A winter Storm

In coastal Virginia we don't normally get heavy snows. Two to three inches is enough to shut things down for the day like they did just last week. But yesterday a big storm formed off the coast and dumped significant snow on us. Something we see maybe every three to five years. The National Weather Service reports 8 inches near us and that is consistent with what we see. There were drifts that are probably pushing a foot or higher. The storm left the yard very pretty.

Early this morning the birds were out filling up to stave off the cold. The high today was only 24F; again something that we only see a few times a year. This White-throated Sparrow was picking seeds that had fallen on top of the snow.

In late morning we saw our neighborhood fox again. This is the third time this month we have seen it up in the main part of the yard. We had only seen a fox a couple of time prior to this year and back in the wooded area. The fox was too "sly" for me to get a good picture but here it is up on the sandbags that I use for flood protection when hurricanes hit. You can see the tail behind the ladder on the side of the shed.

My wife and I bundled up and went out for a walk in the yard. There were a lot of animal prints and I tried to get photos of them.
This is bird prints near the feeder. Obviously there has been a lot of activity today.

The birds were even wandering over the top of the barrel garden. This is the same barrel as in third photo above.

And here is an interesting one that I can't quite tease the story out of. There is a wing print to the left of the feet prints. This would suggest a bird, maybe a dove, trying to take off. But it is only on one side. And the foot prints continue on for quite a while with no more wing prints. So maybe it was just a single flap of the wings. But then there is a pair of small prints to the right that are unconnected to anything else. They differ from the main line of prints and there is nothing in front of or behind them. So maybe another bird landed her to harass the first? Maybe they are from different times and are unrelated? It will remain a mystery to me for now.

Below are the prints of the fox. These were made when we saw it run across the yard just before the picture of the fox tail above.

I was surprised by how deep the prints were. The go almost all the way to the ground. I would have expected the fox to be lighter than that.

And I wrap-up with a few pictures of the marsh. The first is the snow on the pier. The wind did some weird things and cleaned most of the snow off, or never let it accumulate in the first place, but not all of it.

And parts of the creek were frozen but not all of it. Surprisingly, the wider part was frozen, as was the small canal across from us. But the creek was free-flowing at our dock which is in between the frozen spots.

And then, in spots in the marsh where water runs, the snow had collapsed; presumably as the tide went out. It created some interesting visual patterns.

More unusual visitors

We have had a couple of almost reasonable weather days since the last snow storm and that has brought it's own group of unusual birds. Sunday as we were watching the birds come and go to the feeders, my wife noticed a Chipping Sparrow sitting on the bird bath. And then a second on the ground near the butterfly garden. And then another. And another. And another. I'm sure you are getting the picture by now. I ended up counting 20 Chipping Sparrows. And there might have been more as they barely stuck up above the grass and I probably missed some of them. Several White-throated  and Song Sparrows joined in the fun and the whole lawn and alive with their movement. And while scanning for more sparrows, Sharon saw a Woodcock sitting in the garden.  It was sitting for about 30 minutes but during that time it would occasionally start vibrating its body up and down without moving its head at all. It then started probing the garden dirt and stayed for at least another hour.

Winter visitors

For the past day we have had a winter storm come through. Forecasts as to its impact varied widely yesterday but we ended up with a modest 1-2 inches of snow over night. I had set up my time lapse camera in hopes of making a video of the storm. I was foiled on two fronts. First, the snow didn't start until after dark and second, when it did snow, some collected on the front of the lens and blocked the view. So there isn't even a picture of the yard after the snow fell.
But the storm did bring a load of birds to the backyard. There were almost 30 House Finches running back and forth between the shelter of the pine trees covered with vines and the feeder. It got so busy at times that I started a reservation system.
There were also a full range of sparrows. We had several of the typical White-throated and Song Sparrows plus a Swamp Sparrow, uncommon this far up in the yard. And a Chipping Sparrow; to the feeder, no less.

As the birds were preparing for the storm last night we had a visit by a pair of Northern Flickers.

This morning before breakfast we saw an Eastern Red Fox walking through the back of the yard. It wandered to one side and back to the other, then towards the way back of the yard and then back down the path. Later in the day we went out and could see the prints left in the snow.
And when we continued our walk out into the marsh we had a yard-first: a pair of Eastern Meadowlarks.

An Ipswich Sparrow

On the way home from Christmas travels, my wife and I stopped at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge for a morning of birding. While the main draw is the large number of wintering ducks and geese, we were intrigued by reports of several Snowy Owls on the beach. We checked with a ranger to see where the owls had been seen most recently and she told us that they had not been seen in two days. Since we saw a Snowy Owl over Thanksgiving weekend, we figured we wouldn't spend a long time hunting for these. But we did drive down to the end of the parking lot and have a look around. There were a large number of people out walking the beach and fishing so any owl would be a good distance away.
But sine the light was now behind us, we decided to scan Tom's Cove for any waterfowl or shorebirds that were too hard to see from the main road. There wasn't much in the water but as we approached we saw a pale sparrow working through some beach grass. It wasn't very cooperative in giving us good views but did stay in the same general area for several minutes. And a second one joined a few minutes later. We searched our field guides but couldn't quite nail the identification down. I took several photos in hopes that they would help. After returning to the car and consulting the books in more detail we returned for some more looks, with an eye on what was needed for identification. Since it was a bit of a puzzle for us I thought I would walk through it here.

An early look at the bird

The sparrow was pale and ran across the sand instead of flying. We quickly closed in on either the Ipswich subspecies of Savannah Sparrow or a Vesper Sparrow. Although we have seen Savannah Sparrows before, I don't remember seeing an Ispwich and the Vesper would be a life-bird. A Savannah should show a bit of yellow in front of the eyes and have a shortish tail. The Vesper would have a longer tail and a distinct white line along the bottom and back edge of the cheek patch. The tail was how to see most of the time but gave the appearance in the field of not being noticeably short. And there is a distinct line around the cheek patch. But a Vesper shouldn't have distinct lining on the head, especially the line above the eye, the supercilium. After much back and forth and looking at the photographs when we got home, we decided it was an Ispwich that just wasn't showing any yellow. A second bird that we saw when we returned has the slightest hint of yellow as seen in the bottom two photos.

Yellow Warbler

For Thanksgiving, my wife and I went down to New Bern, North Carolina to spend some time with my Aunt and Uncle. They are avid birders, much more so that Sharon and I, and fellow vegetarians. So we planned several days of good food and great birds. But we weren't expecting as good as birding as we got.

Thanksgiving morning Sharon and I stayed around the hotel in New Bern. My Aunt and Uncle were coming up around lunch time and then taking us to some friends of theirs for dinner. The weather was cold but sunny so after breakfast, we walked around a park next to the hotel. We saw American Coots, Mallards, Ruddy Duck, gulls.  All expected birds. But then as we returned to the hotel we passed some shrubs as the walkway passed under a bridge. And there among a few Yellow-rumped Warblers Sharon spotted this bright bird.

It took us a few minutes to piece together the clues: warbler; all yellow including tail and undertail coverts, a thin, yellow eye ring and light red streaks along the sides of the throat. It was a Yellow Warbler. A bird that should be in Central or South America by now. But it was happily picking insects off the leaves and ignoring the people walking by on the path.

We returned about an hour later with my Aunt and Uncle and quickly refound the bird in the same vine we had left it. It gave us great views as it worked its way along the shrubs. We passed on the sighting to one of the other Thanksgiving guests, actually our host, and he refound the bird Friday morning in the same spot. That spot is in the circle that my Aunt and Uncle have for the Christmas Bird Count so hopefully it will stick around until then. If the bird has been finding sufficient food so far then maybe it will survive the winter and get a head start on its fellow Yellow Warblers in the spring.

Yellow tail and undertail coverts are diagnostic for a Yellow Warbler.

Side view showing yellow all over the body and light red streaks along the neck.

Yellow Warbler picking insect off a leave

Some Random Links

I've come across several interesting science articles that last few days and thought I would share them.

• Science News reports on the strange lifestyle of the Pink Fairy Armadillo. This small armadillo from Argentina lives mainly underground moving dirt from in front of it to behind. It then backs up to compact the newly moved dirt. Those are quite some claws it has.
• Several places, including National Geographic, are reporting on the discovery of ancient seawater being found under the crater formed when an asteroid impacted the lower Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago. The water is estimated to be between 100 - 135 million years old and had been stored in the existing sediment. The impact just buried the water even better. [I live on the edge of this impact crater and was in the area when the extent of the crater was discovered in the mid 1990's.
• NPR is reporting on the Dance to your PhD contest where entrants make short videos of interpretative dance to explain their doctoral research. There are some pretty interesting dances.
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Master Naturalist Boat Trip

Back on November 9th I took my final field trip as part of my Master Naturalist basic training. I started the classes in early fall and have been taking 3 hours classes every week plus 4 field trips. Graduation is coming up the second week of December.
For our last field trip we took a boat trip aboard the Bea Hayman Clark out of Norfolk. The trip was run by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. We spent the day traveling around the Elizabeth and Lafayette Rivers.
My adventure started even before boarding the boat. As I live much closer the downtown Norfolk than most of the others in class, I decided to drive to the boat directly instead of joining the car pool. Along my preferred route I first ran into an overpass that was closed for road work. The detour wasn't well marked so I had to wonder through a neighborhood for several minutes until my nav system got me back on course. Then five minutes later, the road was closed due to a car accident. Again, no detour. And the accident was close to a water crossing so the GPS kept trying to get me back on the same road. I eventually pulled out my paper map and found another crossing. And then, just as I see my destination, the lanes in the road start being blocked off. There was a 5K run that had the main roads in Norfolk closed for the morning. Luckily, I found a police officer who pointed me towards an open parking garage. But my 25 minute drive had taken 45 minutes.

It was a surprisingly warm day, even out on the water. We went out the Elizabeth River to where it joins the Chesapeake Bay and stopped and talked about the bay and some of the troubles it is having: over-fishing, run-off, and summer algae blooms. We then headed up the Lafayette River and put out a trawling net and brought up a net full of fish. We then sorted the fish before doing some identification and discussion of the different species. We then returned all of them to the river. The shrimp was particularly interesting to me as I didn't realize how translucent they were.

The trawling net ready for deploying

A rather large flounder that we caught

Pulling up the oysters

After lunch we pulled up some oysters. When the English first arrived on the Chesapeake Bay oysters were common throughout the bay. An oft-quoted factoid is that the oysters in the 1600's could filter all of the bay's water in three to four days. It now takes almost a year. Much of Hampton Roads was built on the oyster industry, even into the twentieth century. The CBF is working to restore oyster reefs by having people grow them for a year in protected waters and then taking them out to join an established reef. In fact, my wife and I did that several years ago. But in what we pulled up, only about a quarter of them were living. One of the other students found this collection of oyster shells and barnacles that is reminiscent of of another animal that likes the water (but not salty).

A "froggy" oyster shell

Our final stop was looking at crabs. For this one I had the opportunity to pull up and crab pot, remove the crabs and rebait the pots. Again, we studied the crabs we found before returning them to the waters.
All in all, it was an enjoyable and educational trip. There weren't as many birds as I was expecting but I've never had a chance to get such insight to the underwater live.

Our captain with a female Blue Crab