Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

Roseate Spoonbills are not challenging to identify, but they certainly brighten up a day of birding. Spoonbills can be found at all seasons in the region of Rockport/Fulton on the central Texas coast. From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes:  In early March, much of North America still will be struggling to shake off winter, weary of the cold and impatient for spring.  But on the central Texas coast, things will be hopping, as the abundant wintering birds mix with the first spring migrants.  And we will be there also.  We will be reviving a tradition that aims to increase the enjoyment of birding. Marbled Godwits, photographed in winter at Rockport, Texas. A wide variety of shorebirds can be found  here  through the winter, with more joining them during migration.  For learning to identify shorebirds with confidence, it's especially helpful to see them in mixed flocks, where direct comparisons are possible.  In the early 1990s, Victor Emanuel...

Adult Roseate Tern on Eastern Egg Rock, Maine, in June 2011. From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Terns may be the ultimate summer birds. They are related to gulls, but gulls thrive in cold weather, some even spending the winter north of the Arctic Circle. Terns, by contrast, love warm climates. In much of North America, they are most prevalent during the summer. About ten days ago, thanks to the generosity of Dr. Steve Kress and his highly successful Project Puffin, Kimberly and I were able to visit Eastern Egg Rock, in the Gulf of Maine. We did see puffins there, and many other birds as well; maybe Kim will blog about the puffins (hint, hint). But I was most pleased by the opportunity to look closely at Roseate Terns. Some treatments of tern identification focus on bill color. The mostly-blackish bill of Roseate Tern can be useful for quick ID, but it’s tricky, too: other terns have blackish bills for part of the year, and in transitional stages they can show color patterns m...

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: For several years now I've been very interested in the whole subject of molt. This is the process wherein birds develop a new coat of feathers, generally by dropping a few feathers at a time, with new feathers growing in their place. Birders may not notice the molt unless they look closely, but it's a universal phenomenon among birds. Especially among smaller birds, it's generally true that a healthy wild bird will replace every one of its feathers at least once a year. Birders may not notice, though, unless the new feathers are strikingly different in color from the old ones. The timing of the molt for most species is quite predictable. Right now, for example, here in northern Ohio, the American Goldfinches are starting their spring ("prealternate") molt. It's most noticeable on the adult males, who molt from very dull to very bright colors. This bird was outside the windows at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory yesterda...

It's spring, the Red-winged Blackbirds are all pumped up and making music, and so are we. From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: In my most recent book, Flights Against the Sunset (published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008), there was a whole chapter ("Nightland") that was an extended essay on sleep deprivation. None of our friends were surprised about that. For Kim and me, sleep is usually pretty far down the list of priorities. There are always too many other interesting things to be doing. Right now we're a little more crazed than usual. This weekend is the big annual banquet / celebration of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO), and we've been swamped with trying to prepare for it. The observatory has a great staff and a lot of wonderful volunteers, without whom nothing would ever happen (come to think of it, I'm a volunteer). But still, Kim has been going like crazy all week, like a hummingbird on overdrive, dealing with a zillion details relating to the ...