Fall, briefly

Summer in 2019 was an almost surreal experience, with work and travel taking me to Ethiopia, Indonesia, the Philippines and, for an afternoon, Dubai. Of course, at the end of it I had to travel back to Washington DC, and deal with the underwhelming DC birding scene for the remainder of the year. It's hard to overstate how disappointing it is coming from the tropics to Washington DC in the summertime, where it's a struggle to find more than 12 or so species of bird on a hot, sweaty and quiet birding adventure. 

I also found myself incredibly busy in my second year of graduate school, and between classes and work I had much less time to get out birding than I usually do- usually only a couple of times on weekends, or to twitch when particularly good birds appeared. That means that there's also relatively little to blog about, which I suppose is a good thing considering how dreadfully behind I am with this blog. 

I took a day to sleep off the jet lag after I arrived back in DC in early September, but my next day back I was straight out birding once again, particularly because a Brown Pelican was making a quick visit to the DC area, hanging out in the Potomac. This was a new 5MR bird for me, and a rare bird for the area as well, so I went straight down to Hains Point to twitch it, and catch up with some other local birds as well. The Pelican put on a fine show for me, wheeling and diving above the river looking like an extra-awkward dragon. There were some other good birds around, including a surprise Rusty Blackbird, another 5MR first and a rare bird anywhere due to their precipitous population decline in recent years.

Brown Pelican

Baltimore Oriole

Northern Flicker

Chipping Sparrows

Rusty Blackbird!

Horace's Duskywing

Big Bluet (Enallagma durum) 

Swamp Cicada (Neotibicen tibicen)

The next week's trip to Roosevelt Island was fairly underwhelming bird-wise, but I did get quite a few invertebrate lifers of various kinds to add to my non-bird 5MR list.

American Goldfinch

Wood Duck in eclipse plumage

Juvenile American Robin

Silvery Checkerspot

Fall Webworm Moth caterpillar

Clouded Skipper

Common Whitetail (Plathemis lydia)

Eremnophila aureonotata, a beautiful thread-waisted wasp

Hains Point the next weekend brought in a few more birds, including a very cute Black-and-white Warbler, good looks at some Brown-headed Cowbirds, and a long-overdue new 5MR bird in the form of a Great Egret. The invertebrates were once again a little more exciting- which I suppose is what happens when it's very, very difficult to see any new birds.

Black-and-white Warbler

Chipping Sparrow

Brown-headed Cowbird

Great Egret

Brown Thrasher

Least Skipper, probably my favorite East Coast skipper

Fiery Skipper

Fraternal Potter Wasp (Eumenes fraternus)

Yellow-legged Mud-dauber Wasp (Scelephron caementerium)

Very successful Spotted Orbweaver with a cicada

Red-headed Bush Cricket (Phyllopalpus pulchellus)

With the new school year I was also living in a new apartment, which meant that my 5MR shifted slightly. This actually worked out well for me birding-wise, since the shift meant that I lost no birds on my list, but was able to retroactively add some that I'd seen just outside it in the spring in areas that were now included. This was especially true for Rock Creek Park, the DC warbler hotspot. Annoyingly enough I missed out on some good potential lifers at Rock Creek Park in the fall, especially Summer Tanager and Kentucky Warbler, both of which I just barely missed. The only new bird on my first fall visit to the famous Maintenance Yard (birds show up in the strangest places!) was a Least Flycatcher that I only barely saw. A late-season Ovenbird and good looks at Veery and Red-eyed Vireo were good consolation though.

Ovenbird

Pileated Woodpecker

Veery 

Red-eyed Vireo

Blackpoll Warbler

Brochymena arborea, a very strange-looking hemipteran

Orchard Orbweaver, one of the prettiest spiders on the East Coast

Chestnut Carpenter Ant

Four Mile Run Park in Alexandria is one of my favorite warm-weather stops, partly for the birds, but mostly for the huge diversity of butterflies, dragonflies and other inverts in its riverside meadows. I had an excuse to visit there in late September when an uncommon Lesser Yellowlegs showed up. I was able to see that and add it to my 5MR, but again the real attraction was the invertebrates. I'd never really paid much attention to bees and wasps before, but this fall I began to appreciate their huge diversity of forms and colors- really cool animals with an important ecological role, and fun to watch as long as you don't make them angry.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Great Egret

Spotted Sandpiper

Common Buckeye, my favorite "trash butterfly"

Fiery Skipper

Monarch Butterfly

Sleepy Orange (an amazing name for a butterfly)

Eastern Tailed-blue

Ailanthus Webworm Moth and Blue-winged Scoliid Wasp (Scolia dubia)

Limonethe maurator I think

Great Golden Digger Wasp

Fraternal Potter Wasp

Tickseed Beggar-ticks, a horrible name for a beautiful flower

Another visit to Roosevelt Island was once again rather disappointing bird-wise, but great for butterflies and wasps.

Carolina Wren

American Redstart

Common Five-lined Skink

Cloudless Sulphur

Eastern Tailed-blue

Red Admiral

Hackberry Emperor

Question Mark (the actual species name!) 

Ailanthus Webworm Moth

The dark morph of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail- imitating the poisonous Pipevine Swallowtail

Pure Green Sweat Bee

Eastern Carpenter Bee

Eight-toothed Cuckoo Leaf-cutter Bee, a rare bee with an overly-complicated name

Transverse-banded Flower Fly

An invasive (and huge!) European Hornet

Green Stink Bug

A very successful Sylvan Jumping Spider with a gnat of some kind

I took a quick trip home to Michigan in late September, which included some great hiking, some cool bugs, and one of the most embarrassing moments of my birding career (and I've had many!). I happened to notice a strange-looking sparrow while hiking Alligator Hill, which I photographed then completely forgot about as I had to rush to the airport immediately afterwards. It was only when I got around to looking at the photo a couple of weeks later that I realized it was a Black-throated Sparrow- a bird that's supposed to be about 800 miles to the west, and in fact only the fourth record of that species ever in Michigan. It's the sort of thing that would have been a legendary find if I'd been on top of IDing when I should have, but instead ended up just being something I cringe to share even now.

#@%$ing Black-throated Sparrow!

Brown-hooded Owlet moth caterpiller

Banded Tussock Moth caterpillar

Goldenrod Soldier Beetle

Carolina Grasshopper

Sensitive Fern Borer Moth at our porch light

The view from the Sand Meadows, my favorite hiking spot in Leelanau County

October in DC finally brought with it some southbound migrant birds, and a second visit to Rock Creek Park was more successful than the first. I saw my second White-eyed Vireo of the year, and added Philadelphia Vireo, Tennessee Warbler, Lincoln's Sparrow, and Eastern Bluebird to my 5MR list.

White-eyed Vireo

Philadelphia Vireo

Red-tailed Hawk

House Wren

Eastern Bluebird

Large Milkweed Bug

The second weekend of October was a long weekend, so I took the opportunity to rent a car and drive out to the coast of Virginia, only my second visit there despite the nearly two years I've lived here. My destination was Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, one of Virginia's best-known birding spots. I arrived a little later than expected thanks to traffic and construction, and my first hike on a marsh trail was a little underwhelming, with the only lifer being a very cute Brown-headed Nuthatch, one of the few birds endemic to the United States. I had a near miss with what was almost certainly a Saltmarsh Sparrow, but it was scared away by some noisy passing tourists.

Brown-headed Nuthatch

Bald Eagle carrying a fish

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Palm Warbler

Eastern Phoebe

Swamp Sparrow- alas, not a Saltmarsh Sparrow

I returned to the bridge I'd driven over to search for some of my waterbird targets, and after some search came across an amazing lifer Clapper Rail foraging in the marsh foliage- much bolder than the rails I'm used to seeing (or hearing, rather). There were lots of other good birds around, like Boat-tailed Grackles, Savannah Sparrows, and Forster's Terns.

Clapper Rail!

Forster's Tern

Boat-tailed Grackle

Savannah Sparrow

Laughing Gull

American Herring Gull

The unfortunate remnants of some raptor's lunch

I drove out to the beach, where I took a long walk along the shoreline looking for shorebirds and other seabirds. I was disappointed not to see any pelagic birds flying out at sea, but there were lots of gulls onshore, including Greater Black-backed Gulls, Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and my favorite, some Black Skimmers, strange-looking terns that use their long lower mandible to skim across the surface of the water looking for fish. These were my most hoped-for lifers for the trip, along with the rail and nuthatch, so it was great to see them. There were some good shorebirds as well, including Western Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers, Grey Plovers, Dunlins, and about a million Sanderlings.

Great Black-backed Gull

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Royal Tern

Royal Terns and Black Skimmers

Sanderlings

Grey Plover

Semipalmated Plover

Dunlin

Atlantic Ghost Crab

The Chincoteague coastline

I took one final hike before heading home, where I connected with my lifers Tricolored Heron and Little Blue Heron, albeit from a distance. I also ran across a funny-looking Grey Squirrel that turned out to be a Delmarva Fox Squirrel, an endangered subspecies found only in a small area of coastal Virginia and Maryland. I also got good looks at the famous Chincoteague ponies, known from that one book we all read when we were kids. They're a feral introduced species that probably isn't great for the native ecosystem, but tourists love them so I guess that Park Service tolerates them.

Tricolored Heron

Cool comparison between Black Vulture (top) and Turkey Vulture (bottom)

Great Blue Heron

Delmarva Fox Squirrel

The famous Chincoteague ponies

Back in Virginia, there were some good migrants at Fort C.F. Smith Park, with an inquisitive Blue-headed Vireo and a very spherical pair of Winter Wrens. I suppose it's nice that bird activity starts peaking after bug activity declines, although personally I prefer to be in the tropics where you can have both all year round.

Blue-headed Vireo

Chipping Sparrow

Winter Wren

Myrtle Warbler

Black Vulture

Jumping Bush Cricket

Northern Flatid Leafhopper

Coppery Leafhopper

Bicolored Sallow, one of the last of the fall moths

A trip to the National Arboretum in mid-November gave me some beautiful fall colors, possibly DC's latest-ever record of Swainson's Thrush, and some Eastern Bluebirds in the sunset light.

An extremely late Swainson's Thrush

Golden-crowned Kinglet

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Myrtle Warbler

American Goldfinch

Eastern Bluebird

Downy Woodpecker

Field Sparrow

Mourning Dove in the evening light

Fall colors

More fall colors

Just when I thought fall migration was tapering off, someone discovered a Lark Sparrow in downtown Washington DC, just near the National Capitol building. I'd narrowly missed a vagrant one last year, so I took an extended lunch break from work and twitched it, finding it in the middle of a flock of Chipping Sparrows after a half hour of searching.

Lark Sparrow

My last DC area lifer of the year came in the form of a Clay-colored Sparrow that another birder spotted in the National Arboretum. It took a solid hour and a half of searching, but I finally found it foraging on the ground near where I'd dipped on a Lark Sparrow last year.

Clay-colored Sparrow

That felt like the end of fall, and indeed after that the weather began to get colder and DC assumed its grey, lifeless feeling that it gets in the winter months. Birding didn't stop of course, but the results of that will have to wait until the next seasonal blog.