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A cuckoo kind of a day

I’ve got so many potential things to focus on from an incredible weekend of birding. The 20-species warbler day yesterday, plenty of other goodies, has my head spinning in terms of what to focus for a blog post.

One of the more curious sightings from today at Newton Hills State Park came while patrolling the beach area. It was a bit foggy yet, drizzle was falling, and it was pretty damned cold for May 19th, and there were birds galore near the beach at Lake Lakota, all foraging on the ground or close to it, in search of whatever few insects might be out. While watching all the commotion, a bird with a noticeably long tail flew past and landed in the bushes behind me. Cuckoo!! But which one? I switched my focus from the beach to the bushes by the parking, and there! A Black-billed Cuckoo! I lucked into 3 Yellow-billed Cuckoos at Newton Hills last spring, but it’s been a few years since I’ve even seen a Black-billed Cuckoo.

As I sat and tried to get a good look at cuckoo #1 through the foliage, here came another long-tailed bird…another Black-billed Cuckoo! I ended up spending half an hour near that bush, and during that time there were up to FOUR Black-billed Cuckoos frolicking about, doing some half-hearted chasing of each other, but mostly looking like they were just trying to survive until the weather warmed up and there was more for them to eat.

Another great morning despite the weather. Here are some of the Cuckoo photos, all from the one location.

Black-billed Cuckoo - Coccyzus erythropthalmus
Black-billed Cuckoo - Coccyzus erythropthalmus
Black-billed Cuckoo - Coccyzus erythropthalmus

A Cluster of Cuckoos!

Spring migration is largely over.  It was a rather disappointing migration overall, in that there were relatively low numbers of warblers, which also seemed to cut into the variety I normally see.  Despite a very wet spring and many flooded fields and other suitable habitat, shorebird migration was VERY slow in our part of the state.  After having the heater on last weekend, today we’ve touched 102 degrees!  From a birding perspective, we’re on to looking for summer residents.

This morning I went down to Newton Hills State Park, about a 30-minute drive south of us.  It’s a gorgeous park that is characterized by beautiful deciduous forest with a wonderfully healthy understory.  In other words…a rather unique habitat for South Dakota.  It’s one of the best spots in the state for finding eastern “forest birds”, and this morning certainly didn’t disappoint.

While I saw a number of the “usuals”, it wasn’t long after arriving at dawn that I heard a Cuk-Cuk-Cuk-Cuk…Cuk…Cuk…..Cuk…a rather unusual, non-musical call with a distinct slowing pace at the end.  Cuckoo! We have both Black-billed and Yellow-billed Cuckoos around here, but I don’t come across either one very often, so at first I didn’t remember which species to associate with that call.  The answer soon came though as two of the birds drifted into the sumac on the side of the road next to me, seemingly chasing each other.  Yellow-billed Cuckoos!  Two of them!  While I’ve heard them on occasion, Cuckoos are notorious for staying close to vegetative cover.  In my 18 years of birding here I’ve only gotten one halfway decent look at them, yet here two of them were interacting within 30 feet of me!

They were definitely more interested in each other than me, with each vocalizing and moving occasionally through the sumac and surrounding trees, with one often following the movements of the other bird. They’d occasionally disappear from view so I can’t be sure, but I believe there were actually three birds present from the views and simultaneous calls that I heard.

It’s been an absolutely miserable day here with the heat, humidity, and cloud of gnats seemingly everywhere. However, if that’s the price that has to be paid to get great looks and photos of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, I’ll take it!

Yellow-billed Cuckoo - Coccyzus americanus

Yellow-billed Cuckoo - Coccyzus americanus

Yellow-billed Cuckoo - Coccyzus americanus

A few more Virgin Islands birds

Mangrove Cuckoo - Coccyzus minor

A Mangrove Cuckoo, one of several I saw and photographed. Nearly every one I came across on St. John’s was NOT in the mangroves, but was in the dry forest scrub that covers much of the island.

I’m just not in a photo processing mood.  Unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon situation.  It’s a bad combination to ALWAYS be in a photo SHOOTING mood, but to rarely be in a photo processing mood.  The result?  A huge backlog of unprocessed photos.  I typically make a directory on my computer where I put a day’s worth of photos, then delete that directory when they’re all processed and the good ones are on my website. Unfortunately right now I have many such directories worth of unprocessed photos!

That even includes a folder of “Virgin Islands birds” I made, from our recent vacation.  I have a number of “new” species” for me that I don’t have on my website, but I haven’t gotten around to processing the photos yet. Here are a few more new species I did this morning.  The highlight of this group for me is the Mangrove Cuckoo.  They’re around in the U.S. itself, with a few lurking in mangrove swamps of southern Florida. I find cuckoos in general to be SO incredibly difficult to try to see. I knew they were on St. John’s Island, the island where we spent our vacation, but I wasn’t really expecting much beyond maybe a brief glimpse, or just hearing them but not seeing them.

Gray Kingbird - Tyrannus dominicensis

A photo of a Gray Kingbird observing his domain from a natural perch. These guys were everywhere, but the problem was trying to get a photo of one that wasn’t hanging out on an electric line.

Fortunately the Mangrove Cuckoos on St. John’s were the most visible cuckoo population I’ve seen!  The first one I heard on the trip was in deed in the heart of a mangrove swamp, but their real stronghold on the island is in the dry scrubby forest that dominates much of the landscape.  They may be a well-named species in much of their range, but they were definitely more common in dry scrub on St. John’s than they were in the Mangrove swamps.  I was able to get wonderful views of a number of different cuckoos, and it seemed on nearly every drive across the island, at some point one would fly across the road.

Another highly visible species on the island were Gray Kingbirds.  If there was any kind of relatively decent-sized patch of open land on the island, you could almost guarantee there would be a Gray Kingbird or two looking out over the landscape from a high perch.  The most common sight was of a Gray Kingbird sitting on a telephone/electric wire, but towards the end of the trip I was able to get some really nice photos of Gray Kingbirds hanging out on natural vegetation.

Zenaida Dove - Zenaida aurita

Zenaida Doves were extremely common on the island. GIven their similarity to our own very common Mourning Doves, I almost forgot to try to grab a few photos before we left!

The third “new” species I processed today was the Zenaida Dove.  This one generally falls into the category of “missed opportunity” from a photographic standpoint!  They were extremely common on the island, basically the ecological equivalent of the ubiquitous Mourning Doves we have around here in the summer.  They were most common in around settlements, but were found in nearly every habitat on the island.  Because they were such a common sight, I kept passing on very easy photo opportunities, waiting instead for a chance at the more “exotic” hummingbird or other species.  Before I knew it, the trip was almost over and I had no Zenaida Dove photos!  I managed a few rather boring photos of Zenaida Doves walking across an open lot, but I definitely felt like I missed many chances to get some nicer photos of the species.

3 species processed…and now I’m no longer in the mood to process photos today!  The rest of the Virgin Islands photos will have to wait!

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