Galveston Fallout

 I recently was invited to Galveston for an "mini fallout" by a renowned birder/ ornithologist who had taught an online bird identification course which I took.Some of the highlights were 10 warbler species Nashville, Black and White,Yellow Throated, Hooded, Prothonotary, Northern Parula, Common Yellowthroat, Yellow Rumped, Orange Crowned,and Pine. The first 5 were lifers.  Rose Breasted Grossbeak (another lifer), White Eyed Vireos, Northern Rough winged Swallow, Broadwinged Hawk, Ruby Throated Hummingbirds, Brown Thrashers, Great Crested Flycatchers, and Scissor Tailed Flycatchers were others.  I won't get into the water birds because I am not sure who stayed for the winter.  ( BTW I know that the Pine,  Yellow Rumpeds and the Orange Crowneds stayed.).  At the end of the day I had 13 new lifers, I still haven't gottten them all straightened out but I have pictures of a number of them which I will try to post.  That is really exciting isn't it?  My total went up to 237 on my lifelist so that is a significent number for me.  "That is great!" you say.  You are probably wondering how you can see something like that. 

 Here is a slideshow of the highlights of the passerine/raptor portion of my trip.  I have not even started ti tackle my shorebirds, gulls, and terns yet.  I will try to post them in a later entry.

What is this "Fallout" that I am talking about?  For those of you who don't know, a fallout is a spectacle in the birding world, where huge numbers of birds traveling 600+ miles northward from the Yucatan penninsula across the Gulf of Mexico get caught by a headwind brought on by a coldfront coming from the north.  So what may take a night to fly could take over a day to fly with no landing spot to rest.  As a result if and when they reach dry land they are totally exhausted!  That means that they aren't going to fly away unless there is imminent danger (and maybe not even then!).   Many of the birds don't make it across the Gulf, they can't swim.  So they die.  Others who do make it are more susceptable to predators. 

Just think about it, what if you had to run a marathon, and you prepared for it and then they give you weights to carry or changed the course so that it was all uphill?  Pretty sad stuff, huh? Now, I don't mean to rain on your parade if you are seeing one of these events.  It is going to happen whether you are there or not , so why not take advantage of the situation?  I will.  Mike of 100000 birds, who is very knowledgeable about things wrote a blog about Fallout Fun.  I just wanted those of you who wish that one will occur, understand the consequencesof such events and maybe respect the survivors enough to not stress them any more than they were already stressed.  Give them their space and let them recover.  Your actions may be what puts them over the edge and causes them to die when they might not have if left alone.

So my thoughts arer that since the wind was blowing so hard that there were very few survivors on that day.  Most of the birds I saw were probably birds that had come in the previous day according to Jim Stephenson. Here are some pictures of birds that may or may not have survived the trip.  An immature male Rose Breasted Grosbeak with what looks like blood on its beak and breast that was probably coughed up from lungs that were overburdened from the trip up here.  By the way, there were no bushes with red berries in the area that I could see and the blood seems to have developed after I first saw him.

A Ruby Throated Hummingbird looks to have survived the trip much better.

4:58 PM - April 2, 2009 - post comment

Mini fallout

Followed your link from birders world. great photos. I've not made the trip down there, but I expect the fallout today will be huge.

scott (bellsa86) - 2:36 PM - April 6, 2009

Multiple fronts

Yeah, Scott. It seems that there have been a number of fronts coming through this past week and a half.

DDolan1075 - 8:41 PM - April 6, 2009