Some Real Chasing

This weekend, Eamon, Lauren, and I went to chase some life birds and rarities in Louisiana.  We started the trip off with a stop in City Park of New Orleans to look for a Black-throated Grey Warbler among a few other early warbler migrants and wintering songbirds.  After a nice walk through a section of the park, we ended up giving up on finding the bird.  This wasn't terribly upsetting since we ended up getting coffee and beignets before a walk through some other sections of the park.  After some more birding through City Park, we enjoyed some great barbecue before deciding to make a chase after some Scissor-tailed flycatchers about an hour down the Mississippi River from New Orleans.  Upon reaching the area where the flycatchers were reported, we caught a glimpse of a Western Kingbird by the roadside, but continued after a brief look to find the Scissor-tailed Flycatchers.  After searching some nearby fields, we decided to go back and look around the Western Flycatcher for the Scissor-taileds, which turned out to be a great idea.  The Western was flycatching along a levee, so I decided to climb to the ridge and see what was on the other side.  As I climbed the hill, a Scissor-tailed gave an annoyed chatter and quickly flew away from me.  I was yelling with excitement at yet another life bird in the flycatcher family, and Eamon and Lauren were right with me as we crested the levee to find another Scissor-tailed foraging as well.  All three of the flycatchers were very hesitant to let me get close enough for some good photos, but that was just going the be the story for this whole weekend.  It was really fun to watch the longer-tailed of the two Scissor-taileds flycatch with such a long tail!

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

After enjoying the flycatchers for as long as possible, the three of us decided it was time to head to Grand Isle, LA to chase after a Lucy's Warbler.  For a while I was listing, now I am chasing, and I've enjoyed doing both for these little stints at a time throughout my time as a bird watcher.  The Lucy's Warbler was particularly exciting to see because it has a normal range in the mesquite deserts of the southwestern US.  Many of the life birds I have been getting are western vagrants showing up on the Gulf Coast.  We got into Grand Isle a little after dark to set up camp on the beach at the state park.  It was extremely windy, and a little bit difficult to set up tents, but it ended up being a warm and beautiful night to walk the beach before heading to bed.  In the morning we got up and birded the shores a few steps from our tents.  The usual winter shorebirds such as Willet, Black-bellied Plover, and Sanderling were all in attendance.  We packed up camp and quickly made our way to the spot where the Lucy's warbler had been reported a couple of weeks earlier.  I was a little nervous that we had missed our chance to see the bird since it hadn't been reported in a decent amount of time.  After a slow walk to the back of the Nature Conservancy property, we patiently walked and searched for the Lucy's in the thick Baccharis stand.  After searching and searching, I think we were all thinking we had missed our chance, when it slowly started to rain.  As we reluctantly were fighting the urge to get to the cars before getting soaked with rain, the Yellow-rumped Warblers seemed to get very active and a bunch of birds began flying from the shrubs and up into the oak trees above the pathway we were walking.  Eamon and Lauren both thought they caught a glimpse of the Lucy's in the shrubs during all the commotion, and then Eamon and I saw a smaller lighter colored bird make a flight out of the Baccharis and into an oak.  We had luck on our side!  We all got about a minute or two of enjoying the Lucy's through our binoculars before it moved along with the flock of other warblers out of our sights.  This also meant that I wasn't able to get any pictures, but getting a great look at the bird and enjoying just watching will always be more important than trying to get a shot through the viewfinder.  Among the flock of warblers there was also a Tennessee Warbler and Northern Parula mixed with the expected Orange-crowned Warblers and plentiful Yellow-rumped Warblers.

Northern Harrier

Northern Harrier

Following the great showing by the Lucy's Warbler, the rain really began to start coming down so we had to quickly get back to the car.  We decided to try to do some car birding just to prolong the birding weekend and we ended up seeing a juvenile Northern Harrier catch a Red-winged Blackbird.  The orange tinging to the breast and face are typically what I use to determine the age of harriers, but apparently the dark central rectrices (tail feathers) are another diagnostic field mark for determining the age of harriers.  This can be seen in the photo above.  On our drive off of the island we were surprised by a large pink bird foraging in the marsh.  None of us thought about the chance of seeing Roseate Spoonbills, and it was a life bird for Eamon so we turned the car around to take a nice look through the scopes at this strange-looking, yet beautiful bird.

Roseate Spoonbill

Some minor outings to look for other rarities and life birds resulted in even fewer decent pictures than the trip to Grand Isle.  One of these outings was a visit to a landfill in Alabama where and Iceland Gull was reported multiple times in addition to some sightings of Franklin's Gulls.  When we got to the landfill area we quickly realized that it was going to be very difficult to scan through the thousands upon thousands of gulls at the dump.  We think there were at least 5,000 gulls, but could have been even 10,000 since we couldn't see where all the gulls were landing.  We ended up missing both species because rain was coming, the wind was strong, and staring around at a dump really wasn't all that entertaining after the first hour or so.  It was still impressive to see so many gulls in one place.

You can try to find the Iceland and Franklin's Gulls in here.  We sure couldn't!

Inca Doves

Eamon found a small flock of Inca Doves in downtown Ocean Springs, MS while taking a walk one afternoon.  This was another lifer for me, so the next day we went to find them again without much difficulty.  It was another dark dreary day, so none of the pictures came out well, but these are really a beautiful dove!  The "scale" look is quite unique, and certainly handsome.  One other great lifer was a Say's Phoebe on the Mississippi State University campus that Eamon and I took a couple minutes to find while picking up some equipment for my project.  I didn't have my camera, though I wish I would've brought it along!  The phoebe was flycatching at the edge of a hill and kiting almost like a raptor until it saw a tasty insect.  The bird didn't seem wary of us, and was a real joy to watch forage and fly.  This has been an amazing winter for lifer flycatchers.  Western and Tropical Kingbirds, Say's Phoebe, and Scissor-tailed Flycatcher being the lifers, and I will never complain about seeing Vermilion Flycatchers.  It has been a lucky and fun winter so far, and spring migration is just around the bend.  In fact, the early movers are already coming in!