The GA's Co.onial Coast Birding & Nature Festival

Hi Dawn

Tomorrow starts the crazy five days of birding festival for me. I thought I would just say, thanks for the comment on my Ring-billed Gull post. Gulls are just one of the reasons, I love to watch birds. They leave us guessing more often than not. They love to confuse us. Don't you just love the brain excise.

In the meantime, eek, The GA's Colonial Coast Birding & Nature Festival is upon us. Here is a group shot on St. Catherine's Island a few years back. Don't they look like they are having fun? I wonder which bird is the best bird. We have been planning for more than a year to build a wonderful fun time for all birders. We have field trips up and down 99 miles of coastline.

This is a Saturday at our exhibit space we call the Rookery. Everyone is watching the Raptor show. I want no rain and good winds. Oh yes! Lots of good birds. Of course in my book they are all good birds. Part of my reason of going thru this excise is to make more people aware of how many song bird species we are loosing.


I will post more in five day.

Kids and Bluebirds

Coastal Georgia Audubon Society is a small group but its members do big things for the community. Chris Daughtry is one of our member that fits that description. Through the years he and a group of Audubon members made bird houses by recycling the oak pallets he finds. This group puts the houses together and then takes them apart, mark them and then tapes them together. These kits are ready for children who visit our booth at Coastfest. Coastfest is our Coastal Department of Natural Resources' way of showcasing the conservation groups who are working on our coast. The event was Saturday October 3.

Here is Chris giving instructions to the Home Depot staff that are going to help the children build the birdhouses. Notice the box in the foreground. I have made 200 Georgia's Colonial Coast Birding & Nature Festival Nature Day Flyers to give out with the boxes.

Here are a couple of happy children putting together their own bird house. Several families told me that birds used the houses they made the year before and how much fun it was to watch the birds choose the box and following to fledging the chicks.

Here is the display. Another hard working Aududon member made 12 posters for us. Look at some of Carole Lyons wonderful posters. The gates open at 10 AM and between 10 AM to 3 PM the volunteers worked nonstop. There were 200 Bluebird houses built. Incredible! Parting image of the crowd waiting to build a birdhouse.

When common gulls show up in odd plumages

This Thursday, I was birding at the south end of Jekyll. I was wading through the dog fennel and grasses that had grown thick on the path out to the beach, when I saw the beach birds fly up and around. Ugh, a group of kids had run down the beach and through the birds. It was frustrating to see the flock of sandpipers fly up and away to become unidentified dots. I was left with joyous kids and nervous birds. We sorted through the flock and found a good selection of terns. There were Caspian, Royal and Forster's Terns standing side by side. That is always fun to watch. It was a nice hour and I was heading back that I saw something that stop me.

The gull in question is in the middle just in front of the Brown Pelicans

I just knew I had a rare gull. I love challenges like this. I recorded the field marks. I photographed it. The adrenaline was rushing. Gulls go through molts and this was a young gull. It had a delicate bill for a gull, dark at the tip and light flesh colored at the base. The pale overall appearance made it stick out like a shining beacon. Its head was almost pure white and the eyes were onyx. What could it be? When I got home I went for by books. As I sorted through it was became clear. It was not a rare gull but a common one. It was a very young, Ring-billed Gull. I had never seen a just-off the nest Ring-billed Gull. Yes, I have seen thousands of Ring-billed Gulls but never one that was in juvenile plumage. Pretty cool bird.

Birding festival at the Shrimp and Grits Festival

Last week was a blur. I was preparing to set up a booth at the Jekyll Island’s Shrimp and Grits Festival. Here is the booth. One of my goals for this Georgia birding festival is to involve the surrounding communities in our Seventh Annual Georgia’s Colonial Coast Birding and Nature Festival. On Friday, I put the booth up. I settled in for the weekend.
What a weekend it was! Friday night, Coastal Georgia Audubon members Jimmie Ann, Janice, Barbara and Carole came by. They brought me some shrimp & grits. Thanks you guys.
Man, was that good.

Saturday Janie Smith of Wild Birds Unlimited came to help me. She brought our store mascot, Jay B. Watcher. He was the showman. Everyone smiled at him. A few gave him a hug. We talked to people from all over the place. There were festival booklets and posters to pass out. Children got a flier and a shell to remind them to come to festival’s Nature Day Saturday October 10. The next three and half weeks are going to be wild. Come see us at the Seventh Annual Georgia’s Colonial Coast Birding and Nature Festival October 8-12,2009.

Red Knots

These days, I am working with a great team of folks to pull together the details of our annual Georgia's Colonial Coast Birding and Nature Festival October 8-12. My goal is to share some of the special places on our coast. In that spirit here is a post from Brad Winn. He is the Senior Biologist for GA Department of Natural Resources studying shorebirds on the GA coast.
Thanks Brad for the work that you do and thanks for sharing this information and these great photos. These are four Red Knots in flight.
Since 1996 GA Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Divison, Nongame Program has been documenting red knot use of the Altamaha River mouth during a late summer and early fall staging event there. This year the number of knots appears to be up slightly from the last several years. Tim Keyes, Stacia Hendricks, and I had about 2,500 knots feeding on the mud banks of Wolf Island NWR on September 1. ( Here is part of this flock of knots.)
We will end up with more than 100 individual band codes from those bird. This flock will spend the winter in the SE US after dispersing from the Altamaha later this month. High counts in 2000 and 2001 were approaching 12,000 knots. The Western Atlantic knot population has been tanking.
We are lucky to have these birds staging in GA. Let's keep the Altamaha waters flowing and clean to maintain the health of the food for these birds on our coast. (Lydia's comment: Counting these birds must have been a challenge. Look at the flock!)

Spoonbills

I just have to share this picture sent to me by Ame a Jekyll Island resident.

It is just one of those quiet scenes that is becoming more common along the Georgia Coast. One report had 91 spoonbills at a roost on US 17 south of Jekyll Island. Even as it is more and more common, there is just something about pink birds.

Last Golf Cart Nature Tour

Friday was the last Golf Cart Nature Tour on Jekyll Island's golf courses for the summer. It has been so much fun to ride in a golf cart to look at the beauty of nature. Here is a picture of the group looking at the Amphitheater pond. I hope we can schedule some more of these tours.