running to catch up

Well time flies when there are lots of birds & birders around. So this is a catch up blog. As February fades into March the birds are becoming more and more active. This activity excites folks to stop and watch. I love it. As I like to say “One of my favorite birds is the last one I saw.” Yes, even cowbirds & grackles if it gets one more person to watch birds and more importantly caring about birds.
So let's starts with February 24, high tide in the morning means I must stop by the oxbow creek near the Jekyll Island Causeway. I was rewarded with at least six Seaside Sparrows singing and bouncing around in the marsh grass. My group was large but everyone was excited as we headed to the southwest side of Jekyll. My heart sank though. There were three groups ahead of us & they had scattered all the bird all the way to the river. Thankfully there were a few birds left included some American Avocets. As we stood there another herd of kids were stampeding toward the birds. My habit in this case is to step in front of the group and politely ask them to please not disturb the bird. But one little boy won my heart. He held up his point & shot camera and ask if he could photograph the birds.
Well my group was all smiling so I put the scope at his level and told him how to photograph thru the scope. As he worked I explained to the leader why the birds were there. As we left he was also helping by explaining why the birds were there. YEA!
The morning was finished at the Amphitheater and a tree filled of Wood Stork.

flocks of birds and birders

Flocks would describe the birding this past week. Flocks of Cedar Waxwings, flocks of American Goldfinch, mixed flocks of Eastern Bluebirds & Pine Warblers, and flocks of shorebirds. Flocks of House finch & their song fill the air.

On Sunday it was a flock of birders for this was our 5th annual Team Birding Event. This is an event was started as a way to allow Coastal Georgia Audubon Society (CGAS) to get in touch with folks who might be a little bit afraid of going to a regular field trip. The idea is to team up with experienced birders who would help them learn about this birding thing. Dawn Zenkert of Tidelands Nature Center holds the Art Inspired by Nature fundraiser at the same time. It is heaven for me, birding in the morning & talking to folks about my printmaking in the afternoon. .

To help start the Great Backyard Bird Count weekend off, CGAS has a refresher course Thursday night. This prepares us for Sunday.

This Sunday February 17 was perfect weather. We had around 30 people come out to go birding a lot of those folks were birding for the first time! To give you a little perspective our normal field trips generally has around 3 to 5 people.

I rushed over to the Jekyll Island Convention Center to set up my art and the Audubon booth. Marge came in to help set up our computer and watch over the booth while we were out birding. Once that was done I raced over to set up the birding part. We had divided Jekyll into 6 sections. The North end group was lead by Wes a birder from New York. The Midsection group was lead by Gene. The Historic District group was lead by John. The Causeway and shopping center group lead by Mike. The Tideland and mid southend lead by Marjorie. Then I lead the southend group. The groups formed and we were off by 9 am. We counted birds until noon when we returned to the convention center and share what we found. We found 83 species altogether. But what was more important is that we found some new birders!

Cedar Waxwing invasion

On Friday February 8, I was sitting quietly at my station at Wild Birds Unlimited Nature Shop on Jekyll dutifully doing the bird list from Thursday’s bird ramble when the quiet was interrupted. Out of the corner of my eye there was movement. I grabbed my camera and shot a couple of shot from the window. They were not good enough so I creped outside. The air was filled with bird song. It was my idea of Heaven. The temperature was perfect and just the right humidity. The trees are green accented by the clear true blue sky and lots of all kinds of birds everywhere.

Shorebirds on Thursday Feb. 7,2008

Man, has the weather been great! Yesterday, I was sure it was going to rain but the day dawned and there was no rain. The temperature was perfect so off we went. I had a good group of birders. As always when you get a group of birders from different places together there were some comparing of notes. We walked out to the beach and rushed to get ahead of the kids. There were good numbers of shorebirds, Dunlins, Westerns etc. Oh we were happy sorting through the birds, comparing bird to bird. There were a couple of times when people threatened to run the birds off. Finally one group did march right through them. Some of my group was from Cape May . They told me of their docent program so I was able to get some good ideas. With the increase in walkers at the south end it would be great to have a docent program here. Stay tuned….
In the meantime enjoy some photo of our wonderful Thursday Morning Bird Ramble for February 7, 2008

White Pelicans

Don ducked his head in the door at Wild Birds on Wednesday & informed me. “Forty White Pelicans right at the river bridge! I couldn’t believe it. I turned around and went under the bridge to make sure that what I was looking as I drove off the island. Yes, there they were. When I was getting ready to get back in the car two snipe flew off.” He was smiling. It is always a pleasure to hear bird reports from different folk who a staying on the island. Don is one of the ones I can count on to report these day. Well on Thursday when I was facing a morning of low tide at 9:30 am and I used Don information. My hardy group and I were off to the wharf at the Historic District. As if on clue, the White Pelicans came in a flotilla. My goodness, they were stunning. There were forty-six of them. While looking around here we had American Avocets, American Oystercatcher, Short-billed Dowitchers, Dunlins, and Black-bellied Plovers strolling on the other side of the River. We moved down a little to the other side of the wharf. We had Western Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers and a Least Sandpiper along with Little Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets. This was within the first hour. The day continued that way. The Campground Sanctuary had a couple of Pine Warblers and one Yellow-throated Warbler at the feeder.
I am still trying to find sea ducks so we visited a few traditional spots for them but no real luck. We settled on Northern Gannets. They are dominant both in the ocean and in the rivers. All in all I can not complain. We ended the morning with over seventy species.

Winter Bird Survey

It is one of those unspoken rules for the Winter Bird Survey. Pick any day at the end of January during the week with the tide high in the middle of the day and it will be the worst day of the year. There is no way to predict the weather for this day is chosen back October/November. But there have been survey days where we have been so wet and so cold and all the optic are useless and still there we are trying to count shorebirds. Now for all that tirade this year was the exception. The sky was a beautiful blue not one cloud could you find for miles. It was a mild winter day with temperatures in the 50’s.
Traditional I am assigned Little Cumberland. Wait! I should back up and tell you about these neat surveys. It started as a Piping Plover survey around the end of 1980’s or early 1990’s. Please excuse my foggy memory I can’t exactly remember when it was started. The idea is to have teams of surveyors out at the same time on all the sandy beaches along the 99 mile long Georgia coast. It needs to be high tide when the birds are pushed out of the marshes and up on the beaches. This insures that there is little if any overlap of birds counted. To sum it up it is a snapshot of the winter birds along our coast.
Now this year I was teamed up with Kate Sparks of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. She is fairly new to our coast, but as we all do, she fell in love with the stunning beauty the coast offers. She moved into this job in October. She is mainly working on marine mammals. Her job keeps her on her toes. For example on Sunday she was examining a whale stranding and today she is taking out a bird crazy person to go count shorebirds.
Kate picked me up at the Jekyll Marina and off we went to the next island south, Little Cumberland. Now Little Cumberland is a private island. It has a good homeowner association and they keep it as natural as they can. There is a land manager who is an outdoors man with a real appreciation for the island. It is always a pleasure getting to talk to him about this little natural jewel of an island.
We got the logistic out of the way and the survey began. This is a small sandy beach so there aren’t a lot of shorebirds but there are a good number of gulls. So with the great weather, good company and a few good birds this was a good exception to the rule.

If I may I would like to say that last Thursday’s ramble was fun. There were American Avocets that we waited for at the southend of Jekyll. I ran into Wes, a winter birder on Jekyll, later in the day. He told me he had been out on the southend around 8 am and had starting to study the birds. He had been watching a Marbled Godwit, the same 31 avocet, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings and the assorted gulls and terns when some of the kids ran through the birds. They all flew off leaving him with a few gulls to watch. That explains why when I got there at high tide falling I had to make my group stand a while for the avocets were not there. About the time the avocets flew back, there was a couple walking toward them. They were going to make the birds flying again. We flagged them over to show them what we were watching.
Today when we were coming back from the survey we went by that southend and sure enough there were lots of kids running through that area. I have an idea that might help us and the birds. It is a docent plan. I have started talking to a few people about this idea. I love some help making this idea happen. It involves just some volunteers who will engage the public about the birds resting. Want to help me? Email me for details and let’s see if we can make this idea a reality.
In the meantime Good Birding!

Rainy day

Well it rain all last night. When I got up it was still raining. As I drove to Jekyll it was just pouring. It wasn’t a good day for a ramble so I call it off. I did a quick look around the fields and feeders around the southend. The Eastern Bluebirds were out and about but otherwise it was quiet. It is a good day to get catch up on art.

I couldn’t talk about an art commission I received last year. These pieces were to be Christmas presents. Christmas is over so I can share with you. These creations I call monotype construction. They were a combination of years of work. I do a great deal of sketching in the field as well as just watching the birds. I combine that with my years as a printmaker using my etching press to create embossing. The years I worked as a stencil cutter for a silk screen company to cut and refine the embossings. I pull these pieces together in a combination of print and drawing. It is hard for me to describe the idea but I love to create shadows and light by elevating some of the pieces. It is just the thrill of see these creations come together.

Thanks to the Babe-breasted Warblers the team of women birders who inspired the art. This team of five women spent 2006 doing a Georgia Big Year birding together. They learned so much about birds. Toward the end of the year they started thinking of birds names that suited them. Becky was named the Black-crowned Night-heron. Nita was named the Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Lynda was named the Common Eider. Darlene was named the Yellow-breasted Chat. Cheryl was named the Blue-headed Vireo. So each piece has these five birds plus their name and the number they got to by the end of 2006.
Darlene posted the photos of the art at http://www.flickr.com/photos/djmoore1657/sets/72157603512188704/


To add a little to this story these five women have become Birding Ambassadors. On January the tenth when we were looking for the Snowy Plover Becky and Darlene saw a person looking for the bird. They did there best to help him. He did see the bird. He was so charmed by these helpful ambassadors that he came into Wild Birds Unlimited Nature Shop to tell how much he enjoyed meeting them.

Here is the team with me in Feb 2006

Please enjoy the art and yes I can do a special monotype construction for you. Plus I would love to hear your birding stories.
Here are the Babes with me in August 06
Good Birding in 2008