February 23, 2016
I’m a bit of a planner at heart. I like to know when we will be where. I like to be sure we can fit in all the work we want to do here in a set amount of time. I resisted the urge to plan at first. Then February came around. I needed to make sure we could do all the repeat visits we needed to do. So I planned. Casually at first roughly plotting out where we would be on the island, and then last week I scheduled by tide. I had it all figured out. No problem!
But the godwits don’t always listen to my plans. Really, they do whatever they want.
Long story short, my plan failed today, and we came up with a new game plan for the day. We’ll see how that affects the rest of my plan! We arrived at Pullao expecting a flock of a thousand and hoping for a bigger one full of FEGs. What we got was 60 distant individuals. We decided to try to come back a different day and changed plans.
I didn’t have a back-up plan for today because Pullao is one of, if not our most, reliable bay - it always has a thousand godwits. So we brainstormed and off we drove to Isla Lemuy.
Isla Lemuy is another island off the coast of Castro. It’s the second biggest island off of Isla Chiloé. There were a few bays that I had wanted survey this year, but we never had time in January - so they were cut. But we had time today. So, we decided to see if we could find a new FEG in a new area.
We surveyed two bays - Ichuac and Aldachildo. We saw thirty godwits and no FEGs. The thirty birds were roosting in a lagoon next to one of the survey bays. Very cool! We left and decided to drive towards the tip of the island to see the sights and check out a “mirador” or viewpoint. Beautiful views of coastline and some of the other islands, unfortunately obscured by the large salmon aquaculture nets and lines of plastic buoys where they grow shellfish.
G wanted to stop at a little roadside humedal to look for birds on the way back that we had seen driving to one of the survey sites. I started writing this post and stayed in the car when he came walking back to my door. “Rose, I saw a Rushbird”.
Well, shoot! That’s one of my nemesis birds here. G had seen them in 2009, and heard one once while birding without me. We’ve been trying at all the wetlands farther north where they’re reported somewhat infrequently for them but without luck. They’re incredibly skulky and fill the niche of a Marsh Wren. Buzzing and smacking and staying hidden low in the sedges. They hardly ever come out where you can see them. Or so I had been told.
We ran back to the humedal. G showed me where he had seen it fly to an we heard one call almost immediately, but I wanted to see it - I don’t like heard only life birds. We were patient. Waiting. Listening.
It called again. Close! There! Up in the reeds! I was able to see it out in the open for about a second before it dipped down where G and I watched it for another second or two. Out of sight.
We waited some more. We listened some more. We watched the Spot-flanked Gallinule as it swam in close. There! G and I spotted it moving in the reeds but more brief, poor looks. We waited and listened. Finally, G spotted it again down low but in a clearing. Good looks! We watched it for almost a minute before it moved out of sight. Such a nice life bird for me! Good thing I’ve got G around to scope out all the random little marshes!
Scan update: 29 individuals.. Still
I’m a bit of a planner at heart. I like to know when we will be where. I like to be sure we can fit in all the work we want to do here in a set amount of time. I resisted the urge to plan at first. Then February came around. I needed to make sure we could do all the repeat visits we needed to do. So I planned. Casually at first roughly plotting out where we would be on the island, and then last week I scheduled by tide. I had it all figured out. No problem!
But the godwits don’t always listen to my plans. Really, they do whatever they want.
Long story short, my plan failed today, and we came up with a new game plan for the day. We’ll see how that affects the rest of my plan! We arrived at Pullao expecting a flock of a thousand and hoping for a bigger one full of FEGs. What we got was 60 distant individuals. We decided to try to come back a different day and changed plans.
I didn’t have a back-up plan for today because Pullao is one of, if not our most, reliable bay - it always has a thousand godwits. So we brainstormed and off we drove to Isla Lemuy.
Isla Lemuy is another island off the coast of Castro. It’s the second biggest island off of Isla Chiloé. There were a few bays that I had wanted survey this year, but we never had time in January - so they were cut. But we had time today. So, we decided to see if we could find a new FEG in a new area.
We surveyed two bays - Ichuac and Aldachildo. We saw thirty godwits and no FEGs. The thirty birds were roosting in a lagoon next to one of the survey bays. Very cool! We left and decided to drive towards the tip of the island to see the sights and check out a “mirador” or viewpoint. Beautiful views of coastline and some of the other islands, unfortunately obscured by the large salmon aquaculture nets and lines of plastic buoys where they grow shellfish.
G wanted to stop at a little roadside humedal to look for birds on the way back that we had seen driving to one of the survey sites. I started writing this post and stayed in the car when he came walking back to my door. “Rose, I saw a Rushbird”.
Well, shoot! That’s one of my nemesis birds here. G had seen them in 2009, and heard one once while birding without me. We’ve been trying at all the wetlands farther north where they’re reported somewhat infrequently for them but without luck. They’re incredibly skulky and fill the niche of a Marsh Wren. Buzzing and smacking and staying hidden low in the sedges. They hardly ever come out where you can see them. Or so I had been told.
We ran back to the humedal. G showed me where he had seen it fly to an we heard one call almost immediately, but I wanted to see it - I don’t like heard only life birds. We were patient. Waiting. Listening.
It called again. Close! There! Up in the reeds! I was able to see it out in the open for about a second before it dipped down where G and I watched it for another second or two. Out of sight.
We waited some more. We listened some more. We watched the Spot-flanked Gallinule as it swam in close. There! G and I spotted it moving in the reeds but more brief, poor looks. We waited and listened. Finally, G spotted it again down low but in a clearing. Good looks! We watched it for almost a minute before it moved out of sight. Such a nice life bird for me! Good thing I’ve got G around to scope out all the random little marshes!
Scan update: 29 individuals.. Still