Borealis Birding

03/19/2024

Just finished up a very successful tour of Belize! What a wonderful place to go birding!

09/11/2023

I encountered my first Orange-crowned Warbler of the fall a couple days ago on September 8th. This is typically the last species of warbler to appear in fall migration and is one of the most regularly misidentified bird species at this time of year. I suspect many birders confuse this species for another bird in the same genus, Tennessee Warbler. While for the most part adult Tennessee Warblers have enough plumage differences to easily separate them, the problem lies with very fresh juvie Tennessee Warblers. With the young birds, they can present as a very greenish monochrome bird and what trips up most birders is that the pale supercilium that is normally pretty bold, starts off with a greenish wash over it, making it almost disappear from contrasting with the rest of the face. The other issue is Tennessee shows a yellowish-green flanks and vent; this feature is mistaken for the undertail coverts as the bird twists around rapidly foraging trying to fuel up for the next leg of its journey. A secondary characteristic to use is- I had to grab my jacket to bird that morning! Even on Lake Superior, Orange-crowns typically don't even make their first appearance until the weather turns a bit colder, to see one before Labor Day on the shores of Lake Superior is notable! Even then they don't start to move till there is that nip in the air and other classic mid/late September migrants make an appearance such as Rusty Blackbird, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Lapland Longspur and Winter Wren start migrating. If you take a look at my eBird checklist from that morning, you'll see that I had all of those species as well that morning, all first of fall migrants for me. A take-away tip might be, if you're sweating while wearing shorts and tee-shirt, it might not be an Orange-crowned in front of you and worth a second, more critical look!

Submitted by Skye Haas.

09/07/2023

It's 9-06! Which is both Upper Peninsula Day and also International Shorebird Day! So what better excuse to go back into the photo archives and post some of my favorite pictures of shorebirds taken here in da Yoop!

08/22/2023

As I mentioned a while back ago, the Hummingbirds from my July SE Arizona tour were incredible and worthy of their own post. The numbers of individuals and species were fantastic and we tallied in 15 species of hummer, a feat I've only been able to do once before in the US!

08/09/2023

I’m so excited to announce this exciting opportunity! This November I’ll be teaming up with longtime colleagues and friends Cameron Cox and Allison Anholt of Avocet Birding Courses to conduct a three day birding class we call Bird Camp! All three of us love to interact with birding enthusiasts to give them the platform to improve upon their skills as birders and expand their knowledge of the amazing biology of birds. This weekend workshop will be a mix of indoor educational presentations and field outings and geared towards people of all birding experience. We will conduct these sessions in the fabulously birdy South Texas coastal region of the Rio Grande Valley where we will have opportunities to see large numbers of raptors and waterbirds as well the tropical specialties the Valley is renown for! Timed to start just before the famous Rio Grande Valley birding festival, this weekend will give you a chance to impress your friends with newfound knowledge of tricky shorebird plumages and how to better detect subtle woodland birds among many other educational opportunities offered at Bird Camp!
Click on the link below to read more and sign up for Bird Camp!

https://www.birdingabc.com/bird-camp

08/09/2023

Recently wrapped up an amazing run to the Sky Islands of southeast Arizona, leading a trip for Eagle-Eye Tours. We tallied in an amazing 181 species of birds including specialties like Elegant Trogon, Red-faced Warbler, Zone-tailed Hawk, Mexican Chickadees and several Montezuma Quail. An amazing haul of hummingbirds were recorded as well, but I think I'm going to do a seperate post for those feather jewels. The non-avian action was excellent as well, with Gray Foxes, Black Bear, Javalina and the recently elevated to full species status Robust Cottontail! The herps were fewer in number, likely due to the late monsoons, but amazing creatures like Arizona Mountain Kingsnake, Black-tailed Rattlesnake and two different Gila Monsters were observed!
Here is a link to the eBird trip report https://ebird.org/tripreport/146574

06/18/2023

Heya folks!

I’ve still got a couple seats open on my Eagle-Eye Tours trip to Southeast Arizona for the monsoon induced Second Spring! Lots of great birds have been being reported lately; come join us on this trip!

Join our Southeast Arizona birding tour, where we will be targeting the borderland specialties like Elegant Trogon, Spotted Owl, Rose-throated Becard, Mexican Chickadee, Thick-billed Kingbird and many more! This tour is timed for the start of the monsoon season, known also as the second spring; the....

06/16/2023

An exciting encounter I had back in late May. Even more surprising was I witnessed it’s mate feeding on seeds, possibly a never before documenting food source for Kirtland’s Warblers!

We have an interesting Kirtland's Warbler observation from Michigan! A male that we banded in 2022 in Douglas County, Wisconsin was observed on territory, with a female, in Marquette County, in the UP of Michigan this year! We know he was banded in Wisconsin because of his unique combination of colored leg bands - orange over white on the left leg, and aluminum over black on the right leg. No other Kirtland's Warbler has that combination and order of colored bands. When he was in Douglas County last year, he was not successful in finding a mate. But, it looks like he's had much better luck in Michigan this year! Thanks to Skye Haas for observing, photographing, and reporting the sighting - it's not very often we have foreign encounters of 'our' birds. Photo (c) Skye Haas 2023.

05/16/2023

We had an amazing run over to Whitefish Point last week. After days of cold north winds, the south wind flood gates opened and birds bounded back to the shores of Lake Superior. We met up with some friends and spent a night and the next day enjoying the bird bounty and it was truly one of my most memorable days of birding there, in no small part to the host of rarities that were encountered! It never truly feels like spring until I am standing on the hawk dune at dusk hoping for a Long-eared Owl to lift out of the jack pines and go bouncing across the glowing skies on its way to Canada. The sunset did not disappoint and neither did the owls- we saw 8 of these lovelies and a few of them flew early allowing for excellent looks! The next morning, a Black-backed Woodpecker was calling loudly from our boreal lake campsite. We quickly tore down camp and headed up to the point to be greeted by a cacophony of Blue Jays, Black-capped Chickadees and Evening Grosbeaks! A quick check of the feeders showed a shocking 6 Eurasian Tree Sparrows! Out on the beach at the waterbird count shack the goodies started to roll in with Red-throated Loons, Piping Plovers, White-winged Scoters, Glaucous Gull, Trumpeter Swan, Northern Goshawk and a surprisingly early adult Parasitic Jaeger! Flocks of chickadees were constantly working their way out to the tree line, often with a Boreal Chickadee in tow. If this all wasn't enough, a pair of next level rarities were discovered by other visiting birders Whitefish Point- the first ever point record of Bell's Vireo and 3rd ever Blue Grosbeak! And this was all before lunch! As the songbirds and waterbirds waned in activity we turned our attention skyward to watch the growing numbers of raptors starting to amass above the jack pines. After some hemming and hawing, we settled on the parking lot of the harbor of refuge at the south end of Whitefish Point; this turned out to be a good plan as winds were directing the hawk kettles right over our heads here! We got great looks at a few hundred Broad-winged Hawks, dozens of Red-tails and vultures, along with steady pulses of Sharp-shinned Hawks, Bald Eagles and Northern Harriers. A dark-morph Red-tailed Hawk and a Swainson's Hawk made repeat passes right overhead! After a delightful afternoon of watching the kettling hawks, it grew time to head back home. But in true Borealis Birdbum style, we poked around on the two tracks in the Tahquamenon Falls State Park seeing all three species of Michigan wild woods chickens- Ruffed, Sharp-tailed and Spruce Grouse!

04/30/2023

As many have noticed, it's been quite the lucky ducky spring so far! Here in Marquette as well as farther afield across the Yoop, observers have been reporting large flocks of staging ducks. With many inland waters here and further north staying locked in ice, early returning waterbirds have been easy to view in locations offering open water. I do love the striking patterns of spring waterfowl!

03/13/2023

Still a couple seats available for my spring migration tour to Texas! Special treat Joe Kaplan from Common Coast Research will be my colead for this trip! Sign up today and strap in for a fantastic birding caper this April!

01/11/2023

Heya folks!

I’ll be giving a talk for Laughing Whitefish Audubon Society about my busy year of birding in 2022. Between running trips for WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide & Eagle-Eye Tours as well as living in the avian cornucopia that is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I had an exceptionally delightful year full of some fantastic bird-watching. If you wanna hear me blither away about what I saw on my adventures-

Join me on the zoom link at 7pm (Eastern), Wednesday, January 11th.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88992725684?pwd=ZDYyeU9ZWjNqSmFTUHZnd3hFMGNaZz09

10/02/2022

A little late in posting, but a busy summer just melted right into a busy fall! I spent a month in Southeast Arizona leading a tour, speaking and guiding at the Tucson Audubon Birding festival. It was greenest (and wettest!) I've ever seen Arizona. The monsoons this year were fantastic. The wildlife really responded to the conditions and I had so many fantastic experiences with the birds, herps, mammals and butterflies of the Sky Islands.
Here is the ebird trip report of the entire run.
https://ebird.org/tripreport/68700

09/02/2022

Heya folks,
If any one feels like a last minute run, we still have a couple of spaces available on the WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide tour to Cape May,NJ at the end of the month. I always enjoy my annual return to Cape May as I spent two seasons as the seabird counter at Avalon for the Cape May Bird Observatory. Check out the itinerary and come join us on a tour of the Capitol City of Birdwatching!

There’s no other way to put it: Cape May is the place to watch the fall migration in eastern North America. At regular intervals, the weather both induces birds to migrate and drives them to the coast, where geography funnels them to the very tip of this narrow sandy peninsula, often followed...

07/22/2022

Early this spring, Susan Myers, Jon Feenstra & I led the Colorado Lekking Grouse tour for WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide. It was quite the merry escapade, and the weather was certainly a notable antagonist in our adventures, but our group was cheery, determined and full of pluck and we had a fantastic and successful trip. We got all the lekking species of grouse, with a few species of bonus chicken. But we also enjoyed a wide selection of other Rocky Mountain/western plains goodies like Lewis's Woodpecker, Pinyon Jays, longspurs aplenty, Mountain Bluebirds and Townsend's Solitaires, and lots of high quality finches like Pine Grosbeak, Cassin's Finch and Brown-capped and Black Rosy-Finches. Waterfowl and gulls diversity was great and we even pulled off a trick difficult to do in Alaska by having a FOUR loon species day; Common, Red-throated, Pacific and Yellow-billed!

Here is an eBird trip report with species totals and additional photos. https://ebird.org/tripreport/47669

If interested in joining us for next year, check out the link below.
https://wingsbirds.com/tours/colorado-lekking-grouse/

07/19/2022

FROM THE WAVES:
In April, WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide boarded the cruise ship Discovery in the Port of L.A. for a short but sweet voyage up the Pacific to Vancouver, BC. With two full and one half day at sea, we spent most of our time just off the continental shelf looking for rare seabirds, of which we found plenty of. A handful of Cook’s Petrels were observed off San Luis Obispo, while we were lucky enough to have 8 Hawaiian Petrels and 4 Laysan Albatrosses from mid-California up into southern Oregon. But the real stars of the show were the large numbers of Murphy’s Petrels we encountered with a total of 139 combined on our two full days at sea! Lots of other great seabirds though including Fork-tailed and Leach’s Storm-Petrels, Sooty, Short-tailed, Pink-footed and Black-vented Shearwaters, lots of Black-footed Albatrosses, all three Jaegers and flocks of migrating of Red-necked and Red Phalaropes as well as Sabine’s Gulls.
Here is our ebird trip list below-
https://ebird.org/tripreport/51495

We’ll be running this highly popular tour again next spring aboard the cruise ship Eurodam beginning on April 24th, 2023. Click here to sign up for the tour! https://wingsbirds.com/tours/pacific-coast-seabird-cruises-from-southern-california-to-vancouver/

07/14/2022

I spent a couple weeks in May in the naturalist's playground that is Southeast Arizona; leading a Warbler 'n Owls tour for WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide , as well as running a big day birdathon Birding Ambassador Louie Dombroski for the Tucson Audubon's Paton Center for Hummingbirds (with a 137 species tallied for the day!).
It was my first time to Arizona in warm months in quite some time, and it was fantastic to hear all the singing warblers, nightjars and owls! I really enjoyed goodies like Buff-collared Nightjar, Five-striped Sparrows and Montezuma Quails. But the real stars of the show were all the flycatchers- 23 species in all, with a trio of really special ones- Tufted, Nutting's and the second US record of Pine Flycatcher!
Here is a link to my ebird trip report with species totals and more photographs as well as some recordings.
https://ebird.org/tripreport/57389

07/13/2022

06/27/2022

06/13/2022

So many adventures of late, I've barely had time to catch my breath before I'm off again- see you soon Nome!!!

But for all the rambling across (and offshore) from North America this spring, I was lucky enough to get a few days home in the Upper Peninsula during peak warbler migration, including a magical rainy day fallout in Copper Harbor. Here are a few shots from those brief but birdy days in the homeland.

06/11/2022

If you’re headed to L.A. (or beyond!) and looking for an excellent guide to take you birding, I cannot recommend my buddy Luke Tiller enough. Knowledgeable across a widespread of natural history, an excellent teacher and communicator and a dang hilarious fella to boot! Check out his website here-

https://www.birdinglosangeles.com/?fbclid=IwAR131k9GDfmnGXbhTzYIbXf0Dv0Irg_FhM0bdZiNYLT8_wJCYecrg23M_2A

Guided birding, birdwatching and natural history tours in Los Angeles, Southern California and beyond.

06/02/2022

Whew! Finally home from spring tours; 54 days on the road in the last two months! Lot of post tour work to follow up on but that will include a ton of new photos! For now I leave you with this Black-capped Petrel photographed in the gulf stream off of Hatteras from last week.

05/03/2022

Heya all! While I may be currently on a ship in the Pacific Ocean, I’ll be headed to Southeast Arizona in a few days to join one of my oldest friend Louie Louis Dombroski in helping raise money for Tucson Audubon Society’s Paton Center for Hummingbirds!

Consider donating to our team Cinco de Myiarchus when we run our Birdathon, we’re hoping you can help us reach our pledge goals to help keep the Paton Center well stocked in sugar! If you care to donate, click on the link below-

https://tas.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/tas/campaign.jsp?campaign=108&fundraiser=86889&

Cinco de Myiarchus

03/31/2022

And here we go! Spring Tour 2022 is off! Over the next two months, I'll be leading several tours across North America starting with Dancing Chickens in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska; then into off to the Texas upper coast to reveal in spring migration, with a side trip out to the Edwards Plateau to look for Golden-cheeked Warblers and Black-capped Vireos. I'll then head to southern California where after getting to see the Morning Flight count at Bear Divide, I'll be boarding Princess Cruises to search the deep waters of the Pacific for rare seabirds! Then back to beloved southeast Arizona for spring warblers and owls in the Sky Islands! A brief turnaround back home in the UP for peak migration will be welcomed, then one final tour for the spring to North Carolina for another set of pelagics on the blue waters of the Atlantic!
60 days of migration and I couldn't be more excited!

03/31/2022

Spring Tours begin next week! Here is a schedule update to see if there is an adventure you might be interested in!

Borealis Birding tours are currently available as pre-scheduled group tours and also by request. I also have several tours through WINGS BIRDING TOURS and EAGLE-EYE TOURS that I would love to have …

03/03/2022

Borderlands Winter Tours 2022

I spent a good chunk of Jan-Feb guiding tours through Southeast Arizona and the south Texas coast/Lower Rio Grande Valley. It was a ridiculously birdy affair with goodies like first US Bat Falcon, Baird’s Sparrow, Rose-throated Becard, Mexican Chickadee, Golden-crowned Warbler, Hook-billed Kite and many more!
Here is a link to the EBird Trip Report.

https://ebird.org/tripreport/37392

04/08/2020

Greetings everyone,
Of course these are somber times and for now, all tours are on pause until the disruption of Covid-19 has safely passed.
Sadly I was supposed be guiding in Colorado this week, leading my first tour for WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide on their annual dancing chickens adventure. So as much as I would love to be posting photos of Sage Grouse and Ptarmigans right now, I do feel fortunate that living here in the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan allows me to see get outside into the unveiling spring and see my local chickens such as the handsome and foppish Ruffed Grouse, and the intricately beautiful Spruce Grouse. These engaging and silly forest partridges really made for a great morning, and I can't wait for the next time that I get to share this experience with you in person!
Stay safe, take care and all my best wishes to you and your family.

~Skye Haas

02/24/2020

Southeast Arizona

One of my most engaging adventures, this Eagle-Eye Tours will explore the rugged mountain islands of south Arizona, a dynamic time of year known as second spring, when the late summer rains initiate a bloom and breeding season on this Sierra Madrean landscape. This is a naturalist’s playground and we will be looking for a wide range of birds and animals like Hummingbirds, Flycatchers, Becards, Trogons as well as a diverse amount of butterflies, herptofauna and mammals in these incredibly scenic mountains.

There are still seats available for this year's tour so consider joining Adam Kent and I on this animal-rich escapade through the stunning landscape of the Arizona borderlands!

https://www.eagle-eye.com/Southeast-Arizona

Southeast Arizona

02/11/2020

Border to Border, from Gray Jay to Green Jay!

A quick turnaround from the frozen Sax Zim Bog down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley for my annual Eagle-Eye Tours South Texas trip.
Both the temps and the birds are looking pretty hot! Feeling energized from a fantastic Minnesota tour with Sarett Nature Center, and a tour report will be up soon about that great adventure as well as updates from the Valley.

02/07/2020

Well that was another fantastic trip to the Sax Zim Bog! Four species of Owl including a very cooperative (and really adorable!) Boreal Owl!
Plus Three-toed and Black-backed Woodpeckers, Goshawk, Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks and more!

But wait! This was only the first day of the tour! This is like a month's worth of good birds!

I'll be guiding for the Sarett Nature Center here in northern Minnesota for the next couple of days; I wonder what else we are going to be able to see!?!