10,000 Hawks Just left New England, Headed Your Way!

Pack Monadnock Raptor Migration Observatory in NH had some record days and as of yesterday, 10,000 Hawks, mostly Broad-winged Hawks, had passed over the site this year since the official count started in Sept. On Sept. 17th we had 4,026 raptors and on Sept. 16th we had 3,483 raptors, the third and fourth biggest days in the 11 yr. history of the site since records have been officially kept.

Broad-winged Hawk, adult.  

Broad-winged Hawks soar in groups (called "kettles") on thermals, rising columns of hot air. 

This large kettle was right over the mountain producing "ooohs" and "aahhs" from all. It is very hard to capture the numbers and feeling of a large kettle in a photo. This photo however captures what it was like to see a distant kettle through binoculars, or even a scope. How do we count them? Quickly and often one at a time. See how fast you can count the Broadwings in this photo, go!

When the Broadwings reach the top of the thermal, they "peel off", i.e. glide until they find a new thermal to rise on, an energy efficient means of getting to their wintering grounds in Central and South America. This peel can often make it easier to count the hawks, as they're gliding by one at a time.

The hawks kept pouring through. Spotting scopes were necessary to see the distant kettles. I showed a number of novice hawk watchers kettles in my scope. It's so cool when they say "oh, wow, now I see what you're all looking at!"

Official hawk counter for this site which is run by NH Audubon, is Katrina Fenton, above, aided by the of many other hawk watchers and sometimes enthusiastic school kids on a class outing. 

The numbers are turned in to hawkcount.org, the official website of Hawk Migration Association of North America, where all the numbers are recorded.

Other New England hawk watch sites also have had large numbers. So heads up to hawk watching sites south of us  the hawks are coming to you!!!!

Confusing Fall Warbler Field Guide Help!

Fall migration is here and warbler ID can be confusing as may birds do not look like they did in spring or young birds look different from adults as with this young Pine Warbler. For the best help with  warbler and other bird fall identification, get our new guides

Order Now! The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region, click here.

Order Now! The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Western Region, click here.

2 new Stokes Guides – The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region and The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Western Region

Reviewers are calling them "Jam-packed with some of the best bird photography out there... they provide the most current and up-to-date information on birds"
birdfreak.com

"Written and created with intelligence and exacting care... Expands on their record of excellent books about birds. I was impressed by the depth and authority of the species descriptions... I highly recommend trying one."
10,000 Birds

"Don and Lillian Stokes hit it out of the park with their new... guide"
Thermal Birding

The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern and Western Region are the most complete photographic guides to the birds of eastern and western North America ever written. These lighter weight, portable editions are based on our best-selling national guide, The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America. They feature thousands of stunningly beautiful photos showing all the field marks and every significant plumage of each species and they include the most up-to-date and extensive identification information of any field guide. (Note, these are entirely new books and not the same as the former Stokes Field Guide to Birds eastern and western regions published in 1996.) We are so excited to bring to you these all new, lighter, more portable field guides,These guides are what you have been asking for. You can pre-order them now!

Take the confusion out of confusing fall warblers! Our guides show all the warbler plumages with multiple beautiful photos per species as with this Cape May Warbler.

These are more portable guides. 

The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region is less than an inch thick. Size is 5.6 x 8.5 x .08 inches, Pages: 513, Photos: 2,200+

The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Western Region is an inch thick. Size is 5.6 x 8.5 x 1 inch, Pages: 593, Photos: 2,400+

Here they are on top of our red, national guide The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America

These guides include everything birders want,
- Over 2,200 gorgeous photos in the eastern region and 2,400 photos in the western region, carefully chosen for each species to show all distinct field marks and plumages including, male, female, summer, winter, recognizable ages, morphs, important subspecies, and birds in flight.
- More photos per species for hard to identify birds. Difficult species, such as sparrows, warblers and flycatchers are shown from every important angle.
- The most complete and extensive identification text of any North American field guide,  either photographic or drawn.
- Handy Quick Alphabetical Index inside the front cover.
- The only North American field guides to include complete information on all subspecies and hybrids.
- Special sections with identification tips on identifying more difficult groups of birds.
- Cutting edge emphasis on quantitative shape as a way to fast-forward bird identification.
- The newest scientific names.
- Habitat descriptions.
- Special help for identifying birds in flight through important clues to behavior,  plumage, and shape.
- Detailed descriptions of songs and calls.
- The newest range maps.

Frequently Asked Questions,

1. Why did you write these new guides?

We wanted to give people lighter, more portable guides to take into the field, so we split our larger national guide, The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America, into two regional guides, The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region and The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Western Region. Plus, each of these new regional guides contains only those species found in the respective halves of North America, so you have less species to look through when trying to identify a bird. This makes it easier to identify birds in your area.

2. Are they the same as your national guide, The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America?

Yes, they contain all of same features as our national guide, the wonderful photos, layout, incredible information, and unique features that have made our national guide a best-seller. We have added a few new photos and the latest scientific name changes as of their writing. Best of all, these regional guides are much lighter and more portable. To further this end, we have omitted the extreme rarities from these regional guides (all of which are in our national guide) and included just the species you are most likely to see in the eastern or western regions of the country. For those who want all of the extreme rarities, we recommend getting our larger national guide, The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America, which was published in 2010.

3. Why should I buy these guides?

These guides are the most complete and up-to-date regional field guides available. They have stunningly beautiful, carefully chosen photos, with multiple photos per species which show all the important field marks and plumages of each species. We give more, not less, photos for the difficult species. The information is the most complete of any field guide available and hailed for it's incredible accuracy. Photos are the new standard in bird identification and our photos are correct, labeled as to
age, sex, season, morph, subspecies, location and month of the photo. We give detailed and complete information on subspecies and hybrids, which no other guide does. Our layout, with photos at the top and no distractions, allows you to look closely at the real bird and all of its variations while trying to ID it. In summary, in terms of quality, information, and user-friendly layout, there are no other guides like these available. If you already own our national guide, you will want to get these new, portable, regional guides to take into the field with you.

4. Which area is covered by each region, so I will know which one to get depending on where I live?

The dividing line between the coverage of the two regional guides is a straight line from the eastern two-thirds of TX up through Canada, including most of OK, KS, NE, SD and ND. The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region covers species found east of that line and The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Western Region covers species found west of that line. There is a map on the back of each guide showing which area of North America it covers.

5. Are these the same as your previous Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region and Western Region published in 1996?

No, these are completely new and much more extensive identification guides with all new photos and information. That's why they are called The NEW Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern and Western Region. Our previous guides have not been updated since 1996. They are not being republished and will go out of print. The previous guides had less information and photos. They did have some behavioral and nesting information.

6. When can I get your new guides?

They are available now. The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region and The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Western Region are fully available all across the country now.

Praise for The Stokes Field Guide to Birds of North America,

The Stokes Field Guide to Birds of North America is "Unequivocally the most spectacular compendium of North American bird identification photographs ever assembled between two covers...this volume significantly resets the bar for North American field guides."

Wayne Peterson, Massachusetts Audubon Society

Common Nighthawk Migration Happening Now - Tips for Seeing Them!

Common Nighthawk, male. Males have a white throat, white subterminal primary bar on wings and a white band on the tail. 

Common Nighthawk, female. Females have a buffy throat, smaller white primary bar and no tail band.

Common Nighthawk, male

Common Nighthawk, female

Common Nighthawk, male

Common Nighthawk, male

Common Nighthawk migration is in full swing here in New England. Last night in NH we saw 301 from our deck. We have gotten good flights before, our previous high count has been 2,202 in one night. We live on a dammed-up section of a river, where the river flows north and nighthawks often follow river valleys on migration. We count from our deck and are often joined by our friends.

Common Nighthawk numbers have been declining in the Northeast so it was very exciting so see so many of them that night.

This is peak Common Nighthawk migration time, so get out and look. The best time to see them is at the end of the day from about 5 pm to dark.

Here are some tips for seeing migrating Common Nighthawks:

1. Look during the later afternoon to early evening hours, from about 4 pm to 7:30 pm.
2. Look north, as they generally move from north to south.
3. Get comfortable, use a chair if you can, you will be looking for quite a while. Tuck your elbows in, it is less tiring and steadier to hold binos that way.
4. Nighthawks often move along river corridors
5. Note if there is an ant hatch. Nighthawks are attracted to, and eat, dispersing ants who rise up in clouds.
6. Study the photos above, to learn nighthawk shape. Often you will only see distant birds with long pointed wings, flapping rather slowly. When feeding, nighthawks fly erratically. When migrating, they move more directly and may even rise up on a thermal sometimes.

Shearwaters, cool seabirds! See them on a whale watch trip.

Several years ago we went on a whale watch trip and we saw many hundreds plus of seabirds, we weren't counting as much as looking and I was also photographing. The seabirds were out feeding with the whales, near Jeffrey's Ledge, a 33 mile long shallow glacial deposit underwater formation that stretches from off Rockport, Mass. to south of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Because of nutrient rich upwelling from the deeper waters next to the ledge, it's very productive of food (small fish, mollusks, crustaceans) for the whales and other marine creatures. Here's a Great Shearwater in flight. By far, the most numerous seabirds we saw were Great Shearwaters. They have grayish brown upperparts, a dark cap and a variable white collar. This one has less of a collar. You can see the narrow U-shaped white patch on the rump.

We also saw a fair number of Cory's Shearwaters, shown here. The yellow bill is quite prominent, a help with their ID.

It ain't easy to photograph seabirds. First of all, you're on a moving boat. We were lucky in that the seas were calm, with no big swells. Some tips, brace yourself against the wall of the boat, keep you knees slightly flexed and plant your feet somewhat widely to steady yourself. Forget a tripod. The boat is crowded, rocking and you have to manuever around people. Use a telephoto lens with image stabilization. I had a Canon 300 mm IS lens with a 1.4 teleconverter (giving me 420 mm) and a Canon Mark II camera. I now use a Canon 7D Mark II and a Canon 1 DX. If you can hand hold the heavy 500 mm lens or the 300 mm f 2.8 lens then good for you, they are too heavy for me.

Here's a Great Shearwater taking off, love the pinkish feet.

Another species we saw was this Sooty Shearwater, an easy ID because of its almost all over sooty color, except for the whitish on the underwing primary coverts.

Here's what it really looks like, with lots of little shapes bobbing on the water. These are Great Shearwaters, but you need to look carefully at each group of birds and all birds flying by to ID them. For great ID help for seabirds, use our best-selling, most complete photographic guide, The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America. Take a whale watch trip and enjoy the seabirds!

Dragonflies for Birders, Enjoy!

Birders can look for dragonflies through their binoculars! This is a Halloween Pennant dragonfly, so aptly named, and one of my favorites. We have hundreds in our fields right now.

Widow Skimmer

Widow Skimmer. The most colorful dragonflies with patterns on their wings are often in the Skimmer family of dragonflies.

When birds are quiet in summer, birders turn to watching dragonflies, that's what we do. Dragonflies are active on warm days, the hotter and sunnier the better. Dragonflies are stunningly beautiful, have cool names, and are abundant in fields, lakes, streams, shores, many of the places people go in summer.

Here are a few tips to enjoy and identify them.

1. Use your binoculars to spot them, if you have close focusing binos, even better.

2. Some dragonfly males patrol territories along ponds, lakes, and streams. Females mate with them then lay their eggs on emerging vegetation. If you see 2 dragonflies flying in tandem, this is a precursor to mating. In the wheel positon, mating is occurring.

3. Some dragonflies are more perchers, others more fliers, that can be a clue to their ID. Different perchers have different ways of perching, again an ID clue.

4. In general, some of the most obvious, colorful, and patterned-wing dragonflies you see are in the Skimmer family, so look in that section of our book.

5. Different species of dragonflies are on the wing at different times during the summer, so you will constantly see new ones.

6. Male, female and immature dragonflies of the same species can look different, just like birds.

We (along with dragonfly experts Blair Nikula and Jackie Sones) produced a book, Stokes Beginner's Guide To Dragonflies in order to quickly help you get into enjoying these marvelous insects. We worked out an easy key and lots of color photos. Take it and binoculars along with you the next time you go to the lake, river or stream. We take it with us in the canoe whenever we go out in the summer. Enjoy!

Enjoying Doves at Your Feeders! How-to.

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Eurasian Collared-Doves are expanding their range, look for them at your feeders

Mourning Doves are common feeder birds across the country

Doves like to drink and bathe

Mourning Dove snoozing on nest. They lay 2 eggs.

Common Ground-Doves are small doves

White-winged Dove

1. Mourning Doves are the most common doves found at feeders nationwide. Eurasian Collared-Doves are mainly found in the southern and middle part of the country. White-winged Doves and petite Common Ground-Doves are found mostly in the southern parts of the country.

2. Doves are seed and grain eating birds, so they eat many wild seeds and will come to bird feeders for a variety of seeds including millet, milo, corn and sunflower. 

3. Doves are large birds (except for Common Ground-Doves) and feed mainly on the ground. So when choosing bird feeders, select feeders that have a platform or wide ledge so doves can land and comfortably eat. Doves will also feed on seeds that fall to the ground from bird feeders. The Stokes Select 3 in 1 Platform Feeder and red Platform Feeder are excellent feeders for doves.

4. Doves feed differently than some other small feeder birds such as chickadees, who come to your feeder and take one seed at a time. Doves have a crop in which they store seeds for digestion afterward. So you may see doves coming in and consuming a lot of seeds, then going off elsewhere to sit on a branch to rest and digest.

5. Mourning Doves are in in pairs in summer. In spring the male gives his long "ooahoo oo oo oo" call to court a female. Some people mistake this cooing for a sound an owl would make. The mournful nature of the sound gives this species its name. Mourning Doves build flimsy nests, lay two eggs and both parents feed their young "pigeon milk," nutritious whitish liquid the parents regurgitate. The young fledge at 12-13 days of age.

6. In winter Mourning Doves are in flocks of about 20 or more birds. The flocks drift about a given area as food resources change. There is a peck dominance hierarchy in the flocks, with some birds more dominant over others. At your feeder you may see one bird raise its wings and even hit at another bird with its wing in aggressive encounters.

7. Most doves have rather plain brownish or grayish plumage. White-winged Doves have a distinct white streak at the edge of the folded wing. Eurasian Collared-Doves look similar to Mourning Doves but have a black half collar with a lower white edge, behind their neck. They are expanding their range and  might show up anywhere, so be on the lookout for them at your feeder. Common Ground-Doves are only 6 1/2 inches long and plain brown, with the male being a little more pinkish on the breast.

8. Provide doves with a bird bath to drink from and bathe in. When doves drink,they can keep their head down and draw in water in their bill. Other birds drink by dipping in their bill then tilting their head up and back to swallow.

9. Keep feeders stocked, water fresh, and enjoy the doves. Maybe you will even see a new species!

Happy Fourth of July!

Northern Cardinal

Great Egret

Indigo Bunting

Flowers from our garden

Happy Fourth of July weekend. Hope you see some red, white and blue birds!

Cedar Waxwing Fun!

Cedar Waxwings in crabapple trees

Cedar Waxwings in Amelanchier (shadbush) trees. The male will hop over to a female, often with a berry, as part of courtship and if she accepts it they will become a pair.

Cedar Waxwings are fruit eaters and this time of year look for them in Amelanchier (shadbush) trees, whose fruit ripens early. We have the trees framing our front walk and are delighted the waxwings are there when we go to our house. In fall waxwings like crabapples trees, so plant both crabapples and shadbush for multi-season Cedar Waxwing fun!

Butterfly Identification made easy! Learn your butterflies!

Monarch Butterfly. They lay their eggs on milkweed and their caterpillars feed on this plant.

Great Spangled Frittillary on Purple Coneflower

Close-up of Great Spangled Fritillary

American Lady Butterfly, told by the two eye spots on underside of the hindwing

Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies are unmistakable

Spicebush Swallowtails can be told from other big, dark swallowtails by their single row of prominent white dots inside the margin of their forewings. The larvae of Spicebush Swallowtails feed on spicebush and sassafrass.

Pearl Crescent butterfly. Scores are feeding on white clover on our path so we keep the path mowed high to preserve the clover flowers for them.

Mourning Cloaks are widespread across much of North America. They are one of the few butterflies who overwinter as adults, finding protected places in log piles, nooks, or under loose bark, and when they emerge in the spring they look worn, as this butterfly does. They are one of the longest lived butterflies and some may live as long as 10 months. Mourning Cloaks feed on sap and fruit.

Our butterfly bushes will bloom soon and they're magnets for the butterflies. Check with your local nature society to see which butterfly plants are not invasive in your area. Here's a Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly on butterfly bush.

We've written two books to help you attract and identify butterflies. Stokes Beginner's Guide To Butterflies, has an easy ID key to help you quickly identify the butterflies you see by size and shape.

Stokes Butterfly Book gives you plans for a butterfly garden, lists and photos of butterfly plants, and chapters, with color photos, on the identification, behavior and caterpillars of common butterflies. Both are available at amazon.com and stores.

When the birding is slow, and it's the middle of the day, a wonderful thing for birders to do is look for butterflies. Butterflies are colorful flying creatures, just like birds. The identification skills birders already have can be transferred to identifying butterflies.

Look at butterflies through your binoculars, no need to catch them in a net.

The hot weather favors butterflies as they need to warm their bodies to fly. They need to get their body temperature up to 85 to 100 degrees Farenheit in order to fly well. Adult butterflies come to flowers for nectar, lay their eggs on special host plants, which can be unique to each species of butterfly. The eggs hatch, larva feed on the plant then turn into a pupa or crysalis from which the adult butterfly will emerge. A complete cycle or generation is called a brood, and butterfly species can go through from just one to as many as four broods per year, depending on the species and the number of warm months. Different butterflies are on the wing at different times during the summer, so you will continue to see new species.

There are about 17,000 species of butterflies in the world. In North America there are about 700 species but only a small fraction are common and likely to be seen by the average person.

When you see a butterfly watch it closely for several minutes. Observe how it flies, its size, shape, and the colors and patterns on its wings, both above and below.

Start by knowing the major families of butterflies that are distinctive. Below are some:

Swallowtails - are our largest butterflies and most have long tails coming off their hind wings.

Whites and Sulfurs - these are all medium-sized butterflies that are predominantly white or yellow.

Gossamer Wings - this group is easy to identify since it includes all of our smallest butterflies, such as the blues, coppers and hairstreaks, and metalmarks. The blues tend to be iridescent blue, coppers are often copper, hairstreaks often have hairlike tails on their hind wings, and metalmarks often have metallic spots on their wings.

Brush-footed Butterflies - this is a large and varied group of medium-sized, generally dark-colored butterflies with such strong and rapid flight they are hard to follow. Their is no one field characteristic, besides their flight, that makes them easy to identify as a group.

Satyrs - these are medium-sized butterflies that are almost all brown, often with darker eye-spots on their wings. They have a weak and bobbing flight and are often seen at woods edges or among grasses.

Skippers - are small butterflies whose flight is extremely rapid and erratic. They are mostly rich brown or orange-brown.

Attracting Orioles, How-To

Baltimore Oriole, male

Baltimore Oriole, male

Baltimore Oriole, Female

Baltimore Oriole, male, so enjoying the oranges at the feeder next to our deck. During the recent spell of cold and rain, both he and his mate frequently came to the oranges, and also to suet. Such a perk for them in difficult weather, helping them get easy calories while they continue their challenge of breeding and raising young. Even though they are eating the fruit now, they also eat insects and will primarily feed their young in the nest caterpillars and insects as oriole babies need good protein for growth and feather development. You can also attract orioles with mealworms and oriole nectar and grape jelly feeders. Some orioles will come to feeders all season but others stop using feeders once they have young in the nest and instead focus on eating insects. The best time to attract oriole is to have feeders ready as soon as they come back from migration.
It is such a thrill to see these orioles up close.

For more on attracting and feeding all the species of North American Orioles see Stokes Oriole Book: The Complete Guide to Attracting, Identifying and Enjoying Orioles