hallnatec's Journal

Another year and another set of goals. And even though last year was the year of the bird, in 2019 I'm focusing exclusively on birds.

1. Participate in the 2019 5-Mile Radius Challenge.
2. Get all of the eBird Hotspots in my 5-Mile Radius patch up to at least 50 species, including the Hotspots I'm planning on suggesting.
3. Continue at least 1 checklist a day and move my Complete checklists to over 2400.
4. Have photos for 80% of my life birds.
5. Complete all eBird challenges.
6. Increase my monthly bird numbers throughout the year.
7. Identify over 300 birds this year.
8. Secret goal (which might get reveled later this year).

It is that time of year were we look back at the year behind us. For the last few years I've been setting some year-long naturalist goals. These are just things to strive for and give me some direction throughout the year.

1. Have photos for 75% of my life birds.
I had this goal last year as well but only got up to 63% so this year I’m looking to move it up.
After another year, I'm up to having photographs of 76% of my life birds. So two years later, I've finally made it up and over the 75% mark. I'm not always that good to remember to take pictures of birds, unless they are rarities.

2. Audio for 25% of my life birds.
To be honest, I’m not really sure about this one. I currently don’t even own any recording equipment except a small microphone which plugs into my iPhone.
I didn't really do too much on this front this year. Right now I have 8% of my life birds recorded. I still don't have any equipment other than my iPhone (which is actually pretty good).

3. Participate in a dragonfly moon.
Inspired by Josh Fecteau’s website, I have attempted to do at least one or two moon challenges each year. In this case I will spend one moon cycle seeking out and identifying at least 15 dragonflies and damsel flies.
This spring and summer I spent a number of days observing odonates around where I lived. I added a number of new species to my life list. I didn't hit the 15 mark but I was able to learn 8 new ones. But more importantly, I found a number of new resources to help to me find and identify odonates. It also lead me to researching best practices for observing odonates.

4. Participate in a mushroom moon.
I will spend one moon cycle seeking out and identifying at least 15 different types of mushroom or fungus. This is one that I really wanted to do and it seemed liked a good mushroom year, but I didn't really spend much time working on it.

5. Screen-light summer.
Once school ends for the year then I have little need to be on a computer or my phone. So this summer, as I did a couple years ago I’m going to go screen-light and attempt to limit my total screen time to about 1-2 hours a day.
Because of some changes in my job I wasn't able to have as screen-lite of a summer as I would have liked. At the same time, because I don't work during the summer my screen usage was much lower than it is during the rest of the year.

6. Complete all eBird challenges.
I will probably talk about this one again later, but basically each month eBird issues a challenge. Each person who meets the challenge will have his or her name entered into a drawing for a free pair of binoculars.
I was able to meet every eBird challenge this year with the exception of August, September, and October. I'm still stinging from a couple years ago when eBird had a year long contest for people who met all of the monthly challenges. I thought I had made it but I had made one book keeping error in March which through the entire thing off. This year, I was able to easily meet them all with the exception of the three above. Those three are usually hard because I'm starting up school again and my outdoor/birding time drops.

7. Increase monthly bird numbers throughout the year.
I have been keeping track of how many birds I have identified on a monthly basis for the last few years and this year I am setting a monthly goal to beat my highest number.
The first three months of the year were hard, I tried to hit my monthly goals but fell short each month, but once spring started I was able to hit, tie, or crush my monthly numbers. In fact, from April until August I was able to match or beat my goal. September was a bust but I've been back on the saddle with the last few months of the year. One thing that I quickly learned is helpful for meeting this goal, was to go back and look at what birds I had seen that same month in the past few years. Then with that list I was able to focus on the gaps and make sure that easy birds didn't slip through.

8. Identify over 300 birds this year.
Each year I give myself a number goal. The last couple years it has been 300 and that keeps me busy but not too crazy busy.
This one was fairly easy with a trip to Florida during April. I was able to hit 336 species for the year, which is a new personal best for me as well. I don't think I'll be able to put up those kind of numbers in 2019 but that I okay, because I have some other fun goals already in the works for myself.

9. Draw 1 nature picture a week.
This one is probably the hardest of the bunch, as I have no drawing skill at all. That said, if I can stick with it, then I should be better by the end of the year.
I started to do this and even started a Maine Master Naturalist class where I was asked to draw a lot. And I learned one very important thing about my self. I hate drawing. I understand the value in observational terms but the act of it is so laborious and my work is so bad. I just don't have the patience to do it with any real focus. I'd much rather just sit and watch a bird or whatever.

10. Start a blog/website as a way to share what I see and learn.
Subgoal. Post on that blog/website at least once a week throughout the entire year.
This was a goal that I set after I had set other goals. During the winter months I like to have something to do when I can't be outside or rather don't want to gear up and go outside. Not to mention the extra darkness. One can only bother the owls so many times. So I started a blog. But then stopped as the weather got nice. And finally moved everything to this journal.

For 2019 I'm participating in the 5-Mile Radius Challenge hosted by Jen Sanford of the I Used to Hate Birds blog. In preparation of the upcoming year, I have been doing a little bit of "paperwork" and data work.

First, I started by creating a Google Earth map of my 5MR. I then uploaded all of coordinates of my eBird Hotspots and got this lovely image. This was all a fairly easily process to do. Some quick Google searching and an Excel spreadsheet later everything was uploaded.

I had already created a Google doc which housed all of the eBird Hotspots in my 5MR with their species totals, and a total amount of completed checklists, but today I took that list and added which Hotspots were missing entries on their barcharts. (These charts represent how bird occurrence changes over the course of the year and are pulled directly from eBird data.) This allows me to prioritize based on which Hotspots have missing data and/or which have the lowest species counts. This will help me throughout the year as I attempt to eBird as much of my 5MR as possible while getting all the Hotspots up to at least 50 and filling in as much missing data as possible.

Here is a little glimpse of how I set my Google Sheet up.

The row coloring got messed up as I was sorting in different ways.

One of the birding blogs that I follow called I Used to Hate Birds is having a 2019 5MR challenge.

The details of the challenge can be found here. But basically they are asking people to bird an area with a 5 mile radius centered on your home. Each month they are asking you to figure out your percentage. To figure out your percentage you take the number of birds you saw in your area and divide it by the number of birds reported in your county on eBird.

For example, so far in December I've seen 33 species in my area while 125 species have been reported in Cumberland County. So my percentage would be 33/125= 26% for December.

It's green, local, and fun. Consider joining in.

I'll be posting my totals here as the year progresses.

Work your patches, know where to find the birds within those patches, where they nest, when they arrive and depart, and know when something is different. Know the habitat and how it changes over time. Work your patches!

That is mantra I had in mind when I decided that I was going to adopt of all of the eBird Hotspots in my 5-mile radius patch. I had noticed, when researching areas to bird within my patch, that there were two Hotspots with 1 checklist and less than 15 species and another 16 Hotspots with less than 50 species. This isn't even to mention the other great birding spots which aren't eBird Hotspots. I felt bad for these under birded spots. Why should they not get the attention of other more popular spots? What birds are hiding in those spots which were being missed by those of us at the popular spots?

The first thing I did was create a snapshot of the current situation of the Hotspots in my patch. I went through each one and, in a Google Sheet, ordered them by how many species had been eBirded at each one. I also am keeping track of the amount of checklists which each Hotspot has as well. The smallest was Ludlow St pond at 2 species while the highest was Gilsland Farm at 254. My initial thought is to start by getting every one of them up to 50 species. Once I get those initial 18 Hotspots up to 50 then I'll start to focus on getting the 46 Hotspots below 100 up to the 100 mark.

In addition to working these "orphaned" Hotspots, I have created a list of parks, land trusts, cemeteries, farms, and other potential Hotspots that I will start exploring with an eye to suggesting them as official Hotspots or at least adding them to my list of spots to start working.

Now each day when I go out the bird, if there isn't a rarity I'm chasing then I swing by the Hotspot at the bottom of the list with an eye towards getting it higher. So far, I've gotten the 2 lists under 15 up over the 15 mark and am working on getting the lowest ones up to the 50 mark.

Further, because I've been exploring new areas, I've found not only some new birding spots but also some fun birds. At the Ludlow St pond, I pished up two kind-of-late Orange-crowned Warblers and at a local high school football field, I had a flock of Evening Grosbeaks fly over. I'm curious to see what else I find in my new endeavor.

Having been asked to adopt a tree and observe it each month over the next year, I have decided to select two trees which I am already very familiar with. The RED and WHITE PINEs that live in my backyard. They are the only two native trees we have in our yard. We do have about 4-5 NORWEGIAN MAPLEs (which I would like to have removed).

For the longest time after we moved in the RED PINE was sick. The WHITE PINE had grown in such a way to crowd out the RED. We had them both trimmed and the RED has been doing much better. Both trees are home to a family of GREY SQUIRRELS. The WHITE PINE has a family which lives a leave and twig nest, while the RED PINE had a family which moved into a large and old bird house.

Throughout the summer both trees pretty much just chill, acting as host to the numerous birds which visit our feeder. The WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCHs particular like the WHITE PINE and we often see them working the trunk for little buggies.

July 18, 2018, Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, ME

I got to the Junk Pond at about 1:50p. The temperature was about 76f with a wind of about 11mph. Still overgrown and quiet. Some dragonflies, COMMON WHITETAILS and TWELVE-SPOTTED DRAGONFLIES. I was also finally able to get pictures of a red dragonfly that I had seen at the pond before. While I haven't taken the time to identify it yet, now that I have pictures I should be able to give it a shot. (Edit--After keying it out with A Field Guide of Dragonflies and Damselflies of Massachusetts, 2nd edition and looking at range data and flight period data from the Maine Damselfly and Dragonfly Survey, I'm leaning towards saying that the red dragonfly is a CHERRY-FACED MEADOWHAWK.

As always the JAPANESE KNOT WOOD is everywhere and growing at what seems a very quick rate. I was particularly interested in the trees as I needed to collect some specimens to press. I was able to find RED and WHITE OAK, WHITE PINE, and WHITE ASH for pressing. The honeysuckle and SENSITIVE FERN continue to go strong.

I was surprised to find a lone female WOOD DUCK. I was expecting to the lone female MALLARD who has been around and had two successful young this season.

There was also the usual EASTERN CHIPMUNK and GREY SQUIRREL.

Overall another quiet summer day at the Junk Pond. I do think I need to come down really early or really late and see how things might be different as the last few times I have been here have been in the middle of the day.

full eBird checklist

July 10, 2018 - Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, ME

While standing on the wooden bridge in the north east corner of the big pond I found 6 AMERICAN BULLFROG. The entire time that I watched them they didn't really do anything. There was no movement at all. At times I could see them breathing but even then I didn't see much movement. I'm assuming that it had something to do with the heat. It was nearly 85+ degrees Fahrenheit at the time that I was watching them. Also of note, I noticed the smallest ones first. And thought there was only two individuals, but as I looked around the area I started to notice more and more. Each one bigger than the last. It was almost as if they were turning on their invisibility powers. When they are stationary they can be very hard to detect.

July 9, 2018, Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, ME

It had been about a month since the last time that I had done a site visit. The last time I had been here I was confronted by some people camping in the area. This time there was no one camping in the area, but there were definitely remnants of their site.

I came in the back way today, through the UNE fields and there the JAPANESE KNOTWEED is so overgrown that the trail is completely gone. So I had to head around to the front entrance.

Upon getting to the other side (at around 10:45a), the first thing that I noticed was the dragonflies, both COMMON WHITETAILs and TWELVE-SPOTTED SKIMMERS. There were also a few dragonflies that I couldn't identify because I wasn't able to get great looks at them or pictures. I'm finding identifying dragonflies to be a lot of fun but unlike birds it is much more challenging, given their size and quick movements.

The AMERICAN GOLDFINCHES seemed to everywhere and making noise the entire time. There were three BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERONS in or around the pond. The first one I saw was an adult and then as I was walking I flushed two juveniles. I watched the three birds for a while looking for any sign at all of breeding codes, but, while they did seem to stick together, there was no indication of breeding in this area. But in terms of bird breeding codes, I did watch two YELLOW WARBLERs bringing food to a juvenile. There were a number of birds in the area, including two SWAMP SPARROWs and a COMMON GRACKLE.

Again, there area was very overgrown. It felt as if there were plants everywhere. In fact, the MORROW'S HONEYSUCKLE had fruited, as had the FALSE SOLOMON'S SEAL. And the SENSITIVE FERN was everywhere.

I did note a couple frogs in the pond but because they were silent and I couldn't see their dorsolateral ridge I wasn't sure if they were GREEN FROG or AMERICAN BULLFROG

The EASTERN CHIPMUNK, RED, and GREY SQUIRRELS were around but I haven't seen the MUSKRATs in a while. That makes me wonder, where they are and what they are doing.

While here I had two different RED FOX walk within about 20 feet of me. The first was noticeably larger than the second. I am wondering if they are foxes from the den I found in another part of the cemetery or if there is a second den in this area. I don't know the territory size of foxes, so I'm not sure. Of note, there was another fox less than 100 yards away as I was walking to the Junk Pond. I watched this one as it was walking up and down the trail and stopping to mark its territory.

I was a bit nervous about seeing so many foxes in the middle of the day, given the amount of cases of rabies being reported this summer just up the coast. One thing that I did notice with all three of the foxes I saw was that the birds where letting me know when the foxes were around. I noticed that the birds were making a lot of alarm calls when the first fox passed the junk pond. At first I thought it was because of me, but it was clear that there was something else. After it passed the birds calmed down but a few minutes later they started up again, letting me know that something was up. Again, out popped a fox. So while I was nervous about the foxes and rabies, I found some comfort in the idea that the birds would give me some idea of the foxes' return.

After about 30 minutes I ended my observation with an EASTERN TIGER SWALLOWTAIL fly by.

eBird checklist

June 7, 2018, Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, ME

Before school I headed over to check my Delimited Site. I parked on Bishop St and walked right over to the Junk Pond. It was 5:55a when I got to the pond and I stayed for about 20 minutes.

It was a very overcast morning, lots of mist and everything had a very wet feel to it. Given the overgrown feeling of the plants, and the moist air, the site had a very jungle feel this morning. The first thing that struck me upon entering was how much the JAPANESE KNOTWEED had grown since my last visit. The FALSE SOLOMON'S SEAL was still blooming and SENSITIVE FERN is growing up everywhere. The MORROW'S HONEYSUCKLE was also still blooming.

Near the back of the site there was buttercups in bloom and a good amount of CINNAMON FERN. The EUROPEAN LILY OF THE VALLEY had completely passed, as well as the WILD GERMANIUM, but the CANADIAN MAYFLOWER and NORTHERN BLUE FLAG was still blooming.

I had a GREAT BLUE HERON flyover. I've never seen a GREAT BLUE HERON in the Junk Pond. I think that it is too small for their liking.

Initially I didn't see any ducks but what I did find was a huge SNAPPING TURTLE walking down the trail. Clearly out of the water to lay eggs. I guessed that its shell was at least 1.24' long and about a 1' wide. After looking for a while I did finally find the mother MALLARD and the two remaining juveniles, who were almost completely covered in mud.

As always there were EASTERN CHIPMUNKS, RED, and GREY SQUIRRELS in the area.

Finally, even given the early hour there was a lot of noise pollution from the city.

eBird checklist