Young Birders Unite!

There is now a Young Birders Network whose goal is to provide resources for young birders to connect and learn, while giving adults resources to help them. It's important to get kids involved in birding, as they are the future of this hobby and the future guardians of birds. Birds, like this Bald Eagle, can be such a magnet for budding birders. 

Kids need to be taken out into the field, allowed to look through optics and get close-up views of special birds.

Don letting some kids look through his scope.

They need to be guided by caring adults, who will be role models for the kids.

Martha Kreik, right, is a third grade teacher, who encourages lots of kids to learn about birds and says these children are the ones who will take care of these birds in the future.

There are many resources for young birders, ranging from school and nature organization programs to the young birders clubs springing up across the country.
The newly formed Young Birders Network is a coordination between Black Swamp Bird Observatory and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for kids from 12-18. The young birders themselves wrote much of the content. There is even a Young Birders Club Toolkit for adults and young birders wanting to start their own club.
There is also a Young Birders Home Page of the American Birding Association website for kids 10-18, where kids can sign up for the ABA Young Birder of the Year Contest, find out about their Young Birder Camps, read their blog and connect with other young birders.
So if you are a young birder reading this, or an adult who wants to help young birders, what are you waiting for, get started soon!

Common Nighthawk is the new ABA Bird of the Year!

Common Nighthawk

we saw 1,026 last Sept!

They flew by continuously

this is what it looked like through binos, most flying by at a distance

Flying down the river in front of the mountain

view from our deck

Check out the new American Birding Association Bird of the Year, the Common Nighthawk . Learn more about nighthawks and the ABA by watching this fun introductory video here. This is a super cool bird that you should get to know. We are lucky in that our NH property is on a nighthawk migration corridor. Sometimes we have fantastic experiences watching migrating nighthawks. For example, we had a mega number of Common Nighthawks migrating past our property this last Sept. 3rd, 2012. We sat on our deck and counted. It started out looking promising as several small groups of nighthawks went by at 5 pm. It just had the right "feel" for a promising nighthawk migration evening. Dragonflies were plentiful in the air, handfuls of Barn Swallows were up there with them. These are both insect eaters, just like nighthawks. Best of all, we saw flying ants dispersing. Nighthawks love these and eat them on migration.

From 5 pm to 5:30 pm, we counted 40 birds. You never know what will come next, so you just keep scanning the sky and try for patience. From 5:30 until 6 pm we saw no birds. We were quickly eating dinner outside on the deck, one person always watching while the other person brought out the food. 19 more nighthawks flew by between 6 to 6:30 pm.  Then, at 7 pm Don yells, Nighthawks!!! We got on the lead birds and just kept our binoculars trained, as a large, continuous stream of nighthawks flew by. A silent phalanx of flapping birds, all following the same path, rather high in the sky, heading south. You just keep counting, not breathing. You count by ones, as they fly by slowly enough for you to be able to do this. I lost a sense of time and suddenly, I was at 514, and they just kept coming...515, 516, 517.......and on and on. The sky was deepening in dusk and still they kept coming. Finally at 7:30 pm most had passed. We still stayed out until 7:45 and saw 2 more. It was too dark to see. Final number 1,026 Common Nighthawks.Wow!!

To put this in perspective, this was the second biggest night we had ever had from our site, where we have been counting nighthawks for at least 8 years. We live on a dammed-up section of a river and nighthawks traditionally follow river valleys for migration, possibly because they are rich with insects, and nighthawks feed while on migration. There is a nighthawk migration count website where numbers are recorded, called the SuAsCo/Nashua Rivers & Beyond Nighthawk Survey. It covers the main river watersheds in the lower part of NH and upper two-thirds of MA. If you count nighthawks in this area, record your numbers at this website. Our number of 1,026 Common Nighthawks, was the largest number recorded from a single site in a single night during this season so far, according to that website.

We usually get good nighthawk migration at our site, great some years, others not so. Our last big day, and record, occurred 8/27/05, when we saw 1,058 Common Nighthawks, most flying by in a continuous stream (just like these did) between 6:30 to 7:30 pm. Only thing is, strangely they were all headed north, while ours last night were headed south.

Common Nighthawk numbers have been declining in the Northeast. The purpose of the SuAsCo/Nashua Rivers & Beyond Nighthawk Survey is to count and record the annual fluctuations of migrating nighthawks in a defined area over time and create a longitudinal data set that might contribute to research on the long-term decline in abundance of this species.

Some days are good birding, others are great. This was one of them!

Birds in Superstorm Sandy, what happened to them?

Magnificent Frigatebird

First of all, our hearts go out to the many who suffered losses and are without power due to Hurricane Sandy, renamed Superstorm Sandy. We here in NH were mostly spared some of the most severe effects felt elsewhere, although many tens of thousands are still without power (luckily, we are OK).

For birders, the first rule is to stay safe during a storm. Many birders did venture out at the end of the storm to see what happened to birds. Such a large storm can effect birds by pushing them into coasts, or some actually get caught up in, or entrained, in the storm itself and carried far away from their usual areas. Monster storm Sandy deposited many, many birds in unusual places, including Magnificent Frigatebirds reported from Little Compton, RI and South Dartmouth, MA (possibly the same bird). 

Phil and Don scan the gray sky for unusual birds

Here in inland southwest NH we ventured out yesterday with some other birders and found 2 Laughing Gulls, usually a coastal species, on our lake.

Laughing Gull, winter adult

Henry helps scan also

We joined with Henry and went to a big lake in our town and found 10 Black Scoters  far out on the lake. These sea ducks are usually off the coast of NH.

White-winged Scoters are another type of sea duck that could be effected by a storm.

This is a Wilson's Storm-Petrel, the more commonly seen one from the NH coast. The more rare and similar looking Leach's Storm-Petrel, still in migration, was more a victim of this storm and many were found displaced throughout the storm area. In our state of NH a Leach's Storm-Petrel was seen at big Lake Massabesic, only to be eaten by a Herring Gull!! 

For photos of this amazing event go here.

Many other storm blown birds are being found. Large numbers of Pomarine Jaegers have been reported from NJ, NY and PA. For excellent coverage of the storm displaced birds throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England Area see John Pushcock's reports on the American Birding Association blog go here

and here.

Also see the live blog updates of storm birds at Nemesis Bird website here.

If you find any unusual storm blown birds in your area, try and document them and report them to your local birding listserve, birding organization and also ebird