The Great Dip

We had been making plans to go to Quivira/Cheyenne Bottoms for a while, and then a White Ibis showed up at CB on Saturday afternoon.  So, we headed up right after church and got to Quivira at around 1:00.  We birded at various locations as we worked our way up to the Big Salt Marsh.  Nothing produced much, but when we got to the Wildlife Drive stuff started picking up.  We saw three Dunlins and lots of Snowy Plovers that had inhabited the road.  We also saw three Piping Plovers, a threatened species, one of which was flagged and banded.


Edit: Turns out it was banded last summer in North Dakota!

We submitted the tag number, so hopefully we will know soon where it came from.

8N9 is the magic combination.

A better looking individual.

I always enjoy seeing Sanderlings!

We headed out NE 170th St. to head to CB, being only briefly interrupted by a Pileated Woodpecker.  A first for us in Stafford County!

Pileated Woodpeckers are definitely expanding their range farther North and West.

On our way up, we learned that our friend Barry Jones had just been up to CB and had not seen the White Ibis.  This slightly dampened our spirits, but we decided it was still worth the extra 20 minutes of driving.

When we got there, we checked around for the Ibis for a while.  We didn't find it, so we decided to bird the rest of the refuge.  There were vast numbers of shorebirds and we found several year birds including Western Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit, and Black Tern.

Part of a shorebird flock at Cheyenne Bottoms.

 We stopped at a short walk-way where there are often rails and sometimes gallinules. I started calling and an aggressive Virginia Rail immediately responded.  I continued calling and it kept coming closer and closer.  Eventually, it came sprinting out in the open!  It moved fast enough that it was hard to keep track of, but we got some decent pics.

Rails are often incredibly hard to see.  About the only way you can see them is to call them out of their thick marsh homes.

Anthony got some really good shots with his better camera.

Photo by Anthony Miller

Finally we had to leave without having seen the ibis, but when we were just about home, I got an email saying that someone had just spotted the White Ibis bedding down for the night!  It was about four miles from where it had been seen last.  We were disappointed, but agreed that the other finds made the trip well worth it.  My year list is sitting at 210 species and Joseph has 202.

Andrew

Looking into the crystal ball, Kansas' Next Ten Birds.

Part of the fun in birding is trying to predict what is going to show up where. While it is often guessing as much as actual prediction, you can be surprisingly accurate, and it's fun when you are actually correct. I've had a Top Ten Next-up Birds for Kansas list, (really more of a top thirty next birds, I went way out) for a while, and have been lucky enough to actually have a few of my predictions come true. I convinced Andrew to come up with a list of his own, so that we could post them here for all to see.


So, without further ado, here are our predictions for the next ten birds to be added to the Kansas state list. You may notice that there are actually thirteen species in the first list, due to my including my successful predictions (in bold) as well.

1. Eurasian Tree Sparrow. March 19, 2016. Doniphan Co. Pending acceptance
 

2. Pacific Wren. Dec 20, 2014 Scott Co. Accepted by the KBRC

3.Slaty-backed Gull. A  fairly regular vagrant into the interior of the continent.

4.  Pacific-slope Flycatcher. Probably overlooked in western Kansas.

Tropical Kingbird. This one from Costa Rica, not Kansas

5. Tropical/Couch's Kingbird. History of straying

6.  Sharp-tailed Sandpiper. Overdue in my opinion, neighboring states have multiple records.

Sharp-tailed Sandpiper eBird sightings map

 

7.  Common Black Hawk. One recent unconfirmed report. Likely to be found in extreme south-west Kansas but could show up anywhere.

8. Blue-throated Hummingbird. Several reports already, only a matter of time for a confirmed one. 

9.  Black Swift. Swifts are highly migratory and this species breeds within a few hundred miles.

  

10. Grace's Warbler. One unaccepted report already, I think?

  

11. Black-chinned Sparrow. Breeds not far away in north-east Arizona. Morton County somewhere?  

12. Purple Sandpiper. December 23, 2015. Russell Co. Accepted by the KBRC

13. Acorn Woodpecker. Breeds within a couple hundred miles. 

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And here is Andrews list. We agreed on a lot of species, but he has some likely ones I hadn't thought of. It will be interesting to see who is more accurate in the long run.

1. Slaty-backed Gull

Slaty-backed Gull eBird sightings map

2. Bar-tailed Godwit

3. Black-chinned Sparrow

4. Zone-tailed Hawk

5. Black-tailed Gull

6. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper

7. Common Black Hawk

8. Blue-throated Hummingbird

9. Golden-crowned Woodpecker

10. Lawrence's Goldfinch



Will any of these actually be the next on the list? It's impossible to say, but I like to think that at least a couple of these predictions will come true. What do you think the next first state record will be? Leave you guesses in the comments below and we will see what shows up!

Joseph

Chickens and Curlews

A few days ago, Andrew, Anthony, Bryant, Michael Yutzy and myself finally made the trek down to southern Kansas to look for Lesser Prairie Chickens, a gaping hole on our state list.

Photo by Andrew

After cruising down some very bad back roads, we finally arrived at the lek just before sunrise. We could see several males actively lekking a couple hundred yards of the road right as we pulled up,  at least that was an easy lifer.

 Since it was still fairly early in the morning when we left, we decided to run over to the Sun City area to check the area of the Anderson Creek Fire.

It turned out to be a great decision, starting with a Burrowing Owl we found just down the road from the lek, chilling in a Prairie Dog town.

Photo by Andrew

We continued on, finding a clump of balloons originating in Colorado Springs, and more importantly, a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks and couple of Long-billed Curlews in a random wheat field beside the road.

Photo by Andrew

Had the hawks been a couple miles further west they would have been a new Kiowa County record.

One of two Long-billed Curlews. Photo by Andrew

When we got to Sun City we were impressed by the amount of fire damage that far north. I knew about where I had taken some landscape shots last summer and thought it would be kind of fun to get a before and after shot of the burned area.

Before the fire

And after the fire. I was surprised how close I actually got to the same view!

More burned prairie south of Sun City

We decided to stop in at Kingman State Fishing Lake on the way back home. Birdwise it was a little drab, but we did find a female Falcate Orangetip, a lifer for all of us.

Falcate Orangetip, note the hooked, "falcate," wingtip.

This is a really amazing looking butterfly, although a lot smaller than I expected.  They are very well camouflaged on the underside, so we would occasionally lose it when it landed.

Falcate Orangetip

There were also several Olympia Marbles flying about. Although these are my best photos so far, I still haven't quite gotten that perfect shot yet

Olympia Marble

It was a great morning out, and we definitely plan to do more of these outings to other parts of the state.

Joseph

Cheney on Sunday

On Easter Sunday, Joseph, Anthony, and I went to Cheney for a couple of hours in the afternoon.  We went to the dam right away and right as we got to the top we saw several Horned Grebes.

Horned Grebes are gorgeous in their breeding plumage!

We moves on along the dam a couple of hundred feet, when Anthony exclaimed that he found a Loon.  Any loon is good, but when we got scope views we were all thinking we had a Pacific.  This was confirmed when we got home and looked at our pics.  A lifer all around!

Pacific Loon

Unfortunately, it was far enough out that we couldn't get any good pics.

There were many Bonaparte's Gulls and one Eared Grebe as well, along with the other more common birds.

This Bonaparte's was just getting his breeding plumage black hood.

We continued along the dam seeing several year butterflies such as Common Sootywing and Painted Lady.  Joseph also got some pics of one of the Olympia Marbles that were cruising the south side of the dam, in the sun and out of the wind.

Olympia Marble: pic by Joseph

We decided to hit some other points in the state park on the way back.  It was a good thing we did.  When we got out to scope some scaup, Joseph mentioned that he had a Red-breasted Merg, I looked up and saw a obvious Horned Grebe, we debated heatedly about this for a bit, both thinking the other crazy.  Eventually we realized we were looking at different birds, so I guess we were both right and are still friends for now.

Since the Merg was to far away to get pics, I will just put in this coot pic:)

While driving back around the lake we spotted a Bald Eagle nest, a quadcopter, and a friendly man out enjoying the beautiful day with his sons.

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Fish Crow

I visited the sandpit on Monday and found that the Fish Crows are back at the Hoskinson's Sandpit, along with my FOS Franklin's Gulls and a flyover Osprey!



Andrew

Firesky!

The sky in Kansas turned downright apocalyptical yesterday. A massive grass fire stretching from northern Oklahoma into southern Kansas released a dense plume of smoke stretching for hundreds of miles downwind. The tinder-dry conditions and howling south wind helped spread the fire through nearly 400,000 acres of range and canyon-land in Comanche and Barber counties. We noticed it starting to get hazy here by late morning, and by early afternoon the sky had turned a fiery yellow-orange.

 It looked very eerie, nearly twilight dark with the sun a dim red orb high in the sky.

 Eventually the wind switched to the southwest and it began to clear off.

You can't normally see sunspots without a special filter, but you certainly could through the dense haze!

This is actually what the sun looked like. I've never seen any weather conditions that made it look pink before







 






Fire rabbit



And yes, this is a horribly unfocused picture of a Bufflehead. But it is a Bufflehead, which up until now I had never seen in our yard. That, and I kind of like the background


Joseph

Spring Pushes

Spring is coming early this year!  I am ready for the change, but in some ways it seems like we hardly had winter this year.  This made it hard to get some of the normally common winter birds. However, I am not going to complain!

I guess I will start with butterflies!  I have only seen about a dozen species this year so far.  The most interesting being an Olympia Marble.

I saw several of these Olympia Marble in my yard one afternoon!

Their underside is a striking bright yellow!

Question Marks are always one of the first butterflies to show up in the spring.

Now for the birds!  Stuff has really started moving around lately, with the early migrants such as Killdeer and Eastern Phoebes now all over the place.  Purple Martins are back as well and I've also seen a pair of Northern Rough-winged Swallows and a Barn Swallow.

One of the Northern Rough-winged Swallows that was at a local pond for several days in a row.

There was a Baird's Sandpiper and a Greater Yellowlegs at our pond and Joseph had Least Sandpiper at a different pond.  This spring we have already noticed a push of White-winged Doves.  Anthony has seen one at his place for a couple weeks, Joseph had one at a nearby farm, and I saw a pair a few miles from my house.

Monday evening, Joseph called to say that he and Anthony had a Burrowing Owl at a worked field near Abbyville.  Bryant and I rushed out to try to find it.  I managed to get a brief view in the fading light, but unfortunately, Bryant missed it.

Tuesday afternoon I went to Hoskinson's Sandpit for about an hour.  I was hoping to see a some Fish Crows, since we had seen them there regularly at this time last year, but I couldn't find any.  However, I did pick out a late 2nd cycle Thayer's Gull out of a bunch of Ring-bills.  According to Birds of Kansas, this is the third latest they have been seen in Kansas!

2nd cycle Thayer's Gull at the sandpit.

So far, my year list sits at 123 species.  Not bad for late March!

Andrew

Cockfight!

I was surprised one morning last week when I noticed a pair of cock Ring-necked Pheasants viciously fighting in the field next to our house. I grabbed the camera and watched as they sparred rather violently for a few minutes.

Sadly, the distance was a little to far to get any good shots

Revolutionary new species of bird discovered in Kansas! Introducing the Two-tailed Pheasant, Phasinius duocaudatus.

I assume they had ulterior, lady-related, motives for the fight, although there were no hens to be seen in the area.

I've never seen behavior like this in pheasants before, although it is similar to displays in other grouse species, such as prairie chickens.

Joseph
 
Butterfly year list-4:(
Bird year list-98