COMMUNITY JOURNALISM: Beginning birders get special trip

Editor's note: Rick Hollis, 64, of rural North Liberty, has been watching birds since his childhood and is past president and newsletter editor for the Iowa City Bird Club.

By Rick Hollis, Community contributor

The Iowa City Bird Club and Friends recently took a leisurely beginning birder trip around the Conservation Education Center at F.W. Kent Park on a gray, damp Saturday morning.

Nearly 20 people made the trip, a mix of experienced and inexperienced birders. Although birders always are willing to talk about what we see and how we identify birds, on our beginning birder trips we make special effort to ensure newcomers learn and see. We had 40-odd species, nothing to jump up and down about but we had a great opportunity to listen and learn the songs of the species.

Before we left the parking lot we heard the loud and varied song of a newly arrived brown thrasher. Although thrashers sing from high, often exposed perches, we failed to actually see the bird until the end of our trip.

As we stopped by the feeders at the education center, we saw a lovely male eastern (rufous-sided) towhee on the ground under the feeders. Towhees are our largest sparrows with oriole-like black, white and rufous/orange patches. We saw and heard a number of song sparrows singing. One field sparrow was seen and several were heard singing their bouncing ping-pong ball song.

A pair of eastern phoebes were calling ‘feeBE! feeBE!' by a small bridge, a likely place for their nest. The overcast morning really let the colors of the male eastern bluebirds shine through.

A number of yellow-rumped warblers passed our way, some of them males in exquisite plumage. After seeing one of Kent Park's famous tree-nesting (which is very unusual) Canada geese we stumbled into a tree full of kinglets, both golden-crowned and ruby-crowned. Kinglets are so small and move so fast that it is sometimes hard to study their plumage, but we were lucky to see the ruby-crowned repeatedly flash its ruby-colored crown.

Once or twice some of us caught sight of a golden-crowned kinglet flashing its brilliant red crown streak. Both species were singing their high-pitched songs. Golden-crowneds sang their thin, twittery song, ruby-crowneds giving us their rich, bubbly song. One of my older field guides, the Audubon Land Bird Guide by Richard Pough, describes the ruby-crowned song as “a beautiful one and the closing notes are amazingly loud for so small a bird.”

Many other birds were spotted, including wood duck and turkey vulture.

A gray day, yes, but any day outdoors is better than a day indoors.

The Iowa City Bird Club's remaining activities for beginners may be found at http://icbirds.org/2012BirdCourse.pdf