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On April 19th, while in the beautiful Mobile, AL area for the joint annual meeting of the Wilson Ornithological Society and the Association of Field Ornithologists, I spent the day afield with ol’ chum Paul Rodewald.

View of Mobile Bay, from our 19th floor hotel window.

Conference poster session.

Conditions were right for a fallout of migrants along the Gulf Coast – big storms had pushed through the night before in advance of a powerful cold front. Any birds that had taken off the night before from, say, the Yucatan Peninsula, would meet headwinds as they approached the coast, and they might fall from the sky exhausted at key locations such as Dauphin Island – our destination for the day.

Check out the blue nape on this common grackle.

 

Laughing gulls and brown pelican at the east end of the island.

 

Laughing gulls – I miss these guys.

 

Broad-headed skink.

A “fallout” in the birding parlance can be one of the most spectacular events in a birder’s life. As birds literally fall from the sky, physically exhausted from their journey, you get a deep sense of understanding their annual trials and tribulations. You develop a new appreciation for conservation, and the degree to which North American and Central American interests need to cooperate to benefit Trans-Gulf migrants. As you stand in awe at “carpets of Indigo Buntings” right at your feet, you steel your will to do everything in your power to keep the coast green. Those meager trees and shrubby fields are an oasis to exhausted migrants, but the fancy hotels offer nothing but reflective glass windows into which countless hapless migrants crash to their deaths – a tragic and ironic end to a little dynamo that had just safely crossed hundreds of miles of forbidding ocean on a death-defying non-stop flight. Finally, you are amazed. The sheer number of birds that make this crossing – twice a year and year after year – indicate that, overall, Trans-Gulf migration is a winning strategy for untold millions of birds. It is at once among the most amazing and the most routine events in the natural world. . .

Small flock of indigo buntings.

 

Our plan was to bird the island pretty heavily in the morning, and then return to Mobile for a series of talks on stopover ecology of migrant birds. As the morning wore on, however, and we could sense that an impressive fallout would occur in the afternoon, we ultimately sacrificed the meeting to stay in the field all day. It was one of those “it took me 40 years to get here” things. Would I come to understand fallouts any better if I returned to an (overly) air-conditioned conference room to hear other people talk about them, or if I stayed where I was and experienced one firsthand? (Rhetorical question, that.)

As a barrier island resort, I found Dauphin itself rather charming. There was far more green space than I had envisioned, and amenities included a superb barbecue place. It was also among the “birderiest” places I had ever seen – dozens and dozens of retirees in olive and khaki sporting expensive optics and sew-on patches of their many birding adventures. Part of the draw was the annual spring meeting/field trip of the Alabama Ornithological Society, but mostly it was just that the Gulf Coast is the place to be on a Saturday in late April. Some of these birders epitomized every negative stereotype of their ilk, but others (a couple of nice ladies from the AOS especially) exemplified everything that is positive about people who devote their golden years to seeking and sharing nature in her most splendid. These were simply lovely, lovely people.

Birders galore!

 

But, we weren’t there to chit-chat. There were birds to see, a fallout to anticipate, and graduate students to defeat in a little friendly big day competition. So off we went into the Dauphin wilds to see what we could find.

Our day started off exciting with my lifer MOTTLED DUCK, a Gulf Coast specialty, and abundant big, showy coastal birds like brown pelicans, great egrets, and laughing gulls. On the west end of the island, where Katrina took out homes, we found sandpipers and plovers in mixed foraging flocks.

Short-billed dowitchers near the airport.

 

Alas, the great fallout never materialized, but we still had a great day in the field. There were flocks – if not carpets – of Indigo Buntings, and numerous Blue Grosbeaks. I found several Scarlet Tanagers in one tree, their drooping wings normally serving as a threat posture, but today probably just an indication of their need to rest and refuel.

Scarlet tanager feeding on the lawn.

 

He looks plum wore-out!

Our 109 species on the day beat the grad students’ 105, but it’s not about the competition. (OK, maybe a little.) The important thing is to check out this field list from a great day in a wonderful place for birds, Dauphin Island:

laughing gull
common grackle
red-winged blackbird
european starling
mourning dove
blue jay
northern mockingbird
carolina wren
eurasian collared dove
rock pigeon
northern cardinal
chimney swift
eastern bluebird
caspian tern
brown pelican
tree swallow
clapper rail
barn swallow
royal tern
forster’s tern
common tern
brown-headed cowbird
boat-tailed grackle
least tern
belted kingfisher
ring-billed gull
fish crow
snowy egret
little blue heron
common loon
hooded merganser
semipalmated plover
sanderling
yellow-rumped warbler
american oystercatcher
herring gull
mallard
ruby-throated hummingbird
dunlin
willet
song sparrow
eastern kingbird
cedar waxwing
mottled duck (#498, North American!)
house sparrow
wood thrush
northern parula
blue-headed vireo
common yellowthroat
black-and-white warbler
yellow warbler
great crested flycatcher
ruby-crowned kinglet
brown thrasher
indigo bunting
blue grosbeak
rose-breasted grosbeak
great blue heron
white-throated sparrow
yellow-billed cuckoo
gray catbird
summer tanager
red-bellied woodpecker
house finch
purple martin
great egret
blackpoll warbler
osprey
white-eyed vireo
house wren
black-throated green warbler
red-eyed vireo
scarlet tanager
blue-gray gnatcatcher
american redstart
hooded warbler
worm-eating warbler
prothonotary warbler
sharp-shinned hawk
spotted sandpiper
cattle egret
short-billed dowitcher
killdeer
tri-colored heron
reddish egret
seaside sparrow
yellow-crowned night heron
green heron
wilson’s plover
piping plover
black-bellied plover
gull-billed tern
ruddy turnstone
sandwich tern
black skimmer
red-headed woodpecker
pine warbler
yellow-throated vireo
swamp sparrow
downy woodpecker
swainson’s thrush
kentucky warbler
blue-winged teal
ovenbird
lesser yellowlegs
least sandpiper
semipalmated sandpiper
veery
black-crowned night-heron