Mist rises, and birds sing out to be counted

A thick morning fog greeted us at Callaway Gardens recently as we gathered for a Christmas Bird Count on the last day of the annual surveys in Georgia.

It may not have been ideal conditions for counting birds, but the fog cast a soft, sublime beauty, a peacefulness, over the woods, lakes and meadows of the 14,000-acre preserve in Harris County. Then, as the sun rose, the fog lifted like a slowly rising curtain onstage, and the birds began showing themselves.

For me, one of the most beautiful sights of the day was small flocks of robins, cardinals and cedar waxwings all sitting peacefully together, enshrouded in mist, on a small, leafless alder in a thicket along a creek next to the golf course. The tangled thicket was in sharp contrast to the manicured fairways, a reminder that wild creatures don’t necessarily prefer human neatness.

More than a dozen birding teams spread out across the gardens and surrounding areas, including FDR State Park on Pine Mountain, to count the birds. Total tally: 81 species. A highlight was a peregrine falcon eating a titmouse, as seen by one of the teams.

Callaway Gardens is best known for its lush azalea blooms, stunning horticultural displays and championship golf courses, but its feathered creatures also now draw many a bird-watcher in all seasons of the year.

Because of its bird life, Callaway Gardens has been designated as one of the Audubon Society’s 50 important bird areas in Georgia. IBAs are sites considered exceptionally important for bird conservation. As such, they have nesting, stopover or wintering grounds essential for one or more bird species, particularly those facing population declines. For a complete list and map of Georgia’s IBAs, visit www.atlantaaudubon.org.

Callaway Gardens also has another special birding designation —- one of 30 stops on Georgia’s new Southern Rivers Birding Trail. The trail winds from the rolling hills of the Piedmont, across the Coastal Plain and ends at Stephen Foster State Park on the western side of the Okefenokee Swamp. Many of the stops are along the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. More information: www.georgiawildlife.org.

Field notes

Excerpts from my notes of the Callaway count:

Hank Bruno, director of horticulture at Callaway Gardens, leads our team … our count area includes most of Callaway’s lakes, the Brother’s Azalea Garden, the Sibley Center and other well-known areas of the gardens … first stop is Heron Lake near the gardens’ main entrance … large flock of red-winged blackbirds fly over … but it starts to rain, and we head back to the van.

The rain stops, and we stop on the edge of a large field that Hank wants to restore to native grasses … grasslands like this are good sparrow habitat, and we see or hear song, white-throated, field and chipping sparrows … hear a pileated woodpecker from woods in distance.

In woods next to the golf course, we spy a red-bellied woodpecker, a downy woodpecker and a yellow-bellied sapsucker … on a neatly trimmed fairway, we spy a fox squirrel with its solid black face —- a beautiful animal … bright red Northern cardinals seem to be everywhere, adding brilliant color to the landscape; this is a good year for cardinals … near the Ida Cason Callaway Memorial Chapel, a tiny ruby-crowned kinglet hops around in some brambles directly in front of us, seemingly paying us no mind … a fellow team member tells me how she distinguishes between ruby-crowned and gold-crowned kinglets: “A ring around the eyes means it’s a ruby-crowned; a stripe across the eyes, it’s a golden-crowned.”

Stop at the Callaway Discovery Center, where we find seven mallard ducks, probably tame … “If it’s got feathers, we count ‘em,” Hank says … see or hear several pine warblers and yellow-rumped warblers … see or hear more than a dozen pine siskins, which visit Georgia only in winter; seems to be a good year for siskins … hear bubbly “tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle” song of Carolina wrens everywhere.

On Whipoorwill Lake, which in spring is surrounded by blooming azaleas, we see lots of bufflehead ducks in their black and white attire, swimming or diving in the water … a belted kingfisher flies overhead … on Bobolink Lake, we see more buffleheads, a pair of pied-billed grebes and double-crested cormorants.

But the “bonus area” of the day is the dense, creek-side thicket next to the golf course, where we also see mockingbirds, brown thrashers, Eastern phoebes, swamp sparrows, a great blue heron and others.

In the sky

The moon was full last night and appears full tonight. January’s full moon is known as the wolf moon because it was when packs of hungry wolves came near villages in search of food.

Mercury is very low in the west just after sunset, said David Dundee, astronomer with the Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum. Venus shines brightly in the west just after sunset and sets in the west about three hours later. Jupiter sets in the west just after dark. Saturn rises out of the east about 10 p.m. and will appear near the moon Wednesday night.

seabrk@comcast.net