Second Golden Eagle!

Today we had our second Golden Eagle for the season. The photo is the first bird which flew by on October 22nd. The last two days have been painfully slow with fewer than fifty birds passing in both days combined. Hoping that tomorrow's cold front brings a ton of raptors with it! Happy Hawk-o-Ween to you all!!!

Jeff Birek - CVWO Hawkwatcher

Beautifully Captured!

This depiction of the Kiptopeke Hawk platform was made by second grader Jack Hoyt of Kegotank Elementary. That's me in the middle (with blonde beard and all!!!) Thanks to all the kids for their wonderful drawings. It made a slow day on the hawkwatch much better! Jeff Birek - CVWO Hawkwatcher

The banding station at its best

I wanted to add this picture to the blog to give a new prospective of the banding station. This picture was drawn by Nygeria Marshall from the Kegotank Elementary School. The schools second grade class came to visit the banding station and the hawk platform here at Kiptopeke over the past week and wanted to say thanks for the demonstrations, so all the kids said thanks by drawing us beautiful pictures! What a way to lighten up ones life! I loved all the pictures they sent along, including this one, which very accurately describes the banding station! Note the picnic tables full of smiling faces, the banding station itself, and the bird in the box! One fantastic picture!
I would like to say thanks to the Kegotank school for their continuing support of the banding station and the raptor projects! I look forward to seeing you again next fall!
Cheers,
Jethro

Gulf Fritillary

Gulf Fritillary, like this one here, is pretty rare here in the Eastern Shore, coming up from the south usually in late August through early October. This Gulf was seen at the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge on the 6th October, and is the only one that was seen this fall that I know of. They are reported almost annually here, but always in very low numbers. A quite large butterfly with an orange, bat wing appearance and silver spots separate them from all other butterflies one would expect in this area.

Timber Doodler!!

With a name like Timber Doodler, what's not to love about American Woodcocks?!

Check out that bill! And the eyes that have rotated to the top and back of the head! What a crazy looking bird!
Again, not a bird we catch every year here, but fortunately for us this year, we caught one. A bird that we catch only on the first net run of the morning (usually about sunrise), these birds are pretty big birds, so they tend not to get stuck in our nets very often.
Notice the tip of the bill. They have the ability to move just the tip of the bill to grab worms while they probe their bills in the ground.
Although they nest here in Virginia, we see a large push of woodcocks into the area about the first part of November.

Pine Siskin banded 10/30

Today ended with a bit of a surprise at the banding station. We caught this little fella on the closing net run. Out of the seven years I have been banding here at Kiptopeke, this is only the second Pine Siskin we have caught here. So what a treat!
An irruptive species that, in some years, are fairly common, this species is just not caught often here at Kiptopeke. Since 1963, only 16 have been banded here. So not very common.

Snow Bunting on the Eastern Shore

Here is a beautiful picture of a first year male Snow Bunting that Sharna Tolfree (CVWO Monarch tagger) found on Wise Point this afternoon. The area that she found the bird is located on the extreme tip of the Eastern Shore near the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel (CBBT) where the road turns into a bridge as you are leaving the Eastern Shore heading towards Fisherman's Island. This area has restricted access and is not open to the public.
The bird was seen in the area for a few hours and remained near night fall.
With the amount of white on the bird especially on the primary covert, this bird appears to be a young male in winter plumage. Although not the rarest bird here on the shore, just a harder one to find. They are reported almost annually somewhere on the shore.

One sweet looking bird!!!

The photo was taken by Joe Medley (CVWO hawk trapper).

Jeff the hawkcounter

Here is a picture of California native Jeff Birek, the CVWO hawkcounter for the fall and a beautiful adult male Northern Harrier. Jeff spends the whole day staring at the sky, counting migrating raptors from the hawk platform here inside Kiptopeke State Park. Some days its pretty easy, when their are clouds and/or the hawk flight is low, but then there are days when the sky is endless and the hawks are dots, even in a pair of binoculars. But Jeff is up to it. He is excellent at identifying raptors even if they are but just five mile away! Also, Jeff is great at doing hawk demonstrations (as he is here) informing visitors of hawk identifications and the need for conservation. And for those of you that are interested, yes, he has seen a few Bald Eagles this fall. ;-)

Worm-eating Warbler 10/22!!!!!

According to the "Virginia's Birdlife an annotated checklist" by Rottenborn and Brinkley (some of you know this book as the "Gold Book") the latest known date for Worm-eating Warbler in Virginia was the 14th October, well the one pictured here is now the latest known Worm-eating to have occurred in the state. We caught and banded this one on the 22nd of October. Although not crushing the late date, its still of note.
This is a species we use to catch quite a few of here at Kiptopeke, with an average of about 15 to 20 a season and we normally catch them very early in the season with most of them occurring in August or the first half of September. But things have changed some over recent years. Last year, we only caught 3 total for the season, but at least we caught them when we were suppose to catch them. This year, we have only caught one: this one. Pretty sad. Worm-eating's are one of my favorite warblers. They are just so full of feistiness ! And they are just beautiful!

Guess it just goes to show you that you can never predict what you might find if you go out birding!

Dung Beetles amoung us

Who said that Dung Beetles are ugly? Check out this beautiful little fella! This is a Rainbow Dung Beetle (a scarab beetle) and we can tell by the long "horn" on the head of this individual that this is, indeed, a male. This, by chance, is the longest horn I have seen on one of these however, hence why I took a picture of it! We normally catch quite a few of these every year here at the banding station. Some days we will catch up to ten. We also catch another kind of scarab beetle here as well. That one is much bigger and is entirely brown. And as a weird side note, those give off an odor that resembles molasses! Sick I know, but that's what it reminds me of. We catch those in our nets as well, but usually in lower numbers. But as cute(?) as they are, I would prefer we not caught them at all. They tend to make a mess out of the nets, but lucky for them, we can usually get them out with out killing them or pulling legs off of them.

Mantis 1, Cloudless Sulfur 0

Yes, I know, this is not a picture of a bird, but its still a cool picture. Well, ok, cool for one of the subjects, not so cool for the other. Here is a Chinese (I think) Mantis that had captured and started to enjoy its meal of a Cloudless Sulfur. It is quite common here at Kiptopeke State Park to see mantis sitting atop blooming plants waiting for supper to arrive. We have two kinds of mantis here at the park(that I am aware of): a native Carolina Mantis and a much more common Chinese Mantis. Chinese Mantis can get very large. I have seen them here at almost 6 inches in length. And they have been know to eat Hummingbirds! Carolina Mantis on the other hand, usually stay much smaller and feed more on the normal, moths, flies, and butterflies.

Awesome pairing!

Here is another picture of the Magnificent Frigatebird that flew over Kiptopeke on the 4th October, but with a little bit more excitement! Along side of the massive Frigatebird is a dwarfed Peregrine Falcon that made sure the Frigatebird knew of its presence! They put on quite a show even if it only lasted a few minutes!
I would like to thank Jeff Birek (CVWO hawk counter) for both of these pictures of the Frigatebird! Joe Medley (CVWO hawk trapper) also got some good photos of this bird and I will try to get those pictures on the blog as well.

Magnificent Frigatebird 10/4/07!

So far this season, this has been the bird of the fall. This adult female Magnificent Frigatebird flew over Kiptopeke on the 4th October and spun circles over the park for about ten minutes before she headed north. It was then seen about 30 minutes later over the town of Cape Charles before drifting out of site still heading north. Although not a super rare bird to the coast of Virginia, there are still under 25 records of this species here with most being associated with hurricanes or tropical depressions, it's still not something you expect every year! This is actually my first Frigatebird for the state, although two flew over during the fall of 2005, but unfortunately for me, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I was thrilled to finally see this one!

Welcome to the banding station!

So this is where I call home for the fall! This is a picture of the banding station (where the banding takes place). We have mist nets set up nearby the banding station that we use to catch the birds, and then go on net runs to extract the birds and bring them back here to be processes. After processing, we release the birds from here.
As far as banding stations go, this is a very nice set up. Not all banding stations are so, well, permanent and constructed! Many are just a tarp laid out on the ground or and old card table. This site has seen its changes over the years as to what made up the banding station. Starting off as just a card table, then to a gazebo and now a full blown building! This new(er) set up is great for us! We can band birds quickly and offers great viewing for the public! So far this year, I will estimate that we have had over 3,000 visitors to the banding station this fall! And we still have a month to go! Been a very busy year for us as far the visitors go, the birds on the other hand have had an off year. We are currently less than half of our normal total, sitting at just over 3,100 birds for the season. WAY below normal.

One beautiful Cape May Warbler!

Here is a picture of just one of the Cape May Warblers we have banded this season. This beautiful male was banded on the 13th of October and is one of the prettiest ones I have seen here! But not to be out done, the very next day we banded another male Cape May that was just a good looking as this one! So far, they are the only two we have banded this season. And I am not sure we are going to catch any more. We normally catch about 5 to 6 a season here, so never many. Just always a treat to catch one, especially when they look like this!

Lincoln's Sparrow AGAIN!

Here is a picture of our fifth Lincoln's Sparrow of the season! How unusual is that? Well, it is the highest number of Lincoln's we have caught here in a season in the last ten years! Even though we are having a very poor season here, at least one species has been high! And lucky for me, it is a sparrow! As some of you might now, I just love sparrows and so I am always excited when the late season gets here and our overall sparrow numbers jump up. Hopefully there are a few more goodies waiting for us in November!

Sorry for the lack of posts!

Howdy all,
I want to apologize for the lack of posts over the last month. We have been experiencing a lot of computer problems here at the CVWO house, and dial-up connection is not quite the fastest way to put pictures up on the blog, but things are slowly being worked out. I do plan on posting a lot more pictures over the next month so please keep checking the blog!

Thanks again for hanging in!
Cheers,
Jethro

Here's licking at you!

Yes, ok, so this is not a bird. But, it is a cool picture! We caught this quite large Black Rat Snake while on a net run a week back. We have seen this individual around throughout the season, making the most out of the warm sunny days here. Rat Snakes are fairly common here at the park and is probably the most common snake here. A few other snakes have been found here at the banding station, like Rough Green Snake, Hognose Snake, and Black Racer.

I would like to thank Dee Viel (my intern here) for taking a great picture!

Our two Tanagers

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two tanagers that we catch here at Kiptopeke. The bird of the left is a Scarlet Tanager while the bird on the right is a Summer. The two birds are often very similar in appearance but there are a few clues to help separate out the two. Although these are not the best of pictures, you can see that the Scarlet has a much smaller bill that the Summer. Also note the overall color difference. Scarlets usually have a darker wing than Summers and the quickest way to separate the two (and come handy in the field) is the underwing coloration! Scarlets have white underwing feathers, while Summers are a yellow color. So if you have a decent look at a fly over, you can separate out the two! Pretty cool eh?
We really don't catch many tanagers here at Kiptopeke. We average less than five for each species here. Both of these birds were caught this fall, with the Scarlet coming this past week. Maybe someday, we will catch a Western here but odds are always stacked against us.