Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

We started Saturday morning with breakfast and then headed out at first light. On the bus ride to the first site, we encountered a mass of thousands of land crabs scuttling across the road. These were likely Gecarcinus ruricola. I would have liked to stop to look at them; but birds were the goal, not crustaceans, so we drove on past (and over) the crabs.

First stop was a bird blind where several dove species were feeding. I added #822 Blue-headed Quail Dove and #823 Key West Quail Dove, but missed Gray-headed Quail Dove because there were simply too many people in the group for everyone to see at once. The trip was overly large at 17 people including guides; it should have been half the size it was. :-(

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Day 3, Friday, we grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel and then drove to Cueva de los Portales, a holiday camp and park featuring caves where Che Guevara hid during the Missile Crisis.

Also many Cave Swallows:

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Day 2 was all birding. We got up early and had a quick continental breakfast at the hotel. Then we walked the three blocks to where we could meet our bus, and added #806 Cuban Martin (aka Cuban Swallow) while waiting to load our baggage. (Lucky too. These were the only ones we ended up seeing the whole trip, and it’s an endemic species.)

We drove about an hour and a half west out of the city into the Pinar del Rio province where our first stop was the Ecological Station of Canada del Infierno, (aka Sierra del Rosario–we moved around a lot and not speaking Spanish I’m a little hazy on the exact names of some of the places we visited). Here we met our local ornithologist guide Hiram Gonzalez for the first time, and chatted with him and Fidel Hernandez Figueroa about local birds and conservation projects. Then it was out into the field for some birds! It was a very pleasant walk, through some gorgeous Caribbean scenery with lots of good birds including #807, Cuban Bullfinch, #808 La Sagra’s Flycatcher, and #809, Cuban Emerald. There was also a possible Cuban Vireo that I missed, and a possible Cuban Grassquit seen by some of the group.

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We arrived in Cuba today almost before we left Miami due to the difference in Daylight Savings Time (though this won’t be posted until some time later due to the lack of Wifi access in Cuba). Of course I got held up by the second most annoying customs inspection I’ve ever had to go through. The inspector looked at almost every piece of optics I had, most of which I had to explain to him. I had to put the spotting scope together and show him how it worked. He took photos of most of it. I’m not sure why. He was very impressed with my 17″ MacBook Pro. Apparently even in Cuba, Apple products are considered cool. Although I was the first one in our group through the metal detector (not sure why, but in Cuba they X-Ray you coming off the plane; looking for contraband I guess) I was the last one to exit customs. Still not as bad as flying back into Miami though.

But we finally got to the hotel around 11:30. The drive from the airport was interesting: Cuba certainly isn’t a rich country but somehow it doesn’t look like a poor one either. In many ways, it looks in better shape than parts of the United States. Poor but not rundown or abandoned. Many, perhaps most, buildings look a little shabby, but that’s common in any tropical country where you need to paint and repair annually or the jungle takes over. It took me a while to put my finger on the real difference I saw between Cuba and other places I’ve visited in the developing world: everyone’s in the same boat. In Panama or Puerto Rico, and to a lesser extent Beijing, there’s an obvious contrast between quite wealthy people and extremely poor people. I don’t see that here because I don’t see wealthy people, or big houses, or apartments, or mansions, pretty much anywhere we’ve been so far. We’ll see if this holds up as more of the country is explored. It’s often in rural areas where most tourists don’t go (but birders do) where you find the deepest poverty.

We grabbed a carb-heavy lunch at a local restaurant, and afterwards explored old Havana. Even before lunch I caught a glimpse of my first lifer, #803, Cuban Blackbird. on top of a building. However I didn’t get a good luck, and couldn’t swear it wasn’t a Greater Antillean Grackle. But we found several again after lunch with much better looks.

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A Barrow’s Goldeneye has been hanging out in the West Pond at Jamaica Bay since at least the Christmas Bird Count, and likely earlier. This more northerly species is very similar to the locally frequent Common Goldeneyes, but with a scope it’s distinguishable. Various birders including myself had tried and failed to find it, while others had succeeded. After several weeks it had become clear that the difference was timing. The bird tends to take off from the West Pond and head out into the bay within an hour or less after dawn, and return maybe half an hour before dusk. This makes it somewhat challenging to find, but not impossible if you get up early enough.

So this morning I pulled myself out of bed at 4:00 AM, grabbed my scope and binoculars and started the long trek out to Broad Channel: #2 to Hoyt Street, transfer outside the subway to the A train at Jay Street, which was unfortunately running local; and then all the way out past the airport to Broad Channel, and then walk in the dark to the refuge, where I arrived just as light was starting to peep out into the morning air.

Despite this I was not the first one there. I found a couple of women already out on the trail with scopes. After a little while scoping through the flocks, we finally located the bird. The difference is subtle: a very slightly kidney shaped chin patch instead of the more roundish patch of the Common Goldeneye, and less white on the upper flanks and back; but it was distinctive. We watched it for about 25-30 minutes, periodically losing track of it and then refinding it, before it took off into flight with two Common Goldeneyes about 5 minutes to 7:00.

No photos I’m afraid. It was pretty far away, and in the morning haze I forgot to bring my camera. :-(

The Northern Suffolk Christmas Bird Count (CBC) found a Mountain Bluebird at Rt 25A and Hulse Landing Road near Wading River over a week ago. However I just hadn’t been able to convince myself that it was worth driving that far to pick up a rare but regular vagrant, especially after very nearly striking out on much closer birds two weeks ago after Brooklyn’s CBC. Then yesterday on the Southern Nassau Count Doug Gochfeld found an incredible Grace’s Warbler much closer at Hempstead Town Park in Point Lookout. This is a first state record, and probably the northernmost and easternmost record ever for this species, which otherwise you’d have to travel to Arizona to find. I still wasn’t convinced though, since the bird disappeared yesterday around 1:30 after being very cooperative for about three and half hours. It felt like a one day wonder, and the weather today wasn’t looking good. But when Steve Walter reported a “warbler sized bird” around 8:30 AM, I started packing my bag; and when David Speiser reported a definite sighting shortly after 10:00 AM, I clicked the “reserve” button at zipcar and headed out the door for Point Lookout.

When I arrived at Hempstead Town Park about 60 minutes later (after narrowly avoiding being sideswiped by a car full of women birders who did not know which way they wanted to turn off the Loop Parkway –check a map before starting out folks) the bird was staked out but not showing itself. A couple of times someone thought they saw movement, but couldn’t say what it was. About 15 minutes later, Lenore Swenson and Starr Saphir showed up in a taxicab after taking a train in from the city. Memo to self: when possible stand behind Starr. She found the bird in less than five minutes. However I was a few meters down the road from her at the time, and by the time I got over to where she was and pointed into the same tree, the bird had dropped down and out of sight again. At least it wasn’t hunkered down completely in all the wind as I had feared.

Five minutes later, as almost everyone including me was scanning and rescanning the same tree where it had recently appeared, hoping to see something move, Lenore spotted it in another tree off to the left; and I got on the bird this time for maybe a full 30 seconds or so as it moved up and down and around the pine, scavenging for what insects it could find. At first I thought I might be looking at a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. The back was sort of blue-gray with wingbars. However eventually it turned its head toward me, and I could clearly see a bright yellow throat, and yellow superciliary, and no kingletish eye ring. Bang! #800 Grace’s Warbler.

Normally I’d stick around and try for a photo and maybe scope views. However it was damned cold and windy out there. More importantly, as long as I had already rented a car and driven all the way out into Nassau County already, I wanted to try for the Mountain Bluebird too. So I said a quick goodbye, and hopped into the Sentra and headed up the Meadowbrook to the Southern State. I was hungry but I decided to skip lunch until I had at least tried for the Mountain Bluebird. If it wasn’t being cooperative, I could grab lunch in Suffolk County, and then try again before dark.

I got to the intersection, right around 2:30 PM. There were several other cars pulled off the road at various spots around the field where the Bluebird was most frequently seen. The driver of the first car kindly told me that the bird was still present in the expected location on the snow fencing paralleling Rt 25A. I walked back along the side of the road, carefully scanning the top of the fence with my binoculars. Well not that carefully, because I walked right past the bird without noticing it. Fortunately a driver in another car, pointed me back at the bird he’d been watching from the comfort of his vehicle. After convincing myself the bird was in fact a powder blue Mountain Bluebird and not an Eastern or Western Bluebird, I walked back to my car and grabbed my scope and camera gear. I tried digiscoping the bird unsuccessfully–I need to improve my digiscoping rig–but I was able to get some good if small photos of the bird with my 400mm f/4:

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