Tri-State Outdoor News

Each year, birders from around the country gather in local groups for the National Audubon Society’s Annual Christmas Bird Count. The following was written by Tom Cronk of Vincennes and details his day in the field with his son, Adam, as the two took part in the Knox County event on Jan. 3,2009. The story was posted in the bird watching forum on www.tristateoutdoornews.com. It contains various bird lingo such as the four-letter code used to document the various species of birds seen. Some of that coding has been preserved.

It was 5:30 a.m. on a chilly January morning. My son, Adam and I were getting ready to start our day for the annual Knox County Christmas Bird Count. We were paired to cover a slice of the circle in concert with several other teams of expert birders. The pressure was on and the excitement mounting. Weeks of intense preparation were finally culminating in an arduous day of searching for, identifying and counting as many bird species as we could possibly muster. Camera lenses had been cleaned, batteries charged, and clothing and gear laid out and ready to don as we started our day.

The sun was not yet up as we left the house with optics, field guides and supplies in hand. A quick, almost reluctant stop at the local McDonald’s for breakfast provided protein and caffeine to get us through the morning. We recorded our time, weather and odometer readings as we gulped down the food and drink, and we were off!

A blue morph phase snow goose stands on one leg at Mirror Lake in Vincennes. Joining the snow goose are Canada geese.

Our first challenge… owls! Could we find any of the wary, reclusive creatures in the early hours? We set off for Robeson Hills, on the Illinois side of the Wabash River, but still in our defined 15- mile circle. The habitat should be perfect, the time right, as we drove up the lane to the top of the hill, but alas!… no owls were heard in this most secluded area.

We moved on… first to the river road on the Indiana side, then across to the east on Schoolhouse road, stopping periodically to listen and play a screech owl recording to tempt a response from an owl – any owl – so we could make the first entry on our tabulation sheet. We pulled over to the side of the road in a fairly secluded spot next to a small pond surrounded by trees. Adam played the electronic call from the car and then we listened…. What was that? …a return call from a Screech Owl (EASO) behind us to the west. We got out and stood in the chilly dark of the Knox County countryside and listened again. There it was again, now closer and more to the northwest. We played the tape one more time… Listen !! It seems like it’s right out there in front of us! Adam turned on his little mag-lite flashlight to see if we could find the rascal and BEHOLD! … sitting on a branch at eye level not 6 feet away from us was our quarry… a gray morph Eastern Screech Owl (EASO). As we studied the little guy in the light, I fumbled to retrieve my camera for a picture. Quickly, with hands shaking… point, click, nothing! Point, click, nothing! All the high tech camera gear and no operator who could figure out how to take a picture in total darkness, Oh well, EASO come, EASO go. But what a find and what a great way to start our day!

Ross’s Goose, considered to be a rare visitor to southern Indiana.

Now we were both wide awake and giddy with our experience. The screech owl was a life bird for Adam, and I hadn’t seen one in a long time, much less close enough to reach out and touch (almost). We moved on to other areas and the sun was now rising, and the skies were starting to show as solid overcast. DRAT! … not going to be a good day for spotting or photos, but we pressed on, tabulating everything we could find… Downy Woodpecker (DOWO), House Finch (HOFI) and at the cemetery, a Redtailed Hawk (RTHA), American Crow (AMCR), Northern Flicker (NOFL) and various others. We had found Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (YBSA) at the cemetery last year, but there was no sign of him this year.

Then it was onto the Roger’s gravel pit. Here we found a few ducks paddling, dabbling, swimming and doing what ducks do… Common Goldeneye (COGO), Canvasback (CANV), Ruddy Duck (RUDU), Horned Grebe (HOGR), and a couple of Pied-Billed Grebes (PBGR) (that one sounds like a beer). At the south end we also picked up a Belted Kingfisher (BEKI). Out on the prairie adjacent to the pits, we got our first smattering of Rock Pidgeon (ROPI) sitting on the irrigation sprayers and picked up our second RTHA for the day and a few other common birds (EUST “Sturnis Vulgaris” en masse, American Crow (AMCR and others). Then back to town to take our first look at Indian Lake (the homestead), Mirror Lake, and the Bridgepoint Pond on College Ave. I had seen Ross’s Goose (ROGO) two days before at the Bridgepoint pond and had called count organizer Gary Bowman immediately to confirm and photograph it, but Saturday, as luck would have it, ROGO was not there. By this time it was nearly midday and a call from Gary brought three of the teams to McDonald’s for lunch. I had a cheesburger (CHBU), and Adam had a quarter pounder with cheese… (QUPO). We exchanged stories with our cohorts and headed back out into the fray.

During the afternoon we shuttled between Four Lakes where we found a (Northern Shoveler NOSH), and Indian and Mirror lakes. Gargantuan gaggles of Ghastly Geese (Canada Goose, CANG) had grouped and gravitated toward the lakes and we decided after trying to count individual Gooses (??) that they just weren’t being very cooperative… moving around, hiding behind each other, diving under the water, flying away, flying back… etc… so we decided to tabulate them with an “expert estimate”. This became a real problem and time waster because Adam and I just couldn’t agree on the count estimate. He thought it should be “oodles” and I, (taking the more mature approach), thought it should be “gazillions.” We debated those and several other terms for some time, stomping around in circles and wildly flailing about to make our respective points, and thankfully, finally found agreement only seconds before it evolved into a physical confrontation. Who says birding isn’t stressful? We settled on, of all things, a number… 1,731 to be exact (of course that’s absolutely accurate).

By now the afternoon was getting on and we decided to check the prairie west of U.S. 41 to the south. We found more of the common stuff, along with ducks such as Redhead (REDH), Ring-necked (RNDU), Lesser Scaup (LESC) and Common Goldeneye (COGO) along with Great Blue Herons (GBHE) and another red-tailed hawk. At one point when we got out to scope out a bird –or a clump or something – I flushed a Northern Bobwhite (NOBO). After the loop to the south we came back through town, scoping the lakes again and checked off Bufflehead (BUFF) and Hooded Merganser (HOME) at Indian and Mirror Lake. Still no sign of ROGO, although I had spotted it earlier at both the Bridgepoint Pond and at Four Lakes, each time with a flock of Canadas.

Our next stop proved to be on the west side of the Wabash River at O’Neal airport. I didn’t hold much hope that we would turn up much there, although hawks were a possibility and of course, Horned Larks (HOLA). We indeed saw horned larks on the abandoned runway that parallels the road going west from the WEP Asphalt and Vincennes University (VU) corner. We had to stop and turn around at the first “T”, as beyond was out of the circle, but as we came back we noticed two flocks of horned larks (presumably) flying up, around and back down. We pulled up to where they landed and did the obligatory look… lo and behold, some of those aren’t horned larks! We had picked up 40 plus Lapland Longspur (LALO) for the day. The Lapland Longspurs were another life bird for Adam, and a great daybird for us.

As we headed back toward town, we made a quick stop at the corner woods by Hank’s bar (no… we didn’t go in). The woods on that corner is fairly thick with lots of brush, so we scanned for a few minutes, and bingo ! Our Yellowbellied Sapsucker (YBSA) we had missed at the cemetery was in the top of a tree right next to our car. Got two really bad pictures of him, but at least could mark him down for this year’s count. As we started to leave, Adam took a short walk across the tree line to the south where there was a little bit of standing water in the adjacent field. When he got back to the car he said he had seen an entire flock of American Robin (AMRO) 35 plus. We thought that was kind of unusual… boy, were we in for a surprise when we heard about Gary and Lisa Bowman seeing their group of robins…. A whopping estimate of 1,200 in one flock.
The day was starting to wind down now, but as we came back into Vincennes, we decided to try to find a Eurasian Collared Dove (EUCD), and pick up whatever else we could find along the way. A Cooper’s Hawk (COHA) was seen calmly resting in a tree at Third and Hart streets as we went east to check the lakes again. Not finding anything markedly different, we decided to head back through VU and follow along the river and neighborhoods to the north edge of town. Since Gary and Lisa always like to cover Oubache Trails, we had decided we would stop short and not go further west than the Ford Sawmill road. When we approached the railroad crossing at Ford’s corner, there were two doves sitting on the phone wire above. Adam called it first… (his eyes are better than mine) … “There’s our Collared Doves!” So after stopping to view and also take several more bad pictures (silhouettes due to poor light) we put two EUCD notches in our tabulation belt.
By now the day was nearly at an end, so we headed back across town toward the lakes once again and found… no, not another day bird… but… Gary and Lisa! We pulled over to compare notes and do a group scope of Indian Lake from the eastern end and survey the “gazillion” Canada geese that were there. In a couple of minutes the Schurr team also arrived and joined the festivities. With the light fading fast, we visited for a while and reviewed our respective experiences for the day, and then decided it was time to hit the ending bell.

All in all, despite the poor light, temperature and afternoon showers, it wasn’t such a bad day. The final compilation from Gary would in fact show that the teams did pretty well over all with 77 species in one day, in the dead of winter. It was a good count! Can’t wait for the next one.