Tag: graphic

NC-VA Coastal Plain 2025

the groupI took my first birding trip with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT), running up the coast from Wilmington, N.C. to Norfolk, Va. Kevin Burke was our excellent guide, always making sure that everyone got on the bird at hand—not to mention handling the driving (always ready to give an extra lift not on the tour), lodging logistics, and finding tasty restaurants. We were five participants; here’s Kevin in the lead of the other four on the beach near Oregon Inlet.

my rideclosed on SaturdayI rode Amtrak to get to Tidewater, but since the tour was one-way, I needed to bridge the gap between the cities. I hopped a Greyhound/FlixBus for the first time in decades. While the coach was quite comfortable, I needn’t have paid for a double seat because there were few riders. As I expected from the barebones stop at Union Station here in D.C., most bus stations these days are tragically spartan, with no options for food or toilets. We pulled in to parking lots and abandoned gas stations. Here’s one exception: a spiffy new transit hub in Greenville, N.C. Ha! Closed on Saturday.

early stopSunday was our first day out birding. Kevin had scouted a little-known corner of pine forest where Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Dryobates borealis) could be found, answering its wake-up call at 07:15. At Orton Pond, a very cooperative Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea) turned up, as well as an American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) that slunk through the water. Down the road my first lifer for the trip arrived, Bachman’s Sparrow (Peucaea aestivalis).

After lunch, I started to learn the handful of seaside plants, among them Coastal Water-pennywort (Hydrocotyle bonariensis), American Sea Rocket (Cakile edentula), and Saw Greenbrier (Smilax bona-nox).

The next day, Kevin improvised a ferry trip to Shackleford Banks, where I found a beautiful new tiger beetle for me, Eastern Beach Tiger Beetle (Habroscelimorpha dorsalis) (woot!) (likely ssp. media), and a robber fly that predates on the tiger beetle, Sand Hammertail (Efferia albibarbus) (woot-woot!).

And then, mostly a travel day to Hatteras on two care ferries, but we did stop at a boat launch access road for another lifer and long-tormenting nemesis bird, Least Bittern (Botaurus exilis).

sea breezeI came backWednesday was scheduled for a pelagic trip, but the weather had other plans, as the surf at Avon Pier illustrates. So once again Kevin cooked up some good birding, including a visit to Bodie Island Lighthouse. The Dancing Turtle in Hatteras is a good place for early morning coffee and pastries, but skip the bagels. (David’s new rule: Don’t order bagels in a shop without “bagels” in its name.)

Thursday we got out on to the water: we were advised that it would be “sporty” and “confused.” Indeed. For the first time in decades, I joined the Fellowship of Ralph. But after tossing all of my skimpy breakfast and coffee, and having a bit of a lie-down, I roused myself to photograph four lifers, including two storm-petrels, Wilson’s (Oceanites oceanicus) and Band-rumped (Hydrobates castro). Also spotted: several flying fish and a Portuguese Man O’ War (Physalia physalis)—surprisingly tiny. The captain of our boat could take a note from VENT on customer service and being welcoming.

Takeaways:

  • Shutter priority is your friend. The bird is moving in three dimensions, and the boat is moving in three different dimensions.
  • You’re not too old for dramamine.

We wrapped up the tour, skirting the Great Dismal Swamp. Seven life birds for me; the group got skunked on Belted Kingfisher (?!). I have a thing for Boat-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus major).

Your Eastern North Carolina dialect word is preesht, that is, “I appreciate it,” otherwise, “thank you.”

At the park: 143

Wrapping up reporting for the 2023 nesting season.

OK, with the last results coming in from far-flung precincts, I can total up results for our nesting season.

For our Wood Ducks, 7 nests started, 1 nest lost to predation, 2 nests abandoned for unknown reasons, 4 nests fledged; 76 eggs laid, 53 ducklings fledged. For our Hooded Mergansers, 4 nests started, 4 nests fledged; 47 eggs laid, 45 ducklings fledged. Good absolute numbers for WODU, but a much better fledging rate for HOME….

Once again, thank you, monitors and staff!

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart

Update 24 June 2024: It appears that Google has finally turned off chart.apis.google.com, as well as chart.googleapis.com. Weird: a forum post says that the service was going away in 2019, but the above chart was still working in July 2023. I’ll look into retrofitting this chart with Google Charts.

Clifton Institute bioblitz August 2022

no, over hereboth sides nowI took part in a Clifton Institute bioblitz on the property of an institute sponsor. I didn’t know quite what to expect, or what to focus on, so I walked along with the group, recording observations of what looked interesting to me, some of which I had to key out at home.

The woods have been logged over recently, and show evidence of disturbance: a fair amount of non-native invasives, as well as Indian Tobacco (Lobelia inflata), about which the Flora of Virginia says, “In a wide variety of mesic to dry forests and woodlands, depression wetlands, flood-scoured shores and bars, clearings, fields, roadsides, and other disturbed habitats.”

There seemed to be some disagreement among the group about this Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor). I’m not sure why. Seems obvious to me.

Flipping rocks, the group found three Eastern Wormsnakes (Carphophis amoenus amoenus). White and White write, “This snake does not bite when handled but will try to escape by probing its head and tail into the captor’s hand searching for a way out,” which is just what this li’l fellow is doing in Ben’s hand.

At the lights, most of the group focused on moths and caddisflies. I’m just getting started with moths—I’ve never before seen moth eyeshine—so I spent more time getting to know some beetles on the groundcloth, like this handsome darkling beetle, Alobates sp.

Rea was giddy when she found this late-instar Regal Moth (Citheronia regalis). The larvae have the common name Hickory Horned Devil.

I took the opportunity to practice using my audio recorder. Need to work on setting levels and generally using it more before I splurge on field headphones and a shotgun mic.

Observations are still coming in.

iNaturalist


View more observations from 7700 Wilson Road Bioblitz (8/6/22) on iNaturalist »

At the park: 120

After my annual scuffling with the Google chart API, I can post the summary graph of nesting activity for 2021. There’s a gray vertical bar for 2020’s missing data.

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart

The true Wood Duck numbers (blue track) are higher, because I did not include two boxes of uncertain disposition: one for which we never got a good egg count, and one dump nest of 25 eggs that didn’t show sufficient evidence that 24 of the eggs had hatched. I found one dead duckling and not much else.

At the park: 106

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart

Better late than never, here’s the graphic of nesting success for the spring season. The Wood Duck number is a minimum. We had two nests for which we never took a good count of eggs, and a third nest that perhaps was predated. I did not count these nests in the year’s total.

The Hooded Mergansers were 40 for 51 (78%) and the Wood Ducks were 32 for 86 (37%). First estimated hatch date for the hoodies was 4 April, and the last estimated hatch date for the woodies was 29 June.

A milestone: 7

I happened to be checking a report and discovered that I had recently passed an important (to me) milestone with Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, formerly Recording for the Blind): 2,000 volunteer hours, the equivalent of one year of 40 hours/week service. It took me almost 24 years to get there, and I’m pretty chuffed about it.

I started with open reel analog recording, made the transition to digital, and moved into virtual studio recording. And the new editions of textbooks keep coming.

On to 2,500 hours!

At the park: 96

My final report for the ducks and mergs team this season:

Well, our box score for the season shows a lot of at-bats but not too many runs across the plate. The mergansers started 10 clutches but only hatched 4; the Wood Ducks started 5 but only completed 1. We had evidence of predation in only 1 box (raccoon, #60). A possible hypothesis to explain the high rate of nest abandonment by the mergansers is simply that there were too many birds chasing scarce resources.

The egg and hatchling counts are similarly depressed: 139 eggs laid by the Hooded Mergansers, with 52 hatched (37%); 34 eggs laid by the Wood Ducks, with 7 hatched (21%). Summary worksheet from our monitoring.

A recap of the boxes: I applied some insulating foam to patch gaps in boxes #1 and #3. Boxes #4 and #7 should be replaced. A map of nest box locations.

box 5, duringbox 5, afterTiny little box #5 was put to good use this year! It was the site of our single successful Wood Duck nest. During (10 June) at left and after (24 June) at right.

Monitors, thank you for all your help!

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart

At the park: 92

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart



From my summary report to the team:

As for predation by the snakes, I wouldn’t move any of the boxes just on the evidence of this season. Last year it was boxes #1 and #3 where we had a problem; this year it was #7 and #62.

no TyphaLocal conditions around box #69 have changed. Past years, it was overrun with Typha sp. by mid-May. This year, it remained clear of veg.

As for nest structures for Mallard and American Black Duck, let us know where you’ve placed them and we will try to work them into our monitoring routine. My references show that the nesting season for these birds extends later into the summer, so we would have the opportunity to extend our work season.

A pattern that I’ve noticed over the years is that the fledge-to-eggs ratio for Hooded Merganser is usually higher than that for Wood Duck. A couple of hypotheses:

(1) Since the mergs start laying eggs a little earlier than the woodies, perhaps they out-compete them and occupy the more favorable boxes for that year. (We don’t see that one species is particularly faithful to a box, and indeed since we see a few mixed clutches, a box may be considered favorable by both species.)

(2) We are more likely to see “dump” and “drop” nests for the woodies: boxes with 20+ eggs. And with these jumbo clutch sizes, it’s more difficult to incubate all the eggs sufficiently.

At the park: 88

We bounced back from the dismal 2015.

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart

From my final report to the team:

It seems like every year I get this final report put together later and later. At any rate, this was a much more successful nesting year for our Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers.

Of our 16 boxes that we monitored, we had 16 nests started. That is, one box had a double brood and only one box this year was not used. Of the 16 nests, 13 were (predominantly) Wood Duck, and three Hooded Merganser. (We often have some eggs from the other species in the nest, which messes up the recordkeeping that I submit to the Cornell Lab.) And of the 16, 13 fledged at least some young, one failed, and two I’m just not sure about. The two questionable boxes are #1 and #3, near the tower. When we checked on 8 May, the evidence indicated predation, but when we visited on 22 May, I saw evidence of membranes, indicating that some eggs had hatched.

So, not counting the two questionable boxes, we have a fledge-to-eggs rate of 70% (114/163) for the Woodies and 91% (31/34) for the Hoodies….

Thanks again, everyone, for the hard work, and we’ll see you in February/March! When it should be colder.