that all the guys here know it fairly well. All that remain are a handful of elusive and reclusive birds as well as a few shorebirds. The Black-crowned Night Heron is one such needed lifer.  And one such needed work break.

Black-crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

The photo is not much to look at, but we were fighting some serious distance.

Evan MarinIt’s a good thing Joel came out to point it out to us.  Even with the right location, I doubt I ever would have found the heron.  Evan felt the need to point this one out to his sister. It was pretty cute.

Evan Marin

After this we went to Kandiyohi County’s main shorebird spot, Carlson’s Dairy just west of Pennock.  We were after another lifer Joel had for us, the Semipalmated Plover.  We couldn’t find one at Carlson’s though. Try as we might, we just could not turn this young Killdeer into our bird.

Juvenile Killdeer

Juvenile Killdeer

Besides the little life bird excursion, the Blue Grosbeak searches, and all the in-state and out-of-state trips, I’ve been procastinating the bathroom project by hunting locally for another would-be lifer, the Wood Thrush.  A couple weeks ago Evan and I went to a spot marked out by Joel north of Sibley State Park.  We were successful in hearing our bird, two of them actually. It was another story seeing this brush-loving understory dweller. I guess we can only count it as a heard-only lifer, an oxymoron in the language of birders.  It’s tough to be so close but so blind.  At least I knew the song well now – owned it in fact.  So much was the case that as I was sitting by Melissa on the couch that evening while she was playing Hay Day on her iPad, the background farm sounds reached out and grabbed me.  I hollered for her to turn up the volume as I put my ear to the speaker.  And there it was, clear as a bell. Mixed in with the farm animal noises was a singing Wood Thrush.  Awesome, but also very cruel to be taunted by this repetitive bird song.

Wood Thrushes must love farms because another birding friend, Brad, called me a week or so later saying he had a Wood Thrush at his farm place. Off we went instead of doing work on the bathroom.  This time, though, we neither heard nor saw the bird even though we were hot on its tail. Argh.

But this story of procrastination does have a good finish even if the bathroom does not yet have the same thing.  Randy was at Carlson’s the other day and said there were Semipalmated Plovers all over the place.  Sweet.  Evan declined to go with me — he’s been burned by this bird too many times at this spot which is nearly a half hour away.  He had a farm to build on Hay Day and Wood Thrushes to listen to.

So I went to Carlson’s solo and put the Semipalmated Plover to rest.

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover

Semipalmated Plover

As a bonus I was able to use a recording to lure in one of several calling Soras, another heard-only lifer at this point. It was magical as I watched the ditch grass move like a snake where a Sora was sprinting his way toward me.  And then, he poked his head out in a small clearing allowing me to see his bright yellow beak.  He sized me up and then quickly disappeared once again into the grasses.  Two more life birds on the books. The wish-list for local stuff is really getting short now.

I suppose, though.  It’s time to get that bathroom knocked out.  But even if I find myself distracted by going out on the roads chasing a migrant, a vagrant, or a hermit, I’m still doing bathroom research.  The ingenuity of this farmer proves I have so much more to learn.

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