This field season has been filled with lots of weekend adventures in the area for birding. We spent nearly every weekend chasing down some bird, or checking some new spot. We even spent some of our time between morning work and night surveys to do a little birding from time to time. There was more birding to be done here in the winter than I was accustomed to during the winter months of Pennsylvania and the surrounding northeastern United States. So this led to the decision to do a big day along the coast, especially since we felt we had done all of the scouting throughout the season. It was also just a great last shindig for the season. The week prior to the big day was spent doing some route planning and last minute checking for rare bird sightings. The weekend prior resulted in a 102 species day without any intention to get that many species. With that in mind, we felt like 120 species on a big day was a pretty good target for which to aim. On the day before, we went to the store to stock up on junk food and energy drinks to get us through the potential 24 hours of birding.
Eamon and I woke up at 3am on Saturday. Since we had already packed, we quickly checked that our binoculars, headlamps, scope, camera, and our junk food stores were in the car. We had decided to get an early breakfast on the way to Point aux Pines at McDonald's. They are always open, right? Well, they might be open, but they are still serving burgers at 4am. We decided to tough it out until we were done at PaP, and quickly went back to a site that we used for yellow rails. We knew there were yellow rails around, and we had seen plenty of LeConte's Sparrows on our surveys. We pulled into the dirt road that went to the site, lowered our windows, and listened for any owls, snipe, or woodcock as we drove. We pulled up and called for eastern screech owl as we put on our headlamps and ate our PBnJ sandwiches earlier than planned. As soon as we were geared up, a screech called back in response, for the first bird of the "day." We tried briefly for a look, sandwiches in hand, but decided to get to kicking around for rails and sparrows.
Using sticks picked up on the walk into the bog, we beat around trying to flush up a rail. We managed to quickly get a sedge wren and plenty of Henslow's Sparrows, but it took nearly 2 hours to flush a yellow rail. We never did find a LeConte's sparrow, but getting a couple species before light was worth the effort. As our time ran out, we packed up and went to MickyD's to get some breakfast for the road since Dauphin Island was about 40 minutes away.
We pulled up to the shell mounds parks on Dauphin Island a little before sunrise, music blaring, and ready to do some serious searching for migrants in the park. Matt was there waiting for us, so we got right into the little park and started birding. This park is a great spot to bird in the spring because it has a variety of deciduous trees and swampy little habitat that are the first land that birds crossing the Gulf of Mexico come across. We happened across three very good migrant warblers, prothonotary, black and white, and Louisiana waterthrush, in addition to a ruby-throated hummungbird. We also picked up several other wintering birds such as red-breasted nuthatch, blue-gray gnatcatcher, and pine warbler. Glen showed up a little after dawn, and met up with us to find an orange-crowned warbler. After a few hours, we went to visit another popular migrant stop on the island before heading to catch some shorebirds. The only other migrant we managed to squeeze out of that spot was a northern parula, but he was definitely worth the stop.
Glen mentioned that there was a spot closer than the far west side of the island to get the shorebirds we would need to find for the big day. Not only did this save us the time of driving, but it also turned out to be all we expected and more for shorebirds. We immediately got piping plover, snowy plover, reddish egret, sanderling, and least and western sandpiper. Glen then spotted a Wilson's plover and red knot, both birds that we surely could have missed without him! American avocets were also hanging out on the exposed sand at low tide, a beautiful bird to see at any time. After scanning the water and the sand, we decided it was time to leave Dauphin Island, although it had been so good to us.
We made our way to a spot for seaside and Nelson's sparrows, and turned out a seaside and a marsh wren. After this we drove back towards Gautier, looking for raptors from the road, and hoping to spot some swallows. We went to a marshy area where we had seen swallows the previous week and only managed to see barn swallows and a Wilson's snipe. From that point, we had some quick decisions to make. We were running out of time to get all the way to Bay St. Louis and get the few remaining shorebirds that we didn't already see on Dauphin Island. We decided to head to Gulf Island National Seashore to try for a few more migrants and songbirds before heading up to the refuge. We managed to find golden-crowned kinglets, white-throated sparrow, and song sparrows at the seashore. We got to the refuge with about an hour to search around for a few birds. We had a Bachman's sparrow the previous Sunday, but we couldn't get him to cooperate with us for the big day. Next, we went to see the bald eagle nest, kingfisher, and sandhill crane. After spending all the time we could afford on the refuge, we headed about 20 minutes away to sewage lagoons for ducks, shorebirds, and wading birds before sunset.
The lagoons turned up plenty of ducks, including blue-winged and green-winged teal, gadwall, northern shoveller, and ruddy duck. We met up with some lesser yellowlegs and black-necked stilt along the way back to the lagoons that have had herons and Virginia rail. We got a surprise look at American Golden Plovers, and I managed to find an upland sandpiper. The upland sandpiper was made even more exciting because it appeared to be the first sighting in North America for 2013. (We found out the next day that the first sighting was the day before our big day, taking away a bit of the excitement.) We met sunset with American bittern, black-crowned night-heron, Cooper's hawk, Virginia rail, and common gallinule. The lagoons turned out to be quite an exciting finish to our day.
Eamon and I went out for owls and other nocturnals at dark. We missed out on great-horned owl, but we managed to find barred owls and an American woodcock for the final species of the big day.
