Back to the Gulf

My adventures, and now my studies, have led me back to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.  I will be spending a good deal of time here, so be ready to see plenty of shorebirds, gulls, and ducks over the coming months.  I have been able to get out on the boat to learn how to drive through the marshes and see some of the local hot spots that require a boat to bird.  I am looking forward to another winter here on the coast for some more of the best birding I've ever done.  The first few weeks reintroduced me to some shorebirds and waterbirds I hadn't seen in a while, but aren't rare in any sense of the word down here on the gulf.  Dunlin, dowitchers, and black skimmers were some of the first with which I was happy to get reacquainted.  Black skimmers are truly strange looking, but amazing to watch as they glide above the water with their mandible skimming through the surface.  When they feel the mandible collide with a fish they dip their head and close their mouth for the capture.

Black Skimmer

Black Skimmer foraging

Dowticher species, most likely Short-billed Dowitcher

Ruddy Turnstone

A line of Laughing Gulls

Juvenile Ring-billed Gull

Forster's Tern

Marbled Godwits at sunset

Lesser Yellowlegs

Willet

Most likely a Short-billed Dowitcher foraging

I have been undergoing boat training in the marshes, which has been a lot of fun.  I feel very fortunate to be spending so much time out on the water and getting to bird along the way.  There have been huge rafts of Redheads and Lesser and Greater Scaup which will move out to sea now that the hunters are giving them reason to be wary of the marshes and shallower shorelines.  Bufflehead, Pied-billed and Horned Grebes are also around in some numbers, flying away from the boat with their stubbly little wings and their desperate looking wing beats.

This past weekend I went birding with the local Audobon chapter and my advisor, Mark, to look for shorebirds along the coast.  Along the way we went through some brackish ponds a little ways in from the shore.  A stop to look at a few ducks and terns on the water resulted in a surprise for me, however.  As I got back into Mark's car and we began driving away, we flushed up a dark little bird from the drainage at the side of the road.  I had a similar situation happen before, so I immediately jumped out of the car and began hoping the bird would stick its head out from the marsh grasses into which it had run.  It was certainly my second sighting of a Black Rail!  I was extremely excited, well, I still am extremely excited, to have had another chance to see such a uncommon and secretive bird.  Although there were no new surprises on the shorebird front on the trip, this Black Rail certainly made the end of my year on the birding front.