Puerto Rico Day 1 & 2: Caribbean Gems

The view from the hotel beach

My friend Mike and I arrived the evening before our birding tour in Puerto Rico to avoid any potential weather-related events that might have caused flight issues. He and I toured around Old San Juan, ate some great local food thanks to a cab driver's recommendation, and drank VERY locally at a dive bar - $1.50 Medalla Light! Bird-wise, we only saw the ubiquitous Bananaquit that first day.

We awoke the next morning and, as I opened the blinds of our balcony, a bird took off from the deck. A Greater Antillean Grackle had brought a chicken bone to our balcony and had been eating it there.

Greater Antillean Grackle

We birded around the hotel a bit where we saw more grackles, a Brown Pelican, Red-legged Thrush (the Puerto Rican version of a robin), and Zenaida Dove.

Zenaida Dove

At 12:30, we met our leaders Kevin and Lena from Wildside Nature Tours and the two other tour participants. After a brief food and fuel stop, we headed west from San Juan toward the town of Hatillo. We made our first birding stop at Laguna Tortuguero, a small woodland area next to a large lake. We immediately started hearing and seeing some of our sought after Puerto Rican endemics.


The first endemic we saw was Adelaide's Warbler - a gorgeous bird, but uncooperative for a photograph. Pearly-eyed Thrashers called from the undergrowth and several female Puerto Rican Spindalises (Spindali?) flitted in the limbs of an Orchid Tree. Luck was with us and a splendid male Spindalis joined the party. He stayed just out of view for a while, but then came down ridiculously close to feed on the flower petals of the Orchid Tree.

PR Spindalis with a piece of petal in his mouth

A hummingbird made itself known by buzzing over the canopy of the tree. It was a female Antillean Mango - a specialty of the Caribbean.

Antillean Mango - the leaf is not really stuck to the end of his bill, just bad positioning in the photo

We also saw some familiar birds like Osprey and Northern Parula and less familiar ones like the introduced Orange-cheeked Waxbill. We ended our time there and continued to our hotel for the night. I had a great dinner of some eggplant dish with a delicious side of rice and beans, along with some flan de vanilla for dessert. Yum. We were off to a terrific start! Day 3 was filled with tremendous birds. More on that later.

Go to day 3

Off to Puerto Rico

For those who didn't see it on Twitter or Facebook... I'll be leaving for Puerto Rico tomorrow for 5 days of birding adventure. The actual tour doesn't start until mid-day on Wednesday. Where connectivity is available, I will be tweeting and blogging about the trip. It should be a blast. Thanks again to the guys from 10,000 Birds for sponsoring the contest. Endemics, quite a few exotics, and neat West Indian birds await!

Would you count it? A CBC conundrum.

John from A DC Birding Blog and I were conducting our part of the 75th Long Branch, NJ CBC on Saturday, a count that I compile. We were on a small trail along a frozen lake (like most of the water in our count area that day) and we ran into a gentleman putting up a Screech Owl box. He mentioned that he worked for The Raptor Trust, giving him some good credentials. He didn't know of any Screech Owls around, but did mention something very interesting. Earlier in the day, he ran into a hunter who showed him a photo taken that day of an injured Barred Owl on land within our count area. The owl box guy went to look for the bird, but did not find it. He planned to return later in the day with dogs to see if he could find it and then bring it in for rehab.

So, do I count it as a bird seen on our CBC? My plan is to count it unless someone has a good reason not to.

For a full write-up of our day and the birds we saw, check out A DC Birding Blog.

Top 10 Birds of the Decade

A few bloggers have started posting Top 10 Birds of the Decade lists (here and here). I think David's is a little more meaningful, but this will be a fun exercise. Although I had been birdwatching many times as a kid, I didn't really start actively birding on my own until 2001 or so. I didn't chase much for the first few years.

My Top 10 US Birds in no particular order (it's easier to limit it to a US list):

1. Green Violet-ear in Navasink, NJ - showed up on my birthday and I got to see it at sunrise the next morning. It flew off a short time later never to be seen again.
2. Long-billed Murrelet - this is the only bird on the list that I didn't actually see, but I missed this extremely rare bird TWICE. I missed the one at Sandy Hook because I was at a meeting drawing pictures of my annual accomplishments. LAME. I chased it a few days later and missed it. Then I missed another at Lake Nockamixon. Boo.
3. Great Gray Owl - one of the more impromptu acts of my life was hopping on a plane to Minnesota in February 2005 to see the owl invasion there.
4. Northern Hawk Owl - one of my favorite birds, obviously. I first got to see one in Minnesota and then saw another last year in New Hampshire.
5. Ivory Gull - Not one, but two!
6. Bicknell's Thrush - one of my most enjoyable birding experiences was hiking up Wakely Mountain to see Bicknell's Thrush with fellow bird bloggers.
7. Western Reef-Heron - chased twice in NY and both times I was joined by my wife. It was her first rarity chase and we had a lot of fun. Saw it on the second try.
8. Swallow-tailed Kite - seeing a bunch of these along with a throng of Mississippi Kites in Georgia was a real highlight for me and my wife
9. Green Jay - How can you not love this bird?
10. Hoary Redpoll - only because I froze my butt off in the town of Embarass, MN and had my parents think that I died in a car crash just to see one. My cell phone had cut out while on the phone with my mom and I didn't get service back. When I got service back an hour or two later, I had 11 voicemails.

I'm sure I missed some good ones. What are your top 10?

Birding on a Soap Opera

My wife is addicted to Days of Our Lives, a US soap opera. I will admit that I do watch and enjoy the ridiculous story lines. Ok, stop laughing. In any event, we were watching it today and two of the characters were birding! Here's a snapshot:

The character on the left remarked that the American Goldfinch was "much too far north for this time of year." The guy on the right responded, "To me they're just rats with feathers." That's a Peterson Field Guide in his hand, the 5th edition. Pretty funny.

A gull of the Ivory variety

In case you haven't heard, an immature Ivory Gull was found in Cape May, NJ on Friday. This is the 5th record of this species for NJ - 1940, 1955, and 2 in 1986. So, as you can imagine, the NJ birding scene and much of the mid-Atlantic is buzzing about the bird. As you may recall, I saw my first Ivory Gull in Piermont, NY in 2007. That didn't stop me from going to see this one in my own state. So, down I headed the 2+ hour drive very early on Sunday. I got to the marina that it favors and only had to wait 15 minutes or so before the gorgeous white creature appeared. I was joined by friends from VA and NJ and we spent a long while photographing and observing the bird. It was insanely accommodating, doing circuits over the crowd of birders, perching close by for photos, and picking from the water. It was nuts. Here are some photos.

Cape May Ivory Gull Photos - Nov. 29, 2009

Oh and did I mention it was a spectacularly sunny and warm day for late November? After viewing the gull, we hit some of the other Cape May hotspots. We got word of a Selasphorus hummingbird at a local feeder which we got to see. We also saw Eurasian Wigeon, Common Eiders, a few lingering Baltimore Orioles, a Bald Eagle or three, and a few lovely Red-shouldered Hawks. We struck out on the Swainson's Hawk that's been down there for nearly a month. All in all, it was a great day to be out. The gull is still being seen as of today. So if you didn't see one of the Massachusetts birds last year, you get a second shot. Although not an adult, this bird is still a beauty and it's a chance to see a bird that is not only rare in the US, but becoming more rare globally.

Pelican Blood Movie Trailer

Wait, what's this? An actual post! Watch the trailer below for the British film, Pelican Blood, based on the novel by Cris Freddi. The main character is a birder or a twitcher as the case may be. Warning: Foul language.

Pelican Blood Trailer from TOBY COURLANDER on Vimeo.

Welcome our new baby!

Julian Patrick Belardo

Born: 10/2/09 5:57 PM 9 lbs. 10 oz. and 21 1/4" long

Mom and baby are doing great!!!

You can read our birth story here and you can see a slideshow of photos here.