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Like aging rock stars going out for one last tour, our migrants are putting on a great show these days in advance of their imminent departures. We birders usually love autumn - or as we call it “fall migration” - because so many wondrous birds will just show up unexpectedly. Take the four pelicans that went over the house a couple of weeks ago, or the Broad-winged Hawk I found on campus the other day. They arrive, thrill us, and are gone.

Last night we enjoyed a great flight (dozens) of common nighthawks. Unlike their noisey “peenting” in the spring, you had to pay attention to see these birds - they were utterly silent. But their dramatic swoops and bursts of speed were an amazing spectacle.

Our male ruby-throated hummingbirds bugged out after the Sept. 14th cold front. Since then, I’ve had just two birds - females or immature males, I haven’t worked that out yet. But now that we’re approaching the end of September, they too will just not be there anymore one of these mornings.

And then there are the scissortails, amassing in evening roosts at a few key spots. They’ve disappeared from their regular haunts - tricking you into thinking they’ve left - when they’ve really just shifted a bit and descended on a small grove of trees in astonishing numbers. I estimated 100-200 over the weekend at the Boomer Lake playground. I counted 57 zipping into one tree at dusk in the span of about 5 minutes.

I birded Sanborn Lake on Saturday 9/22 and Saturday 9/15. On the 14th, a powerful cold front came through and finally dropped some migrants here. Then it got hot again with daily south winds that kept those migrants here. My list for the 22nd was similar to my list for the 15th, including a bird or two found in the same bush I saw it the week before. Here’s the list for Saturday, 9/22:

northern cardinal - 13
brown thrasher - 11
blue jay - 4
gray catbird - 3
Bell’s vireo - 1
red-bellied woodpecker - 2
carolina wren - 4
warbling vireo - 2
northern mockingbird - 2
mourning dove - 1
chimney swift - 14
eastern phoebe - 3
northern rough-winged swallow - 1
white-eyed vireo - 2
field sparrow - 6
painted bunting - 2
nashville warbler - 2
carolina chickadee - 9
tufted titmouse - 2
bewick’s wren - 1
downy woodpecker - 2
great egret - 1
pied-billed grebe - 1
great blue heron - 1
green heron - 1
european starling ~ 30
killdeer - 1
american crow - 3
“traill’s” flycatcher - 1
yellow warbler - 1
orange-crowned warbler - 1

We’ve still got a lot of great birding left before all our migrants bid farewell, but I can’t help but feel a bit melancholy this time of year. Six months with scissortails is long enough to take them for granted; six months without them leaves me longing for their triumphant return: The rock band that somewhere on that tour found the Fountain of Youth, and came back as vigorous and as exciting and as relevant as the very first time you heard them.

Words fail me.

Careless with the ball? Dumb calls (like throwing the ball 6 yards on a 3rd and 10)? I thought that was supposed to be Penn State out there. What an embarrassing performance in an otherwise winnable game.

When will we have an offensive attack to match our great defense?

Please. Please just beat those guys in their “big house”. Lay a Happy Valley smack down, boys!!!!

Atowheeblog beat me to this one, but you should definitely follow the links to learn about “E7″, a female Bar-tailed Godwit that just made a non-stop migration flight from Alaska to New Zealand. Amazing!

And E7 is my favorite guitar chord . . .

On Friday morning (9/14), I was making my way back home from a run and was suddenly met with a blast of cool air. Quite unexpectedly, a cold front had pushed through Stillwater that morning, and Friday was blissful relief from summer’s heat. I noticed four white pelicans flying south over the house. Could this mean that birds were finally on the move around here? The cool air persisted, and Saturday morning too was refreshing and brisk. I knew that this - unlike the front that came through last Monday, would be sure to have dropped in some migrants.

I decided to bird Sanborn Lake, a mix of riparian forest, shrubland, and tallgrass prairie (and a small lake!) out near the Stillwater airport. I had barely gotten out the car when the sounds of chips and the dashes of movement made by foliage-gleaning songbirds confirmed my prediction!

In about 40 minutes, I made my way around the lake, and counted the following (numbers approximate):

Canada Goose: - 20
Northern Cardinal - 12
Carolina Chickadee - 13
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 1
Warbling Vireo - 2

A very bright Warbling Vireo:

Brown Thrasher - 17
House Finch - 2
Tufted Titmouse -1
Painted Bunting - 1
Field Sparrow - 6
House Wren - 6
Bell’s Vireo - 1
Northern Mockingbird - 1
Barn Swallow - 2
Blue Jay - 2
Mourning Dove - 3
Downy Woodpecker - 2
Bewick’s Wren - 6

A Bewick’s Wren too close to focus (I pished him in):

Northern Flicker - 1
Ruby-throated Hummingbird - 1
White-breasted Nuthatch - 1
Belted Kingfisher - 1
Gray Catbird - 3
White-eyed Vireo - 2 (both 1st winter birds)
European Starling - 50
Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1
Green Heron - 1
American Robin - 1
American Crow - 1
Carolina Wren - 4
Eastern Bluebird - 1
Chestnut-sided Warbler - 1

That’s right - a good flight, but still only 1 warbler!

Of all the rapier-sharp quotes attributed to the 18th century French philosopher Voltaire, this one is my favorite:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Thanks to The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe for turning me on to this quote!

I was hoping to find some migrants this morning after last night’s big rain, but I came up empty at a couple of local spots. When I got home, however, the action was in my own backyard - an Olive-sided Flycatcher!

This was my first yard list Olive-sided, my first Oklahoma Olive-sided, and really just the 5th or 6th I’ve ever seen.

The bird hung around for about an hour - never vocalizing - and snatched several big flying insects from sallies out from our telephone wire and our silver maple. The lighting was awful, but I got a couple of diagnostic photos. Safe travels, feathered one!

On Labor Day, I took a few hours “off” by attempting to band some birds at a new location. We had been doing a demonstration the previous week with nets in a suburban backyard and really just had some cardinals to show for our efforts. I don’t mind cardinals in the bush, but I’m really not that fond of them in the hand: when they bite, they don’t let go, and they just clamp their bill down on your finger like a miniature vice.

We were hoping to find some migrants in this new location, so when we noticed that the first bird of the day was an apparent male cardinal, I gladly let my grad student go be the one to retrieve it. But his “It’s not a cardinal” exclamation sent me running to the net!

Indeed, we had captured a male Summer Tanager! The bird was just 4 or 5 feet from the ground and we hadn’t heard any tanager calls that morning - quite a surprise to see that bird there. As tanagers go he wasn’t much to look at - bedraggled from the net and in heavy molt. But he was still my first tanager and quite a spirited chap. He bit me repeatedly - and painfully - but at least he didn’t clamp down like a cardinal. On release he immediately flew to the upper canopy of some of the large oaks nearby and scolded us loudly with his “nip-n-tuck! nip-n-tuck!” call. Then, he was gone.

A little later we spotted this amazing Gulf Fritillary. It was shaping up to be a very colorful Labor Day!

Check out how Paternoville has been rockin’ since Tuesday in anticipation of Saturday’s big game. Last year Notre Dame embarrassed us, and the Lions are looking for redemption. But after their loss last week, the Fighting Irish will be fighting for some respect of their own. Should be a great game - Let’s Go State!!

In contrast to the apparently increasing number of birders, the number of hunters continues to decline.

As indicated in the article, a hunting tradition in the family is the most important determinant of whether an individual will become a hunter. This was deftinitely true for me, as my dad isn’t a hunter. Though we grew up in “the country”, our family went 0 for 5 for hunters.

In recent years, I’ve regretted that I have not gotten into hunting. I like the idea of taking some responsibility both for helping to manage our overpopulated deer herd in the East and for putting meat on my table that I really had to work for. I’d like to give the deer a real sporting chance, so I’m most interested in bowhunting.

But how to learn? At this point in my life, I simply don’t have the time to practice my shot, scout for deer, etc. That kind of learning should happen during the free time in adolescence, under the guidance of experienced family members. Maybe some day I’ll invest the time and effort to learn, but at this point, I doubt it.

Now imagine all those kids growing up in suburbia, to suburban-born parents who don’t hunt. These are kids who’ll probably never engage as regular hunters, just like it’s very difficult for these kids to really get interested in birding. If all they see are pigeons and blackbirds, it’s hard for them to get excited by birding or indeed any form of natural history study. Is this a problem? Quoth Robert Michael Pyle “What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never known a wren?”

But is a decline in hunters a problem? I think so. First, good hunters take responsibility for their resource, through license fees and excise taxes. We birders can certainly learn from that. Just as important, we need population controls on some game species - deer and geese come to mind - or the larger consequences could be rather dire.