Category: Birding Notes

Kauai Birding Summary 11-2019

White-tailed Tropicbirds were easily seen in various places.

Although this trip has been based out of the Pono Kai resort about midway up the east coast of Kauai, and has not been primarily a birding trip, I’ve had pretty good chances to get out birding, though have not been able to access any of the higher elevation native habitats needed to see most of the endemic species. Rain- heavy at times- and driving sedan with not-new tires has prevented even trying the dirt roads needed for access to Koke’e State Park and the Alaki i Swamp areas I’d have liked to get to bird in.
At the Fern Grotto on a boat ride up the only river large enough to navigate in Kauai, the most common bird was feral Rock Pigeon.

Still I brought a spotting scope, and have birded most of the lower elevation spots I knew about.
My #1 take away is that it is hard to find many species of birds on Kauai.
Pacific Golden Plovers are all over Kauai at this time of year.

Hawaii life list prior to this trip, when I’d really only casually birded near Honolulu, and on Maui and Kauai, was only 20 species on eBird. I’d visited Maui in 1992 and Kauai in 2003. I know I had a few more, but didn’t keep good records so that was my starting point. Now with 1 more day and low expectations for any new birds, my HI list stands at 41.

Common Myna

At first glance that seems pitiful. I must admit I have not really worked the urban areas to try for every possible introduced species. Misses have included Red Avadavat, Saffron Finch, Japanese Bush-warbler, and African Silverbill.
Hawaiian Black-necked Stilt

My birding started at the airport in Maui, where I had a 55 minute layover before changing planes to Kauai. I saw House Sparrow and Common Myna there.
I had learned from the Hawaii Audubon Society website 2 most common birds, Common Myna and Zebra Dove. I believe that. This was one of the few lists that did not have both of those species.
On arrival at our condo, it was dark, so Sunday AM we took a brief walk on the Kapa’a State Beach State Park walkway. Very nice paved walk, on abandoned sugar plantation train route, 4 miles long on Kapa’a shore. #1 eBirder for this hotspot is George Gertz from WA. I managed 10 species, including new HI birds for me White-rumped Sharma. As expected, but still really cool, were Pacific Golden Plovers everywhere. Seen in WA in migration, usually fall juveniles. Fly across the Pacific from Alaska. Here seen all over. Rooftops, parking lots, any grassy area. Wonder what Parr is for a golf course in PGPL / hole. My guess is higher than parr for golf shots.
Red-crested Cardinal is one of the more common exotic songbirds here.

Also Sunday we visited ‘Opaeka’s Falls, a nice view but 4 species of birds previously seen. Farther south along Hwy 50 we pulled out at a scenic lookout, and got nice but distant looks at two new HI birds for me, White-tailed Tropicbird and Rose-ringed Parakeet. Also spectacular vistas of a distant waterfall, the seemingly ubiquitous rainbow we have seen this week, (speaks to the weather) and fought off the domestic Jungle Fowl.

Nene, or Hawaiian Goose is fairly common after a successful recovery program.

Monday I headed out myself, leaving Marian to explore Kapa’a Town, and fought rain most of the morning. I planned to head south, visiting some urban, forested and wetland areas. As is often the case when visiting new areas access to viewing was difficult, but I had a nice morning. First was Hule’ia NWR. Heavy rain made it tough, but I managed to see a few Warbling White-eyes, (used to be Japanese White-eye prior to a lump of Japanese and Mountain White-eyes in 2018). I tried and failed to find viewable access to the reservoirs around Koloa, but stumbled upon a birdy area of farmland, finding my only Chinese Hwamei of the trip so far, and great looks at adult male White-rumped Sharma with their long streaming tail feathers.
Zebra Dove is one of the most common birds on Kauai, and throughout the islands.

By far my favorite stop of the day was at the Salt Ponds State Park, just past the south tip of the island. A place with open wetlands where sea salt is harvested, making muddy habitat where I found several WATA, RUTU and lots of BNST Hawaiian race, and of course PGPL. I also saw a Brown Booby working off shore, and two species of dabbling ducks, N. Shoveler and N. Pintail. By the time I finished there about noon it was getting really hot, and I headed for the pool and lunch.
Cattle Egrets are ubiquitous here.

Tuesday we had planned to take a helicopter ride, but it rained so hard the trip was cancelled. We only planned to do this because Marian won a 2-for-1 drawing at the condo when the concierge told of things to do nearby. My experience on this trip maybe 20 years ago was of trying not to barf from the diesel fumes and motion sickness the whole trip, so I called this good Karma and gladly bailed. We headed for the dry side of the island, and enjoyed stops at the Kawaiele Wildlif¬e Sanctuary¬ where we spotted the first Hawaiian Coot, Hawaiian race of Common Galanule, and N. Mockingbird of the trip. It was great to show Marian Nene, and BCNH too. The rest of the day was beach stops, swimming and nothing special for birds.
The old lighthouse at Kilauea Point. It was powered by a kerosene lamp, and with the 8000 pound Fresnel Lens that floated on 260 ;bs of mercury could be seen 90 miles at sea. It is now inoperational.

Wednesday we took a bus trip around the island, with little birding, but saw more White-tailed Tropicbirds here and there, and at the Kilauea Light House saw hundreds of Red-footed Boobies and lots of White-tailed Tropicbirds, Great Frigatebirds, and a few Brown Boobies, along with the expected Laysan’s Albatrosses roosting under some pine trees. 20 years ago when I was there, we saw them nesting on grass right by the lighthouse, but this time they were fairly distant looks. Surprisingly we didn’t find Red-tailed Tropicbird, which I had expected to see.
The new LED light can be seen only 7 miles at sea, but does not need the toxic mercury, is efficient and inexpensive to operate.

Today we headed back north, with plans for spending some time at the Kilewea Lighthouse Park on a seawatch, and see the RTTR along with hopefully a Wedge-tailed Shearwater. I spent nearly 2 hours on a seawatch. I did manage lots of great looks at the same species we say yesterday, but no WTSH anywhere. I talked to a ranger. She warned me it was late, but any chance for WTSH would be remaining chicks in their burrows. She advised looking for scree on the paved path, and look near there. We spent a few minutes doing this, and sure enough, right behind the pay-station at the foot of the path was fresh scree, and literally a foot off the trail, in a burrow was what appeared to be a soon-to-fledge WTSH chick peeking out of its hole. Really cute and obliging. My first non-introduced lifer for the trip. Yahoo!
The last birding hotspot of the day was at the Hanalea NWR, a large wetlands where I found Hawaiian Ducks and my first Scaly-breasted Munia of the trip. Earlier this AM on an exercise walk near the condo I had seen several Chestnut Munia, so managed both of those species today.
Hawaiian Duck, not the brown tail, distinguishing it from a Mallard.

My takeaways for the trip so far is that a birder should not come to Hawaii expecting to easily tick a large number of species. To get many native species plan to get to high elevation areas, spend some time there, and have an all-wheel drive high clearance vehicle to get in and out.
Still, maybe the definition of a first-world problem is struggling to find a large list of birds when getting to the “garden island” of Kauai for a week away from the short days and likely cold rain of the Puget Sound area in November.
View from an overlook above Hanalea.

It’s been a very enjoyable trip, and I’m having lots of fun, and seeing a few birds too.
Until next time, good birding, and good day!

Birding Near Ifrane, Morocco Today

Barbary Macaque today near Ifrane.

Today was a really pleasant day of birding in Morocco. After an open air breakfast on the roof of the inn, we headed to a park with a lake and woodlands called Dayet Aoua, where almost immediately we found good numbers of Hawfinch, lifers for many thought I’d seen Hawfinch in England in 2006 on a Rotary Friendship Exchange trip.

Hawfinch

We found lots of first birds for Morocco, including Eared Grebe (here called Black-necked Grebe) and a great look at a Great Spotted Woodpecker excavating a nest cavity. I got a good video of this species and posted it to my Facebook and Instagram pages, so not added here as a video. Here are a couple of still shots.

Great Spotted Woodpecker

The rest of the day was spent at other woodland areas, where we added Atlas Flycatcher with incredible ease. This can be a tough bird to find, and Mohammad had one before we got out of the bus

Our last trip bird today was a very distant scope look at a Northern Shoveler at a lake. We earlier got brief looks at Iberian Chifchaff.

Off to bed now.

Eurasian Sparrowhawk.
White Stork
Long-legged Buzzard.

Good Birding. Good Day!

Morocco Days 4 & 5: Mohamed Takes us to the Mountain and the Desert

Mohammed on the Mountain

On Day 4 our guide Mohammed and Michael took us to the high Atlas Mountains, to the Vallée d’Oukaïmeden Ski Area and the surrounding mountainside. The elevation when we got off the bus was 8547′ and we walked mostly uphill from there. Over the course of the day we walked 7.02 miles per the eBird tracker, and battled fog and cold most of the day. Despite the really tough weather viewing conditions we managed several good species of birds.

Red-biilled Chough.

Both Chough species, Red-billed and Yellow-billed were all over the place. They are almost crow sized black birds with colored decurved bills.
Rufous-tailed Rock-Thrush

A Rufous-tailed Rock-Thrush gave close up views. A female Blue Rock-Thrush was seen by all, and a male by a few. Black Redstarts were commmon. Rock Finch, or Rock Petronia before its name change, were abundant, with one flock of over 200 birds.

An old rock-built village

After an hour or so the fog really settled in and we battled, but heard a couple of flocks of Crimson-winged Finches flying about just overhead but invisible in the fog.
On the drive down the mountain two stops in steady rain yielded Eurasian Firecrest, European Treecreeper, Euripean Jay, and Coal Tit.

We stayed another night at Maharrech and again had great meals for dinner and breakfast at the Art Place. Up early to head for the coast on Day 5.

Northern Bald Ibis

Day 5 birding was in coastal scrub habitat. Not really desert, but pretty close, with dry sandy soil and scrub-thorn type vegitation. The birding was spectacular. We made our first stop for a potty about 9 AM after leaving about 7 AM and Jay, one of the people on the tour found a Rufous-tailed Scrub-robin in the adjacent vacant lot. At least 6 were zipping about and posing for photos.

Rufous-tailed Scrub-Robin

Next stop was at a fishing port called Port dÉssaouria, where the primary goal was to see Eleanor’s Falcon, a Peregrine look-alike that breeds on an island nearby and we saw 3 seeming to hunt in a line, chasing Rock Pigeons. We also saw the Moroccan race of Great Cormorant, lots of Yellow-legged Gulls and then walked out to a nearby river mouth. There we saw the European race of Sandwich Tern. No yellow tip on the bill of this race.

Ruddy Shelduck

Funny line, Heather Ballash, one of the Tacoma contingent on the trip, remembers this species as having mustard on the tip of its bill, a memory aide to the sandwich name. Does not work here. We also saw a Moussiere’s Redstart.
Next was another river mouth for Ruddy Shelduck, Audouin’s Gull, and the Moroccan race of White Wagtail.

Northern Bald Ibis

Next a spectacular roadside stop to see Northern Bald Ibis. This species was nearly extinct when a local preserve was set up and it is recovering
We finished with a seawatch at Cap Rhir where we all saw Balearoic Shearwater at a distance, and Bruce found a Great Skua.

Closer look at Ruddy Shelduck.

Staying at a nice hotel in Agadir, and headed out locally tomorrow.

Day 1, 2 & 3 Morocco Trip

Marsh Owl flushed from a field with tall grass.

Day 1 of the Legacy Tours Morocco Birding Trip was great. We left the Hotel Toubkal in Casablanca at 6:30 AM and headed north toward Rabat. Along the way we stopped at several places along the coast looking for shorebirds, gulls, and migrants headed toward Europe. The first stop was right along the highwa

Mediterranean Gull
y at a large wetland area beside the road, where we had our first Collared Pratincole. These are a strange shorebird that hunts aerially, catching insects in flight. They are really cool looking, and call constantly a somewhat Killdeer calls.

Collared Pratincole

We had a nice variety of gulls here too, including a Mediterranean Gull, a black-headed gull with a red bill that stood out from the many Black-headed Gulls also there. We also had both species of Redshank, Spotted and Common. The Spotted Redshank has longer legs and a thicker shorter bill, and was a lifer for most of us on the trip.Curlew Sandpipers and Dunlin were together for nice comparisons, and we also added Little Stint, Common Ring-necked Plover, and a few passerines.

African Blue Tit

We pulled off at a sewer treatment facility by a McDonalds where we saw Lesser Kestrel and the recently split African Blue Tit. This is much like the Blue Tit of Europe, but has a larger white area on the head.

Red-shielded Coot with young.

We took our longest walk of the day at Oued Cherrat, a coastal river (Oued means river in Arabic) where over 60 Collared Pratincoles were constantly flying overhead, we added Pied Avocet to the much more common Black-winged Stilts, 12 Kentish Plover and one Little Ringed Plover were seen, and 3 Great Gray Shrike and a single Woodchat Shrike perched for us. Crested Larks were in the fields, and Willow Warblers and Common Chiffchaf were in the riverside brush. Western Yellow Wagtail and White Wagtails were near the water.

Crested Lark

Our last stop of the day was at Side Boughaba Lake, a park where we added lots of waterfowl, including White-headed Duck, a stiff-tailed duck related to our Ruddy Duck, but even more colorful with its large sky-blue bill. Great Crested Grebe and Little Grebe, both Red-crested and Common Pochard and Ferruginous Ducks gave great looks, and a Red-shielded Coot came very close for photos.
We ended the day’s list with a House Bunting that seems to be nesting on a light fixture in the outdoor restaurant where we had dinner.

White Stork

A great start with 85 species and 26 lifers so far on the trip,

You can best hear about Day 1 & 2 on my second mini-podcast episode on The Bird Banter Podcast.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bird-banter-podcast-morocco-trip-days-1-2/id1450449001?i=1000435303247

On Day 2 we made a number of stops in the areas around Rabat. We started by going inland from the coast trying for migrant and resident passerines as well as more water-related species. Our first major stop was at a road into a small wetlands where we checked the wetlands, and then took a nice walk along a riparian type ditch during intermittent showers. Common Cuckoos were calling and flying about, whie Corn Buntings seemed to be singing from every post of grassy knoll. Crested Larks were also very numerous.

Common Cuckoo

Two Cirl Buntings, both females, gave good looks.

A Booted Eagle flew overhead.

Booted Eagle

We totaled 31 species at this stop.

Next we went to a woodland park called Réserve Royale de Chasse. There we heard, and Heather and our guide Mohammed saw Double-spurred Frankolin. Common Nightingales sang incessantly from hidden perches. We left there with plans to return on Day 3 (the next day) early to have better chances for the Frankolin and other species.

On the ride back to the hotel we saw a flock of migrating Euroean Bee Eaters and stopped for nice looks.

European Bee Eater with a bee in its bill.

We stayed our second night at Hotel Ambassy. Dinner both nights was fine, I had vegetable tagine on night two, spaghetti on day 1.

Day 3 was mostly driving, but in the early AM we went back to the preserve from the day prior, getting there about 7:45 AM and as soon as we got out of the van it started to rain. The whole time there it rained variably hard, at times a drenching downpour. Despite the rain, the birding was quite good. We all saw the Double-spurred Frankolins several times in flight, and some saw it running, though nobody really had great looks.

Best other birds were Tree Pipit

Tree Pipit

Spotted Flycatcher, European Pied Flycatcher, and Eurasian Blackcap.

From there we took a long drive to another protected area where we got distant but pretty good looks at Barburry Partridge, and a fly-by look at a Great Spotted Cuckoo.

Our stay for the next couple of nights is at a snazzy hotel in Marrakech, the Art Place Marrakech. which is right on the Medina, or city center mall.

Tomorrow we head into the mountains for a whole new avifauna of birds, many more specific to Morocco.

Good birding. Good day!

Westport Seabirds Pelagic Trip 3-16-2019: A Three Albatross Day!

Three species of albatross together. Laysan (the black and white bird at the lower left), Short-tailed (with the huge pink bill) and our common Black-footed Albatross on the top.

We had 2 (two!) Short-tailed Ablatross with a flock of over 100 Black-footed Albatross and at least 5 Laysan Albatross, for the albatross trifecta. The overall trip was very good, great weather, relatively calm seas, unusual for a March trip, partly sunny skies, and an extraordinarily talented group of leaders and participants on this boat. Still, the story of the trip was that we had 2 individual Short-tailed Albatross, of a species where in my lifetime there were only an estimated 40 or so birds living, none of them adults of this species. These birds nest exclusively on islands off the coast of Japan, and were nearly hunted into extinction by the late 1930’s when a total hunting ban started to be enforced. The population declined from millions of birds in the 1800’s, with a documented 5 million killed over 17 years in the early 20th century for their eggs, oil, and feathers.


Now per Bill Tweit, who is going to be my guest on The Bird Banter Podcast this week, the population has increased to approximately 2400 birds. So we saw just less than 1/1000th of the birds on earth together yesterday!


These are really big birds, making our common Black-footed Albatross seem relatively small in comparison, and have an outrageous bubble-gum pink bill that identifies them at a glance if seen well. I even recognized It was al first-time sighting before the trip leaders called it out by the huge pink bill.

We also had about 8 Laysan Albatross on the trip, with 5 in the flock by a fishing boat where the flock of albatross was located. These are themselves uncommmon birds in Washington and off the continental U.S. I saw my lifer ALAL only 2 years ago on a repositioning cruise, and my WA state bird last spring on a Westport Seabirds trip. To see 8 on one trip was really extraordinary.

To top off a terrific trip was a Manx Shearwater seen early in the day, 12 miles off shore on out way out. It was distant, giving good looks for maybe a minute as it flew away from the boat, much to distant for photos.

BLack-legged Kittiwake

Four Tuften Puffins, over a hundred Black-legged Kittiwakes, and good numbers of Northern Fulmars, Cassin’s Aucklets, and a surprisingly few Sooty Shearwater rounded out the species list.
This for a birder and a lister like me was an epic trip, great long looks at a rare and endangrered albatross made for a memorable day.

Oh! We also saw Fin and Gray Whales.

It was also Ken Brown’s birthday, see The Bird Banter Podcast #2 and #6 for more with and about Ken.
Good birding! Good day!

A Great Day Today

Sandhill Crane seen in Orting today. Look how close it is to the parked car in a driveway in the residential neighborhood.

It’s been snowy in the Puget Sound area for a few days, and today I was starting to feel really anxious to get out side and go birding. That said, this morning it was raining hard, about 34 degrees, and just not reasonable to go birding.
The day started to pick up when Bruce LaBar texted to see if we could move his time to record The Bird Banter Podcast episode #3 up to this morning, since he chose not to try to drive to his yoga, and instead wanted to walk to my condo.

He got here about 10 AM and we recorded the episode. Here is the podcast.

After Bruce left I was able to get the post-production editing done, and publish the podcast, and decided to go for a walk. On the walk on the Ruston Way waterfront a flock of Bushtits made an appearance, for a Pierce County FOY species for me.

Just as I got home Michael Charest put out a text to our county listers that he had a Sandhill Crane in Orting. It appears that the heavy snow forced an immature SACR down and it has been foraging in a residential neighborhood since yesterday. I called Bruce and Will Brooks, and we dashed out to see the crane, exactly where Michael reported seeing it, and photos were had by all.

 

This went so easily we had time to drive the Orting Farm loop, where in the same location Will found a Swamp Sparrow last fall, one was calling from out in the field, and I heard it call several times clearly, and this made my second “county first” species of the day.

Pretty good stuff for a day that started as a weather-bound house day.

I hope you enjoy the podcast. You can also find it Here on the iTunes Store.

Good birding!