The 2017 Spring Meeting was held Friday-Sunday, May 5-7, at Hackberry Flat WMA, an ODWC property located near the Red River south of Frederick. Hackberry Flat is a managed wetland with bermed units, water control structures and a pipeline that delivers water from Tom Steed Reservoir during droughts. ODWC provided Hackberry Flat Center's big meeting room for our evening events on Friday and Saturday. An on site registration and check-in social took place as usual on Friday night. The special event of the evening was a presentation by Nathan Kuhnert on bird fatalities due to collisions with architectural glass in downtown Oklahoma City. Nathan's photos of the many and diverse birds killed, estimated at one thousand per year, made an impression on the audience. Nathan used his photos of glass building facades to show that birds collide with glass either because they perceive reflections of the surrounding sky and landscape as real, or because they are attracted to spaces and vegetation that they see through the glass. A meta-study of building strike fatality research authored by Scott Loss, et. al. used 23 data sources to estimate that 365-988 million birds are killed per year in the United States. Nathan explained that the best prevention technique is to make the glass appear as a solid object by adding closely spaced, semi-opaque strips either as a fritted pattern or as an interior film. There are at least two readily available film products designed for this purpose. Nathan is planning a communications campaign to promote awareness of window kills and mitigation technology among OKC decision makers. President Woodard invited Nathan to apply for funding from the Special Projects Committee to support this campaign. Just after sunrise Saturday morning Nathan spotted an adult White Ibis which was photographed five days later by the Truexes.

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Saturday morning was sunny and windless with temperatures in the 60's. It warmed up during the day but was still sunny and calm, conditions as good for birding as we could have hoped for. The 40 attendees had a choice of three field trip options: a Hackberry Flat tour led by ODWC's Melynda Hickman and Kelvin Schoonover, another Hackberry Flat tour led by Mary and Lou Truex, or a trip to the far southwest corner of Oklahoma led by Kurt Meisenzahl and Jimmy Woodard. Participation was about evenly distributed among the options. The southwest Oklahoma trip found 63 species including most of the birds unique to the region including Golden-fronted Woodpeckers, Ladder-backed Woodpeckers, Ash-throated Flycatchers, Cassin's Sparrows and Bullock's Orioles. The biggest surprise was the colony of 40-50 Cave Swallows found nesting in a culvert near the intersection of E1750 and N1950.

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Those who chose to tour Hackberry Flat had a difficult decision to make, either go on the trip being led by Melynda Hickman and Kelvin Schoonover, two professional wildlife specialists assigned to the WMA; or go on the trip being led by Mary and Lou Truex, two outstanding birders whose frequent counts at Hackberry Flat have produced valuable population and occurrence data over many years. I was able to choose the Hickman and Schoonover tour without regret because the Truexes had thoughtfully included me in their scouting trip on Friday. So having made our choices, we Hackberry Flat birders all climbed onto one or the other of two flatbed trailers, each with two lengthwise, back-to-back wooden benches. These flatbeds were constructed at Kelvin's direction to allow large groups like ours to enjoy motorized travel on the berms without producing the wear and tear on the earthworks that would result from long caravans of vehicles. Most happily for birders is that being seated on one of the flatbeds provides a much higher vantage point than being seated in a vehicle, and there is nothing to obstruct the view. The wetland's inhabitants mostly ignored the flatbeds, allowing observation of many birds along the roads in almost microscopic detail. Comments from the participants included, "like being on safari" and "a clinic on peeps". Early in the day we headed toward the abandoned buildings north of the reservoir that marked the location of the Pyrrhuloxia sighting during the Truexes' scouting trip. Even before we got to the area's entrance gate, we saw a dozen Bank Swallows lined up on a utility wire above the marsh next to the road. At the abandoned buildings the Pyrrhuloxia was eating mulberries from trees along the edge of the mowed area. It was a gray bird, large for a songbird, with a very tall, thin crest and yellow, parrot-like bill. Kelvin spotted a male Bullock's Oriole on top of a tree 100 yards away. It later moved in closer and repeatedly sang a mixture of whistles and burry notes. Other birds seen were a male Blue Grosbeak, Orchard Orioles, Yellow Warblers and a late-season Ruby-crowned Kinglet. One of the buildings contained a nesting Turkey Vulture. When the Truex tour visited this area later in the day they found some additional species, most notably Ash-throated Flycatcher and a collection of warblers: Tennessee, Nashville, Orange-crowned and American Redstart.

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Our flatbed passed along the eastern edge of the reservoir from north to south. The northern end of the reservoir had a large population of Wilson's Phalaropes, a theme that was repeated everywhere there was shallow water. We saw Ruddy Ducks, the males with blue bills, striking black and white heads and bright rufous bodies. Eared Grebes, black and rufous with prominent gold whiskers behind the eyes, were scattered all over the eastern side of the reservoir. Black Terns were flying over the southern portion, their black bodies and contrasting gray wings dramatic even at a distance. An unusually large Graham's Crayfish Snake was draped on a dead branch that projected over the water right below us.

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The tour of the wetland was an almost continuous series of rare experiences. There was a long mud island covered with Pluvialis plovers, somewhat back lit by the sun and too distant to be identified confidently to species. On the east end of the refuge we observed Snowy Plovers on a mud flat, then moved a little south and watched Wilson's Phalaropes and Baird's, White-rumped, Semipalmated and Least Sandpipers foraging a few yards away. This kind of closeup observation of small shorebirds was repeated several times because they were almost continuously present in the bar ditches along the roads. We saw 11 American Bitterns during the day, mostly in pairs or threes, some in flight, some walking through the wetland and some in the camouflage position with neck, head and bill extended upward like a spear. Only problem was the camouflage pose doesn't work very well when the bird is standing in the open, 10 yards away. The tour was punctuated by Soras making whinny calls from areas of dense vegetation, and one was seen walking between patches of cover. When we rolled up to one of the wetland units, it was uncharacteristically empty of birds, not a mystery to Kelvin who pointed out a young Peregrine just before it made a low pass over our heads. There were flocks of White-faced Ibis in many locations, and in a few places large flocks of American Avocets. Over a hundred Black-necked Stilts, elegant with their black and white plumage and long pink legs, were distributed evenly over the whole wetland as singles and pairs. A flock of Yellow-headed Blackbirds called and sang from an area of marsh, the combination of toneless and musical sounds both harsh and appealing. A Common Gallinule made a decelerating series of clucks from cover on the southwest corner of the Weir Unit. Long-billed Dowitchers in breeding plumage were clustered at several points in the ditches along the road. We had closeup looks at Black-bellied Plover, American Golden Plover and Solitary Sandpiper. There was a surprising variety of ducks given the lateness of the season, Blue-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Gadwall, Wigeon, Pintail, Redhead and one flying Lesser Scaup that paralleled our moving flatbed for 50 yards. (Note: no Fulvous Whistling Ducks were seen during the weekend, but the first of several reports came about a week later).

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The Saturday evening banquet was prepared and served by local caterer Tammi Schrick, assisted substantially by Melynda Hickman. The meal was delicious. Members had access to chicken pasta, pulled pork and veggie pasta in unlimited quantity. The keynote address by Jim Lish was based on his 30 years of research on Red-tailed Hawks in Oklahoma. Attendees could buy one of his books in either hard or soft cover form, and he signed them all. One interesting piece of information in the presentation had to do with the Redtail type which is most numerous in Oklahoma during the winter. This type, the abieticola subspecies, is a resident of the Canadian boreal forest during the summer (Abies is the genus name for firs). Commonly known as the Northern Red-tailed Hawk, it is distinguished by having an especially extensive set of dark markings on its underparts. An interesting personal discovery that Jim related is that Harlan's Hawks are frequent predators of Red-winged Blackbirds during the winter in Oklahoma. The other Redtail types, Northern, Eastern, Southwestern, Western and Krider's are mainly devoted to Cotton Rats as prey during the winter. By lowering the rat population, they perform a beneficial service to farmers. Jim emphasized that despite the beliefs of many quail hunters, there is no evidence that Redtails are frequent predators of Bobwhites or a cause of their mysterious population declines. He is concerned about the future of Redtails in Oklahoma due to the hostility of some hunters toward the birds and the danger posed by the continuing proliferation of wind turbines. His presentation closed with a beautiful slideshow of Redtail images accompanied by a haunting melody evocative of Native American culture. Who would disagree that it wouldn't be Oklahoma without the daily chance to "watch a hawk making lazy circles in the sky"? The final act of the day was the species tally, and John Sterling did a fine job of leading it. The great results got all of us die hards psyched for another day of birding on Sunday. For Sunday morning we had originally scheduled a trip to the Wichita Mtns NWR. However Jimmy Woodard stepped up to offer participants another chance at southwest Oklahoma specialties including the Cave Swallow colony discovered the previous day and Black-crested Titmouse which hadn't been seen yet. I led the trip to the Wichita Mtns -- sort of. What actually happened was that I followed the suggestions of Bill and Linda Adams on where to go since they live near the refuge and are frequent visitors. Thanks to their ideas we knocked out my target list of bird species in only about four hours. Starting at French Lake we had barely set foot on the trail to the fish ladder when Bill Adams spotted a Black-capped Vireo singing in some shrub branches hanging over the path. On the opposite side of the trail a Painted Bunting was singing from the top of a cedar. When we first arrived at the fish ladder, the nesting swallows were all in flight around the dam. Soon enough a pair of Cave Swallows returned to their square-sided mud nest and looked at us accusingly, just their heads and necks sticking out. The rufous foreheads and pale throats of the Cave Swallows contrasted very clearly with the white headlights and dark throats of the Cliff Swallows in the bottle nests nearby. Our next stop was the Elk Mountain Trail. We hiked up about half a mile, seeing several more singing Black-capped Vireos, endless male Painted Buntings, a Lark Sparrow sitting on a nest, and a Rufous-crowned Sparrow singing on top of a bare leader. These were very good results, but we weren't seeing or hearing any Canyon Wrens, so we decided to quit the mountain climb and head to Quanah Parker Lake. We were still on the first part of the QP dam when Bill Adams spotted a Canyon Wren on the canyon wall just below us. Soon it started singing its descending series of long tew notes, amplified by the canyon. Then another wren appeared. One wren took a picturesque pose, clinging to a vertical rock face covered with green lichens. Then both wrens flew off downstream. We discussed places to try for Rock Wrens, eventually choosing the Jed Johnson Dam. However we decided to take a break at the Visitor's Center first. While there we found Yong Brenneman with her falconry-trained Ferruginous Hawk on her arm talking casually with visitors. She answered questions about her bird and spoke affectionately about its unique habits and personality compared to other raptors. A little later at Jed Johnson we had just started down the stairway to the dam when Bill Adams spotted two Rock Wrens on the adajcent boulders, one calling repeatedly (just like all the call notes after the first two in the recording here, http://www.xeno-canto.org/362538). What incredible luck to be able to watch two Rock Wrens courting right in front of us. I had waited my entire birding career to see it. After that there was only one target species left to get, the Black-chinned Hummingbird. A quick stop at the Holy City hummingbird feeders, and we had it, a male flashing his purple gorget band. For photos of the Sunday birds at the Wichitas as well as many from Saturday at Hackberry Flat, see Bill Adams' fine album of the meeting at https://www.facebook.com/southernokphotography/.

The participants in Jimmy's trip to Southwest Oklahoma on Sunday also quickly compiled an amazing list of birds. They observed the Cave Swallow colony and found Black-crested Titmouse as well as the other southwest OK specialties seen the previous day. They also found an Eastern Screech Owl. Most amazingly they spotted two Chihuahuan Ravens south of Altus, a location farther east than all previous eBird records for Chihuahuan Ravens in SW Oklahoma.

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The bird list for this event totalled 150 species. This huge number was thanks to the expertise, preparation and execution of the trip leaders, the Truexes, Meisenzahl, Woodard, Hickman, Schoonover and the Adamses as well as the talent and knowlege of our many excellent birders. There was some luck involved too, the Pyrrhuloxia, the White Ibis, the Cave Swallow colony, the Rock Wrens and the Chihuahuan Ravens. It felt good to have fortune smile on us. Our group was treated with the utmost civility, warmth and care by the WMA personnel, Melynda Hickman and Kelvin Schoonover, and by Tammi Schrick, our caterer. Melynda's cheerful leadership throughout the weekend and Kelvin's dialogue on the tour combined to produce a picture of friendliness and competence on the part of ODWC that will make our state wildlife specialists top choices to partner with on future meetings.