Monday, June 27, 2016

And finally...18th and 19th May...

Well it will be sad to sign off. While I have been bombarding you with photos of our nearctic adventure, I have really enjoyed reliving the experience. It was really fantastic you know. I've never been to the states before, so you can imagine how good it would be.

On the 18th we had a long drive back south as far as the Allegan Dam on the Kalamazoo river. Our target here was quite easy to locate - Cerulean Warbler. We soon found a singing male and female that showed well eventually but very briefly and I was too slow for a decent pic, but what a bird.

Allegan Dam
Allegan Dam with hundreds of Cliff Swallows flying around.

Male Cerulean Warbler
Nesting Yellow throated Vireo.

Cliff Swallow
 
Spicebush Swallowtail

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
Also here were a pair of Yellow throated Vireo nest building and 350+ Cliff Swallows nests on the dam itself.

Before calling it a day we checked in to our hotel then came back out to have a look at a parkland and wooded area called Al Sabo Park. We found 1 male House Finch, 1 male Pine Warbler, 2 White breasted Nuthatch amongst the more usual garden species.

Our final day was the 19th. We managed to get in a couple of hours at a place called the Kleinstuck Preserve. A mature wood surrounding a marshy area. Even at the final whistle we still found several new species -  Barred Owl seen well high up, 2 Wood Thrush with their haunting song and a male Pileated Woodpecker seen several times, my biggest woodpecker to date, even bigger than Black. A good selection of other species here included Great Horned Owl, Swainsons Thrush, Rose breasted Grosbeak, Green Heron, Magnolia, Chestnut sided, Tenesee warblers, Downy, Hairy and Red bellied Woodpeckers plus a few mammals - Fox, abundant Chipminks, Fox Squirrel, Red Squirrel and Grey Squirrel and 5 White tailed Deer.

Kleinstuck Preserve, Kalamazoo

American Red Squirrel

Pileated Woodpecker

Red bellied Woodpecker raiding a chickadees nest by making its own back door.
 An Eastern Kingbird was waiting for us back at the hotel as we packed ready for home, This concludes a superb trip. We saw 31 Warblers ( I saw 29 of them), 13 Sparrows, 8 Woodpeckers, 3 Owls and 2 Grouse to name a few with over 130 lifers for me.

So its back to blighty and the real world...

Great Horned Owl chick.
 

5 comments:

Les said...

Cheers Stewart it's been a great read, it's helped me relive every moment of a great trip. The 1 crappy pic of the dark swallowtails I took I thought was a Pipevine Swallowtail where as your pic shows a Spicebush Swallowtail,. Les

Ragged Robin said...

A super series of posts Stewart - have really enjoyed seeing all the wildlife. I've never been to America (or probably likely to!!) so it was so good to read of your adventures.

Stewart said...

Cheers Les, yes I looked at both butterflies but Pipevine has much larger red spots on underwing..I havea couple more to id...

Thanks Caroline, I was concerned that these foreign things are boring to people if they've not been. Its really great over there, I didnt know where to look first!

Amanda Peters said...

Have enjoyed reading and all your lovely photo's....what a trip
Amanda xx

Stewart said...

Thanks Amanda