Willet and Whimbrel (California)

During a far-too-short trip to the San Francisco Bay Area for a reunion this past weekend, Dave and I went out looking for shorebirds in the aptly named Shorebird Park near the Berkeley marina. We saw a nice variety of species we don't see often or at all in Minnesota. Two of these were the willet and the whimbrel, both seen picking their way along next to shellfish-encrusted rocks at the edge of a wide, flat beach.

Willet

The willet is a large, straight-billed shorebird, mostly gray in its winter plumage and a more mottled brown in summer. It's an elegant bird, to my mind, and is most often seen alone. We have seen them in Minnesota, but not often.

Whimbrel 

Here's the whimbrel. Look at that bill! How would you like to go through life with that on the front of your face?  It's well-suited to its job, though: apparently the curve of the whimbrel's bill exactly fits the shape of the fiddler crab's burrow, perfect for reaching in and pulling the crab out.

The Cornell Lab says about the whimbrel (which has also been known as the Hudsonian curlew):

One of the most wide-ranging shorebirds in the world, the Whimbrel breeds in the Arctic in the eastern and western hemispheres, and migrates to South America, Africa, south Asia, and Australia. It uses its long, down-curved bill to probe deep in the sand of beaches for invertebrates, but also feeds on berries and insects.

The only other time I've seen a whimbrel was along the rocky northern California coast in March 2009.

Whimbrel (front) and Willet

Here they are together. While you can't see the full bill of the willet in this photo, you can get an idea of their relative size and coloration. Both are considered large shorebirds, weighing roughly between half a pound and a pound, but the whimbrel is the larger of the two.

Red-breasted Mergansers

Late this afternoon half a dozen male red-breasted mergansers were on Northfield's Superior Drive pond, keeping company with several pairs of hooded mergansers.

We haven't often seen these here. In late April 2011 we saw a lone female red-breasted merganser on the same pond, and I noted that I'd only seen them before up in Grand Marais, where we'd seen a mother with ducklings in August 2008.

Mergansers are diving ducks that eat mainly fish.

(Click on photo to see it larger)

Above, a male hooded merganser is flanked by five red-breasted mergansers -- note their considerably larger size than the small hoodie, as well as their bold, dark, fluffy-crested heads. An American coot is in the foreground -- a duck-like bird that is actually more closely related to rails and moorhens than to ducks. I last wrote about coots on April 4, 2012, after we saw large numbers of them at Lake Byllesby.

This pond was still almost entirely iced over as recently as Friday evening. Yesterday's warming temperatures and the afternoon's rain, followed by sun today, cleared out the ice in a hurry. Some remains, but the pond is largely ice-free today.

We also saw several yellowlegs, probably lesser yellowlegs, on the far edge of the pond that is to the south of the large pond. These, along with some recent killdeer, have been our first shorebirds of the season.

Dozens of ring-billed gulls were on the remaining ice on the large pond that lies between Jefferson Parkway and Superior Drive. Many of them were tearing at hunks of fish that we presumed had been dead in the water.

Fall Shorebirds, Including American Golden-Plovers

We've made several trips lately to a wet and muddy field in Goodhue County near Stanton, where good numbers of shorebirds have been present in recent days. We've seen lesser yellowlegs, greater yellowlegs, least sandpipers, semi-palmated sandpipers, stilt sandpipers, semi-palmated plovers and yesterday a real treat: three American golden-plovers. These were a life bird for me, and it was only the second time in 20 years of birding that Dave has seen them.

Lesser Yellowlegs

The light was good to capture these lesser yellowlegs and their reflections.

Lesser Yellowlegs

The three golden-plovers weren't in such good light as the yellowlegs above, and were farther away.  One of the three birds was darker than the other, helping us quickly recognize that we were seeing golden-plovers. The dark bird did not seem as black as the breeding males shown in the field guides, so it may have been an adult female. The paler birds may be juveniles, as it may be a bit early for the adults to be in their paler non-breeding plumage. The dark spots on the underside of the pale bird below were quite distinctive.

American Golden-Plovers - juvenile and female?

American Golden-Plover - juvenile?

The American Golden-Plover breeds in the high Arctic and winters in central and southern South America, so it has one of the longest migrations of any shorebird.

Below is a wider view showing just one small section of this temporary wetland, filled with shorebirds.

A variety of shorebirds (click to see them better)

Shorebird Workshop, August 3-5, 2012

Dave and I just got back from the Shorebird Workshop led by Doug Buri and Bob Janssen, based in Milbank, South Dakota but with field trips in both South Dakota and Minnesota. It's three days of just enough classroom time to get some basics, then as much field experience as possible, assisted by these two highly knowledgeable and nice-as-can-be instructors. You can study field marks from a book, but there's nothing like seeing the birds in real settings to improve your identification skills.

Workshop members get up close to the water

Here was a life bird for me: the Baird's sandpiper, found on the shore of Bitter Lake. I wasn't at all familiar with this bird before this weekend, but I know it now, because its wing primaries (long flight feathers) extend beyond the tail and it has smudgy brown markings on its breast. The other shorebird with wings this long in relation to its tail is the white-rumped sandpiper, which is grayer, rather than brown, and has clear, not smudged, dark streaks on its breast.

Baird's Sandpiper at Bitter Lake

Some shorebirds are very distinctive, but others require some practice to tell them apart. We focused on getting familiar with approximately eight shorebirds that are fairly common in South Dakota and western Minnesota during migration. If you know the common ones, something different will stand out when you do see it.

I loved the South Dakota and western Minnesota landscapes we visited, in picture-perfect weather, especially on Saturday and Sunday after a storm had cleared the air. On a large plateau west of Milbank known as the Coteau des Prairies, where Bitter Lake is, we learned that rising waters in natural basins that have no outlet for their water have overwhelmed farms and homes with no hope for respite. Here's a good article about this phenomenon. 

Bitter Lake near Waubay, SD

Bitter Lake has grown immensely in the past two decades -- from a slough only two feet in depth and 2,000 acres in size, it has grown to a lake of 3,500 acres and is South Dakota's largest natural body of water, according to this article on SiouxCityJournal.com. The article cited in the previous paragraph says it used to be a mile from the town of Waubay, but now it laps at the southern edge of town. We saw Western and Clark's grebes there, as well as egrets, a Caspian tern (a life bird for me), the Baird's sandpiper (see photo above), and a variety of other shorebirds.

Other highlights of the trip included several buff-breasted sandpipers, some marbled godwits, a Wilson's snipe, some dowitchers, and an osprey carrying a fish, seen on our way back from a quick side trip to Thielke Lake a few of us took at the end of the day Saturday.

Please take a look at a slideshow of photos from the weekend (below). I encourage anyone who is interested to sign up for any of Doug and Bob's excellent workshops. Besides the August shorebird workshop, they offer an early-October sparrow workshop and the Fort Pierre birding workshop, covering birds found on the mixed grass prairie and the Missouri River, in May. All come highly recommended, and we hope to attend these in the future.

Shorebird Workshop 2012

Not-So-Solitary Sandpipers in Flooded Field

Saturday evening, while doing our bluebird nestbox rounds south of Northfield, we noticed that the afternoon's heavy rains had left standing water in many farm fields. Flooded fields are prime habitat for migrating shorebirds, so we were on the lookout. At one particularly wet spot I saw something small and pale, so we pulled over to take a closer look.

We saw one, and then another, and eventually as many as seven or eight medium-sized shorebirds -- not all together, but here and there in ones and occasionally twos. A red-winged blackbird flew at one and flushed it, and we noted that the two birds were of very similar body size, which gave us a useful reference point. When we got close enough to see it, a noticeable white eye-ring confirmed the identification: these were solitary sandpipers. I just checked the comparative body length of the two species, and our impression of similar size was correct: solitary sandpipers are about 8.5 inches and red-winged blackbirds are about 8.7 inches.

We have most often seen these one at a time, as their name suggests, but the Cornell Lab's All About Birds site says, "While not truly solitary, it does not migrate in large flocks the way other shorebirds do," and National Geographic Complete Birds of North America notes that they are "usually seen singly or in small groups." Wet, grassy areas are a common setting for solitary sandpipers. On May 1 last year, in fact, we saw one in a flooded low area of lawn near our house, right in Northfield.

Like most of the shorebirds we see in Minnesota, these are just passing through on their way from their winter homes, ranging from southern Mexico into much of South America, to their breeding grounds in Canada and Alaska.

I was fascinated to learn just now, as I read about these pretty shorebirds, that they actually nest in trees, in the abandoned nests of songbirds, particularly particularly those of the American robin, rusty blackbird, eastern kingbird, gray jay, and cedar waxwing. The Cornell Lab site says, "Of the world's 85 sandpiper species, only the solitary sandpiper and the green sandpiper of Eurasia routinely lay eggs in tree nests instead of on the ground." This nesting habit was not discovered until 1903, 90 years after the species was first described by ornithologist Alexander Wilson.

So here are the things about solitary sandpipers that will stick in my mind:

• White eye-ring
• Same size as a red-winged blackbird (the legs and bills are very different, obviously)
• Flooded fields are likely habitat (this is true for a number of shorebird species, of course)
• They nest in trees!

Yellowlegs

Greater (or Lesser?) Yellowlegs at Lake Byllesby

This is not a bird whose name's origin you have to guess at. Those are extremely yellow legs. 

I'm not positive whether this is a greater or a lesser yellowlegs. Does the bill look to you as if it is longer than the width of the head, and slightly upturned? It does to me, which would make it a greater yellowlegs. But the differences are subtle and the distinction can be difficult to make.

I was at Lake Byllesby with binoculars and spotting scope again last evening, hoping I might catch one of the shorebird rarities that have been popping up in migration. I had planned to be elsewhere, but I'd been indoors all day, and when it came down to it, I needed fresh air and quiet water and solitude. 

I saw at least 80 pelicans on their favorite sandbar far out into the lake; I saw perhaps 40 or 50 each of green-winged teal and blue-winged teal, and some sprinklings of northern shovelers, coots and mallards. I saw several groups of shorebirds -- I think some lesser and some greater yellowlegs (I think I heard both calls), plus a small group of pectoral sandpipers. I saw two bald eagles overhead and the resident great horned owl on her nest. 

No rarities this time, but spending the last hour of light on the edge of the lake -- the cool air echoing and rippling with the piercing calls of yellowlegs, the honking of geese and even the peculiar bark of a pelican -- was pleasure enough.

White-faced Ibis at Lake Byllesby

After a full day yesterday at the Bluebird Expo in Byron, Minnesota, we got home and read a report that Hudsonian godwits had been seen at Lake Byllesby yesterday. This would be a rare and brief stop-off on their long migration -- these large shorebirds winter in southern South America and breed in northern Canada and Alaska. When we went to the lake today, none were in evidence anymore (last night's strong south winds may well have given them a favorable tail wind out of the area), but experienced birders leaving the area as we were arriving reported seeing seven white-faced ibis (or ibises -- Merriam Webster says the plural can take either form). And sure enough, there they were in the shallows at the far west end of the lake, amid a good number of greater and lesser yellowlegs, pectoral sandpipers, ducks and more.

White-faced Ibis

This tall, dark, handsome wading bird gets the "white-faced" part of its name from the white outline around the face that is somewhat visible on the bird on the right in the photos above. It is rarely reported in eastern Minnesota. In the United States, it is found year-round along the Gulf Coast and in Southern California, particularly the Salton Sea, with summer breeding populations found mainly in the northwest and central U.S., usually no closer to us than eastern South Dakota and Kansas. With those population patterns, even in migration you wouldn't expect to see many of these birds as far north and east as we are (though I understand that Atlantic coast sightings have started to occur). You can see a map of eBird sightings of the White-faced Ibis reported since 2008 here.

White-faced Ibis and a couple of Lesser Yellowlegs

Below is a very short video of the birds taken through the spotting scope. The photos above were taken in the same manner, but it is easier to crop the black vignette out of those than to crop a video. The sun was shining on my LCD and I really couldn't see what I was getting, so I didn't let it run more than a few seconds, but you get the idea of their motion as they probe for goodies in the very shallow water and wet mud.

Pelicans

I took a lot of photos at Lake Byllesby on Saturday, where I finally saw a nice flock of about 90 small shorebirds, and a couple of juvie eagles doing interesting things with their wings out on the mud/sand, and I thought I saw a couple of Franklin's gulls but maybe they were Bonaparte's gulls. And then I idiotically erased almost the whole lot during the upload process. Dave and I went back Sunday morning and there were not as many shorebirds, though we did see some -- probably lesser yellowlegs and, according to another birder we saw who was able to get a better look than we did, some pectoral sandpipers. I'd seen one shorebird with a long, downcurved bill on Saturday, and the other birder we saw confirmed that there was a dunlin in the group.

Pelicans - click to see photo larger

Both days there was a line of pelicans on their favorite sandbar well out into the lake. I counted a good 60 on Saturday and about 50 on Sunday.

Speaking of pelicans, these were American white pelicans, the only kind usually seen in these parts, but the rare bird alert has been buzzing with confirmed sightings of a brown pelican in Red Wing and other spots in the region in the past several days. Brown pelicans don't come here! They live along the ocean shores -- east coast, west coast and Gulf of Mexico. They are the only dark pelicans, and much smaller than the white ones we see here. I have seen them flying along the beach in northern California. That is one mixed-up or extremely-blown-off-course pelican. I hope it does okay.

A First: A Shorebird in Our Yard

The land next to our house has a low area that forms a small temporary wetland after snow melt or heavy rains. Mallards often come and hang out, and we've joked about how it would be great to see a wading bird or shorebird there, but really didn't expect to. Well, today my son was outside and came racing back to the house to tell me we actually had one. It was a solitary sandpiper (or so I believe! My confidence is a little rocky after a couple of questionable identifications lately). I quietly walked within a few dozen feet of it to get the bottom shot, then returned to our three-season porch and got the top shot through the window with the spotting scope. Never thought I'd be able to photograph a sandpiper from my porch, that's for sure, and that's why I had to do it!

Red-breasted Merganser

A female red-breasted merganser was one of the highlights of a quick early-evening trip to the ponds near Superior Drive today. According to Janssen's Birds in Minnesota, the only Minnesota breeding grounds of these diving ducks are along the north shore of Lake Superior -- which (at Grand Marais) is the only place I've seen one before. In the Cowling Arboretum bird list, it has been recorded rarely, and only in spring, and it does not appear at all on the River Bend Nature Center's bird list.

The red-breasted merganser winters further south (along the coasts and close to the Gulf of Mexico) than the other mergansers we see in this area, which helps explain why they would be passing through our area now. The common mergansers (which winter as close as Wisconsin and southern Iowa) started showing up here in late winter, and we started seeing  hooded mergansers (which winter throughout the Gulf states and southeast) more than a month ago.

This bird is distinctive for the white wing-patches and (like other mergansers) its very long, thin bill.

We also saw a spotted sandpiper and a lesser yellowlegs today, and a couple of greater yellowlegs northwest of Northfield on Saturday, so shorebird season is under way. To round out the evening's sightings: a great blue heron flew majestically by; we saw a couple of yellow-rumped warblers; red-winged blackbirds and robins seemed to be everywhere; and blue-winged teals and coots were easy to see on the ponds, as was a beaver muskrat an aquatic mammal of some kind [see comments regarding this change in identification].

California Birding

Dave and I spent the past week visiting my family in Berkeley, Calif. While there we found a good spot for shorebirds in the crowded, industrial Oakland/Alameda bayshore, and also had a couple of terrific outings  in Marin County. Here are a few shots from the trip.

Black-crowned Night-Heron

Double-crested cormorants

Willet

American Avocet, Black-bellied Plover

Western Grebes

Surf Scoters (females)

Northern Mockingbird (gorgeous singing - we don't get them in Minn.)

Black-necked Stilt (a first for me - such a cool bird!)

Black Turnstone

Snowy Egret

At Last, Shorebirds (Wilson's Phalarope and More)

Dave came home yesterday excited about a report on the bird listserv about a rare sighting of a Western Sandpiper near Northfield, so off we went. The report area was on 320th St., northwest of Northfield and just east of I-35. We didn't end up seeing the rare-for-here Western (Dave reports being 0-for-19 on unusual-sighting stake-outs), but we finally got to see some little peeps and lots of other shorebirds in a spot other than Lake Byllesby.

In a farm field with a large rain puddle, we saw this large, pale gray shorebird, shown in the next three shots, which looks like a Willet. The smaller bird behind it in one shot is probably a Lesser Yellowlegs. Lesser Yellowlegs themselves are not small birds -- about 10.5" body length to the Willet's 15" (the Greater Yellowlegs is closer to the Willet in size). I've only seen a Willet once before, at the northern coast of California during late winter.




Below is a short video clip taken through the spotting scope of a diversity of shorebirds at a farm pond a bit further down the road. There are plenty of Yellowlegs (mostly Lessers?) and also a number of small peeps that we think were Least Sandpipers.



Next is a really fun clip of a Wilson's Phalarope (a new "life bird" for me) exhibiting phalaropes' characteristic feeding behavior: spinning in the water to create a vortex which brings up yummy edibles from below. It's not great video, but the subject is very cool. (I think that this new camera is not going to be a good fit for the photography I like to do. Even with the powerful zoom I can't really take good photos of small distant creatures, and I can't fit it to the lens of the spotting scope, so I always get vignetting around the edges.)

For both of these videos, you may want to click the "full screen" icon at the lower right.




Here's a startling fact about Wilson's Phalaropes from National Geographic's Complete Birds of North America: "Adult females are the earliest fall migrants, with the first arrivals [at their fall destinations, I presume] in early June." Shorebirds come north and inland to breed, and as soon as they are done, it is time for "Fall" migration! For most breeds, fall doesn't come quite so early, at least not for the females. Here is a longer explanation from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

But what really sets phalaropes apart is the reversal of gender roles from the typical avian pattern. Before the males show up at the breeding grounds each spring, female Wilson's Phalaropes arrive at shallow freshwater marshes and wet meadows from southern Yukon Territory southward to central Nevada and eastward to the Great Lakes. ...

Females lay eggs in shallow depressions that they usually scrape within 100 yards of the shoreline. The males complete the nest lining and a concealing canopy of grasses after the eggs are laid. Then the males settle into caring for the nestlings until they fledge.

...Females leave the breeding territories first, from early June to early July, followed by the males and, lastly, immature birds

So this is a bird where the larger, more colorful female pretty much lays the eggs and takes off, leaving the rest of chick-rearing responsibilities to Daddy.

Shorebirds at Lake Byllesby

On Friday, the day we saw an osprey, we found our way to a secluded beach on the northwest side of Lake Byllesby in search of Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Dunlins, and whatever other shorebirds might present themselves, with particular hopes to see some American Avocets, which had been reported at the lake. This side of the lake is shallow and protected; we found later on when we went around to the south side that it was wind-whipped to the point of being downright inhospitable, and we quickly retreated. However, from this sheltered area there were dozens and dozens - probably at least a couple of hundred - of shorebirds to be seen.

Most were either Greater or Lesser Yellowlegs - it can be hard to tell the greater from the lesser, but they both generally give an impression of a speckled gray on top and a pale breast and underside - and, of course, they have yellow legs. The photo above makes me laugh: look at the bird on the right.

I like this one of two companionable yellowlegs, though the movement of their heads resulted in a little blurring.


Here one looks as if it is scratching itself, and perhaps it is. I am informed by my resident bird expert that what looks like a bent elbow on the bird on the left is actually its wrist; the elbow is higher up, as can be seen on the bird on the right.

This one has a fuzzy-headed appearance that I found endearing.

As I noted in my earlier post about the osprey, we never did see an avocet; they are rare indeed in this part of Minnesota. The shorebirds we did see are in migration and will be gone again within the next two or three weeks. The killdeer is the only bird of this type hangs around here for several months.

We did see a line of white pelicans on a sandbar far out across the lake, looking almost like a line of breaking waves, but they were too far away to get any decent shots, even through the spotting scope.

Sandpipers en Masse

Large groups of animals moving rapidly in unison are amazing to watch, whether they are bats, fish, or birds. How do they coordinate their movements so well? Perhaps all it takes is each creature being aware of the two or three immediately around it, but the overall effect of synchronized motion can be breathtaking. These photos capture a large flock of sandpipers, quite possibly including western sandpipers and slightly larger dunlins, on the Pacific coast near Arcata, CA, in February. The photo above shows them on the beach, where they made us laugh by running back and forth as the waves moved in and out.

The photos below show the flock in flight over the waves. Click on the photos for better detail.

Shorebirds like these winter along the coasts and in the far southern U.S. and Mexico, breed in far northern Canada and Alaska, and can be seen in migration through the Midwest (though only a few types in southeastern Minnesota).