Capuchinbirds and Pink Dolphins

 August 2022: Birding in Amapá and Pará in the Brazilian Amazon

Back to Brazil, with the talented and ever-patient Pablo Vieira Cerqueira, for an almost month-long trip covering multiple states and cities.  I had a bunch of goals for this trip; to finally get to the lowland Amazon (after a dozen trips to Brazil, I'd never seen the Amazon river or a pink river-dolphin), to chase a specific rarity in the SouthEast, and to catch up with friends in São Paulo and Vitoria. 

Saturday, August 6 - Sunday, August 7

Two days in São Paulo.  Rest and recovery, catching up with friends, and a visit to one of my three favorite restaurants in the world, the marvelous D.O.M.

Officially on vacation ...

Monday, August 8 - Macapá

I felt very proud of myself.  I left São Paulo super early, hopped a flight to Brasilia then changed planes and headed up to Macapá where I even managed to negotiate getting an Uber to my hotel (all in Portuguese). Pablo showed up later that day and we jumped in a rental car and headed inland, away from the Amazon, and ended up in a semi-retired mining town called Serra do Navio where a very basic hotel and one restaurant stayed open largely to support the maintenance crews that still worked at the mine. The presence of the mining operation had preserved a decent chunk of forest which would otherwise almost certainly have been lost over the years.  So we had all we needed, the rooms were basic but the food was tasty, and those maintenance guys looked after the trails we planned to bird the next few days.

My first view of the Amazon river believe it or not, after a dozen trips to
Brazil, I finally got to see the Amazon.

Tuesday, August 9 - Wednesday, August 10 - Serra do Navio

Two days on the trails and my first time properly in the Guianan Shield meant I had a ton of life birds waiting for me.  We started along a dirt road through flooded forest looking for Band-tailed Antshrike, a real rarity in Brazil, known only from this one site.  We dipped this time, but I hardly noticed because we quickly racked up a bunch of other lifers for me including Double-banded Pygmy-Tyrant, Todd's Sirystes, McConnell's Spinetail, and Guianan Streaked-Antwren.  Moving on, we worked a more heavily vegetated trail and the birds kept coming, with Guianan Trogon, Brown-bellied Stipplethroat, Todd's Antwren, and (the Hellmayr's form of) Black-headed Antbird all joining the burgeoning list.  Fun, busy, productive birding.

Black-headed Antbird and Brown-bellied Stipplethroat

As we moved down the trail we kept encountering a most disturbing noise, like a tortured cow lowing from the forest.  Eventually, I just had to see one and so Pablo played some tape bringing in a Capuchinbird, a creature straight from the Henson Studios, a truly bizarre looking muppet of a bird.  With its bald blue face poking out of fluffy rich red-brown plumage it truly looked odd enough, but add the cow-like call and it really qualified as just, well, silly.  What a truly bizarre creature ...

Ended day one with try number two for Band-tailed Antshrike, and dipped again.

The next morning gave us Tiny Tyrant-Manakin and a long skirmish with a fast moving antbird flock eventually yielded that superstar of the Amazon, a White-plumed Antbird, definitely one of the ant-things I most wanted to see here.  We also had Rufous-throated Antbird and Common Scale-backed Antbird on this trail, and Olive-backed Foliage-gleaner nearby, then as we emerged into the sunlight we added Caica Parrot and Guianan Toucanet.  In the afternoon we gave the Band-tailed Antshrike a third try and again came up short but we did get Smoky-fronted Tody-Flycatcher as a consolation prize.

Common Scale-backed Antbird

Too soon, our time here was up but there was time for one last crack at the Band-tailed Antshrike.  By this time I felt we'd invested so much time in this bird that to give up now would be foolish.  I'd like to report that fourth time was a charm ... but we dipped again, the bird simply was not there that week.  We did get a very unexpected Sooty Barbthroat though, another species known only from the Guianas with just a handful of records from Brazil, so that was a very nice consolation prize.  Time also for one final trail, which gave us Spot-tailed Antwren and Guianan Puffbird to round things out.

Such a great spot and so many good birds.  I may well have ruined my first trip to Guiana, if I ever get round to getting there, but it did wonders for my Brazil list and a good time was had by all.

Thursday, August 11 - Porto Grande

Back to the Amazon today and a return to Macapá for the next few nights (nicer hotel, better food).  Made a long stop in some dryer habitat on the way back though for two specific target lifers.  Rufous-crowned Elaenia popped up almost as soon as we got out of the car, along with noisy and conspicuous Rusty-backed Antwrens.  We had to work harder for Black Manakin though and covered some ground before eventually chasing down a female bird, declaring victory, and continuing our journey without seeing a male.

Rusty-backed Antwren and Rufous-crowned Elaenia

Friday, August 12 - Santana

Today was a full day of birding along the edge of the Amazon in what looked to me like grubby second growth and cleared fields but apparently contained important relics of a rare flooded forest biome.  It wasn't the flooded forest you see on TV, with dolphins swimming through giant trees, rather a marshy, dense, low scrubby sort of forest that clung on in patches and strips between fields.  We did see a lot of birds though, some of them quite good ones.

Crimson-hooded Manakin and Glossy Antshrike

Among the highlights here were stunning Crimson-hooded Manakin, Scaled Spinetail, and the extremely local White-tailed Goldenthroat, a very good bird for Brazil.  We also took time to stop and listen for parrots and eventually, after covering a lot of miles, bumped into a group of Short-tailed Parrots, not the most colorful of parrot but another life bird for me. 

Saturday, August 13

Mostly a travel day but it was my birthday and I was hoping for a birthday lifer.  Some quick morning birding along local roads did the trick and yielded a Golden-bellied Euphonia, perhaps not the most spectacular or rare bird of the trip but hey, it's nice to get a lifer on your birthday.

Sunday, August 14 - Belém

The flights just didn't work out today so we had a morning in Belém before taking the evening flight down to another mining operation at Carajás.  This set-up was very much active and very much larger than the last, with impressive security, a whole workers' city, and a very nice hotel with expansive buffet dinner and breakfast.  Mixed feelings about the mines, the actual mine here covered a lot of ground, but then so did the protected forest and the latter almost certainly would not be here still without the former. 

I'd been feeling a bit under the weather the past few days and sure enough, by the time I got to Carajás it was pretty obvious that I'd picked up another bout something (a mild COVID or a close cousin).  Had a long night of 'fever-sleep' then spent the next 3 days feeling flu-y (and probably looking, and sounding, like an extra from a low-budget zombie movie) but Pablo and I decided to ignore it as much as we could, keep to ourselves, wear masks in cars/hotel, and press on ...  and overall it turned out to be a pretty mild bout compared to the last time.  The things you do for birds.

Monday, August 15 - Tuesday, August 16 - FLONA de Carajás (forest trails)

Two days to explore the forest of Carajás might have been a little better if I'd been feeling better.  As it was, I felt had no energy and dragged along the trails behind the guides, pausing to look at birds when told to, resting where I could, and generally not enjoying the experience very much.  There were some great birds here and Pablo and the local guide worked hard to get me on then (especially seeing as I wasn't exactly at my sharpest) but by the second day even Pablo has started to adjust the itinerary with longer, more ambitious trails swapped for short walks near the car and a number of possible birds quietly dropped from the conversation.  I should probably have been resting in bed but I didn't want to come all this way and miss the target birds.  In the end it was a bit of a compromise; I did see some good birds but didn't always have a lot of fun doing it.

The star bird here was definitely the White Bellbird a big white cotinga that sits on the top of trees and belts out a 'zoink' call that can be heard miles away.  We heard one as soon as we got out of the car but it turned out to be surprisingly hard to see in the canopy when viewed from the ground.  In the end it took us a half hour of careful peering and moving around to find a gap in the canopy where we could actually see it.  An amazing creature though and worth a dose of 'warbler neck'.

Among the other good, or new birds we saw were White-throated Woodpecker, Natterer's Slaty-Antshrike, Spotted Tanager, White-crested Guan, Black-breasted Gnateater, Ornate Stipplethroat, Snethlage's Today-Tyrant, Dwarf Tyrant-Manakin ... the list goes on.  A big personal favorite for me was the Wing-banded Antbird, a weirdo among ant-things that reminded me of a Rail-Babbler as it tottered along through the leaf litter seemingly oblivious to us admiring apes.  Also, it was here that I passed another personal milestone which I'd hoped to hit on this trip when Opal-crowned Manakin became my 1,000th species for Brazil (my first 1,000 species country in eBird!).

Amazonian Scrub-Flycatcher

One night we did some night birding, somewhat curtailed because my stamina limited the day.  Still, we did get some great night birds including the recently described (not yet split in Clements) Xingu Screech-Owl, a Black-banded Owl, multiple Pauraques and Blackish Nightjars, a Great Potoo and even a Cryptic Forest-Falcon thrown in for good measure.  Imagine what we could have had if we'd been able to stay out longer.

Wednesday, August 17 - Vila Tapete Verde / Parauapebas (Núcleo Urbano de Carajás)

Still in Carajás but birding some disturbed habitat outside the forest where we got good looks at a currently undescribed form of Amazonian Spinetail accompanied by a chorus of Rothman's Titi-Monkeys.   Later, in the center of town we added Chestnut-headed Chachalaca to my list (almost done with Chachalacas ... one to go ... if they don't split some more).  There were plenty more birds to see here so I'll hopefully come back to the forest one day but we still did end up with a great list and a pile of life birds for me.

Chestnut-headed Chachalaca in suburban gardens.

Brazilians are VERY fond of chocolate.

Thursday, August 18th - Travel Day

More driving, lots of it.  Then another flight that ended up in Manaus, a city I'd long wanted to see.  I still do want to see it though because all we really saw was the airport and the nearby Ibis Hotel ... so another thing on the 'come back for' list ...

Friday, August 19 to Tuesday, August 23 - P.N. de Amazônia

An early flight and another long drive on dusty roads brought us finally to Amazônia National Park and a simple but lovely little guest house on the river that became our home for the next five days. 

The view from the 'bar', we saw two species of river-dolphin here ...

We had five days to work the forest trails here and dropped into a pattern of doing one trail at dawn, coming back for lunch and siesta then hitting a second trail late afternoon through dinner. The weather was challenging, super hot and incredibly humid meant that things got pretty quiet during the middle of the day.  The hotel location was so lovely though that I didn't at all mind sitting at on the river bank during the heat of the day.  Although it was tough birding we did get a lot of great birds, including a number of star-birds that stood out as real accomplishments given the conditions.  Among the highlights here ...

Brown-Chested Barbet in a canopy vine tangle.  (Green-backed) Dark-winged Trumpeters on the trail and Ihering's Antwren in a mixed canopy flock.  

A major target here was the elusive Pale-faced Bare-eye, a really difficult bird to find in the Amazon but our local guide had heard one in a flock along one of the trails.  We spend a full morning working up and down the trail, walked miles, sweated pints, and saw ... well ... very little of note except a few Saki Monkeys.  As so often the way though, we slogged back to the car closer to mid-day in a silent forest and, when we were almost there, heard a fast moving understory flock with calling Harlequin Antbirds.  Now this species is a spectacular ant-thing and was a lifer for me, on any other day it would have been the day's star but today we were looking around them hoping for more, and sure enough after chasing the flock for 15 minutes, a Pale-faced Bare-eye popped up and crossed the tail.  Humidity, what humidity ...

We also spent a full morning on Black-bellied Gnateater, a brute of a gnateater and another really hard to find bird.  Once again the guide had a territory staked out but it still took us most of the morning to get some decent views in the shadows of the forest floor.  The humidity here was truly oppressive and very uncomfortable eventually knocking out my camera, simply overwhelmed by the condensation, and so no photos for me for a few days while everything dried out back at the lodge.

No Neotropical birding trip is complete without a battle with antpittas and, with two target species here, we devoted two full afternoons to games of cat-and-mouse with the mischievous little buggers.  Tapajos Antpitta surrendered relatively easily but Amazonian Antpitta battled us across two days before giving us a glimpse and joining the list.  Standing motionless in a blind for hours in that hear was not a fun experience but least, and the end of the day, we had cold caipirinhas to look forward too and our victory was duly celebrated.

Birds on the sand islands in the Tapajos River . Sand-colored
Nighthawks, three species of martins

One day we did a boat ride on the river, a pleasant break from the sticky heat.  The sandy river islands have some specific habitats, small ephemeral forests between floods, and we were able to winkle out Amazonian Tyrannulet, Blackish-Gray Antshrike and Black-chinned Antbird in these miniature worlds.  We also saw Tucuxi and Pink River-Dolphins and enjoyed a cool breeze on a moving boat.  Luxury ... 

Black-chinned Antbird

On our final day we crossed the Tapajos River again and hiked trails on the other side in search of two specific targets.  Tapajos Hermit popped up pretty quickly along the trail but we had to hike a distance to a specific site and play tape to get a shy Tapajos Fire-eye to break cover and give good views.  The fire-eye was another of the 'hard to see' birds here and we did really well with our targets, getting all the main ones.  Overall a great, if somewhat sticky, visit.  And once again, I'll get a Harpy Eagle and a Jaguar (neither of which I've ever seen) on the 'next' visit.

  

 

Cuvier's Beaked-Whales and Pelagic Seabirds in New York

July 2019: A way offshore pelagic from Brooklyn in July

Looking back at the blog, I seem to have stopped writing about my local birding and natural history adventures.  I guess the world-birder-travel stuff seems so much more exciting, and the local trips perhaps seems repetitive year-to-year.  But I still get out locally most weekends when I'm in New York, so here's something from closer to home.

Monday, July 22 - 130 miles South of Brooklyn

For most of my 28 years living in New York, pelagic trips were an exercise in futility.  The gulf stream, warm water, and most interesting birds are a very long way from shore in New York.  In North Carolina you can be looking at a wide range of pelagic species an hour from the dock, but in New York you have to steam for 8 hours overnight to get into good water and stand a decent chance of seeing good birds.  For years, folks tried to see things closer in ... I chartered a few boats myself with mixed results ... and then an enterprising chap called Paul Guris got it all properly worked out.

Paul (and his better half, the lovely Anita) is a sea-birding impresario who puts together pelagic trips along the East Coast, mostly in New York and New Jersey.  In my opinion, he single-handedly turned New York pelagic birding from futile to productive over the course of the last five or six years.  Boats now get regularly filled, get out to good waters for decent amounts of time, and see excellent birds.  Indeed over the last few years, Paul's "Paulagics" have turned up Fea's Petrel, Trinidade Petrel and made previously mega birds like White-faced and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels and Black-capped Petrel into regular, gettable birds in New York.

Wilson's Storm-Petrels

This year the boat captains have been making things difficult but when the opportunity to sail on a July 'Paulagic' came up, I signed up quickly.

I should say straight up, I am not a good sailor.  I have been seasick on pelagic boats all over the world, and may unfortunately be semi-famous for it.  I have never been on a Brian Patteson trip in North Carolina without contributing to the chum line and have even failed to hold it together on the relatively placid waters of Monterey Bay.  But 'you don't look, you don't see' so I keep going, keep optimistically taking my dramamine (which unfortunately usually puts me to sleep for half of the trip) and keep soldiering on.  Sea-birds are important ... and cetaceans are even better.

So 9pm Sunday night and off we go again (how do you spend your Sunday nights?).  There's a certain amount of socializing on these trips as they gather together a broad group of New York birders who don't get to see each other every week, but I tend to try to find a quiet bench and spread my sleeping bag early.  Once I've taken my dramamine I'm down for the count, and sleep most of the night, but this time I was vaguely aware that it wasn't the smoothest passage out to the deep water.  Turns out we passed through several thunder storms and took a detour around others, but by dawn we were out where we wanted to be ... over 7,000 feet of water, 130 miles South of New York City.

As the sun came up, the steel gray waters were choppy and the smell of diesel and chum permeated everything on the boat.  I frankly felt somewhat queasy all morning, even passing on the egg and cheese sandwiches that they cooked up in the galley (and I love egg and cheese sandwiches).  But there's something special about dawn on a pelagic trip and, no matter how awful you feel, the excitement of being out there in the deep water takes over and we all staggered to the railing, ready to bird.

Leach's Petrels only show up close to dawn.  It's a strange fact and I'm not sure it applies everywhere, but on New York pelagic trips, the Leach's Petrels are typically seen early in the low light, and then vanish mysteriously.  I'm not sure why, or where they go, but for veteran pelagic birders, the first half hour on the chum slick is Leach's Petrel time and sure enough, they showed up on cue that morning.  A few Band-rumped Petrels showed up too so we got a quick reminder on ID by 'jiz' with the bouncing flight of the Leach's contrasting with the purposeful direct fight of the Band-rumped.

Leach's Petrel

Then, over the next few hours we slowly filled out the list of pelagic birds.  The numbers weren't big, but we got most of the species we expected.  There were a few Great Shearwaters, a couple of Cory's Shearwaters and Audubon's Shearwaters along with a single Manx Shearwater surprisingly far offshore.  An hour or so in I picked up a fast moving back and white bird and called it, but blanked on the name, even though I knew what it was ... Black-capped Petrel.  This species used to be a 'mega' for New York but it's now seen regularly and annually on these trips so we've all gotten a little blasé about them.  Still, in global terms, a very rare bird and they are always fun to watch.  We looked out for it's even rarer cousins too, but it didn't happen that day.

Black-capped Petrel (old photo from N. Carolina)

Beyond the birds, today turned out to be a great day for cetaceans.  First up were a pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, a good contrast to a later pod of Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins.  The stars of the day, from a dolphin perspective, though were undoubtedly a large pod of Risso's Dolphins that stayed close to the boat for a long time and gave great views.

Risso's Dolphins

I also got a New York State life cetacean, a species I'd seen several times in North Carolina but nowhere else, when we bumped into a pod of CUVIER'S BEAKED-WHALES.  This species is a true oddity, with their white heads and goose-like 'beaks', they just look ... well, odd.  They are also famous as the deepest diving mammal species in any ocean (deeper then Sperm Whales, or even Elephant Seals).  That diving ability means that views are typically brief as when these guys dive, they are gone for a while, maybe 40 minutes before they surface again.  We were lucky then to get a decent view on the surface before they headed down to the depths.  A very cool species.

Cuvier's Beaked Whales

All too soon however, it was time to start making the long run back to shore with a plan to be back at the dock around 9pm.  They way in is often dull.  The die-hard birders persevere and may add a few things (a hammerhead shark sp. and a sea-turtle sp. in this case) but it's generally pretty birdless.  Being a cynical old birder, and high on dramamine, I usually sleep most of the way back in and that was pretty much the case that day.  When we got close to shore though, the weather started to look a little challenging.  We'd been avoiding thunder storms all through the trip, but as we got back closer to Brooklyn,  it was obvious that we were going to have to pass though one in order to get home.

Ahead of us was a wall of black.  The seas were blue and the skies were clear where we were, but we were going to have to go through some very dark and scary looking waters.  As we got closer everyone made their way down to the cabin and when we hit the edge of the storm, all hell broke loose.  From relatively calm seas the waters turned to ugly boiling churn with waves breaking over the bow and thumping down against the sides of the cabin.  It quite literally went dark, from day to night, and as the captain labored to keep the bow into the waves, our progress slowed to a crawl.  Then things got really ugly, a brush from a water-spout slammed the side of the boat and several of the large (12 foot by 3 foot) plastic windows on the boat cabin exploded out of their frames and crashed into the cabin with wind and waves blasting in behind them.  Scenes from the end of the Titanic movies came to mind, and there was me without my dinner jacket.  We did remain surprisingly calm though and I found myself pressed up against a window with other passengers trying to keep the remaining panels in their frames.  Everyone was soaked and a bit rattled but after a very tense 15 minutes or so, the maelstrom started to subside, the sky slowly lightened, and we passed out of the roaring waters and back to calmer seas.  Phew!  'Cheated Death Once Again' as my old friend Steve Howell is fond of saying on pelagic trips.  Definitely an experience ... but let's not do that again please.

So back at the dock and safely home an hour later.  While the trips can be a bit of a slog, the distances long, and the birding time short, you do get to see really good species.  Every time I get off the boat I think that I won't do another for a while.  Then the email goes out announcing a new trip, and I inevitably sign up ready for a new adventure ... who knows what we might see out there next time.

July 4th in the Hamptons

Some Local Birding from my Home in East Hampton

Planned to spend the long July 4th Holiday weekend out at the house in NorthWest Harbor, and with only a few house guests I was able to grab three blocks of time to do some local birding.

Saturday, July 1 - Cupsogue and Mecox

Up bright and early and off in search of a recently reported Sandwich Tern at Cupsogue.  Made a quick stop at Mecox, which was pretty quiet, especially after a Bald Eagle passed over flushing the few birds that there were on the sand bank, then off to Hampton Bays.  This was my fourth trip to Cupsogue this 'tern season' and the first one where I wasn't likely to be the only birder present, indeed the report of a Sandwich Tern the day before (scarce but annual in New York State) looked likely to bring out a crowd.  Menachin Goldstein had posted that the bird was roosting on 'mussel beds' and, not sure where they might be, I took my usual route out towards the flats.

I usually come to Cuposgue close to the top of the rising tide, which concentrates the terns and shorebirds in a place easier to see them up close.  Today though the tide was low and, as I walked in I saw some mussel beds that I don't usually see or scan.  It felt like a good idea to do a quick scan there and sure enough, the Sandwich Tern was one of the first birds I saw, standing out from the Common Terns mostly by being so much obviously whiter, even at a distance.

Bad, distant 'digi-phone' image of a Sandwich Tern.

I put the tern sighting on the New York State rare bird ListServe and soon enough other birders came by to see it.  I then spent the next three hours birding in the area, seeing nothing terribly unusual to be honest, but mostly catching up with other local birders and generally being social.  Standing around chatting on a mud-flat in the middle of a salt marsh is the sort of the birder equivalent of social time, or brunch I guess.

Sunday, July 2 - Whale Watching Boat out of Montauk

After the June pelagic trip got cancelled, I'd been thinking of ways to get to see some of the shearwaters I was still missing for the year.  Sea-watching wasn't coming up with much so I decided to take the Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island (CRESLI) / Viking Fleet Whale-watching boat out of Montauk.  For $75, the boat (a big fishing boat) gets you offshore for 5-6 hours and, while it doesn't get out to the canyons or true pelagic waters, it does get you 30-40 miles out to feeding areas where there are (hopefully) whales and sea birds.

Ocean Sunfish or Mola Mola

The ride out was pretty quiet for a while but as we got further from shore I started to pick up a few shearwaters and storm-petrels.  All of a sudden though we found ourselves among the whales and spent and hour or so with multiple baleen-whales - eight Fin Whales and a Minke Whale - pretty much constantly in view.

Fin Whale

Whatever the whales were eating was also good for the sea birds and there were lots of them in the same area.  My estimated counts included 120 Wilson's Storm-Petrels, 80 Cory's Shearwaters (including a Scopoli's Shearwater), 40 Great Shearwaters, 25 Sooty Shearwaters and 4 Manx Shearwaters.  Pretty much all the sea birds I'd been missing for the year .... except for one ....

Cory's Shearwater (above) and Great Shearwater (below)

Mixed Shearwater flock including some Sooty Shearwaters

Manx Shearwater

Then something unexpected happened.  I was looking at a distant flock of shearwaters sitting on the surface when a bird took off and showed huge white wind flashes .... Skua!  Well it turns out that when you shout "Skua!" on a boat full on non-birdwatching tourists out looking for whales, you get some odd looks.  I think I probably scared a few people and no-one rushed over to see what a Skua was.  The bird itself was flying away from us and I was scrambling to get some photographs, so no-one other than me got to see it.  One of the tourists came over after the fact to ask what all the fuss was about, the rest I think just decided that I was a crazy person and kept their distance.

I was very happy though, SOUTH POLAR SKUA is a very good bird in New York State and the bird I was most hoping for on the June pelagic trips that have been canceled due to weather for the past two years.  It was also New York State Bird #396 for me (this was before they lumped Thayer's Gull so I guess I'm back to 395 now).  While I debated the ID for a while wanting to make sure I wasn't being fooled by a large, dark Pomarine Jaeger, I was VERY glad that I had my camera with me, and very happy that I took the boat that day ... great trip.

Two very bad, distant and heavily cropped shots of a South Polar Skua

Tuesday, July 4 - Local Spots in East Hampton

Less time for birding so decided to put some local eBird hours in and checked several spots close to the house, counting Piping Plover and Least Tern colonies, checking up on local breeding warbler sites, and visiting a few spots that don't get a lot of coverage.  I also moved a couple of Eastern Box Turtles away from the road .... lots of good karma built up for future birding adventures.

I ended up seeing 105 species over the weekend in The Hamptons - not bad for a crowded resort area on the busiest tourist weekend of the year.  Despite the crowds, there's still a lot of wildlife to be seen out there, and it is a spectacularly beautiful area.  Happy holidays indeed.

A Weekend in Australia

A Quick Trip to Perth and a Great Weekend of Birding

Saturday, April 22 - Perth

You know you've been flying too much when the idea of going to Australia for the weekend seems reasonable.  True, I was in Singapore, so Perth in Western Australia was only a five-hour flight away, but still, that's an awfully long way to go for a day and a half of birding.  My original plan, knowing that I had only from Friday night to Sunday night free, was to go to Way Kambas in Sumatra.  That plan fell through though and some on-line research revealed that yes, there were direct Friday and Sunday flights to/from Perth.  So all I needed then was a guide (a day and a half in an unfamiliar continent is no time to be "working things out") so when Peter Taylor from Birding SouthWest replied to an email to say he could guide me that weekend, I had a plan.

Singapore Airlines is one of my favorites and everything went like clockwork on Friday night, leaving me exhausted but excited in a hotel in downtown Perth by 1am.  The alarm was set for a very civilized 6am for a 7am pick-up and, at the appointed hour when we met, I was happy to accept Peter's suggestion that we "head for the hills" to start our day.

It's been a very long time since I was in a place where almost all the birds were completely new to me.  What was that thing that sounded like a baby goat?  What about the large black things that flopped along like kites or fruit bats?  Was that a Kookaburra?  Kangaroos!

First stop was Victoria Dam - and poor Peter had to put up with me being a lost kid, with a big goofy smile on my face soaking up the new and unfamiliar.  It was a truly awesome couple of hours wading through the blizzard of new birds, mostly new genera or even families.  The goat sound was Australian Raven.  The floppy fruit bats .... Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos.  Yes, there were Laughing Kookaburras, but apparently they aren't native so not a good thing.  And yes, there were Kangaroos ... two Western Gray Kangaroos hopped casually across the trail in from of us and off into the Eucalyptus woodland.  How Australian was that?  I was thrilled.

Western Spinebill and Gilbert's Honeyeater

We walked down to the dam and then on to the picnic area and new birds came at me fast and thick.  There were Red-capped Parrots and Western Rosellas, Brown, Gilbert's and New Holland Honeyeaters, White-browed Scrubwrens, Western Thornbills, Western Whistlers, Weebills, Red Wattlebirds, Gray Fantails, all sorts of cool unfamiliar things.  We paid special attention to Fairywrens and even though most were in eclipse plumage I was thrilled to see lots of Splendid Fairywrens and a couple of Red-winged Fairywrens.  Australian Robins were also very endearing, with Scarlet Robin and White- breasted Robin at the camp ground along with adorable Red-eared Firetails.    Just a wonderful 2 hours and 7 minutes (from eBird).  A really great way to start my trip and if I had any regrets, it's only that it occurred to me right then that I would never again have a first morning in Australia.

Scarlet and White-breasted Robins

Red-eared Firetail

Next stop was further up into the hills surrounding Perth and as we worked our way into Collins Road in Beverley I got another wave of new birds.  As soon as we got out of the car we had Rufous Treecreepers (not at all like the treecreepers I'm used to), Gray Shrikethrush (neither a shrike nor a thrush), and White-browed Babblers (you guessed it, not a babbler).  Other goodies there included Blue-breasted Fairywren, Spotted and Striated Pardalotes, Restless Flycatcher, and Western Yellow-Robin.  By the time we stopped for lunch I'd probably had 50 life birds.  Totally overwhelmed, but definitely not complaining.

Rufous Treecreeper and Restless Flycatcher 

Blue-breasted Fairywren

The afternoon was pretty much the same and included a big mixed flock of Carnaby's and Baudin's Black-Cockatoos.  With Long-billed and Little Corellas, Galah, and the three Black-Cockatoos, that made SIX lifer species of cockatoo for the day.  Not bad considering I'd only ever seen one species of cockatoo in my life before.

Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo

In the heat of the afternoon we switched over towards water birds and had a really great selection of ducks, shorebirds, wading birds and others at Bibra Lake and Alfred Cover Nature Reserve.  By the time Peter dropped my back at the hotel at around 7pm, I was exhausted.  Plans for exploring Perth were replaced by room-service and a hot bath ... hey, I had a lot of life birds to absorb.

Sunday, April 23 - Perth

Up and at 'em again on Sunday morning.  This time starting in sand dunes at Floreat Beach.  The targets here (two more Fairywren species) would not cooperate but there are worse places to dip things than standing on a beautiful coast watching Common Bottlenose Dolphins, Parasitic Jaegers and Australasian Gannets from the beach.

Rufous Night-Heron and Spotless Crake 

The rest of the morning was taken up by the wetlands of Herdsman Lake where we had a huge variety of super tame waterbirds to keep us amused.  Freckled Duck was the star bird rarity-wise for good looks at Spotless Crake, Buff-banded Rail, Rufous Night-Heron and Yellow-billed Spoonbills were all memorable moments for me.

Yellow-billed Spoonbill

After a last stop at King's Park - a wonderful Victorian park with large areas of native vegetation between the ornamental planting and heroic statues - my time had unfortunately come to an end.  Back to the airport and back up to Singapore.  This trip was not nearly long enough but I was faced with a choice ... two days of Australia or no Australia ... and I gather it's possible to get direct flights from Singapore to Darwin .....

Puffins, Dovekies, Razorbills and Murres

A Winter Pelagic out of Brooklyn

Until yesterday I had never managed to go out on a Winter Pelagic birding trip in New York State waters.  That's not to say that I hadn't tried to go out - in fact I'd booked on at least four or five boat trips that had been cancelled due to weather - I'd just never actually managed to get out there.  So the omens were good for January 2017, with Paul and Anita Guris organizing a trip on January 7th out of Brooklyn ... which was to course cancelled due to weather (!).  Luckily this time though, the boat captain gave us an alternate date, and despite the threat of another snow storm, at 3am on Friday morning I was driving to Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn in search of a boat and a whole bunch of similarly judgement-challenged birders planning to spend a brisk January day out on the Atlantic Ocean.

The plan quite simply was to motor out fifty miles into deeper water, hopefully arriving in an area frequented by working scallop dredges and other fishing boats by first light.  Then we'd lay a chum slick and 'tow' a bunch of gulls around with us while we looked for other species.  The trail of gulls would make us look like a fishing boat discarding by-catch and hopefully attract other, rarer species to join the gulls.  Well that was the plan anyway ....

Black-legged Kittiwake (2 shots)

By 7:30am, the sun was up, and even though it was cold, gray, and cloudy, there were birds to be seen around the boat.  We did establish a chum slick (diced Menhaden and Beef Suet) and had a bunch of gulls behind the boat all day.  Most were Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls but we did have a single Lesser Black-backed Gull and a lot of Black-legged Kittiwakes stay with us for part of the day.  The gull flock was also supposed to attract Northern Gannets and NORTHERN FULMAR, and both species did show up in very small numbers, but neither species stayed long  The Fulmar was a State Bird for me (#392) and one of my main reasons for coming out on the trip, so I was very happy to see a couple of them even if they didn't put on the kind of show we were hoping for.  The gulls were also supposed to attract Great Skuas, an almost legendary bird in the Western North Atlantic.  Almost every birder on the boat wanted this species, and all but a tiny handful need it for their New York, ABA, or even Life List.  I definitely need it for New York and would love to have seen one, but despite hours or scanning, today was not our day.

While the Skua did not cooperate, the Alcids most definitely did.  As the sun came up we were treated to many fly-by Razorbills and quite a lot of fly-by Dovekies.  Dovekie, a starling sized puffin relative, are really very hard to see from shore.  Experienced sea-watchers in New York might get a couple of distant ones zip by in their scopes in the average year, but for many of the riders on the boat this was a highly desired state/ABA/Life bird.  And we saw lots and lots of them ... I'm guessing perhaps 75 Dovekies, with the captain making an effort to get the boat close to several individuals on the water for photographs.

Nice as Dovekies are, they weren't my target bird.  I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to see Dovekies most years while sea-watching at Montauk, but the same could not be said for ATLANTIC PUFFINS which never come close to shore.  I've waited a long time to see a puffin in New York (a species I've seen only in Maine, Canada, Iceland, and in the UK) and as the day wore on with no sightings I was starting to get stressed that this might not be the day I got them after all.  Then around lunch time, the boat slowed and voices were discussing a bird visible from the bow.  When I heard the words "dusky face" I knew what the bird was and, after a tense few minutes trying to get on the bird, Atlantic Puffin joined my New York State list (#291).

Dovekie (above) and Atlantic Puffin (below)

While birds were the main goal, and it being Winter we weren't expecting much else in terms of vertebrate life out in the cold sea, we did actually see a few non-bird highlights.  Best for me were a pod of BLUEFIN TUNA mixed with a pod of Short-beaked Common Dolphins.  Others apparently saw a whale spout (I missed it) but I did get good views of a couple of Harbor Porpoises ... a species I'm always happy to see.

By 2:30pm, with only a couple of hours of light ahead, it was time to come back in and once again admit defeat in the search for Great Skuas.  On the way in though we had to pass through the 'Murre-Zone' and would add another bird that would be a lifer or state bird for many on the boat.  Common Murres are remarkably loyal to a band of water 23-25 miles offshore in New York in the Winter.  I've seen them before in this zone, and as soon as we motored into the right area, we started to see Common Murres and saw in the end perhaps ten of them.

Common Murre (3 shots)

Darkness overtook us before we reached land, and as we pulled into the dock in Sheepshead Bay, we arrived to several inches of fresh snow that had fallen while we were out at sea.  Not the most fun drive back to Manhattan, but it was a very fun day at sea.  Two state birds (Atlantic Puffin and Northern Fulmar) and four year birds (Lesser Black-backed Gull and Common Murre) made it worthwhile.  I took the opportunity to book myself on two additional Paulagics (June and August) and I guess I'll keep doing the Winter ones and hoping one day for a Skua.  I will get my New York State list to 400 one day (392 currently) and who knows, maybe Great Skua will be that 400th bird.