On The Road – Albatrossity – Summer in Flyover Country – week 4

As I may have mentioned before, our local Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum) populations are low this summer, perhaps as a result of a killing winter week in their wintering grounds in Texas. So I celebrate every time I see a hatch-year Grasshopper Sparrow here this summer, like this one. It still has the yellow gape (corners of the mouth) that helped it attract parental attention in the nest, and very spiffy tail feathers, unlike the worn-out stubs that many adult birds display at this time of year. Let’s hope it lives long and prospers!

Only a few warbler species stay in Flyover Country for the summer, and this Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) is one of those. This bright adult female seems to have recently molted, and is perhaps trumpeting her stunning new look to the world. Either that or she was panting in the heat…

Gray Catbirds (Dumetella carolinensis) are vocal and abundant residents of the wooded brushy areas on the prairie edges, and this one was guarding a nice pokeberry (Phytolacca americana) patch where the poke berries were just about ripe. All parts of the poke plant are toxic for humans, but birds (of many species) consume them avidly. The generic name of this plant means “plant dye”, and pokeberry juice is indeed a powerful pigment. When I was banding birds near a pokeberry patch, I learned not to hold the catbirds above the data sheet; catbird poop laced with pokeberry juice can permanently stain the paper (or your pants, or shirt, or anything else that gets in the way of one of those emissions).

Here’s a familiar bird to most birders in eastern North America, a Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor). This is a recently-fledged youngster, because it has a limited amount of dark feathers on the forehead, and a faint buffy eye-ring. It was following an adult around, but its plaintive begging was soundly ignored, so it flew off to fend for itself.

I made a trip to our stellar National Wildlife Refuge, Quivira, and on the way found this magnificent Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus). It was still hunting even though the sun had come up, so that glare probably also means that it is hungry.

Speaking of the sun, here is the sunrise that day. Like most of the country, we are having very colorful sunrises and sunsets, thanks to the smoke from all the fires in the west.

Pied-billed Grebes (Podilymbus podiceps) clearly had a good year, production-wise, at Quivira. There are young grebes, with their stripey faces and their fluffy white butts, on just about every bit of open water at the refuge this summer. Interestingly, even though this is the most widespread grebe species in the Americas (from Canada to Tierra del Fuego), very little is known about population parameters, longevity, or annual reproductive success of this species. The little that is known mostly comes from studies in North America. If you know somebody who wants a wide-open research topic in South America, tell them about this!

Another local youngster seen at Quivira was this hatch-year Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), looking very regal from its preferred perch in a dead cottonwood tree.

One of our earliest sub-Arctic shorebird migrants, the Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) is the smallest shorebird in the world, and very common in marshes in Flyover Country in July and August. Despite its diminutive size and overall resemblance to a lot of other small shorebird species, it is usually easy to ID, since it is the only small sandpiper (aka peep) with yellow legs. You just have to hope that it has not been in mud so that its leg color is disguised…

This is one of those molting birds with a funky plumage that was mentioned above. Despite that pale overall color, this is a Black Tern (Chlidonias niger). It has lost the black upper chest and head feathers that make it very distinctively black in summer plumage, and has reverted to a gray-and-white color scheme that most terns favor. It could be a local bird (there are breeding records for both Quivira and the state refuge a bit further north, Cheyenne Bottoms), or it could be an early migrant from the northern prairies. There were some blacker ones flying around in the same vicinity, so this one has started its molt quite early.