On a different topic

I am going to assume that readers might enjoy a break from the Finland and Norway posts although, if I say so myself, the best is yet to come.  

I needed a break.  Yesterday I hauled myself on a three hour drive south to Urbana, Ohio to try to see Gray Petaltail (Tachopteryx thoreyi) at a really nice fen.  This was my second visit there - the first being mid-July last year - when I did not see the Gray Petaltail.  We hypothesized that mid-July was already too late to see them.  Going by Odonata of Ohio (pages 188-189), (incidentally, you can purchase the book many places for much less than $65) June seems to be their month.  "Gray Petaltails are specialists of wooded seeps and often frequent quite shady haunts.  It sometimes occurs around the margins of fens, ponds or forested glades ..." (page 189). 

Cedar Bog features a mile long boardwalk through precisely this kind of habitat.  No Gray Petattails.  I stayed about three hours and circled the boardwalk twice.  I found a couple of other things but, when compared with my first visit last July, there were few Odonata.  Cedar Bog also hosts other speciality odes. 

Here's what I saw and was happy to see them - only my second time ever, the first time also at Cedar Bog.

Female Elfin Skimmer (Nannothemis bella)

Male Elfin Skimmer

Elfin Skimmers are well named.  Elfin indeed.  They are so small - the female is possibly easier to see because of her color; but the male hides very well.  Last year I think my photos of the female Elfin were comparable to these.  My photos of the male Elfin this time are much better.  Both ♀︎ and ♂︎ are pretty jittery and, for me at least, this also makes for a difficult photo op. 

Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)

This was overlooked - it was sort of hidden as you can see from my not great photo - until a park employee came by to point it out to us.  I think we were seeing the last bloom of the season.

Two Hackberry Emperors (Asterocampa celtis) on fox scat accompanied by a red-eyed fly in photo below. 

Many years ago I had a common hackberry tree (Celtis occidentalis) planted in my front yard just to see if I could attract this butterfly.  No luck in my yard, but super happy to see several of them yesterday.  Even if it hasn't yet attracted the Hackberry Emperor, my Celtis occidentalis is the tree that attracts many birds in both spring and fall migrations.

Hackberry Emperor perched in shadow on a tree trunk.

About five Prince Baskettail's (Epitheca princeps) were hawking insects over a fen meadow.

Ebony Jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata)

Cedar Bog attracts a variety of human visitors.  There were families walking the boardwalk - no bins, no camera - just visiting and looking.  It also attracts photographers and there were many present yesterday.  I got acquainted with a couple and they helped me find things.  That's who the 'us' is in the Lady Slipper anecdote.

Cedar Bog is surprisingly uncrowded - but it was hot yesterday so it may not have been a representative Saturday.  For me, coming from SE Michigan, it's also a challenging drive.  About half the drive is on I-75 South and the other half is on two lane highways through pleasing small towns and farmland.  While the drive along the rural roads may be pretty, it's still challenging.  That might be a good thing.  Otherwise, I could be tempted to become a more frequent visitor.

Two good loons and another bird

I will admit, up front, that this blog entry contains the worst photos of all.  Couldn't be helped.  Still May 30th.  Still coastal Norway.  At Syltefjord, and still looking at birds through a spotting scope.  The birds were distant, but at least they were floating.

Front bird - Silhouetted Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata).

      

Above and two below: the photos get slightly better in the 2nd and 3rd spots.

Arctic Loon (Gavia arctica), for us Black-throated Loon

The Arctic Loon was a male in breeding plumage and an extremely attractive bird.  One of my favorites.

Above:  Use your imagination and it's possibly the best photo for a better sense of the bird.  The Arctic Loon is a stunning bird.  Would have been wonderful to see it closer.  Mostly a Siberian breeder and the couple of Arctic Loons we saw were in passage to Siberia.

What is this?  Another loon in passage to Siberia.

White-billed Loon (Gavia adamsii); our Yellow-billed Loon.

I think both Arctic Loon and White-billed Loon are better names for these birds.  I'm unlikely to ever see either again.  Very happy to see both in Norway.

(Eurasian) Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus)

Noisy, always present bird which feels like we saw everywhere.  We saw it along the roadside our first night at the industrial park where we saw the Terek Sandpiper.  I saw it walking along rooftops, along old, broken down wharfs, nesting along a road in Båtsfjord Harbor and nesting on a man-made structure at a roadside rest area, along lakes and rocky shores.  Everywhere.  Of the many photos of Oystercatcher I tried for, this is really the only one I like.  I can see the red eye.

Flying across the harbor.

The lighthouse

Our second stop on the morning of May 30th was Kjølnes Lighthouse in Norway.  It was gray, cold and windy.  From this point forward I am not going to write that it was windy.   In coastal Norway, it is windy - all the time.  Not just a mild, ocean breeze.  No, gusty, cold wind.  We did get a lucky break from the wind, once, which I'll write about later.

Both of our guides had very nice Swarovski spotting scopes and these served us well throughout the trip.  We received spotting scope etiquette instructions at the start of the trip, but they were forgotten at the first opportunity.  I noticed also that many, including myself, were squeamish about moving or focusing the scope.  I felt like I couldn't touch the scope.  I'm not sure how valuable a sea watch is under such circumstances.  Gray skies, gray water and wind.  If something good was seen by the guides, (as one participant described it, "looking at dots over the water") it meant that thirteen trip participants had to line up behind the scopes for their own look.  That also meant that the dot on or over the water was long gone by the time, say, the third or fourth in line got their turn.  I stuck with this as long as I could stand it.  It's my least favorite way to see birds.  (Through dirty van windows may be my second least favorite way).   If it's a life bird I'll certainly give it a try, but I typically don't see the bird well enough to count it anyway.  This is true even for a trip bird.  We had three sea watches under these conditions - the very last one was probably the absolute worst. Activities like this probably drive up the species list numbers more than anything else.    

Fortunately this was also our lunch time.  We had bagged lunches this day.  I got my bag, made a cup of coffee and then left the lighthouse to find a place to eat out of the wind.  I never returned.  

My wandering took me around to the other outbuildings and a landscape which was either rocky or grassy little hills.  Away from the lighthouse the wind was diminished and tolerable and it was very pretty especially around the little hills.         

Common Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) - seen often on this trip.

Above and below:  Red-throated Pipit (Anthus cervinus).

Anttu said that we were also looking for a Rock Pipit here for one of the trip members who needed it for her life bird.  My solo wondering scared up a pipit - I could tell by the way it was acting and flying - but it never settled within view to get a real look.  I thought it was a Rock Pipit (A. petrosus).  When everyone finally came down from the lighthouse I told Anttu that there was a Rock Pipit flying around in the grassy hills.  Oh, let's find it.  He played the Rock Pipit vocalization and the bird that revealed itself was a Red-throated Pipit.  I had never seen a Rock Pipit or a Red-throated Pipit so I was pleased with either.  But, I was told that Red-throated Pipit was "so much better" because they are harder to find.  True enough, both birds have a very slender range along the coastlines.  We did later see a Rock Pipit - just one - and we also saw Red-throated Pipit at least once again after this.  

Nothing was ever said about seeing Red-throated Pipit on this trip.  I feel about pipits like I feel about wagtails.  We don't have enough of them; for me, American Pipit (A. rubescens) is really the only one possible.  I've never seen Sprague's Pipit (A, spragueii) out west, despite seriously looking on a trip across Montana in June 2009.  The Red-throated Pipit's range in Alaska is a mere decimal point when compared with the range of the Gray-headed Chickadee - oops, I mean Siberian Tit.

On the list of my five favorite trip birds, I tied Ortolan Bunting and Red-throated Pipit in the fifth spot.  Maybe Red-throated Pipit should have been all by itself.  All this second guessing.

Landscape along the road leaving the lighthouse.

Coastal Norway's landscapes are really beautiful and quite dramatic. Enlarge this photo to see the reindeer in the lower center left.

Tundra birds

We saw many tundra birds and many over and over.  We were in and out of the vans all day long.  Many of the birds we saw in the tundra landscape were birds not necessarily expected.  The photos below represent some of the expected.  

  

Long-tailed Skua (Jaeger) (Stercorarius longicaudus).  We say many times here and elsewhere.  We also saw Arctic Skua (Parasitic) (Stercorarius parasiticus) here and in a variety of other habitats.

Long-tailed Duck (Clangula hyemalis). 

We saw many Long-tailed Ducks, often in larger numbers, and I was hoping to hear them as described by Barry Lopez in his book Arctic Dreams*.  He wrote: " ... the haunting sound of oldsquaw in the ice, ahaalik, ahaalik ... " (page 404).   I remember reading this and going immediately to Merlin to see if this sound was in that app.  It was, and accurately described by Barry Lopez.  We discussed the duck's pejorative name oldsquaw and I was able to offer the eskimo origins for this name that I learned when reading Arctic Dreams.    

Eurasian Teal (Anas crecca)

Above and below:  Willow Ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus)

Temminck's Stint (Calidris temminckii)

Reindeer way out on the tundra.

Above and eight below:  Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) for a good look.

Whooper Swans (Cygnus Cygnus).  There were five in this spot.

Whooper Swans were seen daily.  Curiously, even though it is a European bird, we saw only two Mute Swans (C. olor) on the whole trip.  This certainly would not be the case here; crazy to think how many we have now.

*Arctic Dreama, Copyright © 1986 Barry Holstun Lopez.  First Vintage Books Edition, October 2001.

Successful strategy

It was May 28th and we came here, to Inari--Saariselkä Kaunispää in Lapland, for one bird.  It was a bird everyone wanted to see.  We arrived at a large, tundra-like landscape and got out of the vans to begin our search.  It was cold, windy and raining.  We walked around for a while and then I heard one of our guys whistle.  He waved his arms.  "Hey you guys, we're being called."  I didn't know what he found, but I was the closest to the spot he was calling from and I took off.  As I got closer I slowed down.  It was too windy and rainy to shout over. Suddenly, I saw what it was.  The Eurasian Dotteral (Eudromias morinellus).  Moss had stepped very near the nest and the bird popped up leaving three eggs exposed.  He took a photo of the eggs.  

This is how I first saw the bird.  I can't remember but I think the bird did vocalize.  He - it is a male bird - continued to distract those of us tromping over the tundra.  He was very close.  It had been banded by Finnature and it was the same bird that has been showing up here for at least a couple of years.  

We were starting to leave and I turned around to take one last look.

Back on the nest!

I can't remember if it was Nigel or Anttu but one, or both of them, took turns explaining this bird's breeding strategy.  The female bird is somewhat more brightly colored.

The Eurasian Dotterel exhibits a polygynandrous breeding strategy, specifically with serial polyandry.   Female Eurasian Dotterels arrive at breeding grounds and establish mating territories, competing with other females for access to males. Females are polyandrous, mating with multiple males, while males typically incubate the eggs and care for the young. This means the female lays multiple clutches, usually of three eggs, with different males and the male is left to raise the chicks from his clutch.  Our bird was sitting on his three eggs.  

There are many on-line sites where photos of the Eurasian Dotteral and its mating strategies are discussed.  I'm not a Birds of the World subscriber, but for those who are it's probably a satisfying deep dive.  eBird also has a good write-up with a good range map.  There are many others.

A scientific paper (1983) by two Norwegian researchers, Breeding Chronology and Mating System of the Eurasian Dotteral (Charadrius morinellus) was published in The Auk, and is available for free from The Digital Commons at the University of South Florida.  The Dotterel's genus was also recently changed from Charadruis to Eudromias. 

The paper above suggests that the female Dotterel may remain in the same area and breed with another male.  However, both Nigel and Anttu suggested that the departed female Dotterels can travel quite far to their next breeding sites.  The male will stay behind to incubate and take care of his offspring.  I am guilty of anthropomorphism, not always but occasionally, especially when it's something that really appeals to me.  This was one of those things.  One of the trip members was a wildlife biologist who had done a lot of work with birds, although they were not her area of expertise.  We often sat together in the rear seat of the van.  I admitted to my anthropomorphism and commented how content the male Dotterel appeared on his nest.  Contentment is a human emotion.  But, she agreed with me and went further with other examples of how research is opening doors where we are beginning to understand anthropomorphism differently.  Specifically about our Dotterel - incubating his eggs is his whole goal in life.  It is well understood that birds have hard lives.  This bird had flown thousands of miles precisely to do what he was doing on the day we saw him.  He deserved some contentment which, in this case, is being a successful breeder.  I was worried that every birder in Finland would make a visit to see this Dotterel and his nest would fail.  But Anttu disagreed saying this Dotterel had been a successful breeder for the past couple of years.  Finnature will, apparently, monitor this.  Anttu is likely to be a part of this monitoring.  I worried less.

In the 2nd edition of Birds of Europe, the author wrote this about the male Dotterel:  "Nest is a bare scrape.  Male does most of incubation and care of young.  Some males are extremely tame just before eggs hatch" (page142).  

On the list of my five favorite birds I put the Eurasian Dotterel in my number two spot.  My number one bird is still coming up.  But, after looking at my photos again and writing this blog entry, I wish I had made the Dotterel my number one.  On any trip there always seems to be one bird that I become attached to.  On this trip it was this bird.