Birding with ABC at Bill’s Spit, August 2014

If I were trapped in the wilderness with just one other person, I would want it to be Donna La Casse. She knows how to survive, hunting, fishing, dealing with danger, what’s edible, when to run. But just 2-1/2 years ago, I didn’t know her. When her husband died, she knew exactly how to handle her grief, by sharing her expertise and learning more every day. The Batkers introduced her to me at the 2013 CBC count dinner and mentioned she was ready to start birding again, having birded with the Ramseys decades earlier. She took Ken Brown’s Advanced Birding Class until it finished and joined ABC; and she grabbed the Tahoma Audubon scholarship to take the banding training in 2014.

Donna received one of Tahoma Audubon’s banding scholarships in 2014.

When I asked for more volunteers to count swifts, she joined us; she joined Great Old Broads for Wilderness and has been all over the West with them, doing the dirty work to preserve the wilderness; and she’s with COASST when they’re out on the beach counting bird carcasses.

Picking up stinky dead stuff is part of what Donna does.

And of course she’s been with the Washington Nature Conservancy. They have just put their Volunteer Spotlight on our Donna! Lately she’s been working with them to census and try to save the last Pygmy Rabbits in the northwest.

Pygmy Rabbit project, Nature Conservancy. Photo/Hannah Letinich

Read the Conservancy’s article about Donna and congratulate her when you see her, if she’s not out saving the world!
http://www.washingtonnature.org/fieldnotes/2016/7/10/july-volunteer-spotlight-donna-lacasse

Donna carries a weight in her backpack to help her bad back. That weight is her cat, Stoney.

Ken Brown & Ryan Wiese took a group of ABC’ers over to the coast on a sunny windy weekend.  On Saturday July 23 we covered the Hoquiam sewer pond (record stinkiness!) with a surprise finding of a family of Swainson’s Thrushes and the usual birds.

7-23-16 – Swainson’s Thrush in molt across from Hoquiam sewer pond

From there we headed for the Point Brown jetty where there were record numbers of Heermann’s Gulls and our first Brown Pelicans.

7-23-16 – Heermann’s Gulls

Ocean Shores jetty

Then, not having enough of sewer ponds (!), Ken directed us to eat lunch at the Ocean Shores sewer plant, which luckily was not stinky!   Then off to Washout Beach where we continue our gull study there and at the Oyhut game range.

7-23-16 – Oyhut game range

Then off to Bill’s Spit where we hit the tide right and had thousands of gulls, terns, godwits, and whimbrels to sort through!

On Day 2, Ed & Kay Pullen and Chazz Hesselein joined us, and you can read about that on Ed’s blog:

Coast Trip Sunday

Some of my photos are on FLICKR now (more to follow): https://www.flickr.com/photos/76552838@N03/albums/72157668638371674

Will be updating as Laurel and others post photos.  Ed’s photos and Richard’s digiscopes of the Franklin’s Gull are on Ed’s blog.

Thanks to Ken, Ed, and others who helped with the eBirding!

Audubon has a new interactive map of the best birding hotspots in each state. Fun to peruse.

http://www.audubon.org/travel#travelmap

Ed

On July 19, 2016, ABC’ers did our version of a relaxing summer movie, with Ordinary Extraordinary Junco, complete with popcorn.  A little skeptical going in that we’d find out anything new about Juncos, we happily found out there was more to know, with speciation going on before our very eyes, as well as mysteries still to be revealed, such as how those Juncos got out to that island way way way off Baja?

The Ordinary Extraordinary Junco, viewed by ABC’ers July 19, 2016

For those wanting to know more about this movie from Indiana University and the National Science Foundation, or to watch it again, go to the website:  juncoproject.org.

Ordinary Extraordinary Junco movie comes to ABC

Thanks to Melissa Sherwood for sharing her unique Junco story, as seen here:  http://abcbirding.com/local-juncos-make-history/

Melissa and Dennis Sherwood of Gig Harbor had a nest box of Juncos this spring, which is the first time in over a hundred years that Cornell could find any record of Juncos using a nest box.  Project NestWatch signed up Melissa and made her jump through a bunch of hoops to verify this, and now it’s in the history books!

The nest box was designed for swallows, but a rodent had apparently enlarged the entry hole, and these extra-smart Juncos knew what to do with it in April 2016.

A swallow house with a gnawed-out entrance hole was used by Juncos! (Photo by Melissa Sherwood)

Cornell required Melissa to climb a ladder at two different stages to check on the viability of the nest, take photographs and measurements, and log the trips to the box by the parents.  Melissa was shaking the first time she went up and looked into the box and accidentally pushed it askew, but all was well.

Measurements were among the requests from Cornell’s Project NestWatch (Photo/Melissa Sherwood)

Finally in May, Melissa went up the ladder one last time and startled a nestful of chicks out of the box, but they could fly well enough that they weren’t hurt.  The Sherwoods quit worrying when they observed the parents continuing to feed the young for quite some time.

The now-famous nestbox Juncos successfully fledged young! (Photo/Melissa Sherwood)

The experience has now been published by Cornell’s Project NestWatch, and you can see it here: http://nestwatch.org/connect/news/nestwatcher-finds-first-dark-eyed-junco-nesting-in-a-birdhouse/?utm_source=Cornell+Lab+eNews&utm_campaign=b800c90c02-Cornell+Lab+eNews+06_13_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_47588b5758-b800c90c02-302790209

SEPT 22, 2016, 6:45 PM, Pierce County LIbrary Administration Bldg, 3005-112th St. E., Tacoma 98446: John Klicka!  $10 speaker fee.

John Klicka, Curator of Birds at UW.

Join us in welcoming John Klicka, Curator of Birds at the Burke Museum, University of Washington, who will be our honored guest. He tells us, “I will be talking about some of the research that I have done recently. Basically, what we do here in my lab is take traditional museum questions regarding taxonomy, behavior, and morphology, and we attempt to answer them using modern museum tools (molecular methods, DNA analyses). In this way, I will touch on the taxonomy of sparrows, attempt to determine just how many of species of “House Wren” actually exist, and look at levels of genetic connectivity between bird populations occupying mountain-top habitats throughout western North America.”

For more info on Dr. Klicka and the Klicka Lab at the U, see his website:
https://klickalab.com/john-klicka/