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Advanced Birding Project

I like birds and biodiversity. Here one can find photos & videos I take of those things.

02/09/2024

Here are a few photos from last week on a quick trip to Florida for work.

The first photo is a Limpkin; in the US, they're almost exclusively found in Florida, where they were nearly eradicated due to hunting and habitat loss in the early 20th century. They have since rebounded thanks to strong conservation efforts.

The second photo is the Mottled Duck, my 387th lifer. It is in the family of dabbling ducks (like the Mallard). This species is found only in Florida and directly along the Gulf Coast over to Texas.

09/06/2023

An adult and juvenile American Flamingo at Caesar Creek State Park in southwest Ohio on September 1st, 2023.

Displaced by Hurricane Idalia, this was the first time in state history that Flamingos had been seen in Ohio. They rarely leave their home waters around the Yucatan, Cuba, and the far southern tip of Florida.

04/24/2023

A Redheaded Woodpecker eats some suet and then takes a peanut for the flight back.

04/23/2023

5.5-7 million years ago a few finches got lost and ended up in Hawaii. Through a process known as adaptive radiation, they evolved into over 50 separate species known as the Honeycreepers. These magnificent birds are found nowhere else on the planet. In a matter of just a few hundred years, humans have undone millions of years of evolution and have caused the extinction of 2/3rds of the Honeycreeper species. Many of the 17 remaining species are extremely endangered, some with just a few hundred individual birds remaining. The widespread destruction of habitat and the untold number of invasive species introduced has been their undoing.

Below is the Hawaiʻi ʻAmakihi which has a stable population. Its stability is sadly the exception, not the rule for Honeycreepers.

04/10/2023

In 2021 my wife and I put up a gourd rack and never got Purple Martins. In 2022 we got one pair late in the season that successfully fledged 4 babies. The question for us was whether that would be enough for them to return and start a colony...

Moments ago in our backyard we heard that wonderfully distinct call of the Purple Martin. Having flown all the way to South America last fall, they have now returned to breed again and start a colony!

04/08/2023

Did you know there was a native parrot in the U.S.? The Carolina Parakeet was once wide spread over the southeast, up to Ohio, and as far west as Colorado. However habitat destruction when the deciduous forests were cut down decimated the population from east to west. Further, hunter the birds for their feathers significantly damaged their populations. As social birds they would return to where the other birds were shot only to be shot themselves.

The last known Carolina Parakeet named Incas died in 1918 in the same cage at the Cincinnati Zoo that Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon had died in just four years earlier.

03/28/2023

Walking along the coast in a quiet an empty corner of O'ahu I stumbled upon a stunningly beautiful Laysan Albatross. The albatross untucked its head from its feathers to look out and determine whether I was a threat. I snapped a few photos before it tucked its head back in and returned to sleep.

The Laysan Albatross is endemic to Hawai'i with 99.7% of the entire population breeding on the Hawaiian islands. The oldest known Laysan Albatross was banded in 1956 and had a successful brood in 2021, she is estimated to be 70 years old!

03/27/2023

This is no Canada Geese, this is a Nēnē, the state bird of Hawaii. Some 500K years ago a few angsty Canada Geese got tired of the mainland and struck out for Hawaii. They evolved into a new species (not the distinct neck striations), shed their angry ways, and took on the island lifestyle becoming very mellow.

Once numbering nearly 25,000 strong, they were almost extinct by the 1950s numbering just 30 total individuals due to the widescale introduction of rats and mongoose + hunting. These days they number around 2,500, 90% less than their peak. While still a threatened species, they're coming back! This was lifer #337 for me.

03/23/2023

This is a Hawaiian Coot photographed at a marsh in Kailua, O'ahu. Hawaiian Coots are a threatened species with the total population only ranging between 1500-2000 total Coots. It was the 319th species I have identified.

03/21/2023

Red-crested Cardinal photographed in Honolulu, O'ahu, Hawaii.

Note that the Red-Crested Cardinal is not a species of Cardinal but is actually in the Tanager family. Additionally, Red-crested Cardinals are not native to Hawaii and are an introduced species.

02/11/2023

A female Eastern Bluebird perches in a Cherry Tree.

01/25/2023

A Sharp-shinned Hawk visited our backyard today and made a meal of an invasive European Starling.

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