The Days Grow Shorter...

and the year reaches a close.  A birder looks back on the year's list and remembers the special ones.  He looks forward to the coming year when even a House Sparrow brings excitement because its the first of the year.  He ponders on the misses and grins at the fortuitous finds.
As November reaches its dusk and December lurks around the corner, I look back at the birding year 2012.  I set out to see 245 Kansas birds, not a lofty goal but a realistic one considering the arrival of a new family member and the tight budget hindering long birding trips.  I now sit at 250 birds for the state in 2012.  More impressive probably is my 229 birds found in Rooks for the year.  In fact, there were only 2 county birds I saw in 2011 that I did not see in 2012: Black-necked Stilt and Eastern Wood-Pewee.
As 2013 draws ever closer, I wonder what my goals for the coming year should be.  Will it be another "stick close to home" year?  Will it be a "scour the state" year?  Who knows, but I'm excited no matter what lies ahead.

Photos

Here are some decent photos of some of the birds I've seen recently.  I won't bore you with any more words....

 "Just" an American Pipit

 A Pipit in Profile

 A songbird's bane

 Female Merlin

 By far the best shots of a Merlin I've ever gotten

 Here in Kansas, this is already the Winter of the Red-breasted Nuthatch.  I've even got it as a yard bird.

Townsend's Solitaire.  One of a group of four.  Isn't that an oxymoron?  A group of Solitaires?

A Few Surpises

The past few weeks have been pretty crazy in terms of my schedule.  I have made it out some, though.  Unfortunately, I've missed some primo opportunities to take some weekend trips with Henry.  Sooner or later, I'll get to go.
There has been quite a bit of migration going on recently.  The early songbirds and shorebirds have given over to waterfowl, later sparrows, and some "winter" birds.  Here are a few photos of a few nice "winter" birds:

 I love all nuthatches, but these guys are, for some reason, way cooler than their White-breasted relatives.  Maybe it's that cool facial strip, or maybe it's the Red-breasted's nasal voice.  Whatever it is, this awesome guy was frolicking near a maintenance building at Webster SP.

Thanks to Tiff's suggestion, I was sitting on the porch with Caid just taking everything in...and more to the point, trying to keep Caid from fussing (He already loves the outdoors!), when I heard a "jip jip" sound.  Now I wouldn't have told you before that I could pick out a Red Crossbill by voice, and I'm still not sure I can, but "Red Crossbill" immediately popped into my head.  Anyways, this guy landed in the tree in the lot across the street.  He called repeatedly, long enough for me to get my camera and get some documentation shots.  When I came out of the house, he had a girlfriend with him!  They took off not too long after, but not before I had landed another awesome yard bird!

While not really a "winter bird" the next bird was a new county bird for Mitchell County and one that I've had a lot of success finding lately in the surrounding counties.

The bird on the left is smaller, has a noticeably smaller and thinner bill, had a longer tail, and had no yellow/orange on the lores.  All of these traits add up to the first Mitchell County Neotropic Cormorant.  I've been finding quite of these birds in the surrounding counties.  I hope that this continues because they break up the monotony of looking at Double-crested after Double-crested.

I hope to get out some more in the coming weeks to pick up a few more year/county birds.  I'm sitting at 249 for Kansas for the year, so 1 more would put me at 250, which sounds a lot better than 249.  Here a few "likely" candidates: 

Common Loon

Scoter

Short-eared Owl

Long-eared Owl

Le Conte's Sparrow

Marsh Wren

Clark's Grebe (if I can get a good enough look at them to differentiate them from Western)

Sabine's Gull

A Few Pics

 A beautiful Grasshopper Sparrow.  It's large head gave me hope at first that it might be a Baird's.  Looking at it through my binoculars, I realized that hope was in vain.

 A very poorly lit Taiga Merlin that I saw the previous day munching on a House Sparrow.

This guy was 10 yards away from before I reached for my camera...he must have thought I was reaching for something else.

 White-throated Sparrow: an uncommon migrant through these parts.

Another look at the Grasshopper Sparrow

This bird is supposed to be shy

So I'm going to post some pictures first and let you revel in the awesomeness of how bold this bird was for a supposedly shy species.  Take it in and try to imagine how excited I was to find my target bird and get such awesome looks as it:

 A beautiful Sprague's Pipit!

So I set off yesterday with two target birds: Sprague's Pipit and McCown's Longspur.  Not only would both of these birds be county, year, and state birds, they would be life birds to boot.  Sprague's passes through every year, but they can be shy buggers and difficult to find.  McCown's may pass through every year, but Rooks would be on the Eastern edge of their migration route.  

When looking for these types of birds, you basically drive around...or at least that's how I do it.  If anyone knows a different way, let me know.  Anyways, you drive around and look for decent habitat: pastures, short grass prairie, disced fields, etc.  Then you hope to see little birds flying around.  The presence of Killdeer can be a good indicator at this time of year to see if birds are using a specific field.  

I had been driving the country roads for a little over an hour when I found this disced field and happened to see a few small birds flying around.  Bingo!

At first all I saw were Horned Larks and some American Pipits (always a nice bird to see).  I then caught some flashes of black on the bellies of a few birds.  When I finally got them in my binoc view, I found that they were Chestnut-collared Longspurs still transitioning into basic plumage.  Now this is only the second time I've seen Chestnut-collared Longspurs.  And this was the best view of them I've had.  They are not as "pretty" at this time of year, but you just don't complain when getting to look at Chestnut-collared Longspurs.  I tried hard to find a McCown's, and there was one bird that I saw through my binocs that looked like a good candidate, but when I got the scope up, it had flown the coop.  

Meanwhile, while I panned the field looking for McCown's, I also had Sprague's in mind because they can use these types of field during migration.  All of a sudden, I noticed a very pale bird off to my right.  I got the bird in my field of view and was awestruck to find that it was a Sprague's Pipit!   I turned on the pipit's song and the bird proceeded to fly within 10 yards of the car and poke around trying to find the bird that was making that racket.  Eventually the bird flew off into the field to the West that had fairly tall grasses, but not before I got some awesome looks at my lifer Sprague's!

What Next?

I've met my goal for the year, and it's only in September.  So what do I do now?  Try to find more birds of course!  There are a number of potentials out there, but here are some of the more likely birds:
-Common Loon
-Bonaparte's Gull
-Pine Siskin
-Long-eared Owl
-Short-eared Owl
-Le Conte's Sparrow
-Marsh Wren
-Swamp Sparrow
-Scoters
-Long-tailed Duck
-Sprague's Pipit
Difficult but not out of the realm of possibility:
-Nelson's Sparrow
-Sedge Wren
-McCown's Longspur
-Baird's Sparrow
-Trumpeter Swan
-Tundra Swan
-Purple Finch
-Northern Goshawk
All of these birds are possible.  It be great if I could get above 250 this year, but I'm not going to kill myself doing it.

245!

I reached my goal last Saturday.  With Grandma Kerri coming up to spend time with Tiff and Caid, I was able to get away and do some birding.  The funny thing was, I got my best bird (and only new year bird) in the first half hour of birding.  That's when I was able to track down this little bugger in the canopy and Id it:

So it's not the best photo in the world (which of mine are), but it shows enough to let you know that what you are looking at is a first Fall female Chestnut-sided Warbler.  This bird was on my radar, but I wasn't counting on it.
While driving the country roads later in the day, I saw the White-winged Dove-like flash of white on the wing scapulars on a much smaller bird.  It turned out to be this:

It's my first Lark Bunting for Rooks in 2012.
I also happened to avoid running this awesome guy over:

I first thought that this snake was a Coachwhip (which would have been sweet!).  But I now think that it's an Eastern Racer (still pretty cool, but c'mon...it's called a Coachwhip!).  The scales look very braided, which made me think Coachwhip right away, but the coloring of the snake should be quite a bit different for that particular species.  If you know for sure, please let me know.  But I'm pretty sure it's an Eastern Racer.