Left DC; Now Back in Maine

Exciting news in the world of the Birdist: I've relocated to Maine to work for Maine Audubon. They're an incredible organization, based in my hometown, and I'm ecstatic to be in the fresh air working to promote and protect our state's wildlife.

It was difficult to leave DC, and my job at NPCA. I had a lot of great years and great friends there. Plus, great birds. The DC birding community threw me a nice going-away party, which was so kind, and thanks again to all who came. So many kind birders there: Paul, Gerry, Sharon, Dan R., Dan S., Taj, Hugh, Frank, Scott, and lots more.

I'm sad, too, to leave the DC Audubon Society, which I volunteered with for years. Leading monthly walks with the large group of birders was some of my most enjoyable times in the city. I'll miss a lot of those folks, especially Sara, Chris, Zach, Liz, Tom and Callie, Joel, Marissa, Dana, and others.

Let me do a quick recap of my top birds in the city. I left the city with a respectable 234 species. I'll break this down into birds I saw that others found, and self-found birds.

Top 5 DC Birds

5. Ash-throated Flycatcher - There are a lot of species I could put here at #5, this re-finding this Ash-throated Flycatcher at Kenilworth Park was a real highlight. I showed up and the bird hadn't been seen for a few hours and I was hanging out with some cool teen birders I'd never met before (Kevin Bennett, I think, and some others?), when one of the cool teens was just like "hey there it is," and there it was. Plus, uhhhh, I got some great pics.

4. Snowy Owl - The winter of 13/14 brought an incredible irruption of Snowy Owls to DC and elsewhere along the East Coast. In late January I ventured to McPherson Square - near the White House - to view a Snowy hanging out in the middle of this very urban park, and watching city residents walk almost directly under a Snowy Owl without seeing it was one of the most surreal DC moments I had, and led to this blog post.

3. Bell's Vireo - found by one of DC's best birders, Hugh McGuinness, in an odd little area of the National Arboretum. Tough to get a good look, but a great bird.

2. Black-throated Gray Warbler - another Hugh McGuinness find, this time on one of his daily walks around his suburban, not-at-all-rarity-expecting NW DC neighborhood. This western stunner spent a few days coming to a feeder and sapsucker tree, and gave me some brief but obliging looks on Dec. 20, 2016.

1. Prairie Falcon - This bird just kicked a bunch of ass. I never expected a Prairie Falcon to show up anywhere near DC, but this bird was found hanging out on the side of a huge old power plant in Alexandria, making dive-bomb murder soirees over the Potomac and into DC territory. It was about a 10 minute bike ride from my house, and I loved it.

Top 5 Self-found DC Birds

OK I'm crap at finding good birds on my own. I'm just crap at it. Here's what I did.

5. Lesser Black-backed Gull. Look, I said I am not that good at finding rare stuff, OK?

4. Black-billed Cuckoo - Look I know! I know. Big deal. But this was back in 2006, and I remember that I saw both this bird and a Blue Grosbeak in my binoculars at the same time, and that both were lifers for me. Two lifers in one binocular-life! Does life get any better??? I wish I had a pic of that.

3. Surf Scoter - Scoters are pretty tough to come by in DC, but I was pretty lucky. I spied a Surfer from Tide Lock Park. Went back to the car to get my camera and when I returned it was gone.

2. White-winged Scoter - Another scoter on the Potomac, with a pic this time.

1. Lapland Longspur - There was a big snowstorm in on a Tuesday in mid-December 2013, and I left work (or work was let out? I can't remember) and hiked down to the Washington Monument to see if anything had been kicked out of the skies. Right there on the grass, with the Monument in front of me and the White House behind me, I found a nice flock of Horned Larks (rare in DC) and a couple of Lapland Longspurs. I didn't realize it at the time, but longspurs hadn't been seen in the District for more than 20 years! I got THE WORST digi-binned pics, but they were good enough.

Love you and miss you, DC. Stay gold.

On the Patch: Yards Park 2015

2015 was a weird year birding on my dirty little patch of the Anacostia, Yards Park. As I've outlined in (too much) detail before, The Yards Park is my typical afternoon dog-walking-while-also-keeping-an-eye-out-for-birds location.

High Island it ain't. There are no trees, really, and only a few bushes here and there. Lots of gulls roost on the river sometimes, and other times it's barren, even when the nearby Potomac is covered in loons and grebes and whatnots. But that's what patches are, ain't they? You learn to know a place well enough and then even the most mundane birds, the slightest out-of-place "vagrant" becomes a big deal.

I moved to this area in March of 2014, so 2015 was my first full year birding at Yards Park. I hadn't looked at the numbers until today, and when I did I was surprised to see that even though I put in a lot of time with the ol' pup, I saw far fewer species this year than last.

In total, I saw 42 species at the Park this year, the last being a Common Yellowthroat back in September. I had only four new birds for the location: a Cooper's Hawk, American Kestrel, Downy Woodpecker (in the trees by the actual Naval facility), and a Black-crowned Night-heron.

In 2014, however, despite having a three month disadvantage, I managed 55 species.  34 of them were new to the park. (In my first ever visit, after a Nationals game in April 2013,  I managed a whopping 23 species, my biggest single checklist ever!

Would you like to see this represented graphically? Sure you would:

So what happened to make 2015 so light? I'm not quite sure. There was a real lack of birds on the water in 2015, unlike the winter of 2014 with it's huge grebe invasion. Red-necked and pied-billed grebes are all over the place in March 2014, but didn't make an appearance at all in 2015.  I also somehow managed to miss BOTH vulture species in 2015 (?! That can't be right!) And cardinal (!) And towhee. I don't know. Tough year.

But all you can do is keep trying. I just took Gibson for his first walk of 2016 and managed 13 species, including a spiffy Bald Eagle. Here's to many more in the months to come.

A Big Day in D.C.

A crack team of legendary birders saw 136 species in the District of Columbia on May 6, 1989, and on May 6, 2015 I joined two friends to take a shot at the record.

I wrote about our attempt for National Parks Magazine (any day spent in DC necessarily means a lot of time spent on National Park Service land), and the article is now available online.

Did we break the record? Click here to find out.

A Crudely Drawn Guide to Birding at DC's Rock Creek Park

The best and most popular birding spot in DC during spring and fall migration is Rock Creek Park. Sure, some birders will try to play the hipster card and say "oh yeah Rock Creek is played out I'll be at Battery Kemble or Fort Dupont or whatever" but that just means they'll be stuck in traffic when ceruleans are reported on the Ridge.

Rock Creek is great but not everyone knows how to do it right. Like, although the park is huge and there are (probably) a lot of great birding spots, the vast majority of us focus our attention on the Maintenance Yard and the Equitation Field.  What the heck do those words mean, you ask? Let me show you.

Alright, though the park is the whole green thing there, we're really only focused on what's in the red circle (and west of the Creek, at that).

Why so limited? Well, in general , RCP is the biggest green space in the city, a natural target/trap for migrant birds.  But why limited to this circle in particular? A couple reasons. First, these are some of the highest points of the park, so it's sort of a natural landmark for birds.  Second, there are some open areas here that provide views into the canopies that aren't found in many other parts of the park.
So, here's a basic layout.

Read more »

Breaking Records or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Patch or: A Pedestrian's Guide to the Unspectacular Birdlife of Yards Park, DC

In patch birding, it's all relative.  You're not after huge numbers, you're not expecting rarities. Instead, it's about really knowing a place, and learning its rhythms.  When you're stuck with a patch long enough, you learn to love it no matter how few birds there are.

And there aren't a lot of birds on my patch, Yards Park along the Anacostia River in DC. It's where I walk my dog most every day after work. Despite running along a big ol' river and featuring at least some greenery, I've only managed 62 species despite visiting a few times a week for a year and a half.  I dunno, that's not a tiny number, but it's less than I could get on a decent spring day at a park just up the river. (Also, it's enough to make me the hotspot leader by about 30 species).

But it's what I've got, you know?  And I love it. I especially love it on days like yesterday, a gray and dreary afternoon where I somehow beat my previous dog walking record and saw 17 different species.  Check out that list!  The clincher was a solo mourning dove that cruised overhead when I was back on South Capitol Street, almost home. My dog had no idea what I was yelling about.

Anyway, in honor of my record-breaking afternoon I made a quick. annotated bird finding guide to Yards Park. It's oriented South to North, which is the way I walk it, but it's a little confusing that way. It's displaying small, but you can click to enlarge. Or you can just not do that, and go on with your life.

A Series of Images Showing Commuters Unknowingly Walking Directly Below a Snowy Owl in Downtown Washington DC

I saw this bird in McPherson Square tonight from 7:15 to 7:45.  Several folks were watching with me.  Others were just passing through.

Lapland Longspurs at the Washington Monument

My downtown DC office was officially closed yesterday due to a massive snowstorm that turned out to be a massive nothing.  I went in anyway, because I'm hardcore, and also because I knew I could leave whenever I wanted to go birding.

The National Mall is actually not a bad little place for birds.  The Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial (#20 below) and the nearby Constitution Gardens (#16) had both held scoters over the weekend, and a Long-tailed Duck had been spotted in the all-concrete Capitol Reflecting Pool (the water in front of #26) a week before.

I left around noon and walked down 12th St NW.  My destination was Constitution Gardens which, because of its natural shape and small, reedy island, is the best bet in the area for waifs.  However, I stopped at the grounds of the Washington Monument (#25) to peer through the huge flock of Canada Geese feeding in the muddy grass.  It was a funny place to see such a huge flock of birds - look one way and you see the Monument, one of DC's most famous landmarks, and look the other and you see the goddamn White House.

Anyway, as I was looking through the flock for "better" geese (there weren't any), I noticed a group of small, tan-colored birds feeding quietly on the ground in front of me.  Horned Larks!  I peered through the flock and immediately found two other birds, immediately identifiable to me by the boxy frame behind their ears (the auriculars) - Lapland Longspurs!  Cool.

I knew they were good birds and sent a message to the listserv before attempting to digi-bin them.  Goddamn is digi-binning hard.  Holy cow.  I managed some awful shots and then moved on.  The rest of the day was great - a Canvasback and lots of Ring-necked Ducks at Constitution Gardens and American Pipits everywhere.

It wasn't until I got home and checked the listserv again, though, until I realized how rare the Longspurs were: just the second record in eBird, the previous one from 1985!  I'm glad I was able to get a picture, however garbagy.  Look for the longspur at the top center of the frame.  Good birding!

Where DC Commuters Can See Peregrine Falcons

Peregrine falcons are the world's fastest animal.  WORLD'S FASTEST ANIMAL.  They're amazing creatures, but I bet none of my sleep-eyed compatriots riding the early morning Metro between Pentagon and L'Enfant Plaza know that these birds can be seen almost every morning.

Between Pentagon and L'Enfant Plaza stations, the Metro goes above ground and crosses the Potomac on a bridge.  It can be a dazzling moment for groggy passengers - bursting from the dark tunnel into a city sunrise over the river.  It's good birding, too, with gulls and geese and ducks and what-have-yous.  There are also, often, Peregrine Falcons, if you know where to look.  Metro passengers looking downriver can often spot a bird sitting on the railroad trestle, usually at one of four spots: the edge of the VA side, the two edges of the middle section, and the edge of the DC side.  Here are some maps (click to enlarge):

 

 



It may not be the greatest look in the world, but the hunched posture and sleek shape of the falcon are usually clear.  Living in DC it's easy to feel completely separate from the natural world, but these falcons are a daily reminder that we're not as far away as it seems.