It was dawn at an unprepossessing motel south of Mobile Alamaba and an exciting day loomed. Another day on the coast, would we get more migrants than we had the previous day. And of course there was our Alabama list to think about, currently sitting on a nice round nought. It was impossible to this time ignore the car park, and before we set off south to Dauphin Island a quick search found a few birds, the best of which by far was a Loggerhead Shrike perched on a dustbin. Great birding.
With the list off to a great start we drove the half hour out and across the causeway. The whole of the coast is characterised by these types of barrier islands, from beyond the southern Texas border all the way around the Gulf to Tallahassee with only few major breaks. We started at the Pier, walking out through the vegetated dunes where we hoped to find Sedge Wren, inexplicably another ABA target. This was achieved reasonably quickly, certainly before our car could be ticketed, but it was a highly skulky bird that needed quite a lot of time to actually pin down and get confirmatory views of even though we could hear it constantly. Job done we carried on down to the beach and scoped up various waders - Grey Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Sanderling and Least Sandpiper.
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| Great Blue Heron |
The main hotspot we concentrated on was Shell Mound Park just a short drive away. This is a fully fledged birding site, with drips, pools, benches and so forth, and lots of birders doing circuits of the small lot. This was an excellent site, far more birdy than either of the Grand Isle tracts, and we spent nearly two hours here. It is also with much joy that I can report that there were Warblers! The best of these were undoubtedly two Prothonotary Warblers and a Worm-eating Wabler, but also Black-and-White, Tennessee and Northern Parula. There was a lingering rarity in the form of a Bell's Vireo, as well a Great Crested Flycatcher, Brown Thrasher, Baltimore Oriole, Summer Tanager and two Scarlet Tanagers.
We took a break at around 10.30am and went off to the airport where something interesting had been reported. We didn't see it, but we did find a Great Northern Diver offshore which felt a little odd, and then some more expected Black Skimmers. We also had more excellent views of a Clapper Rail here.
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| Clapper Rail |
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| The Audubon Bird Sanctuary on Dauphin Island |
There are loads of birding hotspots on Dauphin Island and we were running out of time. We charged around the Audubon Bird Sanctuary for about an hour, but this is a pretty large site and we must have missed a fair amount of it. At the pond we had Merlin, Eastern Kingbird, another Grey Kingbird and a Fish Crow, and then in the pines we found Brown-headed Nuthatch as well as an adult and juvenile Great Horned Owl. Shell Mound Park had been so good that we returned there early afternoon - we could afford about an hour before we had to get going - our final destination in Mississippi was over four hours drive away. I am glad we went, as shortly after arriveal a Swallow-tailed Kite sailed over, and we added Ruby-throated Hummingbird and Chimney Swift to the list as well.  |
| Great Horned Owl |
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| Brown-headed Nutchatch |
We had one final birding stop in Alabama, Splinter Hill Bog. This is a well documented site for the rare Bachman's Sparrow which requires a very particular habitat of pine woods with a low understory. I really liked this site, and only because we did eventually find the Sparrow. In fact we found two, the song leading us to good views of one whereupon we realised we coul hear another bird responding. Also at this site were a vocal Eastern Towhee, I think our first Eastern Wood Pewee, and a Wild Turkey. The understory here contains thousands upon thousands of carniverous plants, and had we had more time and the heavens hadn't opened we might have spent a bit of time botanising. As it was we had to run for the car and just escaped being soaked to the skin by some monumental rain, the sort of rain that the windscreen-wipers just couldn't deal with. We waited for it to ease a little before continuing north and into Mississippi. At some point that evening a Pileated Woodpecker flew over the car. The trip was going pretty well at this point, in fact bang on versus the plan. We were now up to 114 species (Bradders was on more having had two days in Texas) and I'd had three new ABA ticks.
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| Bachman's Sparrow |
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