Monthly Archives: September 2015

Shorebirding with the Man who Wrote the Book on Shorebirds

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Dennis Paulson and the ABC Birding Trip

Dennis Paulson and the ABC Birding Trip


Every Pacific Northwest birder refers to Dennis Paulson’s definitive book “Shorebirds of the Pacific Northwest” when we want to get the best available help with shorebird issues. Today 15 ABC members, myself included, had the pleasure of spending a day with Dennis at Ocean Shores looking for shorebirds and learning from his vast experience. One of the major topics of the day was the dramatic absence of shorebirds to study. We made several stops at the usual places, the jetty at Brown’s point, both sides of the Oyhut Game Range, the open beach and the Hoquiam STP. We managed to see only 10 species of shorebirds, and in relatively low numbers. Still we all felt fortunate to have the opportunity to be out with Dennis, learn from his approach to bird identification, and all had a really nice day.
Our time at the Jetty was quite productive, with 3 “rock-pipers” Black Turnstone, Surfbird and Wandering Tattler seen along with good numbers of Common Murres, and intermittently large numbers of Sooty Shearwaters. Dennis helped us ID a young probably early second-cycle Herring Gull on the beach. The game range was pretty quiet, we suspect in part due to the two Peregrine Falcons and the Cooper’s Hawk who kept what shorebirds were there on the defensive.
We finished at the Hoquiam STP and had nice looks at a basic plumage Eared Grebe and a good variety of ducks and gulls, but again alas the only shorebird was a single Killdeer.
Thanks to Dennis for leading the trip, to Kay Pullen for helping to arrange it, and to the participants for helping make it possible. Good Birding.

Minor Change to Bird Trax County Rare Birds Pages

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I found making the county rare birds pages for the ABC site easy, helpful and useful. It prompted me to decide to make a website dedicated to displaying last 2 weeks of e-Bird rare bird sightings for the rest of the U.S. for each state and its counties. Since I’ll attempt to support and keep this site current, I decided to replace the ABC e-Bird county rare bird pages with pages from the County Rare Birds site. This will help me avoid duplication of effort in maintaining both sets of pages, and will give ABC birders exposure to the County Rare Birds site’s other features. At this time these features include a page similar to the prior ABC County Rare Birds pages for all U.S. states and counties, as well as links that I deem useful for many states. See the WA Rare Birds page as an example. I’ve added easy links to the e-Bird Top 100 listers for Washington, and for a few select counties both for the current year and all-time.
I hope this is well received by ABC’ers. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
Thanks.

Ed

ABC Meeting Report – Tasha’s Eiders! 9-21-2015

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Steller’s Eider researcher in Alaska, Tasha Di Marzio, gave a presentation to ABC on September 21, 2015, that was riveting! Many of us have heard of Tasha over the years of birding with Shelley Parker, Tasha’s mom, but the reality was even greater than the parental bragging rights! Tasha is a first class researcher, bold adventurer, arctic explorer, fabulous photographer, and great at doing presentations!

Tasha has chosen the eider that is the most difficult to study, but because of that needs study the most. These birds are down to 200 pairs in Alaska in 3 areas, one of which has almost been abandoned. Tasha’s work has mainly been in the Yukon delta, which she knows intimately from the mud up, spending months at a time “trapped” there with just a couple of others, studying these birds as well as the other wildlife of the area. Not a glamorous profession!

The study she is currently working on involves releasing captive-bred birds back to the delta in 2016, something her team has been agonizing over for several years as they have worked through the amazingly difficult project of how to raise these birds in captivity, figuring out which birds are attracted to which birds, how to make the eggs hatch in an incubator as successfully as in a parent’s nest (much harder than you would think!), and where to raise them (salinity turns out to be the limiting factor, a fact known only for the last 2 years and not published yet), and control of predators, especially Arctic Foxes.

Part of the reason the Yukon delta was chosen was cooperation with native tribes, something apparently not possible on the North Slope, and also not possible with Russia at the moment, where there are more Steller’s Eiders. The birds nest where the females say to nest, and the males always agree, but since they’re only monogamous for a season, those same males may go to Russia the next year. This is determined early in the year when hormones start to build on the wintering grounds and matches are made. When it’s time to go nest, they migrate northwards, some turning left to Russia and a much smaller group turning right to Alaska.

The reasons for an 80% decline in Steller’s eiders are not completely clear. Spectacled Eiders are also down about 80%, but the main reason is well known for them — lead shot, which is being dealt with, and there is much hope for them. Salinity in the nesting areas has gone way up, and that is thought to be one factor. But these studies are important to help pin down other causes as well as increase the numbers.

It was a privilege to have a peek into the life of this researcher, and we hope to see Tasha again in the future when she’s down here visiting family.

Click on photo below to enlarge. Kay Pullen introduces Tasha, then Tasha gets into her subject.

Note New “About” page on ABC Birding

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In response to discussions about how ABC Birding and Tahoma Audubon relate, as well as to embrace the reality that we have become a club of more than just graduates of Ken’s advanced birding class, I took it upon myself to rewrite the “About” page for our club site.
I’m open to comments to help refine or improve this narrative. Let me know if any of you have ideas for improvement of this or other aspects of the website.

Thanks.

Ed Pullen

Exploring JBLM with Nathanael Swecker

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Praying Mantis- at least 2 seen on this trip

Praying Mantis- at least 2 seen on this trip

On a beautiful mid-September day Nathanael Swecker led a trip of 11 to explore and learn to navigate part of his JBLM e-Bird patch. Nathanael burst on the Pierce County birding scene last year with several posts a week from various areas of JBLM, often finding birds the rest of us only dreamed about finding. He has immersed himself in birding in the 3+ years since he became an avid birder, and has decided to undertake studying and documenting on e-Bird the JBLM avifauna.
We began our day meeting at the Roy “Y” park-and-ride, where 10 ABC birders joined Nathanael where he showed us excellent topographic maps of the JBLM area, complete with range map borders, and outlined our plan for birding today. Here is a copy of the Range brochure with a simple map. In order to bird it is first necessary to obtain a free range pass from the base Range Control Office. Then you need to check with the range control website or phone number to see what ranges are open.

Our first stop was at the Spanaway Marsh, although not in the usual way for most of us. Most birders access the marsh from the turn-around at the south end of 176th Street where it crosses Pacific Ave. Nathanael explained that this area is a joint JBLM/County road, and sometimes he has encountered police who don’t want him to park there, or access the area from there. Instead we circled around to the back of Training area 9, via a right-hand turn just past the railroad tracks near the usual entrance to Chambers Lake. We turned there, then another right onto Transmission Line Road, and entered the back of the marsh area. We got great access to large areas of the marsh water that are not visible from the 176th St. entrance, and saw Wood Ducks, swallows, and a good variety of fall passerines.

Next we visited Chambers Lake, taking a nice walk down the back side of the lake accessed by taking a left off the main road past the dam bridge, going a ways, parking and walking on the road nearest to the lake. It gives much nicer water views that the front side, and we saw upwards of 80 wood ducks, a flock of 8 Blue-winged teal, several other waterfowl, Red-breasted sapsuckers, and experiences an area many of us had not seen from that perspective.

Our last stop was the Area 15 part of the 13th Division Prairie. Many of us learned that the 13th Division Prairie encompasses much of 3 training areas, and the access is often limited to only area 15, sometimes area 13 and essentially never area 14. Area 14 is the big open prairie area where environmental concerns limit access. There we found bluebirds, a Peregrine falcon, both Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks, and again found ways to visit the Muck Creek riparial corridor from a vantage new to most of us.

Many thanks to Nathanael for teaching us about how to bird his “patch” on JBLM, and we look forward to his promised website on birding JBLM in the near future.

Here are e-bird links to our lists for the day when we totaled 58 species.

Spanaway Marsh

Chamber’s Lake

JBLM Training Area 15

Good Birding.
Ed Pullen