Nelson County Big Day

May 21, 2018May 21, 2018 / Ezra Staengl / 2 Comments

Big days are an old birding tradition. During a birding big day, individuals or teams compete with each-other as they try to see the most species in a given 24 hour period. Often big days are used by conservation organizations as fundraisers, like the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory’s (CVWO) Kiptopeke Challenge. Teams collect pledges for the CVWO for every species that they see during the big day. I participated in last year’s Kiptopeke Challenge, and my team, Team Turnstone, raised over $400. Other members of the Blue Ridge Young Birders Club (BRYBC) and I enjoyed the Kiptopeke Challenge so much that we decided to do our own big day, as a fundraiser for our club.

Since I moved to Nelson County four years ago, I have been frustrated with the lack of knowledge about how and where to find birds in the County. I couldn’t just look on eBird like I usually do when I’m looking for new places to bird, because very few people submit bird sitings from Nelson County. Nelson has 2,243 checklists on eBird at the time of this writing, compared to adjacent Albemarle’s 18,248.

Learning more about birding my local area is a very rewarding experience, as it puts me in touch with my surroundings. Whenever I’m walking or driving in Nelson, I’m always looking for new and interesting habitats and wondering what birds might live in them. I’ve already found one first Nelson County record, a canvasback at Lake Nelson, and I expect more will follow.

I figured since our club was doing a big day as a fundraiser, I might as well use it as an excuse to learn more about Nelson County. There are still so many places I look at on google maps and wonder about what birds could be there. I hoped the big day might help me answer some of those questions. I invited my friends Drew, Tucker, Ander, Paul and my brother Theo, and got planning.

Our group (minus Theo and Ander) at Rockfish Valley Trail at sunset. Photo by Galen Staengl

Our big day started at 6:00 PM on Saturday April 28th. As the count time started, we were walking down a steep trail into a rich river gorge just below Wintergreen Ski Resort. Spring ephemerals such as sessile and perfoliate bellwort, Solomon’s seal, wild geraniums and showy orchid carpeted the ground around us. Drew called out that he saw spring coralroot, a leafless orchid that gets all of its nutrients from parasitizing fungi. Drew and I had found the first county record of this plant nearby in 2016.

Spring Coralroot (Corallorhiza wisteriana)

The flowers were beautiful, but there weren’t many birds out. In fact, I hadn’t heard a single species since we started birding. No matter, I knew from last year that as soon as we crossed the creek we would get to better habitat and the activity would pick up. As we descended into the ravine, the noisy rushing of the creek — freshly swollen from recent heavy spring rains — reached our ears. We came out of the forest at the bank of the creek, and I realized that the water was too high to cross. So much for that. We decided to cut our losses and get to Rockfish Valley Trail for the rest of the evening.

The Rockfish Valley Trail, running next to the south fork of the Rockfish River, is the best known birding spot in Nelson. Parts are forested, but most of the land is open pasture and brushy fields. We took our time birding, as we had no where else we needed to be before dark. We saw 36 species, including eastern kingbird, eastern meadowlark and a beautiful Cape May warbler. We left the Rockfish Valley Trail at 7:30, and headed south towards Shipman, where I had a nightjar spot staked out.

We arrived at Sturt Park, a large tract of land near Shipman, just as it was getting dark. We walked up an old trail through a dense forest of loblolly and shortleaf pines. The loblollies were no doubt planted, but they had grown up in such a way as to appear almost natural. Spring peepers called loudly from the puddles in the path. The occasional dry trill of an upland chorus frog came from the surrounding pines. A prairie warbler sang, its rising buzzy trill cutting through the loud frog calls. Once it was totally dark, besides the bright full moon which was rising above the pines, we heard our first eastern whip-poor-will singing. Soon there were many calling simultaneously, their voice intertwining from all directions in a loud cacophony of whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will…

The next morning we fell out of our beds at 4:30 am, hoping we would be able to hear rails, bitterns, or marsh wrens before the sun rose at the wetland impoundments at James River State WMA. As we pulled into the dirt parking lot overlooking the muddy James River we heard the songs of common yellowthroats coming from the marsh. A wild turkey gobble drifted out of the fog. Yellow-breasted chats whistled and grunted from the field across the wetland from us.

Yellow-breasted Chat (Photo taken at James River State WMA later in the day, after the sun rose)

We walked out along the marsh impoundment as the sun slowly began to light up the eastern sky. Soon it was light enough to see a little bit of color. Someone spotted a small rufous colored bird hopping around in the base of a willow. Could it be a marsh wren? It was only a swamp sparrow — still new for the day — but not as exciting as a marsh wren. Finally the sun rose, and the marsh came alive with bird song. We began adding species to our day list left and right. Prothonotary and yellow-throated warblers and a warbling vireo sang from the large maples, ashes and sycamores along the river. When we reached the end of the wetland, we turned around and walked back towards our car. A northern waterthrush sang in a thick tangle of brush next to the marsh. We stopped briefly by the same willow clump that we’d seen the swamp sparrow in earlier, and to our surprise a small rufous bird was once again hopping around. I raised my binoculars and saw that it was a marsh wren. It was Nelson County’s 3rd record, and the first one in the spring.

Marsh Wren

We left James River State WMA half an hour later, with our big day total being 70.

Our next stop was the parking lot for Crabtree Falls, where we hoped to get some mountain breeding warblers. I had never birded there before, so like most of the big day, it was an experiment, but after our highly successful morning along the James River I was feeling pretty good about it. As we drove up into the mountains, the Tye River rushed and crashed over rocks right next to the road. Suddenly, someone yelled, “Go back, I see ducks!” We quickly turned around and were thrilled, if somewhat unsurprised — there are only so many ducks that can be found in a small mountain river in central VA during April — to find two common mergansers sitting on a rock in the middle of the river. Unfortunately, they flew away before we could get any decent photos.

The Crabtree Falls area was a bit of a disappointment. We added a few species, including black-and-white warbler, ovenbird, blue-headed vireo, and black-throated green warbler. The next stop, Montebello State Fish Hatchery, was slightly more successful. A small, slow sandy bottomed stream flowed next to the road. We heard the high buzzy song of a blackburnian warbler coming from a group of old pines. A Louisiana waterthrush sang from the stream. We drove up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, keeping our eyes and ears peeled for warblers.

Wind whistled up the valleys towards us as we drove along the parkway, obscuring any faint warbler song we might’ve been able to hear. We did manage to see some raptors fighting against the wind, including broad-winged hawk, red-tailed hawk and American kestrel. Periodically, we stopped at areas sheltered from the wind and got out of the car to listen, but there just wasn’t much singing other than the occasional American redstart, black-and-white warbler or black-throated green warbler. I wondered if the lack of warblers was because we were too late in the day, too early in the season, or perhaps it was just too windy?

We exited the Blue Ridge Parkway at Wintergreen Ski Resort, where we hoped to find breeding dark-eyed juncos or common ravens. We drove up a winding road to a parking lot called Devil’s Knob, overlooking the ski slopes from the top of the mountain. Sure enough, we quickly heard the rattling, musical trill of a dark-eyed junco, and we soon found a few more.

Dark Eyed Juncos are a common breeding species at high elevations in the Appalachians, but they are completely absent from lower elevations during the summer. Photo by Theo Staengl

Just as we were getting ready to leave, the distinctive shape of a common raven appeared over the ridge. At least that stop went as planned.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. It was hot, and we were getting tired. We birded several more locations without finding any new species, including the Rockfish Valley Trail and the adjacent Horizons Eco Village.

Things finally began to pick up around 4:00 PM as we got to Schuyler. We found a spot where the road went over the dammed Rockfish River, and got out to look for cliff swallows. I was excited to see about twenty of them swirling around over the water, every now and then carrying an insect under the bridge to their nests.

Cliff swallows often nest under bridges over rivers. The only place I’d heard of them breeding in Nelson was the Howardsville Bridge over the James River, which was too far out of our way to go for the big day, so it was especially lucky to find a new colony that day. Photo by Theo Staengl

An osprey flew over the reservoir, shrieking loudly and scattering the swallows. I added up our list for the first time since the morning, and found that we were at 94 species, significantly more than I expected. Could we make it to 100 before we had to be back in Charlottesville for the tally/potluck at 6:00 PM? I was happy with our Nelson County birding, feeling that I had gained significantly in my knowledge of Nelson’s bird life, so I decided we should spend our last hour in Albemarle, where we hoped we’d be able to add a few more species more easily.

Our first stop was King Family Vineyards, where two artificial ponds often hold shorebirds. I quickly found a spotted sandpiper in the scope, along with the hooded mergansers that have bred there for the last two years. As we drove toward Charlottesville we talked about the easiest way to get four more species. We decided on the Secluded Farm Trail at Kemper Park, where both kinds of tanagers and Kentucky warblers are usually reliable. With any luck, we would stumble on another new bird as well. We ran up the trail into a large field with old growth tulip populars scattered in the middle. Tucker led us down a path into the woods where he often had Kentucky warblers. Just as we were giving up hope of finding any new birds before we had to go, the three rising whistles of a black-throated blue warbler reached our ears. A scarlet tanager started making chick-burr calls to our left. We knew we had to leave then in order to be in time to get to Ivy Creek, so we sadly trooped back to the car. Just our luck to have an amazing day of birding and end up just two short of 100. Oh well.

On our drive to Ivy Creek I looked over the tally one more time, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. To my surprise, I saw I hadn’t counted the whip-poor-will. 99. Then I realized I didn’t remember putting down wild turkey. With mounting excitement, I looked back through the checklist, and sure enough, wild turkey wasn’t marked. We’d made it to 100 after all. We were thrilled, probably more so than a two bird difference should have made. I handed the list to Paul and Theo to count, and they added an additional two species that I’d forgotten. We finished the day with 98 species in Nelson County, plus an additional 4 in Albemarle County.

Birding Big Day in the Lower Rio Grande Valley

November 16, 2017November 21, 2017 / Ezra Staengl / 2 Comments

Thick mist rolled off the spiny limbs of unfamiliar tropical vegetation as strange calls pierced the stillness of the early morning. We crossed over a small channel of water, watching for green kingfishers, and then walked into the woods on the other side. Large oak branches draped in Spanish moss hung over the trail.

We were at the famous Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, located in the very southern tip of Texas. Birding at Santa Ana and other locations in southern Texas had been a long awaited dream for me, and it felt unreal that it was finally happening. My friends and I were participating in the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival (RGVBF), and had scheduled this day to be a “big day,” an attempt to see as many species as possible in 24 hours. We had all agreed in advance that we would be extremely relaxed about the pace, as we wanted to have as much time as we wanted with each new species.

As we continued walking through the old, tropical woodland, we heard the calls of great kiskadees, plain chachalacas, long-billed thrashers, and golden-fronted woodpeckers. Mourning, white-winged, and Inca doves foraged on the ground. Up ahead the trail opened into a large, wet marsh, called Pintail Lake. As we walked out on an elevated dike towards the water, we heard American pipits, and spotted a vermillion flycatcher and two tropical kingbirds perched on projecting sticks. We set down our scopes and started scanning the many ducks on the water. We quickly found 11 species, including black-bellied whistling duck, mottled duck, redhead, and the lakes namesake, the northern pintail.

As we were about to get back into the cars, a small, gray Buteo flew low over the parking lot and landed in a nearby tree. It was a gray hawk, a lifer for most of us.

Gray Hawk (Buteo plagiatus), photo by Theo Staengl

I had never been to our next stop, a small city park called Anzalduas, before, but I had heard it was a good place for zone-tailed hawk. We drove there on roads on top of high dikes overlooking the Rio Grande. Border Patrol vans were everywhere, but most just waved at us as we drove past. When we finally got to Anzalduas, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. A far cry from most of the natural areas we were birding in the Rio Grande Valley, Anzalduas was a large expanse of sparse grass under periodically spaced trees, broken only by decrepit playground equipment. The only other people around were twenty or so border patrol agents.

A local constable drove up and unpleasantly informed us that the road we had driven on into the park was closed to the public, despite the complete absence of signs saying so. He warned he’d give us a citation next time. We walked up a side road to another dike, across the park from the Rio Grande that was supposedly a very reliable spot for zone-tailed hawk, and possibly for hook-billed kite. After several uneventful minutes, two things happened very quickly. First, I noticed the constable’s car coming up the road toward us, and a large, thin-winged, mostly black raptor, a zone-tailed hawk, flew low over us. We ignored the constable, and had beautiful looks at the hawk.

Zone-tailed Hawk (Buteo albonotatus)

When we looked down from the hawk, we saw the constable talking with my mom and our unofficial guide, who knew the local area well. The constable pointed to two huge signs in front of the road we had just walked up, that said “no public use.” We had honestly missed the signs because we had approached from the side, but from the constable’s perspective it sure looked sketchy. In the end he let us go, and we hurried quickly off the dike. The only other notable bird we saw at Anzalduas was a house finch, locally uncommon in the Rio Grande Valley.

Forty minutes later, we pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Frontera Audubon Center’s small tropical reserve. We walked the short, dirt trails through dense undergrowth, scanning the bushes around us for warblers and clay-colored thrushes. As we neared a small feeder station near the visitor center, we found our first thrush flock, with about five clay-colored thrushes.

The range of the clay-colored thrush (Turdus grayi) just barely extends into the United States in the very southern tip of Texas. Clay-colored thrushes and many other predominantly central American species that just extend into the southern Rio Grande Valley are what makes south Texas such a birding hotspot. These species are often referred to in the US as Rio Grande specialties, even though many of them are much more abundant further south.

We continued on the trails deeper into the woods, listening and looking for warbler activity. That morning, someone had spotted a tropical parula there, which would be a life bird for all of us. Soon we came to a wooden platform overlooking a small lake. Warblers, mainly orange crowned, chipped and flitted in the dense willows. We scanned the flock to the best of our ability, and were able to add Nashville, black-and-white, and black-throated green warblers to our day list. We spent another hour roaming the trails looking for the tropical parula, but it proved to be a waste of time. I was able to photograph a buff-bellied hummingbird, another fairly range restricted species, at one of the feeding stations, though.

Buff-bellied Hummingbird (Amazilia yucatanensis)

As we got out of the car at Estero Llano Grande State Park, I was beginning to feel worried we had spent too much time at Frontera, and we wouldn’t have enough day-light at South Padre Island, an important shorebird spot, later in the day. Evan so, I couldn’t help enjoying the bountiful ducks at the visitor center lake at Estero. Wild ducks swam peacefully about, clearly used to humans being nearby. A vermillion flycatcher foraged from a dead stick over the marsh, its brilliant red belly and crown contrasting beautifully with its brown back and eye-line. We added cinnamon teal and least grebe to our day list. One of the birds I was personally most excited to see here was the common pauraque, a large tan nightjar of Central and South America. While it is locally extremely common in south Texas, it is so cryptically patterned that one could easily walk within a foot without seeing it. We were walking along a dusty dirt road near where pauraques have been known to roost when I almost stepped on one. Once we noticed it, we were so focused on photographing it, we failed to see two others within a yard of it until some kind older birders pointed them out. What a weird looking bird!

Common Pauraque (Nyctidromus albicollis)

We raced along the highway as the sky became cloudier and the sun sank ever lower toward the horizon. Our rental car’s tinted windows probably did not help our feeling of impending darkness. When we stepped out of the car at the mudflats above the South Padre Island Convention Center, wind coming off the Laguna Madre buffeted us and tore at our clothing and scopes. We hurried over the muddy sand toward distant shorebird flocks, hoping the incoming tide wouldn’t strand us. As soon as we could, we put down our scopes and started scanning. We quickly found most of the common shorebirds we needed, along with two piping and snowy plovers. It was only the second time I had ever seen a snowy plover, and it was a lifer for some of my friends. We ran back to the cars across what were now inches of water, soaking our shoes. We spent the rest of the daylight birding around the slightly more sheltered trails of the convention center. Our list for the day was 126 species, the most I have ever seen in a day.

Kiptopeke Challenge 2017: A Birding Big Day on the Eastern Shore

September 26, 2017September 30, 2017 / Ezra Staengl / 6 Comments

I felt completely awake despite it being two hours before dawn from the anxiousness and excitement churning inside me. My brother Theo, our friend Tucker Beamer, and I stood in the high grass of the salt marsh at Pleasure House Point Natural Area in Virginia Beach. The sounds of the high buzzy chip notes of migrating warblers occasionally pierced the quiet as they flew overhead. We were competing in a birding big day known as the Kiptopeke Challenge (KC) in order to see as many species as we could in a twenty four hour day, and raise money for the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory (CVWO), an important conservation and field research organization in the area. We had registered ourselves as Team Turnstone.

Team Turnstone at Cape Charles later in the day

Over the past month, we had meticulously planned a birding route up the Eastern Shore of Virginia from Pleasure House Point, and we were thrilled to finally be putting our plan into action. Suddenly, we heard the hoarse croak of a yellow-crowned night-heron as it flushed out of the grass somewhere off to our right. The first identified species of the day! The low grunting of resting mallard ducks drifted to us on the still night air from the water. The raucous repeated “kek” calls of a clapper rail erupted out of the marsh and then died back. We hurried back to the car, and drove to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT).

At 5:25 AM we pulled into the deserted parking lot of the first CBBT island, a famous birding spot, but not one I had high hopes for in the dark. In the dim light of street lamps, we spotted the blobs of two sleeping shorebirds on the rocks in the surf below. Closer inspection showed a ruddy turnstone and a sanderling, as well as two more juvenile yellow-crowned night-herons.

We were particularly excited for our next stop, a small section of bay-side beachfront in southern Northampton County called Sunset Beach. We had heard that hundreds of warblers that had overshot during the night and found themselves on the edge of the difficult to cross Chesapeake Bay flew back up the peninsula of the Eastern Shore at dawn every day. We found a Wilson’s warbler foraging in the brush, but not yet much else. We arrived just as the sun was rising, and as we waited for more warblers, we birded along the beach in the half light. We saw common gulls, pelicans, and cormorant for the first time that day.

Coming back to the small woodlot near where we had parked, we saw that other Kiptopeke Challenge teams had gathered in expectation of the great flight. Among them was the Blue Ridge Great Horns, the other youth team. They were Tucker’s older brother, Baxter Beamer, Gabriel Mapel, and Max Nootbaar. They jauntily approached us and asked how we were doing. We asked them the same question instead of answering. Baxter told us that they had done more pre-dawn birding than us, and as a result had some birds that we didn’t, like bobolink, Swainson’s thrush, and northern harrier. They didn’t have Wilson’s warbler though. All further talking was interrupted by a barrage of warbler flight calls. We hurried to take up our position with the rest of the teams as 20 warblers streaked low over head and disappeared into the dense pines. Over the next hour, we watched more than 600 warblers of almost 20 different species zip over the gap and up the peninsula. It was hard to identify them from so brief a look, and to compound the problem, by KC rules, everyone in the team has to see a bird for it to be countable on the team’s list. Even so, I enjoyed the challenge and the feeling of wonder at the sheer amount of birds.

Northern parulas were one of the most common species on the morning flight at Sunset Beach. Photo by Tucker Beamer

When the constant stream of warblers finally began to die down, we had around 60 species for the day, and it was only 7:40 AM. We said goodbye to the Great Horns, and headed to our next stop, the Eastern Shore of Virginia NWR. We hoped the other teams wouldn’t stop here, and we might be able to get some birds back on them. We saw a beautiful American kestrel as we drove in to the refuge.

American kestrel

Other notable birds at Eastern Shore of Virginia NWR included sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawk, a late eastern kingbird, and house finch, supposedly a difficult bird on the Eastern Shore. At the Kiptopeke Hawk Platform, we were surprised by how close the migrating raptors were. At the Rockfish Gap Hawkwatch in Augusta, the raptors appear as little specks in the sky, but at Kiptopeke most birds are low. We saw our first confirmed merlin, as well as a tufted titmouse, a sometimes difficult species in Northampton. We drove to Magotha Road, where we hoped to see Eurasian collared dove and marsh wren. Sadly, the only new birds we added were peregrine falcon, least sandpiper, great egret, foresters tern, and eastern bluebird. As we were about to leave, the Great Horns drove up again. They asked us how we were doing again. When they learned that we were quickly catching up to them, they left in a hurry. We continued on to Cape Charles Beach, where we hoped to pick up the other tern species. The sea oats on the dunes blew lazily in the midday wind. I was beginning to feel the strain of such an intense schedule, but the terns flying by quickly distracted me. We were only able to pick out royal and sandwich terns here, leaving us to hope we could get caspian and common at Chincoteague later in the day. At the town of Willis Wharf’s lovely scented boatyard, (the freshest air in the place was the abandoned porta potty), we once again saw our mascot bird, the ruddy turnstone, perched atop a mountain of oyster shells.

Go Team Turnstone!

Now we had a long time in the car, as we drove all the way up to Saxis Wildlife Management Area in the most northern part of Virginia’s portion of the Delmarva Peninsula. Seemingly endless plains of salt marsh stretched out from the road in all directions. We got out of the car, feeling the hot sun beating down on us, and “pished” at the grass. A seaside sparrow flew up and further away from us. We clapped half-heartedly, hoping to coax a Virginia rail into responding, but since it was literally the middle of the day, we didn’t have much hope. After about a minute, some Virginia rail, somewhere way out in the marsh, decided it just wanted us to shut-up and let it rest. The grunting call of the rail was barely perceptible to us, but we could count the bird.

Now we could continue to our last stop, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. We had planned on spending most of the afternoon at Chincoteague, which proved to be a mistake, as Chincoteague just isn’t that good in the Fall. We should have spent more time birding sites in Northampton County. But Chincoteague is always pretty good, and we weren’t entirely disappointed. We were disappointed by the number of people using the beach. Why on earth does every beachgoer in the world have to decide to come out to a wildlife refuge when they could literally choose any other spot of sand?! The beach was so crowded, you could hardly see the ocean from behind the lines of sunbathers. We hurried past, toward the Tom’s Cove mudflats where we hoped for shorebirds. One of the first birds we spotted was my Virginia lifer piping plover.

Piping Plover posing for photographs

Shortly afterward, we found a sandpiper flock, with some semipalmated sandpipers, sanderling, and semipalmated plovers. There was also a least sandpiper, and many black-bellied plovers. These were all new birds for the day, except the least.

Semipalmated Plover

As we continued down the beach, we were surprised by the lack of willits and marbled godwits, which should have been common. Up ahead, we saw a giant flock of gulls and terns and decided to scan it. They were mostly great-black backed, herring, ring-billed and laughing gulls and royal terns, but we were able to find caspian and common terns mixed in as well. Suddenly, a flock of 31 red knots flew in from the ocean side, and landed nearby. This was a day-bird and Virginia lifer for me.

Red Knots preening

We birded around Chincoteague for the rest of the day. Highlights included an adult Lincoln’s sparrow, a bird never before seen on the Kiptopeke Challenge, that we spotted on the Black Duck Trail.

Lincoln’s Sparrow. Photo by Tucker Beamer.

As the sun was setting, we hurried back out to the beach to give willits and marbled godwits another shot. As we walked down the now empty beach, massive flocks of willets and red knots were everywhere. We were able to pick out four marbled godwits in a flock of over 50 willits. Thank goodness we eventually got those birds! After dinner, we came back out to the refuge to try for owls and nocturnal migrants, but we came up with nothing new. We had planned on listening for more nocturnal migrants back at our hotel, but I guess the beds just looked too good. It was 10:30 PM, and we had been up since 4:00 AM. We went to bed. Our total for the day was 107 species, perhaps not as good as we hoped, but still a fairly solid number, and we’ll be back next year to do better.