Costa Rica Birding 2021 Part 4 – Savegre Valley

August 14, 2021August 14, 2021 / Ezra Staengl / 1 Comment

The Savegre area was the place that had the highest elevation of any on our trip, and because of that, it had very different birds. This was immediately apparent upon our arrival, as even the birds in the garden of the Savegre Hotel (where we stayed) were very different from what we’d been seeing the rest of our trip. Talamanca, fiery throated and volcano hummingbirds, as well as white-throated mountain-gem (also a hummingbird) were common and relatively tame. Yellow-bellied siskins, flame-colored tanagers, and slaty flowerpiercers were also abundant. Long-tailed silky flycatchers, an absurdly elegant bird that looks like it might be finely sculpted from wax, were rarely out of earshot our entire stay.

Our first night we went on the night tour offered by the lodge, because it was advertised as providing a good chance at finding several different species of owls. Apparently, however, there was some miscommunication between the guide and the lodge, because we spent nearly the entire time trying to call in one species, the bare-shanked screech-owl. After a truly disturbing amount of playback from our guide, we did eventually manage to spotlight the owl, which was a special experience. Despite that, though, I regret not insisting sooner that enough playback was enough, and it was ok if we just heard the owl. I suppose I can hope that particular night tour isn’t very popular.

The unfortunate bare-shanked screech-owl.

One of the most unique habitats we visited on our entire trip was the high elevation páramo that covers the very tops of the mountains in that region. The páramo is a stunningly gorgeous grassland that only grows above 11,000 feet or so. When we went many of the forbs and shrubs were blooming, coloring the mountain peaks bright shades of yellow and white as they faded into the distance. Tiny crystal-clear streams filtered through the vegetation, in one of which my brother found a bright green salamander. Unsurprisingly, the birds of the páramo are also unique — many of them are restricted to that habitat. We spent four hours at one páramo site (Cerro Buenavista communication towers in Los Quetzales National Park) and only saw 17 species. However, almost half of those were lifers. Volcano juncos were everywhere, hopping about on the ground and in the short vegetation. Large-footed finches were also easy to find, usually sitting still in the bases of bushes. Timberline wrens usually stuck to the dense tangles of bamboo, although my brother did manage to photograph one in a small shrub amidst tangles of reindeer lichen. Yellow-winged vireo, black-capped flycatcher, mountain elaenia, black-billed nightingale-thrush, and sooty thrush were also all abundant.

On our final day, we took a long hike around our lodge. The trail led through a forest of old and gigantic oaks, their trunks absurdly tall and straight, and their distant branches covered in lichens and epiphytes. The birding was slow, but pleasant, and we slowly racked up an interesting list of species. At one point, a family of spotted wood-quail quickly ran across the path in front of us. At another, a flock of sulphur-winged parakeets descended noisily from the sky. Perhaps the most exciting bird of the hike was a wrenthrush Theo and I encountered deep up the valley of a small mountain stream. Wet vegetation pressed all around us as we huddled on a little beach, our binoculars trained on the brilliant red crest of the small bird agitatedly singing on the bank opposite us. We also saw flame-throated warblers, silver-throated tanagers, yellow-winged vireos, a buffy tuftedcheek, a spot-crowned woodcreeper and my 1000^th life bird, an ochraceous pewee. The pewee ended up being my last life bird of the trip, as when the hike was over we sadly said goodbye to the beautiful Savegre Valley and began the long and grueling drive back to San José for our flight home.

Costa Rica Birding 2021 Part 3 – Rancho Naturalista

August 13, 2021August 14, 2021 / Ezra Staengl / Leave a comment

The next destination on our trip was Rancho Naturalista, located in the foothills of the Cartago province. Unlike the other lodges we’d been staying at in Monteverde and Arenal, Rancho Naturalista specifically advertises itself as a birding lodge. They had two very skilled birding guides, a Costa Rican women named Mercedes and a British man named Harry. Both had extensive experience birding the region of Costa Rica and had also traveled elsewhere in the tropics. Every meal at Rancho Naturalista was cooked for us, and honestly it was some of the best food we had our entire trip. Aside from us, the only other guests at the lodge were a couple of photographers.

Rancho Naturalista is a great place to see many different bird species, but the one we were most excited about ahead of time was the snowcap, because Rancho Naturalista was the spot on our itinerary where we were most likely to see one. Snowcaps are a small and extremely charismatic species of hummingbird endemic to the mountains of southern Central America. Males have an iridescent wine purple body with a bright white cap. Females are glittering green on the back and white below.

We arrived at Rancho Naturalista in the early evening. After dropping off our bags in our rooms we walked down a short path to the lodge’s communal area, where a deck overlooked a set of fruit and hummingbird feeders, and more distantly, the mountains. As the sun set, we watched birds on the feeders and surrounding trees. The most numerous hummingbirds were large species, particularly white-necked jacobins and green-breasted mangos, but other species were also present, including green hermit, crowned woodnymph, and rufous-tailed hummingbird. Cocoa and streak-headed woodcreepers worked the trees behind the feeders, and a buff-throated foliage gleaner poked cautiously around the edge of the small clearing the lodge was built in.

The next day we were up bright and early, guided by Harry. We walked down the dirt road from the lodge, stopping constantly to look and listen to a somewhat bewildering array of birds. Slaty-capped, yellow-olive and tawny-chested flycatchers were all present near the lodge, the first two of which were lifers. Harry led us to a house off the main road where there was a large clump of the purple Verbena the hummingbirds love. It was only a few minutes before the first snowcap flew in, chattering excitedly. Occasionally he would take a break from his feeding and perch on a small twig, allowing us to get close for photos. Other hummingbirds were also using the Verbena patch, including green thorntails, brown violetears, and rufous-tailed hummingbirds. We spent the rest of the morning walking the trails and roads around Rancho Naturalista, exploring forests, pastures and gardens. We saw a total of eighty species, some of the most exciting of which to me (that weren’t already mentioned) were tropical gnatcatcher, white-vented euphonia, speckled tanager, stripe-throated hermit, checker-throated stipplethroat, and dusky antbird.

Following Harry’s advice, before we left Rancho Naturalista the next day, we stopped at a bridge crossing a small, swiftly flowing stream in the adjacent town. Sure enough, on a branch across the stream about thirty feet away was a small nest, with a sunbittern sitting on top. At some point the sunbittern got up to go hunt, revealing two downy white chicks. With that last lifer we headed off to our final destination of the trip, Savegre Hotel in the Savegre Valley.

Costa Rica Birding 2021 Part 2 – Arenal

August 12, 2021 / Ezra Staengl / 2 Comments

My first impression of the Arenal Volcano was when we were sitting in our lodge’s restaurant the evening we arrived. It was raining and very cloudy, and most of the world seemed to be cloaked in white mist. Below our window a couple great curassows ate watermelon slices that had been left out for them. Suddenly, the fog cleared, and a tall, conical mountain appeared in an area I had assumed was just empty sky. Lightning flickered near its top, periodically illuminating it through the fog. I had a vague memory in the back of my mind that there was a volcano in the Arenal area, but I’d never seen pictures. I certainly hadn’t expected such a perfectly conical one. It was beautiful, and a little intimidating. For the entirety of our stay in Arenal it was always present, either visible looming over us or blocked from sight by the rain and clouds.

After arriving from Monteverde, we spent the next three days in Arenal, exploring the fabulous grounds of Arenal Observatory Lodge. The lodge had an extensive trail system that led through diverse habitats, including dark forests, open pastures, and several small rivers. Each habitat had its own set of associated birds, and the result was that it was relatively easy to see a lot of species in a small area, or without much effort. We averaged around 70 species a morning without a guide, and someone more familiar with tropical birds would undoubtedly have detected many more. The lodge had planted many clusters of a purple flowering Verbena shrub that the hummingbirds loved. On our first morning, we spent over an hour just standing and photographing the hummingbirds at one such clump. There were violet-headed hummingbirds, blue-vented hummingbirds, green thorntails, and the ubiquitous rufous-tailed hummingbirds. Occasionally a black-crested coquette would swoop in and hover at eye level before zipping off to a flower to feed. The males of this little hummingbird species are particularly spectacular, with shiny dark green throats and crests, light orange bills, and spotted green and white undersides.

Another interesting experience at Arenal was seeing a mixed species foraging flock. We were walking along a woodland trail with very few birds, other than the distant calls of a white-collared manakin lek. Suddenly, the forest seemed to come alive. Carmiol’s tanagers dripped from every tree and shrub. A spotted antbird hopped out on the path. Various woodpeckers, woodcreepers, tanagers, flycatchers and euphonias moved all around us. Even one of the white-collared manakins briefly flew in, bouncing around near the ground like a ping-pong ball and making a sound like two marbles clicking together. Mixed species flocks are of course a phenomenon in temperate regions too, but rarely have I seen one so impressively large and species rich as that one.

On some of our walks from the lodge we went further afield, following trails through the woods that emerged into an area of wide open pasture. Eucalyptus groves dotted the lush green fields, and the Volcano loomed over it all. Short-tailed hawks, white hawks, barred hawks, gray hawks, and swallow-tailed kites circled lazily in the sky, while swarms of white-collared swifts zoomed by. Yellow-faced grassquits foraged in the field and sang from the fences. As the road passed by a cluster of farm buildings, the bird activity picked up, partly due to a gigantic nesting community of Montezuma oropendolas, which are extremely noisy birds. A small flock of orange-chinned parakeets raided a fruit tree nearby. As we walked by a small stream I saw a tiger-heron perched majestically on a pipe hanging over the water. Wanting to get a better look at the bird’s front to identify it, I slowly edged along the bank of the river. I hadn’t realized I was right under the oropendola colony until one pooped on me! Luckily there wasn’t much to its poop, but it still freaked me out. The heron was a fasciated, a species I’d never seen before.

We spent two evenings at Arenal out with guides looking for owls. The first evening was a lava tour, where we visited the site of the lava flow from the last major eruption of the Arenal Volcano, which occurred in 1968. Aside from learning many interesting things about the volcano, it was nice to be out after dark because we saw different wildlife than we would have in the same spot during the day. As the sun set, we saw several common pauraques sitting in the road. At two small ponds, we stopped and searched for frogs, and found several species, perhaps the most beautiful of which was a stunningly colored red-eyed tree frog. On our drive back to the lodge we saw both an olingo and a black-and-white owl on the power lines.

The next evening we went out again, this time with a different guide. Our goal was to find as many species of owls as possible. Unfortunately, despite quite a lot of driving around on back roads and some playback, we were only able to find two species, both of which we only heard — black-and-white owl and a family of mottled owls.

Costa Rica Birding 2021 Part 1 – Monteverde

August 11, 2021August 11, 2021 / Ezra Staengl / 3 Comments

Earlier this summer, my family went on a birding vacation to Costa Rica. Previously (in 2016) we’d spent two weeks at Tortuguero National Park and the Osa Peninsula in the Costa Rican lowlands, so this time we planned our route to focus on highland ecosystems and bird species. We flew into and out of San José and stayed one night just outside the city on either end of our trip. We split the remainder of our time between four general areas — Monteverde, Arenal, Rancho Naturalista, and the Savegre Valley. This post focuses on just our time at Monteverde, our first destination, but look for three more in the coming days with details about the rest of our trip.

The sky dumped rain as we drove into the small town of Monteverde on our second day in Costa Rica. Throughout our trip it rained on and off for most afternoons, making the early mornings the superior birding time. Despite the rain, we’d managed to see some common birds on our long drive from San José, including a crested caracara, many great kiskadees and tropical kingbirds, and our lifer brown jays. Once we got to Monteverde we immediately went to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, as we were desperate to take a walk after sitting in the car for hours. The forest was tall, green, wet, and very dark, and the birds were not very active. In fact, we only saw three species on our walk, yellowish flycatcher, white-throated thrush, and Costa Rican warbler. However, even in the pouring rain hummingbirds swarmed around the feeders by the entrance to the reserve, and we soon saw several lifers including green hermit, purple-throated mountain-gem, stripe-tailed hummingbird, and the Costa Rican endemic coppery-headed emerald.

Yellowish flycatchers are… yellowish. This photo was taken the next day at Curi-cancha, not in the rain.

The next morning, we explored Curi-cancha Refugio de Vida Silvestre — another local cloud forest — with a guide named Johnny. The refuge had many different habitats, including both wooded and open sections. Birds were everywhere, and we soon saw over 50 species, a stark contrast from the previous afternoon in the rain. Johnny quickly pointed out a three-wattled bellbird song, which was a very loud ringing call followed by a loud piercing squeak. We listened to the bellbirds for the rest of the morning and were also able to see and photograph a few. Other highlights (and lifers) from Curi-cancha included white-naped brushfinch, white-eared ground-sparrow, golden-browed chlorophonia, black-headed nightingale-thrush, long-tailed manakin, and smoky-brown woodpecker.

We also spent the next morning with Johnny, birding around the town of Monteverde and then returning to Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. At the reserve we heard and eventually located several resplendent quetzals, perhaps one of Costa Rica’s most famous birds. Much like bald eagles here, quetzals seem to be revered by birders and nonbirders alike. They are indeed stunning birds, with intricately feathered glittering green backs and bright red undersides. My photos do not do them justice, as for most of the time we were watching them they were high up in the lush canopy.

Johnny then showed us several other birds, including a scale-crested pygmy-tyrant, before saying goodbye. After he left, we continued to bird the reserve by ourselves, finding prong-billed barbet, black-breasted wood-quail, spotted barbtail, eye-ringed flatbill, ochraceous wren, and a very cooperative collared redstart among many other species.

The next day we went to Monteverde Sky Adventures Park, a place with many long and high bridges up in the canopy that spanned small valleys. We watched butterflies glide from flower to flower and monkeys scramble between trees at eye level, barely noticing that we were over one-hundred feet in the air. Swallow-tailed kites circled lazily above nearby ridges. It was a fun experience to see some of the birds from previous days at eye level, and we did mange to find a few new species such as spangle-cheeked tanager and black-faced solitaire.

Here’s some howler monkeys on one of the bridges.

Winter Birding in New Hampshire

February 6, 2021 / Ezra Staengl / 4 Comments

Last week, my family traveled to New Hampshire to ski in the White Mountains. The skiing was fantastic, but I’m here to talk about the birds. We drove up from Charlottesville over the course of two days, stopping periodically to chase continuing rarities. We saw our life bird tundra bean goose at East Reservoir Park in Philadelphia, and our lifer tufted duck at Captain’s Cove in Connecticut. In addition to the tufted duck, Captain’s Cove proved to be a productive birding stop in general, with several hundred lesser scaup and a glaucus gull. Two peregrine falcons briefly appeared over the frozen river and proceeded to dive at a lazily soaring red-tailed hawk, which fended them off by flipping over in midair.

Red-tailed hawk and peregrine falcon. Photo by Theo Staengl.

Once we arrived at our destination, the town of North Conway, NH, we were struck by how few and far between the birds actually were. On several occasions we walked for hours in the snow-covered spruce woods and could find little more than a few black-capped chickadees. However, one day my brother called me outside early in the morning to point out a flock of four pine grosbeaks sitting in the top of a tree just outside our house, munching on berries. They were puffed up against the cold, making them seem even larger and rounder then they normally do. It was only the second time we’d ever seen the species, the first being in Glacier National Park several years ago.

Another day we decided to hike from Pinkham Notch onto the slopes of Mount Washington. It was bitterly cold, so we covered as much of our skin as possible. Even with gloves and a balaclava, my hands and face were soon cold. However, the trail was steep, so my core quickly warmed up beneath my multiple coats. The scenery was gorgeous. More than a foot of snow blanketed the ground and weighed down the spruce bows. We passed several small streams, all of them almost completely frozen, with the ice making intricate shapes along their banks. One waterfall was particularly beautiful, with formations of gigantic icicles covering its rock face. About two miles in we got to a flat spot with gaps in the canopy and were able to look up at the treeless caps of the mountains. It was a landscape much more reminiscent to me of the Rocky Mountains, and utterly unlike anything I’ve seen before in the East. We were in the bottom of a huge bowl, with white capped peaks rising up on three sides of us. Directly in front of us, a massive wall of snow spanned the gap between two peaks. Even though it was only two in the afternoon, the sun was low over the mountains, casting the snow in tints of gold and pink.

Once again, the birding was very quiet on Mount Washington, but we did encounter three boreal chickadees feeding in a grove of spruce. We were first alerted to their presence by almost imperceptibly quiet “tsee” calls. A patch of snow fluttered to the ground, and I raised my binoculars to focus on a plump, brownish bird with a large white ear patch. The chickadees were much more muted and warmer in coloration than the black-capped chickadees we’d seen earlier, but their slow, deliberate movements among the snowy evergreens had a certain charm. Other than the two chickadee species, we only saw two other species on Mount Washington, a downy woodpecker and a common raven.

Boreal chickadee. Photo by Theo Staengl.

The real highlight of the birding part of our trip came on our way home, when we stopped at Salisbury State Park in Massachusetts. We were lured there by tantalizing eBird reports of winter finches, but we were under time pressure to drive the twelve hours back to Virginia before a snowstorm hit that we worried might make the roads impassable. The entrance road to Salisbury led through a partly frozen brackish marsh, which was inhabited by hundreds of American black ducks. We also spotted a few common goldeneye, mallards, and buffleheads. Inside the park we drove to a snow-covered campground, which was notable for its extensive sameness. Every campsite was alike, with a pine tree, a fire pit, and sometimes a picnic table. It wasn’t long before we heard the calls of red crossbills and located a large flock foraging in the pines. I spotted a smaller, streakier bird, and watched it until it turned to face me. Sure enough, it had a bright red dot on its forehead, one of the most obvious features of a common redpoll, a finch I’d never seen before. The redpoll briefly dropped down onto the ground, before moving off with a group of crossbills. American tree sparrows foraged on the snowy ground, and large flocks of snow buntings wheeled about in the sky.

A local birder told us the location of two long-eared owls that were wintering in the park, and we followed her directions to them. Although long-eared owls are present in Virginia, they’re very rare and hard to find, so we’d only seen one individual before those two. After the owls, we walked out onto the beach and scanned the Atlantic Ocean for ducks. White-winged scoters and common eiders were the two most abundant species, a striking contrast from Virginia where they’re among the rarest of the expected sea ducks. In addition, we picked out a few surf scoters, long-tailed ducks, and common loons. Three sanderlings foraged on the line of the breaking waves.

Our lifer common redpoll. Photo by Theo Staengl.

The time forced us to leave Salisbury to start our long drive home. Normally I find being in the car for long trips tedious, but the week had been so filled with activity, sights, and birds that the time to sit and relax felt welcome.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge – 2021

January 8, 2021January 8, 2021 / Ezra Staengl / 1 Comment

I walked down a narrow strip of compact, damp sand, my brother Theo a few paces behind me. The air was crisp and cool, and when the wind gusted it ripped through my three coats. My fingers, even inside my gloves, burned from the cold as they gripped the legs of my spotting scope tripod. To my right, low sand dunes stretched into the distance, only sparsely covered with vegetation. To my left, the Atlantic Ocean disappeared over the horizon. Above me, the sky was brilliant, depthless blue, unbroken by cloud or bird.

My brother and I were at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, in what has now become a yearly tradition. For the past four years, we have spent several days in the first week of January birding Coastal Virginia, arguably the crown jewel of which is Chincoteague. Chincoteague is always one of the most fun days of the trip, because its size and varied habitats allow us to spend more time in one place, which encourages slower, less frenzied birding and more attention to details of identification and counting. Over the years it’s become a tradition for us to try to get as many species as possible on an all-day eBird checklist from the national wildlife refuge. So far, my personal record is 90, which was set in 2019.

Ipswich savannah sparrow is a savannah sparrow subspecies that winters in sand dunes along the Atlantic Ocean. They’re larger and paler than typical savannah sparrows.

We started our visit to Chincoteague the same way we did all our others — with a walk down the beach between the Atlantic Ocean and Tom’s Cove. We saw giant flocks of snow geese wheeling in the sky, and long-tailed ducks, black and surf scoters, horned grebes, and common loons diving in Tom’s Cove. Eventually, we reached the abandoned coast guard station at the far side of Tom’s Cove. We watched an Ipswich savannah sparrow forage in the sand dunes from an old, wind bleached boardwalk, the color of the weathered boards closely matching that of the sparrow. At the coast guard station, we faced a choice. Either we could go back up the beach to the parking lot and bird the rest of the refuge, or we could push on along the beach a few more miles to the mythical mudflats at the very southern tip of the island known as the hook. We’d been to the very edge of the hook once before, but never seen the massive shorebird flocks that were rumored to haunt this hard to access area. Our curiosity was too great, so we set off down the beach, our hopes high.

Dunlin flock, with sanderling and western sandpipers.

As we approached the end of the island, the beach widened out, so that we were looking out over a large expanse of sand. Large pieces of driftwood dotted the landscape. A thick line of shells, wood, and human trash ran along the edge of the beach. My brother and I split up so we could search the plain of sand more effectively for shorebirds. I walked along the edges of the dunes, keeping my eyes out for snow buntings or more Ipswich sparrows. We walked for a long time, but the landscape didn’t change, and there were few birds to be found. Finally, I heard the sound of my brother’s voice on the wind. Running out from behind a dune, I saw his distant wind-blown form hunched over the spotting scope, gesturing for me to come. When I reached him, he pointed out a flock of several hundred dunlin huddled together next to the ocean. Looking farther down the beach, I saw several similar flocks. All the dunlins were huddled close together, and most were sleeping with their heads tucked under their wings.

I carefully scanned the dunlin flock, searching for any irregularities in size or color that could give away another shorebird species. Several pale gray sanderlings were clustered near one end of the flock, along with several slightly smaller shorebirds. On first glance, they looked almost like miniature dunlin, but closer inspection revealed they were slightly paler, and when they raised their heads to look around, they had different facial patterning and shorter, straighter, bills. They were western sandpipers, a species we’d never seen at Chincoteague before, despite extensive searching. We lay on our stomachs on the sand and photographed the birds as they preened, until the cold wind compelled us to keep moving.

While I’d been scanning the shorebird flock with the scope, Theo had been searching the ocean with his binoculars. He drew my attention to a common eider among a flock of surf scoters and common loons. It was a beautiful young male, with a white body and a brown head. Surprisingly, it was the seventh of our trip, many more of this uncommon sea duck than we had seen on any of our previous Coastal Virginia trips.

We continued down the beach, scanning and counting the dunlin flocks as we went. By the time we turned around, we had seen more than one-thousand dunlin, and nineteen western sandpipers. We also encountered a large gull flock with lots of herring, great-black backed, and ring-billed gulls, and one lesser black-backed gull. Ruddy turnstones, sanderlings, dunlins, and black-bellied plovers foraged around the gulls’ feet.

Eventually, we started hiking the several miles back up the beach towards the rest of the refuge. It seemed to go on forever, the uniform plain of sanding stretching nearly to the horizon. I became hot in my coats, and thirsty. Other than the occasional flock of scoters over the ocean, there were almost no birds to distract us. The wind whistled, blowing sand into our legs. When we did get back to the car, we just sat there for several minutes, eating, drinking, and recuperating before we birded the rest of the refuge.

The rest of our trip to Chincoteague followed a more typical path. We scanned Swan Cove, seeing marbled godwits, Bonaparte’s gulls, tundra swans, and hundreds of dabbling ducks of various species. Then we drove around wildlife loop, counting hundreds more northern shovelers, gadwall, American black duck, and green-winged teal. Finally, we stopped on the boardwalk bridge on the way out of the refuge to pick up a seaside sparrow, forced to the edge of the marsh by the high tide. We ended with 71 species on our eBird checklist, and had another fun day of birding adventure.

Hog Island Audubon Camp 2019

June 22, 2019June 22, 2019 / Ezra Staengl / Leave a comment

I sat in the bottom of a small wooden rowboat with several other teen birders as we were rowed over the water of Muscongus bay towards the rocky coastline of Eastern Egg Rock. Thousands of terns circled and called over the island. Razorbills and black guillemots perched on the rocks around the base of the island. An Atlantic puffin flew by, heading for its burrow somewhere under the rocks, its oversized bill stuffed with fish. Our boat bumped up against the rocks in a small cove, and we scrambled out. The interns studying seabirds on the island greeted us, and told us to wait until the rest of the campers were rowed to shore, so we wouldn’t accidentally step on any tern eggs. Indeed, just a few yards away, we could see common, arctic, and roseate terns guarding their nests.

Roseate Tern

Visiting Eastern Egg Rock was the highlight of the Audubon Society’s Hog Island “Coastal Maine Bird Studies for Teens” camp. Hog Island is a 300+ acre island just off the coast of Maine in Muscongus bay. It has been owned and run by Project Puffin — a program of the National Audubon Society — since 2000, and by National Audubon or Maine Audubon since the early 1900s. Since the Audubon Society first acquired Hog Island, they have used it to run programs and summer camps to inspire people to care about nature.

Soon after I first heard about Hog Island from friends in the Blue Ridge Young Birders Club, I read Project Puffin, which tells the story of how Stephen Kress restored Atlantic puffins and terns to their former breeding colony on Eastern Egg Rock. In the 1970s, when Stephen Kress started Project Puffin, puffins survived on only one of their former breeding colonies in Maine, having been extirpated primarily by hunters from all the others. Stephen took young puffin chicks from a large colony in Newfoundland and raised them at Egg Rock with the hope that they’d return to breed there as adults. Eventually birds started returning, and now there are several hundred puffins breeding on Eastern Egg Rock, as well as numerous arctic, common and roseate terns, and Leach’s storm petrels. The seabird restoration techniques that Project Puffin developed have been used successfully elsewhere in Maine, and also in other countries.

I arrived on Hog Island late in the day on Sunday, June 9, after a long day of travel. I was ferried across the small stretch of water separating Hog Island from the mainland, along with several other campers, on the Snowgoose 3, the boat we would travel on for the rest of the week. Several buildings were scattered around a clearing and bird feeders, including a dining hall, a lecture hall, several dormitories, and a building called the Queen Mary, where the camp’s bird collection was housed. All the teens were staying in one building, called the porthole. I threw my stuff on my bed, went outside to meet my fellow campers, and quickly got my first lifer of the trip, a black guillemot.

Black Guillemot

Every night after dinner, all the teens and the adults from a camp running concurrently to ours would hear a talk on some aspect of seabird biology or conservation. The first night it was Stephen Kress himself speaking about the history of Hog Island and Project Puffin. Other speakers talked about seabird senses, seabird families, and the effects of warming ocean temperature on seabird breeding success. That last one was one of my favorites, as I learned a lot about puffin and murre conservation. Apparently, having a good supply of food is one of the most important things for alcid survival and breeding success, and when the fish species that the alcids eat are overfished or forced to move — potentially away from breeding colonies — by changing ocean temperatures, the effects on the alcids can be devastating. Many of the talks were inspiring to me, because the speaker’s enthusiasm and love for the seabirds really came through. The story of Project Puffin’s success is amazing, and hearing research with such clear and direct potential to help seabird conservation was fascinating.

During the day, we were busy with many different bird related activities. We went back over the channel to the mainland, where we birded several different habitats, including a bog. The mosquitoes were horrific, but we did manage to hear several warbler species, including Canada, Nashville, magnolia, and northern waterthrush, as well as a yellow-bellied flycatcher. Back at Hog Island, we did some birding, bird art, and played ultimate frisbee with someone’s new Hog Island baseball cap. One morning we set up mist nets around the feeders, and watched as the staff banded the birds we caught. It was a great opportunity to see the details of their plumage up close. We banded American goldfinches, purple finches, black-capped chickadee, red-breasted nuthatch, black-throated green, and yellow-rumped warblers, and a northern parula.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Finally the day arrived for us to land on Eastern Egg Rock. After reading about it in Project Puffin and hearing about it from my friends and now from Stephen Kress himself, I — and I think all the other teens as well — was very excited to actually get to see it in real life.

Arctic Terns

The five research interns living on the island for the summer led us slowly up the rocks and onto the island. Every several feet, we could see one or two large, cream colored, brown speckled tern eggs on the rocks. The noise of the terns calling as they circled overhead was deafening. Occasionally a tern would swoop at us, hitting our heads with its beak. As we climbed away from the surf, we began to see plants growing in cracks in the rock. We arrived at the headquarters for the researchers on the island — a tiny building they used as a lab, an outhouse, and several tents.

The Tern Hordes

We split into two groups — I was in the group that was first to go to the blinds located around the edges of the island. The blinds were chest high wooden boxes, with a ring of windows to look out of from the inside. Mine was called “Arizona,” although I don’t have any idea why. A landscape less like Arizona is difficult to imagine. Waves crashed and churned on the rocks below, sometimes spraying water up onto the ledge of flat rock immediately below me. Common and arctic terns were everywhere, some protecting their nests, some flying frantically back and forth from the island with fish in their beaks, and others just loafing around on the rocks, seemingly unconcerned with the world. Common eiders swam in the surf. Several puffin burrows were marked in red paint on the rocks next to me, so I was unsurprised when I saw my first puffin land with three fish in its beak only about ten feet from me. It looked around in a furtive way, then hunched its shoulders and scurried into one of the burrows.

Atlantic Puffin

I saw many other puffins over the hour I had in the blind, bringing fish into the burrows. One bird didn’t even stop on the rocks, but flew directly into the burrow. I worked on getting a flight shot of a puffin flying down the island’s coast with its beak full of fish. Razorbills occasionally flew over the water, and black guillemots were abundant on the rocks.

Atlantic Puffin

Later, as the whole group was eating lunch outside the main building, the island suddenly went silent. All the terns stopped calling at once, and flew low over the rocks and out over the water. A group of terns suddenly scattered, revealing a peregrine falcon flying swiftly towards us. It flew overhead and then back out to sea, and soon the noise of the terns returned to normal.

Before we left, one of the researchers pulled a Leach’s storm petrel out of its burrow to show us. I knew they bred on Eastern Egg Rock, but I hadn’t expected to see one because they’re usually underground during the day. We got to see it in the researcher’s hand, and even smell it — it smelled very good, almost citrusy. We said our goodbyes to the Leach’s storm petrel and Eastern Egg Rock, and made our way back down the rocks to our boat for the trip back to Hog Island.

Leach’s Storm Petrel

All too soon the day came for us to leave. We packed our bags, ate a quick breakfast, and then went down to the dock to wait for the boat to take us back to the mainland. We stepped onto the snowgoose 3 for the last time, and said our goodbyes to each other as we crossed the channel.

Hog Island Dock

I continue to find the story of the Audubon Society, Hog Island, and Project Puffin very inspiring — a testament to the positive impact a dedicated group of people, or even a single person, can have on conservation. Project Puffin took Maine from having barely any puffins left to multiple thriving colonies — all in one lifetime. It continues to work on seabird restoration and conservation sites all over the world, and Hog Island continues to serve its vital education function, as group after group of campers come to love it, and Egg Rock, and the birds. Some of those campers return to Hog Island as staff or researchers — I don’t know the exact number, but several of our councilors were previous campers. I know I’d like to go back if I get the chance. I think all who go to Hog Island come away with greater knowledge, new friends, and more hope.

Acknowledgements: I’d like to thank the National Audubon Society for awarding me an Ambassador Scholarship to attend the camp.

Shearwater Journeys Pelagic Birding Trip on Monterey Bay

October 26, 2018 / Ezra Staengl / Leave a comment

I stood along the railing of a large fishing boat, a strong, cold wind blowing on my face. The water of Monterey Bay was choppy and dark beneath a cloudy sky. Thousands of sooty shearwaters flew by both sides of the boat in long lines, flapping hard and fast low over the ocean and then soaring up above the horizon in arcing, stiff-winged glides. Two common murres flushed off the water in front of our boat, flying straight away from us over the waves.

Sooty Shearwater taking off.

Going on a Shearwater Journeys pelagic birding trip in Monterey Bay had been a dream of mine ever since my dad read The Big Year by Mark Obmascik out loud to my brother and I a few years ago. The Big Year is a goofy book that follows three birders competing in a North American Birding Big Year. One of the characters in The Big Year, a very competitive and stubborn birder named Sandy Komito, decided to do a pelagic birding trip with Debbi Shearwater of Shearwater Journeys. Sandy Komito enjoyed the trip until he realized that the boat was “wasting” valuable birding time looking at whales when he could’ve been adding birds to his year list. He went to the trips leader, Debbi Shearwater, and demanded that they keep moving. She denied him. He then went around the boat and asked every person whether they were there to see birds or whales. He confronted Debi again, informing her that 47 out of the 50 people on the boat were there to see birds, not whales. Debi — who did not move the boat for him — disliked his rude behavior so much that she gave a free trip to one of Sandy’s big year opponents. My brother and I laughed our heads off at this exchange.

Although pelagic birds could theoretically be found almost anywhere over the ocean, they concentrate around spots with lots of food, like Monterey Bay. Under the water of the Bay lies a huge submarine canyon which brings cold, nutrient rich water close to shore that forms the base of the Bay’s rich food web. Tens of thousands of migratory seabirds use the bay as a staging location during their long migrations, and some species like tufted puffin and ashy storm-petrel breed on nearby islands.

So there we were, four years after I’d first heard about the wonders of Monterey’s seabirds, on a boat with Debi Shearwater herself.

After exiting the harbor we traveled along the edge of a kelp forest. Flocks of elegant terns flew over, their rattling calls filling the foggy air. Great egrets and great blue herons hunted from atop the kelp mats. A peregrine falcon alighted on a tall cell tower just barely visible through the fog. Parasitic jaegers harassed gulls into giving up their meals, periodically flying over the boat.

As we turned away from the kelp beds and headed out into open water, someone spotted a gigantic ocean sunfish drifting near the surface of the ocean. The sunfish was bizarrely shaped, seemingly nothing but a large chunk of fish flesh with a weird fin that was feebly moving back and fourth above it. The ocean sunfish or mola mola is the heaviest bony fish in the world, sometimes weighing more than a ton. This one was several feet thick. The boat pulled up for a closer look, and we saw that the sunfish was actually being torn apart by sea lions and western gulls. The sea lions dove at the sunfish in a swirl of motion and emerged with their mouths full of chunks of bloody meat. The western gulls picked off the bits and pieces that fell out of the sea lions’ mouths. It was sad to see such an awesome creature being eaten — especially when it was apparently still alive — but it was fascinating to see all the feeding activity around it. We soon saw a few more, much smaller but healthy sunfish.

Western Gull with Pelagic Red Crab. Photo by Theo Staengl.

Suddenly I heard Debi yelling something in an excited voice. I looked around, worried that I was missing a bird. She repeated herself, and I realized she was talking about the pelagic red crabs that a couple of western gulls were happily munching on. One of the guides standing next to us remarked that “Debi can be a little excitable.” Debi was saying that it was unusual to see such large numbers of the red crabs in the bay except during years with unusually warm water, when they move up the California coast. I remembered seeing swarms of similar looking red crabs in the Channel Islands National Park near Los Angeles two years earlier, so this was interesting information.

A leader began throwing pieces of anchovies out of the boat, which soon attracted a hungry swarm of western gulls. Northern fulmars flew past the boat, occasionally dropping into the wake for a piece of anchovy. Someone yelled “pink footed shearwater!” I ran to the back of the boat and looked behind us at a large, slow-flapping shearwater with a white belly speeding towards us on bowed wings. At least one pink-footed shearwater followed the boat for the rest of the day, sometimes dropping so far behind us as to be barely visible, and then with a few flaps and subtle adjustments of its wings speeding up the wake to right behind the boat.

Pink-footed Shearwater

We continued our progress out into the bay, carefully scanning the sooty shearwaters for other shearwater species. We found a black-vented shearwater, slightly early in Monterey Bay. This was one of the few pelagic birds I had already seen, as they were the abundant shearwater in the Channel Islands when I visited. A Buller’s shearwater made a brief appearance in the in the chum slick, and I barely saw the bird’s bright white underside. Unfortunately it was the only one we saw all day, so I never got a better look. Our boat flushed common murres and rhinoceros and Cassin’s auklets every so often, as well as small flocks of red-necked and a few red phalaropes.

Black-footed Albatross

I began to wonder if we would see albatrosses on the trip. I was pretty sure they were still supposed to be reliable in early September, but I was getting worried since we hadn’t seen one yet. I needn’t have feared. A few minutes later, a large, dark seabird appeared on the horizon and began moving towards us. The black-footed albatrosses flight was graceful and even seemingly effortless. When one landed in the wake right behind the boat, we got a good size comparison with western gulls. The black-footed albatross looked double the size, and many times the weight. And they’re supposed to be a small species of albatross!

Black-footed Albatross

We arrived back at the harbor around 3:00 pm, exhausted from the wind and motion of the boat but thrilled with the birding experience. I got 12 life birds, which hasn’t happened in the United States for a long time. I also learned a ton about west coast pelagic birds and their identification, and got to see some amazing birds like the black-footed albatross. Debi Shearwater is retiring next year, so I would highly recommend anybody who’s interested to sign up for a trip with her while you still can.

The Blackbirds of Moonglow Dairy

September 15, 2018 / Ezra Staengl / 2 Comments

We drove into Moonglow Dairy on a dusty dirt road, scanning for blackbird flocks. We passed muddy cattle pens with little grass or other vegetation and looming heaps of compost. Even the leaves of the distant eucalyptus grove were brown with dust. Completing the picture, black phoebes hunted from the tops of leafless bushes. When we stepped out of the car, our faces contorted as we smelled hundreds of cows at close range. Cows stood in lines behind their food troughs, eating through piles and piles of slimy vegetables — which did not smell so great either. Flies swarmed in thick clouds around the cows and their rotting food, doing nothing to improve the atmosphere.

Cattle Pens at Moonglow Dairy. Photo by Theo Staengl

We were at this stinky cow farm to see a bird, specifically the tricolored blackbird. They have a fairly small range, mostly in California — making them an attractive target for birders from the east coast — although they also have scattered breeding colonies in Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Baja California. Tricolored blackbirds breed in large communal colonies in fresh water cattail marshes, but they seem to gravitate to more artificial habitats for foraging, such as fields and cattle pens in their range.

Tricolored blackbirds look very similar to a much more widespread species, red-winged blackbirds. Males of both species are medium sized, glossy black and have a red patch on the shoulder bordered by a light-colored stripe. Females are streaked brown and white. The only field mark our field guide gave to separate males of the two species was that on tricolored blackbirds, the light line was supposed to be white, while on red-winged blackbirds it was supposed to be yellow. The book did warn that the shoulder patches of freshly molted or molting male tricolored blackbirds could look more yellowish though. Not much to go off, as we soon realized.

We got our birding stuff and braved the foul air and flies, walking slowly up the road. We saw a few blackbirds, but they were mostly hidden from view by small hills. Most of the ones we could see clearly were Brewer’s, although there were some with thick yellow stripes on their shoulders. As far as we knew, tricolored blackbirds should have white next to the red on their shoulders, so we decided that the birds we saw with the thick, yellow stripe must be red-winged rather than tricolored. Even so, I was pretty sure I had never seen a red-winged blackbird with this much yellow on the wing and so little red. Could it be a plumage I didn’t see often, such as that of an immature male? Just as we were coming to this conclusion, a huge mass of blackbirds lifted off from behind a distant barn and descended into the cattle pen in front of us, totally swamping the few birds we had been struggling to see before. Of the hundreds of birds now present, almost all had the thick yellow stripe, while a few had a massive red patch and almost no lighter color at all. Surely all these birds couldn’t be immature male redwings. We decided that the tricolored and red-winged blackbirds must be distinguishable from each other based on the relative whiteness of the “yellow” stripe rather than on a clear categorical difference.

A tiny portion of the huge flock of blackbirds. Photo by Theo Staengl

At that point our search became farcical. My brother Theo started pointing out birds with light colored stripes that he thought were whiter than those on the birds surrounding them. Unfortunately, I could see no decisive difference between the birds he claimed were tricolored and the birds that looked exactly the same to me, that we agreed were red-wings, sitting right next to them. He pointed out bird after bird with supposedly whiter wing stripes. Even the act of finding his birds amidst the mass of feeding blackbirds was a struggle. He would zoom our scope in to its maximum distance and attempt to convey the location of the bird he wanted me to look at with land marks as unpredictable as which way the fattest pigeon in the scope view was facing. Inevitably, just as I thought I had found the right bird, the entire scope field would be taken up by the curious head of a cow.

Tricolored blackbirds, European starlings and rock pigeons feeding under a cow. Photo by Theo Staengl

Theo grew impatient with my inability to see the birds with obviously whiter stripes and I grew more and more frustrated. To make matters worse, my parents, who sometimes still cannot identify a bird as striking as a pelican in flight, chimed in that they too saw birds with whiter stripes than others. What the heck was going on? Was I suddenly color blind? I didn’t think so, but it was hard to rule out the possibility. I know it’s silly, but I particularly can’t stand my little brother getting a bird that I miss. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it hurts. He saw a bananaquit in Florida, for instance, while I was scanning the wrong bush for it. The bird spent half a second in the bush Theo was watching, and then disappeared, never to return.

We continued our search for the now seemingly mythical white stripe blackbirds for about three hours before we gave up and walked dejectedly down onto the trail that went around the nearby pond next to Elkhorn Slough. A pectoral sandpiper and several semipalmated plovers foraged in what I thought looked suspiciously like watery decomposing cow manure. A cinnamon teal flew by.

We ran into an older English birder who said he had been coming to Moonglow for years. He said the tricolored blackbirds were molting, which was why the feathers looked yellow instead of white. All the red-winged blackbirds he had seen at Moonglow had been of the California bicolored group, so they had almost no color other than red on their wings. Therefore, they were even easier to distinguish from the tricolored blackbirds than the more eastern group of red-winged blackbirds would be.

The heavens opened and I heard the angelic chorus sing.

Tricolored blackbird in a relaxed posture. When these birds were feeding I hardly ever saw any red on the shoulder.

We got our life bird tricolored blackbird, but more importantly, I was able to leave feeling that I had learned and now understood the identification of North American Agelaius blackbirds at a deeper level. Clearly, size of the light color on the shoulder is a much better field mark for separating male red-winged and tricolored blackbirds than color. Even if the red-winged blackbirds at that particular location had been of the more eastern “tricolored” group, they still wouldn’t have had as thick a light stripe as the tricolored blackbirds did. We did not escape Moonglow unscathed, however, our rental car — newly christened the Mobile Cow Pie — smelled like a dairy for the rest of our vacation, and when we returned it at the airport it was the dirtiest car in the garage by a large margin. Oh well, some things are worth a little dirt.

An Ecotourism Success Story: Refugio Paz de Las Aves

February 12, 2018February 15, 2018 / Ezra Staengl / 1 Comment

I first heard about the Refugio Paz de Las Aves — which translates as Birds of Peace Refuge — from Noah Strycker, an ornithological writer and big year birder at a talk he gave at the Biggest Week in American Birding Festival in Ohio in 2016. He told the story of a man in north-west Ecuador who had trained rare, strange looking, tropical birds to come out when he called them. It sounded amazing to me, but I had no idea that only two years later I would be going to the same place.

I watched the shadows of the predawn forest from a bamboo blind, eagerly waiting for my first views of an Andean cock-of-the-rock at the Refugio Paz de Las Aves lek. Andean cock-of-the-rocks are one of the many species of birds that form communal displays, called leks, where multiple males gather to display for females. In most species of birds that lek, the males don’t help with nesting or raising the young, but they sure do put on a show.

As the sky began to lighten, I heard faint croaking noises coming from the trees. The sun rose, revealing five or six huge, striking, red birds with black and white wing patches in the trees in front of the blind. They began to jump and flap their wings while making loud squawking calls.

Andean Cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus)

Once the sun had completely risen the cock-of-the-rocks continued to display, although a little less vigorously. Apparently, if a female were to show up, they would go crazy with their displays again. We took a last look at them, and walked up the path out of the forest. A brilliantly green bird with a red breast, a golden-headed quetzal, flew over us and landed in a tree. As we emerged from the forest onto a dirt road, clouds drifted overhead. I thought I caught a glimpse of a swift in the clouds several times, but it would always disappear before I could identify it. The founders of Paz de las Aves, Angel and Rodrigo Paz, met us at the road, and than disappeared into the forest to look for the giant antpittas Angel had trained.

Antpittas are a very secretive family of large tropical birds that like to hop around in dense brush and eat worms. The giant antpitta, especially, is a skilled hider, and on top of that, a very rare, range-restricted Choco endemic. Landowner Angel Paz didn’t know this information, though, when he first noticed a giant antpitta eating worms on a recently made trail years ago. He had already discovered the cock-of-the-rock lek on his land, and begun showing it to tourists. Angel spent the following days studying the bird, learning about its habits and what it ate. He tried feeding it worms, but at first it wouldn’t accept them. Finally, one day the bird ate the worms he offered. He named her Maria, and trained her to come out whenever he called in exchange for worms. When he realized that there were other species of antpittas on his property, such as chestnut-crowned, yellow-breasted, ochre-breasted and mustached, he worked on training those as well. Now birders travel from all over the world to see Maria and the other antpittas, and he makes a much better living from conserving the forest and all the species that depend on it than he ever did logging it, as he once did.

We stood in the road listening to the loud low whistles of Angel’s imitations of the giant antpitta’s call. Our guide said that the antpittas were not as reliable in the rainy season, because it was easier for them to get worms on their own. Despite his pessimism, I began to hear a whistled response to Angel’s imitations. Sometimes the antpitta’s call was just barely audible above the chorus of frog noises, and sometimes it seemed like the bird might hop out into the path at any moment. Just when the bird began to sound particularly close, a motorbike roared by, and it didn’t respond again for several minutes. Finally, after almost an hour of tense waiting, a large bird with a rufous belly barred with black, and a big, thick, bill hopped out onto the path where Angel had set down worms.

Giant Antpitta (Grallaria gigantea) Angel told us this bird was Maria’s mate.

I watched with fascination as the giant antpitta ate, thinking about how so many birders, including Noah Strycker, had seen this bird or his mate before me. Eventually, he finished his worms, looked up at us for the last time, and hopped back into the forest.

We continued up the road, where Angel had once again disappeared into the woods. When we arrived at the end of a dirt trail off the road, Angel and Rodrigo were waiting with a family of dark-backed wood quail eating a banana. Dark-backed wood quail are another secretive endemic that was nearly impossible to see with any certainty until Angel trained them to come out.

Dark-backed Wood Quail (Odontophorus melanonotus) This is a link to a video I took of the wood quail family on youtube: https://youtu.be/AvA-ufjqlxA

The wood quail and their chicks ate the banana voraciously within three or four feet of us before slowly wandering down the slope.

The next stop, on a steep, densely wooded hillside, was to see the yellow-breasted antpitta. Angel called for it, and threw worms into a clear space amid a tangle of branches and roots below us. It wasn’t long before a small, brown-backed, yellow-breasted bird emerged from the brush, and started gobbling down the worms.

We walked through the Paz de las Aves lodge and past signs saying “ochre-breasted and mustached antpittas that way” and onto a trail that followed the top of a bluff into the forest. We followed the trail down the steep, muddy slope of the hill. Monkeys hooted and climbed in the huge palms in the distance. Eventually the trail leveled out, and we stopped to call for the ochre-breasted antpittas. We soon saw three of these tiny, adorable antpittas eating worms and hopping on the sticks in front of us.

I believe this individual Ochre-breasted Antpitta (Grallaricula flavirostris) was named Chiquira.

As the ochre-breasted antpittas began to retreat into the forest, Angel began throwing nuts he had picked up earlier onto the ground. Apparently, the mustached antpitta that he had trained, named Jose, was attracted by the noise of the nuts hitting the ground. Jose soon appeared, hopping with much more dignity than the tiny ochre-breasted antpittas, who backed up to let him pass.

Jose the Mustached Antpitta (Grallaria alleni)

We took our final looks at the antpittas and walked back toward the lodge, where we had a delicious breakfast of mashed and fried green bananas filled with cheese and empanadas. While we ate, we watched toucan barbets and blue-winged mountain-tanagers eat at a banana feeder. Violet-tailed sylphs, velvet purple coronets, and fawn-breasted brilliants buzzed and swooped around the hummingbird feeders.

Paz de las Aves shows how effective ecotourism can be as a conservation tool. Now, instead of logging patches of forest, planting crops, and then moving on to the next forest — while there is still forest left to clear– Angel and his brother can conserve the area just by being able to show a couple of birds to visitors. Not only is Paz de Las Aves financially important for the Paz family, but it’s one of the main attractions in the wider Mindo region, where visiting birders and other tourists spend money on numerous goods and services.