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September bird list

To people reading our travel reports, it probably seems like we never work. To birders reading our bird list, it probably seems like we hardly bird. Mostly Colorado. A little bit of Wyoming and Nebraska. 84 birds. We only recorded 84 birds in an entire month!

1 Canada Goose
2 Gadwall
3 American Wigeon
4 Mallard
5 Northern Shoveler
6 Pied-billed Grebe
7 American White Pelican
8 Double-crested Cormorant
9 Great Blue Heron
10 Great Egret
11 Snowy Egret
12 Cattle Egret
13 Green Heron
14 Turkey Vulture
15 Osprey
16 Bald Eagle
17 Northern Harrier
18 Swainson’s Hawk
19 Red-tailed Hawk
20 Ferruginous Hawk
21 American Kestrel
22 Peregrine Falcon
23 Prairie Falcon
24 American Coot
25 Killdeer
26 Lesser Yellowlegs
27 Wilson’s Snipe
28 Franklin‘s Gull
29 Ring-billed Gull
30 Rock Pigeon
31 Eurasian Collared-Dove
32 Mourning Dove
33 Great Horned Owl
34 Black-chinned Hummingbird
35 Broad-tailed Hummingbird
36 Belted Kingfisher
37 Downy Woodpecker
38 Northern Flicker
39 Western Wood-Pewee
40 Say’s Phoebe
41 Western Kingbird
42 Loggerhead Shrike
43 Red-eyed Vireo
44 Blue Jay
45 Black-billed Magpie
46 American Crow
47 Common Raven
48 Horned Lark
49 Barn Swallow
50 Black-capped Chickadee
51 White-breasted Nuthatch
52 Rock Wren
53 Canyon Wren
54 House Wren
55 Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
56 Mountain Bluebird
57 Townsend’s Solitaire
58 American Robin
59 Gray Catbird
60 Northern Mockingbird
61 European Starling
62 Cedar Waxwing
63 Yellow Warbler
64 Common Yellowthroat
65 Wilson’s Warbler
66 Spotted Towhee
67 Chipping Sparrow
68 Clay-colored Sparrow
69 Brewer’s Sparrow
70 Vesper Sparrow
71 Lark Sparrow
72 Lark Bunting
73 Savannah Sparrow
74 Song Sparrow
75 McCown’s Longspur
76 Red-winged Blackbird
77 Western Meadowlark
78 Yellow-headed Blackbird
79 Brewer’s Blackbird
80 Common Grackle
81 House Finch
82 Lesser Goldfinch
83 American Goldfinch
84 House Sparrow

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Times of our lives

  In 1966, in the first third of our lives, Judy and I arrived in Clarksville, Tennessee, just south of Ft Campbell, with everything we owned in a 1959 Plymouth station wagon.  We were just starting out.   Here we are, over forty years later, grandparents, in the third third, driving through Clarksville, Tennessee, with everything we own in our RV.   It’s a different time.    
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Leaving St Louis

We’re headed warmer. Through the Southern Illinois rolling deciduous forests. Across the great Ohio River into Kentucky with its tobacco fields going yellow, Past Ft Campbell. Past the Swine and Dine Barbeque Restaurant. To Tennessee with rivers winding through it. It doesn’t seem to matter where you are, or what direction you go in Tennessee; you cross the Cumberland River.
We’re in Montgomery Bell State Park outside Nashville for the night.

Elevation 385 feet.
6,800 trip miles.

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The kindness of strangers

There is a reason why we’re in a casino RV park in East St Louis. It’s because on April 25, 1870, a European immigrant, missing the familiar birds of his homeland, released twelve Eurasian Tree Sparrows into Lafayette Park. The sparrow never expanded its range much, but the population survives. This area is still the only place in North America a person can see a Eurasian Tree Sparrow. They look kind of like house sparrows, but the top of their head is rufous instead of gray, and they have white cheek patches with a spot in the middle.

We were kind of heading this way anyway, so we routed ourselves through St Louis. Saturday afternoon, we went to Horseshoe Lake State Park, east of St Louis in Illinois, a place known to have them. We had a very nice birdwalk, saw lot of birds, even saw wood ducks, but no sparrow. We drove to the Southwest part of St Louis to the “Dogtown” neighborhood at dusk. No luck.
Saturday night, reading everything I could find on the internet about locating Eurasian Tree Sparrows, I came across a name and phone number of a guy who knows about them. I called him. He shared several locations we might find the sparrow, then volunteered that if we wanted to make sure we got it, we could just come to his house and look in his yard. They live right there in his neighborhood. That sounded promising! Then he went on to say that since these are birds, he couldn’t guarantee that we’d actually see one, but that anyone coming to his yard to find one had never missed yet. Beyond promising!

A Sunday morning drive back through St Louis to Webster Groves. Flawless directions to his house (His directions had nothing to do with us missing a turn and driving back and forth across the Mississippi River three times.) Within ten minutes of our arrival we had our bird. Several of them. First the fleeting look, just enough to make the call, then the satisfying looks. Poses for pictures. We got to stay and watch them for as long as we wanted. Bird number 511.

Thank you Bill Rowe, for being kind to strangers. (We didn’t meet Bill in person. He was off on his own birding trip by the time we got to his house, so, by his invitation, we wandered his yard and neighborhood unescorted.)