Colonial Coast Birding Challenge

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		COASTAL BIRDING CHALLENGE & HURRICANE “BIRDERS & MORE” RELIEF EFFORT
HURRICANE “BIRDERS & MORE” RELIEF EFFORT
The results are now in for those generous people who wanted to support the effort to aid those affected by the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes, and who pledged to send a dollar amount for every bird species recorded during the Coastal Birding Challenge of Oct. 7. The final tally of species recorded by the 4 teams is an amazing 145 distinct species. For further details on the Challenge results, see below Also, lump-sum donations are continuing to come in from both individuals and organizations. The Okefenokee Bird Club of Waycross, GA not only sent in money and birder items as a unit, but had 100% of its members contribute as individuals as well. They invite other clubs to join them in making a group-donation too. Those who wish to contribute birding books, equipment, bird feeders, etc. as part of a "Birder Exchange" may also help accumulate these items for distribution to Gulf Coast birders. Everyone thanks you for your kind support which will go a long way to helping those who are enduring hard times since these disasters occurred. For more information on the festival's "adopted" birder--Judy Fruge' of Cameron, LA--see her biography on the web site. Pledge donations, lump-sum contributions, and birding items should be sent by Oct. 22, 2005 to Coastal Georgia Audubon Society (C.G.A.S.) c/o Sheila Willis, 324 Pineview Dr., Waycross, GA 31501 with the notation of"Hurricane Relief-Festival Challenge". The majority of the funds received will go to affected birders with a percentage going to the Salvation Army for the general public.
Judy Fruge		(one of Judy's favorite birding spots in Cameron Parish - click image for more info)
MEET JUDY FRUGE, ADOPTED GULF COAST BIRDER Judy Fruge, of Cameron, LA, is retired from the Cameron Parrish School System, a mother & grandmother, gardener, and more. She's a long-time active member of the Louisiana Ornithological Society and various area bird clubs. If you attended any LOS migration meetings, you probably met her at the registration desk. Her favorite birds to watch are hummingbirds, warblers, and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers. Until the recent hurricanes, Judy had a productive backyard wildlife habitat that provided sustenance to a variety of resident and migrating species. During the evacuation for Hurricane Rita, she was able to escape with her binoculars, scope, & 2 bird books, but the majority of her extensive collection of birding & gardening books as well as wildlife art was lost. In addition, her own home and even the town she lived in were totally destroyed with only a token structure or two left standing. Although some oaks still stand, in her words, "the landscape is almost unrecognizable". Judy says "I am heartened by the generous offer to help offset my loss of birding resources. Thank you Georgia birdwatchers!" She's ready to start rebuilding, replanting, and go looking for birds again. Let's all help her in those efforts.
COASTAL BIRDING CHALLENGE The lists have been turned in, and the results are spectacular for the 2005 Coastal Birding Challenge. A total of 145 species of birds were identified by 4 teams who searched at various Coastal Birding Trail sites during different periods of a rainy 24-hour session on Oct. 7. Locations in McIntosh and Glynn Counties such as Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, Sapelo Island, Altamaha Wildlife Management Area, Gould's Inlet on St. Simon's Island, and Jekyll Island were explored. Each & every team contributed species to the overall list. One interesting tidbit was that two teams in two different locations pulled in Yellow-bellied Flycatcher (Sapleo Island & Altamaha S.W.M.A.). The winning team of Bill Lotz, Dan Vickers, Chuck Saleeby, & Sterling Blanchard managed to count 129 distinct species and were symbolically awarded the Coastal Birding Challenge trophy during the Saturday evening's festivities on Jekyll Island. Their names will be inscribed on the sculpture's base and their record will now be the one to beat during future events. Congratulations to these Atlanta-area superbirders! The three other Challenge teams and their totals were: Mal Hodges (78), Samantha Smith (65), and Clay Taylor (62). They selected a few key sites to search and their intense efforts there added additional birds to raise the count tally. A few examples of such birds would be Plain Chachalaca, Whip-poor-will, Red-shouldered Hawk, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Bank Swallow, & Blackpoll Warbler. Their extra work under less than stellar weather conditions is much appreciated. Thanks to the willingness of these intrepid birders to participate in this festival event, additional birding records have now become part of coastal reports that can be used by many that keep an eye out for trends in bird migration and populations. And for this year, the overall total number of birds making the Challenge finals is being used as a bench-mark for monetary pledges-per-species that will raise funds to aid birders & others in the Gulf Coast hurricane-ravaged areas. For more information on that effort, please see the accompanying section in the festival web site. Good job folks!! For more information on all these special festival events, contact : Sheila Willis Full Challenge Bird List:** Pied-billed Grebe Brown Pelican Double-crested Cormorant Anhinga Least Bittern Great Blue Heron Great Egret Snowy Egret Little Blue Heron Tricolored Heron Cattle Egret Reddish Egret Green Heron Black-crowned Night-Heron Yellow-crowned Night-Heron White Ibis Glossy Ibis Roseate Spoonbill Wood Stork Black Vulture Turkey Vulture Wood Duck Mottled Duck Blue-winged Teal Northern Shoveler Green-winged Teal Osprey Bald Eagle Northern Harrier Cooper's Hawk Red-shouldered Hawk Broad-winged Hawk Red-tailed Hawk American Kestrel Merlin Peregrine Falcon Plain Chachalaca Clapper Rail King Rail Virginia Rail Sora Common Moorhen American Coot Black-bellied Plover Wilson's Plover Semipalmated Plover Piping Plover Killdeer Greater Yellowlegs Lesser Yellowlegs Willet Spotted Sandpiper Ruddy Turnstone Red Knot Sanderling Semipalmated Sandpiper Western Sandpiper Least Sandpiper Pectoral Sandpiper Short-billed Dowitcher Wilson's Snipe Laughing Gull Ring-billed Gull Herring Gull Lesser Black-backed Gull Great Black-backed Gull Caspian Tern Royal Tern Sandwich Tern Forster's Tern Black Skimmer Rock Dove Eurasian Collared-Dove Mourning Dove Yellow-billed Cuckoo Eastern Screech-Owl Great Horned Owl Barred Owl Whip-poor-will Chimney Swift Ruby-throated Hummingbird Belted Kingfisher Red-bellied Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Northern Flicker Pileated Woodpecker Eastern Wood-Pewee Yellow-bellied Flycatcher Acadian Flycatcher Eastern Phoebe Eastern Kingbird White-eyed Vireo Red-eyed Vireo Blue Jay American Crow Fish Crow Tree Swallow Bank Swallow Barn Swallow Carolina Chickadee Tufted Titmouse Brown-headed Nuthatch Carolina Wren House Wren Marsh Wren Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Eastern Bluebird Veery Gray-cheeked Thrush Swainson's Thrush Wood Thrush Gray Catbird Northern Mockingbird Brown Thrasher European Starling Northern Parula Yellow Warbler Chestnut-sided Warbler Magnolia Warbler Yellow-throated Warbler Pine Warbler Prairie Warbler Palm Warbler Blackpoll Warbler Black-and-white Warbler American Redstart Northern Waterthrush Common Yellowthroat Summer Tanager Scarlet Tanager Eastern Towhee Savannah Sparrow Sharp-tailed Sparrow sp. Seaside Sparrow White-crowned Sparrow Northern Cardinal Rose-breasted Grosbeak Blue Grosbeak Indigo Bunting Painted Bunting Bobolink Red-winged Blackbird Common Grackle Boat-tailed Grackle Brown-headed Cowbird House Sparrow
Last year's Colonial Coast Birding Challenge was a great success. A note from the winners: It was a fantastic weekend for birding on the Georgia Coast. Deb, Chuck Saleeby and I participated in the first annual Coastal Birding Challenge on Thursday. This "Big Day" event encompassed any/all of the sites of the Coastal Birding Trail. We left Atlanta just before midnight on Wednesday and planned our drive to arrive at the Ansley Hodges Marsh Project at the Altamaha Wildfowl Management Area at the appointed start time of 5:30AM. Our first bird was an unshared Barn Owl calling as it flew over the marsh, unfortunately Chuck and Deb were still getting there gear out of the car and missed it. The next hour or so before dawn was fairly slow but we were able to FINALLY get an Eastern Screech-Owl to respond as well as a surprisingly late Chuck-Wills-Widow calling. The only thrushes we heard were Swainson's and Veery, but we were able to hear Sora, Virginia and King Rails. The day light chorus was kicking in and we quickly started to add the common species. Once we could begin to see well enough, the herons and egrets began to show themselves and we added all the expected species including Yellow-crowned Night-Heron and Glossy Ibis. Ducks were very tough to find, and the only confirmed species were Mottled, Wood and Blue-winged Teal. The road along the marsh was thick with Indigo Buntings, Common Yellowthroats (everywhere), Savannah Sparrows and Palm Warblers. We managed to find a few female Painted Buntings and the only Yellow Warbler of the day as well. Later in the morning, the raptors started moving and within twenty minutes we had Merlin, Peregrine Falcon, Bald Eagle, Northern Harrier, Coopers and Red-tail Hawks. We left the Altamaha with a total of 72 species for the morning and headed up to Harris Neck for some missing passerines and hopefully some ducks. Since the rules prohibited recording birds from the car while traveling between sites we were unable to count some of the species we saw along the road like Eurasian Collared-Dove and House Sparrow (which we missed for the day). We arrived at Harris Neck and immediately scored a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a bird we were not counting on this early in the season. We got off to a good start and added several other species like Downy Woodpecker, Pine Warbler, Black-and-White Warbler, Red-eyed and White-eyed Vireo but we never could find any large flocks of birds and practically no migrants. Woody Pond was fairly quiet but it did produce the hoped for Wood Stork, Pied-billed Grebe and Black-crowned Night-Heron along with Yellow-throated Warbler and Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher. We spent probably too much time trying to kick up some migrants in the woods around the pond with not much luck. The biggest surprise of the day came when Deb spotted two Mississippi Kites overhead at Woody Pond. These birds were very late leaving the area (and we were very lucky to be looking up at the right time!). The thousands of Tree Swallows feeding on the Wax Myrtle berries was an amazing site to see. We worked some of the weedy areas around the runways and Chuck and Deb flushed a Bobolink which I missed, the only one of the day. We finally found another Pine Warbler (Deb missed the first one), and we tried every pine area we could find for Brown-headed Nuthatch, but could never find one. We departed Harris Neck with 91 species. Our plan was to try and be at the Visitor Center on the Jekyll Island Causeway as the tide was coming in, always a tricky calculation depending on the height of the high tide. We blew it. We got to the Visitor Center around 2PM (high tide was supposed to around 4pm) and the mud flats were already covered up. We were able to pick up a Seaside Sparrow along the causeway as well as some countable Eurasian Collared-Doves. The next stop was Gould's Inlet and East Beach of St. Simons Island. Luckily, the high tide has pushed most of the gulls in to the near-side beach with a nice assortment of shorebirds. We picked up the expected species as well as five Lesser Black-backed Gulls. We could not find any American Oystercatchers and this was our best spot for Reddish Egret which we missed. We left Gould's Inlet with 118 species. We cruised by the Causeway and made a quick stop to try for the Sharp-tailed Sparrows since it was high tide. We missed the sparrows but added Marsh Wren. The next stop was South Beach on Jekyll Island. Chuck managed to find the last remaining Great Crested Flycatcher on the island by the Pink House, and on the beach we found Greater Black-backed Gull and a few of the other shorebird species we were still missing. We left south beach at 121 and headed up to the north end of the island. Once again, the woods were very quiet and there were virtually no song birds around the woods near the pier. We did flush a Spotted Sandpiper on the rocks, so we left to try our last bit of luck back on the causeway. The tide was headed out but there was still no mud flat exposed when we got back to the Visitor Center. Exhausted from a full day of "combat birding", it was just enjoyable to stand and watch the setting sun over the marsh. It helped that a flock of Avocets and a Roseatte Spoonbill happened to fly by, both birds that we needed! The day ended with a respectable total of 125 species. We missed a few birds, as always happens on any "Big Day", and we found a few surprises. However, standing there with the sky light fading, the breeze blowing in over the marsh, with good friends, made the entire day worth while. It's not about the competition, it's about enjoying the rich and diverse habitats that the coast of Georgia has to offer and how critical this entire coastal area is to these species that migrate through our state and those that make the marshes and dunes and maritime forests their home. It's about the birds. `Bob & Deb Zaremba Marietta, GA` For more information email Sheila Willis