After an amazing 4-week vacation at home in Cape May, New Jersey, punctuated by several nice morning flights of warblers at Higbees beach, an amazing post-hurricane beachwatch that included 2 White-tailed Tropicbirds, and several Bridled and Sooty Terns, and a pleasant pelagic trip out to the continental shelf where Common Dolphins, Pilot and Minke's Whales, Loggerhead Turtles, Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks, an Ocean Sunfish, Bridled Terns, an immature Long-tailed Jaeger, and 2 Audubon's Shearwaters added much excitement to the already enjoyable show put on by 100s of Wilson's Storm-Petrels, and many Great and Cory's Shearwaters, the former giving awesome views close to the boat. Though it would have been great to stay in Cape May through the Fall, I had to get back to reality after this break and return to PhD work and the gym to combat the side effects of too much of mother's and grandmother's comfort food (not to mention Joe Battle's North Carolina ribs and Hemingway's seafood buffet)!
I am also excited to be back to start serious European birding, but also very busy at work so this is a belated report from over a week ago. Two Sundays ago (Sep 25), my colleague (now friend) Ashwin Mohan and I had an amazing birding experience (the best I've had thus far in Germany) at the Zschorna Ponds (
Zschornaer Teichgebiet) just north of Dresden about 20 km or so. Neither of us have cars, and so we rode there on bikes, with some help by getting more than a 1/3 of the way there on the #7 tram's last stop north at the town of Weixdorf. We both separately discovered the website of the VSO (Saxon Ornithologists Club) which has chapters in different parts of the state of Saxony, including Dresden. They have information of general hot spots for birding, and an active forum for rare bird alerts as well as general sightings, all in German (thank God for Google Translator!) Seriously, though, I can say that this site has helped me learn many new German names for species, and I am going to try hard to improve my German this scholastic year. I also just contacted someone from the group for information on membership, monthly meetings, excursions and surveys/counts...there actually are a lot of potential experiences for learning and fun, but I digress...
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| Click to enlarge map. |
So there we were, getting off #7 at Weixdorf around 6:30am, about 20 minutes from sunrise (just enough light that we did not need to turn on our lights) and we headed NW to Zschorna while passing through a few quaint little villages like, Medingen, Grossdittmansdorf (love the name, don't you?), and Radeburg. Between the villages, we rode past plowed fields and forest edges where we picked some nice birds and natural spectacles. At the interface of a field and some house, where we stopped quickly to check the passerines in the conifers (which turned out to mostly be Great Tits and Chaffinches), a Hobby flew over our heads, out over the fields, in its typical direct, stiff, and fast but relatively-slow-flapping-for-a-falcon flight style. At another field we stopped to observe a male Marsh Harrier Ashwin had first picked up sitting, perhaps finishing a freshly-caught breakfast, flying low over the field. At the same place, we watched a huge flock of European Starlings in a tight pulsating ball of 300-400 synchronized birds, which, after a few minutes broke up and slowly dispersed on the plowed field. We found this lively wood's edge on both sides of the road at the bottom of this small hill with Short-toed Treecreepers, a female Lesser Spotted Woodpecker on one side, and then a blood-rushing, shrill "klii-eh" from the other side...we turned to each other at the same time with wide eyes..."Black...Wood...pecker?!" I whispered excitedly. We heard it call a 2nd time, yep, it was definitely a Black Woodpecker; unfortunately we did not see this one. This was a "semi-lifer" in my book: a bird I could identify by voice but still have not SEEN yet, so not a true Lifer in the traditional sense. A bit further down the road, and Ashwin stopped in front of me abruptly,checked some small birds he spotted going overhead: two of them were Yellowhammers (coolest name for a bunting, eh?!). Other birds we had on the way (trying not to stop and linger too long) included: large flock of Graylag Geese, a second calling (distant) Black Woodpecker, a Green Woodpecker, and 3 egrets (1 Great, and 2 Little).
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| female Green Woodpecker |
When we arrived at the Zschorna Ponds around 9:00am we started sifting through waterfowl groups on the western "Great Pond" (which, as the name suggests, was huge and I really wished i had my scope with me!). Most were Mallards, but we picked out 4 drake
Common Pochards and a
Great Crested Grebe. There were 8+ Grey Herons and a single Great Egret on a small sandy, lightly-vegetated island in the far SW corner of the lake, along with many adult and juvenile Great Cormorants. Also noted was a single
Canada Goose in a flock of Graylag Geese, and after consulting the guide to make sure, we can assume that this was a lost member of an introduced population (photo below) but still interesting to note.While I was quickly jotting down some notes, Ashwin spotted our first
Common Kingfisher darting across the water and into the edge vegetation north of us...and I saw a bird but missed it with the bins, ugh. (I was determined to find another one or come back and find this guy again...). Walking down the center road which separated the two main "ponds" (they were really lakes if you ask me, by there shear size, but...) White Wagtails were landing in the road and strutting, calling, and flying back up into the roadside habitat. We had a couple nice views of cooperative Chiffchaffs. They seem to respond to imitated ascending whistles, and can be somewhat inquisitive. Soon after that, Ashwin took notice to a flock of medium-large birds...I had an immediate guess (partly because I was expecting this, and partly because of the extreme "frying-pan" wings), and binoculars confirmed my guess:
Northern Lapwings. This flock was made of 23, but later I kept tally of the various flocks, and many were around 20 but one was twice this number and...oddly to Ashwin and I at least...joined by a good size Starling flock?! Yes, interpenetrating flocks of Lapwings and Starlings. Is this typical, or has anyone comments about this behavior?
While finding 3 more Great Crested Grebes on the east "Wide Pond" (
Breiter Teich), we both simultaneously saw our "Holy Grail Bird of the Day":
White-tailed Eagle! It was a nice adult with short, wedge-shaped, pure white tail, and it soon was joined by another adult (we assumed this was a pair that nested near the lakes). We did not locate the nest, but saw the two fly together a short while and then did a short display like Bald Eagles I have seen in New Jersey, so I suppose it might be something common to the genus
Haliaeetus. Later on we spotted a very distant eagle with flight feathers and tail much darker than the back, head and upperwing coverts. We got very excited when we realized it was another eagle-lifer: a
Lesser Spotted Eagle!
When we sat down in a shady spot at the northeast corner of the Great Pond, to have lunch while keeping watch for new birds, just then we heard a nearby Black Woodpecker give its flight/alarm call "
krruck-krruck-krruck..." We literally dropped our lunches to follow the calling. Shortly it responded with its shrill "
klii-eh" call. Just as we located the tree we thought it might have been on, a group of loud, chattering cyclists rode by and flushed the bird! Ashwin had a very brief glimpse of the bird as it dove and flew directly away from us, but was not able to see the extent of red to sex the bird. We heard it call once more, but it was way off, and then we decided to give up for the moment. Walking out to a field, which the woods bordered, our bins came across a
juvenile Common Buzzard with much white on its back and upperwing coverts as well as the head. Svensson
et al. describe this pale variant as mostly found in northern Germany and southern Sweden, so this must be one of the southernmost areas this variant can be found (this weekend we found another one at another location to be mentioned in the next post). When we returned (seriously hungry by this time) to our lakeside lunch spot, and resumed eating, a small bright bird came from out of the bushes just right of us, and started flying directly across us and south along the shore, low over the water. I sort of knew what it was sans optics, but when I finally caught it in the bins...my God, how stunning this Common Kingfisher was! I still have not gotten over the shiny, azure-blue backside of this tropical gem. Finally while checking the woods edge and fields just north of the Grossteich, Ashwin started taking pictures of a cooperative Chiffchaff I whistled in. (giving a plain, slightly upturned "hwee
et" with an emphasis on the end, seems to have the same effect on chiffchaffs as pishing has on chickadees or tits. Pictured below, we were perflexed by this bird, first thinking maybe it was a willow warbler (later, after reading descriptions of call notes, willow would be ruled out alone) but also the chest and underparts in general were too dusky and not light enough for willow, but the thing that made this individual bird not typical for a chiffchaff was the rather bold supercilium, especially in front of the eye. Most interesting from the picture below is that the bolder supraloral region is also noticably yellow and moreso than the rear part of the supercilium. This feature, along with the greenish-yellow tinted scapulars and wing coverts, after looking in Svensson
et al., suggest an
Iberian Chiffchaff!!! BUT, the brownish back and not-so-yellow underparts don't fit for a true/typical Iberian Chiffchaff. Then again, don't the bill and legs appear paler than is typical for regular Chiffchaffs? Primary projection (slightly longer in Iberian species) is unfortunately not clearly seen in the picture, and what is worse: we did not recall any vocalizations, which might have made the ID much easier than basing it on plumage details solely. Oy, does any reader perchance have any ideas/advice on the true identity of this bird? Comments would be GREATLY appreciated, and thanks in advance!
The pictures here are all from Ashwin Mohan (except for the pic of Ashwin of course, and the map of Zschorna ponds), and at the end is a complete checklist for the day. Good birding to all!
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| NE corner of Grossteich (Kingfisher/Lunch spot) |
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| Canada Goose hanging with flock of Graylag Geese. |
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| White Wagtail in the road that runs down between the two main lakes. |
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| Field on edge of woods (just north of Breiter Teich) were we found the pale juv. Buzzard. |
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| Odd Chiffchaff: note the very yellow supraloral region, and the greenish wing coverts. |
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| Ashwin scanning for Kingfishers. |
Cumulative Checklist:
A=seen between Weixdorf and Zschorna.
B=seen at Zschorna Ponds.
Total number of species: 45
A: B:
1) Graylag Geese x x
2)
Canada Goose(introduced) 1
3) Mute Swan 65-70 1
4) Mallard x x
5) Common Pochard 4
6) Great Crested Grebe 5
7) Great Cormorant 35-40
8) Gray Heron 6 8
9) Great Egret 1 1
10) Little Egret 2
11)
White-tailed Eagle 2
12) Marsh Harrier 1male
13) Common Buzzard 1 4
14)
Lesser Spotted Eagle 1
15)
Eurasian Hobby 1
16)
Northern Lapwing 80-100
17)
Common Sandpiper 2
18) Black-headed Gull x
19) Common Wood-Pigeon x x
20)
Common Kingfisher 2
21) Lesser Spotted Woodpecker 2
22) Great Spotted Woodpecker 2 2
23)
Black Woodpecker 2 1
24) Green Woodpecker 2
25) Eurasian Magpie x
26) Hooded Crow x
27) Common Raven 1
28) Barn Swallow x
29) Great Tit x x
30) Eurasian Blue Tit x x
31) Eurasian Nuthatch 2 1
32) Short-toed Treecreeper 6 1
33) Chiffchaff x x
34) European Robin 2
35) Black Redstart x
36) Eurasian Blackbird 1-2 1
37) Song Thrush 1
38) European Starling 400+ 200+
39) Gray Wagtail 1
40) White Wagtail x x
41) Yellowhammer 2
42) Common Chaffinch x x
43) European Greenfinch 3
44) European Goldfinch x
45) House Sparrow x x
