Fun with herps

My Fiancee Nikki is doing her master's project on the breeding ecology of Skinks. For those who don't know Skinks are lizards from the family Scincidae, the largest and most diverse family of lizards. In general skinks have very little neck and usually have relatively reduced limbs, in some genera in fact they have no legs at all, which contributes to the myth that Skinks are or are related to snakes. Despite being the most common or only types of lizards in many areas, very little is known about skink biology. Nikki has two different study sites in the Stillwater area, one in a crosstimbers forest for woodland species, and one in a large old field for grassland species.

Anyway occassionally helping Nikki with her fieldwork helps me get my herp fix (I have always been interested in reptiles and amphibians nearly as much as birds). So I enjoy going out with her and trying to catch not only skinks but the many other species of reptiles and amphibians that she catches in her traps and under her cover boards. Here are some pictures of some of the various critters we have been collecting this spring.

Here we have a Ring-necked snake, a common snake species at the woodland site.

Here we see a juvenile five-lined skink in a bag! Nikki doesn not want him to escape, check out his beautiful blue tail.

This species occurs almost exclusively at the woodland site.

Here we have a Woodhouse's Toad, the grassland site can get quite marshy after rain and we see quite a few amphibians here.

Here we have a Strecker's Chorus Frog, this is a relatively range restricted species native to the southern plains

This beauty is a Speckled King Snake, a gorgeous black and yellow/green speckled constrictor snake, they eat rodents as well as other snakes and lizards.

Here Nikki teaches her minions a little bit about the biology of the Speckled King Snake.

Here we have a Small-mouthed Salamander, the only regularly occuring Salamander in the Stillwater area, I love Salamanders as much as birds, they are awesome!

Here I contemplate a world without Salamanders.

Nikki pit tags all of her Skinks, this way she can tell who she has captured already, as she is doing a mark/recapture study. This allows her to discover all sorts of things about skink natural history.

Here a beautiful southern prairie skink awaits his turn for a pit tag. This species occurs only in prairie habitat like the grassland site, it has a very restricted range and very little is known about it.

LIFER!!

No word is as exciting to a birder as the word "Lifer". Lifers are often the currency by which birders judge themselves and others. A lifer is simply a new bird for a birder's "life list" a bird that they have never before seen. For some birders, birds are often little more than numbers, something to collect as they build their life lists higher and higher. To these birders the goal, in this case a large "life list" is the important thing, the journey is just a means to an end. For others they barely pay attention to their lists, they simply enjoy the experience of seeing a new bird, watching its never before seen beauty and its novel behaviors. For the majority some mixture of the above two scenarios is the norm. Most birders (though not all), watch birds because they do indeed LIKE birds, they enjoy watching their behavior, soaking in the particular habitat of each new species and listening to new bird vocalizations. However, they may also enjoy some facet of listing, competing against others or just against their own goals and expectations.

I fall into the last category, I am and for as long as I can remember, have been fascinated by birds (and indeed by all of the natural world). So much so that I chose wildlife ecology and management as my career. To me life just doesn't get better than being in a new habitat for the first time and watching a whole new community of birds and other organisms interacting with the habitat and eachother. I do admit to also being conscience of my lists though as well. For example at the beginning of each year I set a goal for myself about how many birds I want to see that year, how many lifers etc. its the part of it that makes it a game and a little more fun. With that in mind I entered this year (in what will likely be my final year living in Oklahoma), wanting to get my Oklahoma state list over 300, something I was hoping to accomplish much earlier but with grad school obligations and other responsibilities, I haven't had the time to just bird like I did in years past. Last weekend I was leading a group of my ornithology students (I am teaching an ornithology lab class at OSU this semester) to the Wichita Mountains NWR, one of the last strongholds of the Black-capped Vireo in Oklahoma. It just so happens that I had never before seen this species, not only in Oklahoma but never before period.

The morning started off cool and foggy and I was worried the birding was not going to be very good. However about 15 minutes after arriving at the refuge the fog began to lift and we soon saw a herd of bison.

Many of the bison in this herd appeared to be young males, and they seemed to itching for a fight.

We then took a trail into some likely looking Black-capped Vireo habitat. The birding was good and the students were hearing and seeing many new birds, many of them newly arrived Neotropical migrants like Summer Tanagers and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers. Soon we heard a probable Black-capped Vireo but after hiking off trail for awhile toward where the song originated from, we were unsuccessful in locating the caller. After contemplating turning back to check some other areas for waterfowl and other species, I convinced the group to continue on through likely Black-capped Vireo habitat for little longer.

Ornithology students walking through Black-capped Vireo habitat at the Wichita Mountains.

Only a couple of hundred yards farther down the trail. We heard another Black-capped Vireo calling from up on a hillside. Andy Crosby, one of the students who had formerly worked on a Black-capped Vireo project and I led the way up the hill towards the singing Vireo. The Vireo was skulky and mostly stayed hidden in the small shinnery oaks but we were patient and eventually he showed himself.

Perhaps the most important thing about "Lifers" is that sometimes its just an individual bird, never before seen that can propel somebody into a life of birds and birding and eventually bird conservation. These lifers are called "spark birds" a bird that lights the spark that ignites the birding pation in somebody. For me I can actually point to one of these birds and moments that hooked me on birds for life. At 8 years old I had been interested in dinosaurs first and eventually this led me to a fascination with non-extinct animals as well, especially birds. But I don't think you could have called me a "birder" until a fateful family trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1989. I had been watching the local birds around my little hometown in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a year or so, and had already seen many of the common species. This trip into the "west" however would change me from a passive birdwatcher into an avid birder. I had brought along my little Tasco binoculars and golden field guide my grandparents had given me as a present and while my parents and siblings were swimming at the pool in our campground I walked around the area looking for new birds. I still vividly remember the bright sky blue bird that flew into my vision, over the black hills spruce and onto a barbed wire fence seperating the campground from a pasture. My field guide said it was a Mountain Bluebird but to my 8 year old mind it was something much more, something new and exotic, it was a lifer.

Finally adding the beautiful and federally endangered Black-capped Vireo to my lifelist has certainly been one of the highlights of my spring. More importantly adding this species to the fledgling lifelists of my ornithology students might help influence some of them to become ardent birders and bird conservationists themselves, just like that Mountain Bluebird in that Black Hills pasture did for me almost 20 years ago.

Yearlisting amongst a cloud of sparrows

A number of years ago I read a book called "A Cloud of Sparrows". Although this book had absolutely nothing to do with birding, (it was a memorable story about the difficulties faced by the japanese people during the rapid industrialization and westernization that occurred in Japan during the late 19th century) I have always loved the title and thought it a fitting description of birding in Oklahoma. The Sooner state is well known for the many species of sparrows that spends at least part of the year here. We have interesting breeders, like the above Rufous-crowned Sparrow (a southwestern specialty), and the rare and hard to see Bachman's Sparrow (a southeastern specialty) as well as many others. We also have many more northerly breeding species that spend the winter here, including the white-crowned sparrow and range restricted Harris's sparrow seen below.

Oklahoma also has all four species of Longspurs (which are a specialized kind of sparrow) wintering here, as well as some of the harder to see Ammodramus sparrows that winter and/or migrate through like the Le Conte's Sparrow (the species seen in this blogs title) and the Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow.

All of these beautiful sparrows are part of what makes birding in Oklahoma great! This year I am attempting an Oklahoma "Big Year". This is an attempt to see as many species as possible WITHIN Oklahoma within the calender year. Most birders attempting a feat such as this probably have a lot more money and time on their hands than this recently graduated former graduate student, thus a very respectable OK big year attempt should be near or above 300 species. Due to my lack of funds and many time commitments I would be quite happy with something around 250 however. Wish me luck!

more things to identify

For many years now I have resisted the temptation to plunge myself into the world of butterflying. Still too many birds left out there to see, I thought. So many other vertebrate taxa that I haven't hardly began to enjoy. But having taken a short-term job that will place me in the LRGV of Texas (a region known not only for its awesome Mexican birds but also its awesome Mexican butterflies) for at least part of the upcoming spring/summer. I decided to pick up a butterfly field guide and start learning some of these guys! In fact the field guide helped lead me to some other resources that allowed me to (tenatively) identify some of the butterflies I photographed in Mexico last year.

Diaethria a. anna, aka Anna's Eighty-eight

Heliconius erato cruentus, aka the Erato Heliconius or the Crimson-patched Longwing

Hamadryas februa ferentina, aka the Gray Cracker

Papilio (Pterourus) multicaudata grandiosus? aka the two-tailed tiger swallowtail

So when the temps start warming up, not only will I be looking for the usual warblers, tanagers and flycatchers but also the skippers, fritillaries and checkerspots!

Sandia Crest

Sandia Crest, New Mexico

My fiancée and I decided to spend the Martin Luther King day weekend (Jan. 17-19th) observing the Rosy-finches at Sandia Crest New Mexico. Rosy-finches are birds of high mountains in western North America and eastern Asia. In North America, Rosy-finches primarily breed in alpine tundra above the timberline at high elevations. In the past ornithologists recognized just one species of Rosy-finch but now recognize four species, three of which occur in North America. Traditionally many birders had to travel to different regions to see these three species, but relatively recently birders discovered that all three species winter in the Sandia Mountains of northern New Mexico. Earlier this decade birders set up feeders at the Crest House, a restaurant and gift shop at the highest point in the Sandias (10,678 feet). Here birders can take a relatively easy drive (if the weather is nice) up into the mountains and see Rosy-finches coming right into a feeding station! In addition local birders and ornithologists began a banding program at Sandia Crest, which has expanded into looking at stable isotope data and now even radio tracking individual birds. Here are some of the photos I took at Sandia Crest.

This is the most wide-spread of the three Rosy-finches in North America, the Gray-crowned Rosy-finch, which breeds in Mountainous areas of much of Northwest North America, stable isotope studies have shown Gray-crowned Rosy-finches wintering at Sandia Crest come down from as far away as Alaska

And here we have the most range restricted, the Brown-capped Rosy-finch; breeding mostly in Colorado small portions of adjacent Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico, this species is one of only a handful of species entirely endemic to the United States

Here is the Black Rosy-finch this species breeds in much of the middle Rocky Mountains, in Utah Wyoming, Idaho and Southern Montana, stable isotope studies have shown that the majority of Black Rosies wintering at Sandia Crest breed in a small area of northern Utah, this is also a United States endemic

Here are some pics from the rosy-finch banding

A Black Rosy is banded

and had its wing cord taken

A close-up Brown-capped Rosy-finch

A newly banded Black Rosy

Here my fiancee, Nikki releases a newly banded Brown-capped rosy-finch

Here all three species of Rosy-finch feed on the deck of the Crest house. Hopefully the information gleaned from the Rosy-finch banding project will aid in the conservation of these beautiful mountain wanderes!