Feather Weather

I've moved.

2010-02-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

I have actually migrated this entire blog to Wordpress, and you can find me and my more recent postings at Contact Calls, or http://contactcalls.wordpress.com/. Even though I had just done a revamp of this blogspot page, I soon remembered why I had let the blog atrophy a couple times in the past few years. I've always had trouble posting images to this blog, and getting them formatted and to display the way I wanted. Maybe other blogspotters don't have this problem, but I just could not find a way around it, so I checked out Wordpress and was pleased with their editing interface.

I still have to keep this blog at least for a while though, because the images I'm displaying on wordpress are still linked to blogspot. But I wanted to make sure people coming here realized that I am still actively posting elsewhere. So please come by and take a look!

Eric

Macaulay Recording Workshop

2010-01-22T13:16:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago Nathan Pieplow explained on his excellent blog Earbirding how he got into recording bird songs. In his post he also put out a call to arms as it were to his readers to go out and get more involved in recording as a means of making real contributions to the science of ornithology, and a couple weeks later he provided a short, off-the-cuff sample of the myriad of topics and areas of research that are still essentially wide open to study.

I took the posting very seriously, and almost personally. If you know me you know that I've been immersing myself the past few years in bird song, studying it continuously and spending more than just a few dollars on CDs and a few hours organizing my iTunes library to do my own systematic study of bird vocalizations. And I definitely have contemplated getting into recording. Every time I did though I tended to dismiss it however, thinking that people like Nathan and Andrew Spencer and the dozens of other regular contributors to xeno-canto.org basically have the situation covered, and that I'm just a little too late to the game to contribute all that much. I'd enjoy it as a personal pastime, sure, but I wasn't sure I could rationalize the initial expenditure on recording gear, and then later the other time and money expenditure on 'support infrastructure' needed to do justice to the pursuit. Think of it this way -- when you buy a nice new digital camera, say a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, you are effectively buying more than just the camera itself. You are also buying into batteries, memory cards, a laptop, a storage system, maybe a website subscription for posting your photos, basically all the things such a camera needs if you are going to use it on a regular basis. I just figured that going into sound recording would entail a similar approach, and although that itself doesn't scare me, it seemed like that wasn't something I should distract myself with right now as I am trying to finish my ongoing book project.

Well, I finally changed my mind, and have since reserved a spot in this year's Macaulay Library Recording Workshop out in the northern Sierra Nevada's in June. I didn't come to the decision easily, but I figured that it's an excellent deal, and if I ever do want to get into recording on a larger scale, I shouldn't just assume that this workshop will be around forever, at least not with this level of accessibility and affordability. Also, I've been toying with the idea of going back to graduate school (again), this time in something ornithological; if I ever do that, I'm definitely going to do something with bird vocalizations, ethology and field work. It'd be silly for me to pass up this opportunity to get some hands-on training and explanation from experts. Greg Budney helps teach the class, and he's a celebrity in the admittedly small circle of bird sound people.

Thanks Nathan for your encouraging words on your blog, and showing someone like me the way. I'm really excited about this class!

Brushes With Greatness: the Snowy Owl

2010-01-17T14:44:00.005-07:00

On Monday the 11th I left the house at 4 am and made the 2 1/2 hour drive from Fort Collins down to El Paso County, to search for the recently reported Snowy Owl that had been seen frequently in a subdivision northwest of Falcon, CO the day before. I was not sure of my prospects, knowing that this species can be quite hard to chase because of their nomadic qualities. Nonetheless, I felt that leaving so early would give me the best chances of seeing it if it were anywhere in the area.

I had wondered what the feeding habits were of the Snowy Owl, if these birds hunted at night. If they did, I felt like my chances were reduced, as the bird would likely forage away from this accessible area and head towards who-knows-where. My book "North American Owls" by Paul Johnsgard made no mention of their foraging styles, and the Birds of North America Online entry for Snowy Owl plainly states that it is "[n]ot known if these owls hunt at night, or even by moonlight, during winter darkness." Fascinating - and this is in fact typical of a fair number of species even here in North America, in that there is still a lot we don't know about how birds actually live.

I arrived at the subdivision (which I later learned is technically part of Peyton) around 6:40am. The eastern horizon was getting light, and I began my search in earnest. My plan was to go to the western portion of the network of accessible roads and scan the rooftops and antennas for large birds perch atop them, and hope to find silhouettes while scanning with my spotting scope. To my utter amazement my plan worked brilliantly, as I found a suspicious-looking character on a chimney/stovepipe vent some distance away within just 5 minutes. He didn't stay put for long, but he also didn't go far, as after a few minutes watching it became apparent that what he was doing was moving around from one perch to the next trying to improve his vantage points for finding prey in the open grassy fields surrounding the widely-spaced homes.

Eventually he found a nice TV antenna to search from.

After I took this shot, he launched again into a distant field, and for a moment I lost track of him. But he emerged again a minute later, and as I followed his flight in the scope I could see that he had something underfoot. I never got a clear look at it, but it was fairly large and dark, like a rat perhaps. That's all I could tell as I watched him start to tear into it from quite a distance. The light was increasing, and I set up my rig for digiscoping, which I hadn't tried doing for nearly two years. I hoped that I could just remember how to do it!

The light grew brighter as the sun finally peeked up from the horizon. I realized I could probably swing around and get a better-lit vantage point, and perhaps be a little closer. These digiscoped shots were made from about 250 yards if I had to guess, in very suboptimal light.

These next shots were made from the other side of the cul-de-sac, and the bird is in the same spot as before. I snapped about 2 or 3 dozen digiscoped shots, the vast majority of which were blurry. I blame the camera for most of that, but user error certainly played a part too. Still, a couple images came out ok. This time I was closer, and I estimate the range of these shots to be around 75-100 yards.

The next photo was taken with my handheld SLR and gives you an idea of what the actual distance between me and the bird was. This is fully zoomed out (300mm).

The bird had stayed put in this spot for over 40 minutes. Apparently after eating that large rat, he was fat and happy, and just digesting. A few other birders had arrived and all got terrific looks and photos from here as well. Finally, the bird flew a bit further westward to another grassy spot closer to a house and the road, and the several of us scooted the couple hundred yards along to follow. He perched with a residence in view behind him, which belonged to a fellow who later emailed me and asked for a copy of some of my photos.

At this point my remote shutter-release for my digiscope camera (an ancient Nikon Coolpix 995) had stopped working presumably due to the cold, so the only way I could take steady pictures with it was to use the timer. And that worked fine, although it also meant waiting 10 seconds every time I snapped a picture, and also not knowing where the bird would be looking when I snapped it. But then, as is the case with digital under any circumstance, just snap the hell out of it and see what comes out. Eventually I got a couple real winners:

After a few minutes here the bird flew across the road and into the field just south of us. It was quite a bit further away and in poor light, so my bird photography was done for the day. I needed to head back north to Fort Collins anyway, but I was thrilled about having seen this lovely animal under good light and mild weather. Here was the birder scene as of 8:30am:

The last photo actually has the bird in it too - you might zoom in though. Look for the small white dot in the middle of the field.

Heading back was the happiest 2+ hour drive I've had in quite a while. Not even the Denver traffic got me down. How many of those schlubs on I-25 had seen a Snowy Owl that morning? Not many, not many at all.

Trashing my ABA list

2010-01-08T16:55:00.001-07:00

I'm about to do it. Yep.

I'm going to give up and throw away my ABA lists. I'm not going to maintain them any longer. I'm going to take the data contained therein and transfer them where applicable to other lists. But I will no longer recognize the "ABA area" as one worth keeping a list for.

I dunno. Is this a big deal? Seems like it. The ABA is a pretty big, established, prestigious organization, with a storied history. I've never heard of anyone else doing something like this - forswearing the bird checklist for the ABA. Or at least, I've never heard of anyone being as theatrical about it as I am. Still, the point stands - it's rare to trash one's ABA list, perhaps unheard of, except maybe by those who give up birding altogether.

So what brings this on? What's my story? Why am I pursuing this seemingly radical track? If you're thinking that maybe I have a beef with the ABA, you'd be right.

Well, let me temper that a bit. I don't really have a beef with the ABA per se. Actually I like the ABA. I'm a dues-paying member, and I eagerly await every issue of the magazine. What I don't like anymore is the ABA listing area. I've never really understood it, and I've reached a point in my birding and bird study that the more I think about it, the more ridiculous and nonsensical it seems. And in light of the ABA's recent decision to keep the ABA area as it is currently defined for no other reason than historical consistency, well, I feel the need to take up arms against a sea of troubles the only way I can and rage, rage against the dying of the light. Or at least breath life into mixed literary allusions.

Once again, I need to temper my rhetoric. Calling it an act of rage really overstates the case. I'm not really angry. I'm not really angry at all. But I do finally feel like I understand the situation well enough, and that I don't feel the need anymore to simply follow along just because it's easier, if I perceive something as redundant or overly contrived. In the case of the ABA area list, I definitely find it overly contrived, and essentially uninteresting. That many thousands of birders will certainly continue to keep an ABA list fascinates me, in the way that a slow-motion train-wreck is fascinating. Sure, you can't take your eyes off it, but you sure as hell don't want to be a part of it if you can help it.

About 5 years ago the only list I ever kept was a life list. Most of my birding had been pretty solitary, and I liked it like that. I never even thought of things like state lists or year lists even. I just figured that all there really was were life lists. But when I moved to Colorado and got to know other birders better, I came to understand the appeal and utility even of keeping many more lists. I joined the ABA, and of course started keeping an ABA-area list. After all, I wanted to fit in with the kool kids and be able to measure my progress as it were against other ABA members. I did note the ABA area definition at the time, but didn't really think about it much.

The ABA area is defined as follows:

The geographic area covered (sometimes referred to as the ABA Checklist Area) is essentially North America north of Mexico. Specifically, the area encompassed is the 49 continental United States, Canada, the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon, and adjacent waters to a distance of 200 miles from land or half the distance to a neighboring country, whichever is less. Excluded by these boundaries are Bermuda, the Bahamas, Hawaii, and Greenland. A subarea of the ABA Checklist Area, or other prescribed area, is as defined by its legal boundaries. If not legally defined otherwise, it includes adjacent water (rivers, lakes, bays, sounds, etc.) out to half the distance to a neighboring area, but not beyond 200 miles. Birds observed on or over an ocean are counted for the area having jurisdiction over the nearest land, if within 200 miles.

Basically, this boils down to saying the area includes mainland Canada and the continental USA (49 states). And that's it. Nothing south of the Rio Grande, no Hawaii (even though Hawaii is part of the United States of America, last I checked, unless the anti-Obama birthers recently took over the country), and no Greenland for that matter. But it does conveniently include any ridiculously remote islands that happen to be politically connected to a mainland continental political entity, like a US State. In other words, if a Eurasian vagrant like, say, a Common Nightingale lands in Kap Farvel in Greenland, that's not countable, but if one lands on Attu on the very end of the Aleutian Island chain off Alaska, then break out the champagne, we've got ourselves a new bird for our lists! Never mind that Kap Farvel is closer to Labrador and the Canadian mainland than Attu is to the Alaskan mainland. For the purposes of the ABA list, political boundaries are paramount, as is the peculiar artifact of Attu being not just US territory but technically part of the United States proper.

Which is fine. As part of the United States, Attu should have the benefit of having its bird list included with that of the rest of the country. In this way, what you see birdwise in Attu is as countable as what you see in Central Park in Manhattan. But what about Hawaii? What if that White-tailed Eagle leaving Kamchatka takes a wrong turn and instead of landing in countable Attu, it lands on Kauai? Sorry, as far as the ABA is concerned, a bird in Attu is more important than one in Hawaii, even though Attu is practically as far from North America as Hawaii is.

OK then, so we're keeping to islands that are at least connected geologically (if not so much geographically) to mainland North America. I get it. Attu is OK, but Bermuda is not. But then why is it that if I travel north of the border, I can count a Boreal Chickadee in the heart of British Columbia, but I can't count that Hook-billed Kite on the other side of the Rio Grande riverbank at Santa Ana in Texas? What is so magically important or different to the ABA about birds in Canada as opposed to birds in Mexico?

I certainly believe that people and even institutions are free to create and adhere to lists of whatever nature they like. That's our prerogative, one for all of us. But that prerogative says nothing about whether or not it makes any sense to follow it. And the more I think about the ABA area as it is currently defined, the less and less sense it makes. And to have an institution like the American Birding Association continue to ignore rather conspicuous parts of America, defined either geographically (Mexico) or politically (Hawaii) when it had the choice not to, makes me think that it's not worth keeping up a list for the birding area that they most proudly lay claim to. (note - link requires ABA-member password to access) The continuing insistence of allowing freaky Attu birds to count on an ABA list just because Attu has had some awesome vagrants just by conveniently being downwind of Asia, while the Bahamas are likely excluded because they will never be able to keep up with the Attu'ses birdwise, shows me that the ABA doesn't really have its priorities straight. But just because they don't doesn't mean I have to follow suit.

So instead, I'm going to convert all my ABA lists to AOU lists, and USA lists. I'm also going to integrate my Hawaii and ABA lists to create a USA list. (This won't be too hard for me, since I've not yet been to Canada or Mexico anyway.) I'm also going to forget ABA year lists, and convert those to US and North America lists. My ABA lists will be dismantled and forgotten, and I will instead focus on lists that make more biogeographic or more political sense. Continent or biogeographic regions, like say, North America, the Western Palearctic, or Australiasia make sense to me. Country lists make sense. State lists make sense. County lists make sense. Yard lists make sense. But does the ABA list make sense? Nope, not really. It never could decide whether it's a political or a biogeographic list, so it tries instead to be a mysterious hodgepodge of both. It's just there anymore because some people (OK, lots of people) are stuck in the past, and don't want to lose whatever sense of prestige gained from keeping a list based on such a strange definition.

And again, that's fine if that's what they want. They're allowed. But I'm allowed to call that kind of thinking ridiculous, and move on to something that makes more sense.

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Give me Gallinule

2008-06-29T09:54:00.013-06:00

This is one of those topics that doesn't really matter a whole lot in the scheme of things, yet seems to bring out the strongest and most fiercely guarded opinions - the names of things.

The species Gallinula chloropus has been a problematic one apparently with regard to its name, although for as long as I've been birding, I've known it as the Common Moorhen. I've been blissfully unaware of the history of the naming of this bird until recently, where I've learned that it used to be known as the Common Gallinule. In fact, on some web pages including the very Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology page that I referenced in the link to Common Moorhen, under Cool Facts, the last bullet item uses the old name 'Common Gallinule' whereas the rest of the page uses Common Moorhen. Obviously the content writer still hears the old name in his or her head.

But change is afoot again! Just last month the South American Classification Committee, a subcommittee of the American Ornithological Union, passed proposal #335 which will return the name Common Gallinule to the species. This will be a reversal of the naming convention adopted in 1983, as stated in the proposal's background section:

Gallinula chloropus was known in the W. Hemisphere as "Common Gallinule" in the 1957 AOU checklist but was changed to "Common Moorhen" in a Supplement sometime in advance of the 1983 AOU checklist. For more than a century prior to the 1983 list, it had been known as either the Florida Gallinule or Common Gallinule, but always a Gallinule. The change was a concession to the BOU to keep the "Moorhen" in the name; the species there had been known "forever" as the Moorhen.

The 'BOU' referred to here is the British Ornithological Union, which oversees among other things the English naming conventions for Old World birds, like those in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Gallinula chloropus is a wide-ranging species with subspecies in the Old World, and those birds have long been called 'moorhens'. There are also several other species of closely-related birds in the genus Gallinula, also commonly called 'moorhens'. Still, as the proposal states:

The breaking point for me came when, at the Neotropical Ornithology Congress in Venezuela this year, even the Spanish-first speakers were ridiculing it and using it as an example of an absurd common name. To make matters worse, the endemic Neotropical species of Gallinula still retains the name Gallinule (Spot-flanked Gallinule, G. melanops). The credibility of NACC as a body capable of governing English name usage was questioned. [Yes, I mentioned to them that this change happened before I was on NACC.]

Although most Old World Gallinula are now called Something Moorhen, two Australian species are called Native-hen, so the genus itself already does not go by a single English name.

The globalizers will go ballistic if we backtrack on this one, and there will be some who say that, heck, we've lived with Moorhen for 25 years and to backtrack now looks bad. I am reasonably certain, however, that the vast majority of our clientele, professional and amateur, will welcome a return to a better and historically traditional name. In fact, many of you may have noticed that many people refuse to use Moorhen in the field anyway except to fill out official checklists, and that many state game agencies retain Gallinule.

Makes good sense to me. Although I do have affinities for some bird names, 'moorhen' is not one of them. It has always struck me as a strange name, and I like that it now shares a common name with the Purple Gallinule, even though the latter species isn't even in the genus Gallinula. It visually makes more sense, given the similarities between the two North American gallinules.

And maybe it's just my naivete, but I am struck by the arguments against changing the name, made by a few of the committee members:

Comments from Stotz: "NO. I voted against this return to Gallinule in the North American committee, and I will vote against it here as well. I didn't like the change in 1983 and it took me a long while not to think of this bird as a Gallinule, but it has been 25 years now, and a large number of birders and ornithologists have never known it as anything other than a Moorhen.

Yes, and I am one of them. And yet, I love this name change, so please don't think you're doing me some kind of favor by voting against the name change in this instance! Honestly, it's this kind of argument that drives me bonkers: "Yes, we made a bad decision a while ago, but it's too late now to do anything about it, so let's ignore it." Good grief! You're the naming committee! That's what you do. I understand about the 'optics' of reversing a name change made only 25 years ago, but if it was a bad decision then, I see no problem of correcting it now. And really, of all the birds that people are likely to get huffy and defensive about, Gallinula chloropus is kinda low on the list. Are there really legions of birders who would 'go ballistic' by changing it back? Really?

NO. We made our bed, and we need to lie in it. Too many have switched to the dark side, but it would give our committee a lot less credibility if we whimsically switch back and forth without any real reason aside from personal opinion.

This is another variant of the previous argument, but it does raise an interesting question, that of 'committee credibility'. I can at least understand the concern about name changes like this as it pertains to credibility, but again, as the proposal states, there are already state game agencies using the old term anyway, despite AOU official convention to the contrary. I really don't think the SACC is sacrificing any credibility here, because on the issue of Gallinula chloropus, they were being ignored anyway.

I think the worry here is way overstated, and that the gallinule-moorhen question is not going to be generalized and become a slippery-slope into ornithological common-name chaos like it is with botany. I think it is plain to see here that this is a very special case, and although it is a reversal of a position taken a short time ago, I really can't see it as having any significant impact on the seriousness with which the ornithological and birding community at large takes the committee's work. With all the highly technical taxonomic work they do, are there really people out there who would use the gallinule name-change as a reason to ignore, say, the removal of Saltator from Cardinalidae? I dunno.

In any case, this only applies for now to the South American lists - it has no bearing (yet) on the North American committee, until at least someone in the committee proposes changing its name to maintain consistency in the Western Hemisphere. But I would have to think that proposal will come within the next several months to a year, and after that we should start seeing 'Common Gallinule' back on the official state checklists and in bird guides. I'm fine with that, really.

I can understand the reluctance to change common bird names wholesale, for sure. I agree that there needs to be some measure of continuity, even if the current common name isn't fully accurate or sensible. But at the same time, that desire for continuity shouldn't rule out every single name change, especially when the change is actually to set it back to what many people are still using out in the field.

The 5 Stages of Bird List Grief

2008-06-17T15:26:00.007-06:00

I got back from a trip to New York City about a week ago. It was a cultural trip with my non-birding wife, and we mostly took in the big tourist sights like the Empire State Building, the UN, Brooklyn Bridge, Katz' Deli on the Lower East Side, the Natural History Museum, and even a couple TV show tapings. Great fun actually.

On the 3rd, we spent a good portion of the day in and around Central Park. I knew going in that there was some decent birding to be had in a few of the areas, so I brought my binos, "just in case". And I'm glad I did - even though I had to do my usual hemming and hawing to my wife about why I had them and why I wanted to go this particular route through the park. Fortunately, she's pretty accommodating, and I don't have to debase myself too much to get what I want.

We took a route through an area called "The Ramble", and just as we started to enter, I heard a sound that I'd never before heard in the field. But it was one that I had heard frequently on my "More Birding By Ear" recordings by the Peterson's Guide. It was an unmistakable thrush song, Bicknell's Thrush! Quickly I scrambled over to the area where the song was coming from, and not long after I got a few views of the bird in question. How exciting! I wasn't at all expecting to find this species on this trip, so what a great bonus to add to my newly-formed New York state list, which would only have a couple dozen species on it, but at least one new life bird!

One thing bugged me though - how did I know it wasn't a Gray-cheeked Thrush? Come to think of it, I had no idea what their song was like. Is it similar? Would either of these species be singing if they weren't on territory? Lots of questions, and few answers to be found in my NYC guidebook. Well, I had to wait until I got home to look this stuff up. I eventually got home and began my investigation.

And if you are a knowledgeable East Coast birder, you can probably imagine my disappointment when I realized that Gray-cheeked Thrush does indeed sound a lot like Bicknell's. In fact, there's only one really helpful sound trait you can use to separate them in the field. And I probably heard it too - the problem is, I didn't remember it! I wasn't even paying attention to those crucial notes at the time, because I hadn't bothered to study the two species before I left for the trip. Who'da thought I'd be hearing any thrush songs in Central Park?

At this point, I should have known that I wasn't going to be able to count this as a Bicknell's. But I wasn't ready for that. I had to go through the Kübler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief first apparently.

(Denial)

Well, I tried ruling one or the other out, based on the likelihood of singing away from their breeding territories. I thought maybe I could just eliminate Gray-cheeked just because it was much further from its usual breeding grounds than the Bicknell's, which breed in upstate New York. If only it were that easy - Birds of North America as well as a couple different comments over email from knowledgeable East Coast birders informed me that either one could well sing during migration. And as far as field appearance goes, as good a look as I got, it wasn't nearly enough for me to see any clearly distinguishing traits. I knew it wasn't a Hermit or Swainson's, or even a Wood. But that's as much as I could say.

(Anger)

I felt annoyed that I may not be able to count this as a life bird after all. (I already have Gray-cheeked in Colorado and Florida.) The supporting evidence I had used so confidently to call this a Bicknell's was falling away, leaving only uncertainly and ambiguity. I had already gone to the trouble of adding it to all my lists! Like hell if I'm going to take it off again!

(Bargaining)

So, given that Gray-cheeked generally occurs on more days in May and June than Bicknell's, it's likely that I heard the former instead of the latter. Of course it isn't ruled out completely - part of me still thinks I heard a rising note at the end. So maybe it was a Bicknell's! How about if I take off a different species from my life list, like Robin or something? Wouldn't that balance things out?

(Depression)

Bummer.

(Acceptance)

Well, in the greater scheme of things, I'd rather add a life bird to my list knowing without a doubt that it was that species, instead of scurrilously adding a bird with doubt, just to pump up the list. I'll just have to make a dedicated trip up to the Northeast some day and look and listen for Bicknell's properly. Dang it.

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As always, this is awkward.

2008-04-12T10:16:00.005-06:00

It's time for another of my "gosh, I haven't posted anything new in a while, boy do I feel like a schmuck" postings.

Until this morning I wasn't even sure when the last time I posted here was, but I see that it was over a year. I didn't even have anything new for all over 2007! In the back of my mind over this past year, I remembered Feather Weather and knew that I would have to come back sometime. It rankled that I was leaving it unattended and forlorn, and yet I never felt overly compelled to write anything new. As is often the case when I leave the blog, it's not because I have nothing to write about (although there are sometimes 1-2 week spans where I delve into other interests that have little to do with birds and therefore I feel there's nothing to offer in the short term), but because I go through phases where I convince myself that my next blog post ideas are too perfunctory to merit the attention needed to make them interesting. Even if I have other more interesting ideas in the pipeline, sometimes I think the blog has little or nothing to offer me, in lieu of what I'm actually doing or preparing away from the computer. What do I mean by that? I think I mean that if I don't really have a readership (and I realize that a readership comes about only through regularity of posting, and that regularity of posting for me comes through readership), I lose the kind of motivation I usually require to post some of those more perfunctory items, before I get to the other more interesting stuff that doesn't require as much of a kick in the pants for me.

In any case, the past year was plenty full of bird watching, and bird learning. I just didn't write about it. But it was there. And now the pendulum is swinging back again, and I'm feeling the necessity of articulating and recording, because some different and very interesting things are starting to happen now.

If I can just get over the perfectionist streak that often prevents me from posting anything that I don't consider artful or illuminating, I think I can post a lot more often. Perfectionism isn't always bad, but it is often the impediment to progress. As Voltaire once said, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."
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Colorado Birding Year

2006-12-30T08:13:00.002-07:00

Having left Colorado a few days back for the last time in 2006, it’s time for another year in review. The birding is over, so let’s see how things went....

2006 was a fun and productive year in birding for me. My state list burgeoned from 229 on January 1 to 318 as of Dec 27. 91 new state birds this year included regular seasonal visitors like the Northern Shrike, Great Egret and the Rosy-Finches, and a fair number of unusual vagrants like the White Ibis, Yellow-throated Vireo, and Hudsonian Godwit. I chased quite a few rarities, with mixed results, and I also visited some new areas of the state which allowed me to pick up other varieties which are typical in their respective habitats but not often seen in or around Fort Collins. Towards the end of the year I managed to pick up a couple really nice species, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and the Varied Thrush, both of which turned out to be much easier than I expected.

As in 2005 I kept a year list, to see how much I could improve on my regular bird-finding. I had 229 birds in ‘05, and sought to find 300+ in ‘06. I got close, but unfortunately came up short with just 294. I’m still pretty happy with that - 294 is a lot of birds. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 15 species that I looked long and hard for but failed to get, for various reasons. Some of that is of course blind luck, or lack thereof. Despite my best efforts I simply won’t always find what I’m looking for, and that’s not a reflection of anything in particular. Another reason I missed 300 was that I never did do the spring SE Colorado trip I thought I might earlier in the year. Sure, I visited Chico Basin Ranch a couple times, once in February (for the Long-billed Thrasher) and again in May for a Nature Conservancy-led field trip. I also was down in Pueblo in February for a Winter Raptor Survey, and in Cañon City in late September in search of the elusive Common Black Hawk (which I apparently missed only by one day). But these were very short trips, and I never did make a visit out to points further east like Lamar or John Martin Reservoir or better yet Cottonwood Canyon way down in Baca County, like I did in 2005. If I’m going to get 300+ birds in Colorado for a year, a couple days in that part of the state sure helps a lot.

I resisted for over a year since I arrived, but I finally gave in this year and started up some Colorado county lists in earnest. I had been afraid of the administrative overhead in maintaining so many additional bird lists, but the advantages in doing so have turned out to outweigh the challenges. For one, keeping county lists adds a new dimension to in-state travels, giving purpose and relevance to seeing birds in a new place that you might see quite often in more familiar and regularly-visited stomping grounds. Even Rock Pigeons are interesting if you see one while crossing into a county that you’ve never been to before - time to fire up a new list! At year’s end I have 15 county lists, ranging in length from 20 in Montrose County (which we only drove through during a SW Colorado trip back in early August), to 239 in Larimer. Weld and Boulder counties also see a lot of action, and I have 182 and 137 in them respectively, but all other counties have fewer than 100 species tallied so far.

As fun as county lists have proven to be, at this point I still don’t bird for the purpose of increasing their lengths though. In Colorado my real interests are increasing my life list and my year lists - county lists are incidental accomplishments. In time this may change, and I will possibly travel across the state just to pump up county lists. But for now I’m probably obsessed enough as it is.

So what do I hope to do next year, listwise? I’m not sure - I’ve not thought that much about it yet. I still want to see 300 species in a year, but part of me wants to wait to do a full-on Big Year and shoot for 350+. Another part of me wants to focus more on bird-finding and less on bird-chasing this coming year - that would be more in line with my belief in the real purpose of listing, which is to increase understanding of birds, their populations and distributions, and the furtherance of their conservation. That kind of focus would probably reduce my total species counts for the year, but it would increase the number of rarities for which I was the original finder, and it may well be a better use of my skills anyway, helping to cover ground that other birders aren’t focusing on.

Lastly, I started a yard list too this year. The “yard” includes any bird seen from my property, whether flying overhead or in a tree across the street. Some people have great locations and can tally 70, 80, or even a 100 species over time in their similarly-defined yards. I’m currently at 34, which I think is pretty good, but until I can create a much more bird-friendly yard and attract more songbirds, it’ll be tough to boost that number by much. My best yard birds so far are the Eurasian Collared-Dove, Hermit Thrush, and Bohemian Waxwing.

Soon I'll post some more detailed overall year-end highlights, and finally some of my nicer trip photos.

tags: birds, Colorado

Varied Thrush rush

2006-12-19T19:58:00.001-07:00

I drove out to Crow Valley campground today, having heard about a Varied Thrush that has been seen there the past couple days. Things are pretty quiet at the campground - the gate is shut, and I was the only human there. In spite of that (or perhaps because of it?) I was able to find the bird hanging out with some thrush pals (robins and solitaires) near the picnic area in just a few minutes. Here are a few views of it.

Varied Thrush is pretty rare in Colorado, and this was my first one here. It's one of favorite birds though - very handsome, like a Robin that got tired of its plain look and decided to sport a necktie or a vest.

tags: birds, thrush

Moonwalking Manakin

2006-10-13T18:27:00.001-06:00

Actually, to me this shimmy looks a little more like the "Electric Slide" than Michael Jackson, but that's just nitpicking.

The clip doesn't make it clear, but this bird is Pipra mentalis, the Red-capped Manakin. It ranges from southern Mexico down through Central America into northern South America.

tags: birds, dance

500 miles. 1 bird.

2006-09-28T08:25:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I made a trip down to Cañon City to see the Common Black-Hawk that's been reported frequently over the past few weeks. I've only seen one of this species before, in Costa Rica about 4 years ago, so I was eager to see another and to see it here in North America. The bird has been hanging out along the Arkansas River near the Mackenzie Avenue bridge (SeEtta Moss at SEColoradoBirding blog describes the situation in detail here). There'd also been Black Phoebes seen in the area too, and those weren't yet on my Colorado State Life list.

And if that weren't enough, there had also been a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher reported about 30 miles east of Pueblo, at the Otero/Pueblo county line. I had visions of having another terrific Colorado birding day like the one I had several months ago, so I set out at 4:50am to make it happen. One wrinkle though - I had to pick up my brother-in-law from the Denver Airport around 2pm, so I had to be efficient and see the birds in a timely manner if I was to get them all in, especially considering the driving involved. In other words, I needed to go 120 miles to Colorado Springs, go another 40 miles to either Cañon City or Pueblo first, and get to both the Pueblo County line (far eastern Pueblo county) AND to Cañon City (in Fremont County, 50-60 miles west of there. Either way was going to be tons of driving.

I made a decision to look for the STFL first. It took 3 hours total driving to get there, and I realized that I really only had about 20-30 minutes to look for the bird before I had to leave, if I wanted to get to the Black-Hawk spot by 10am or so. It was a calculated risk, but having had success finding a STFL last May in Arizona in a short time (hey, I haven't talked about that trip yet, have I? That's a story in itself), and knowing that the bird was seen in a very limited area, and that it should be easy to spot if it's anywhere nearby, I thought it would be worth it. Well, in the end it wasn't, because the bird was nowhere to be found. By 8:40am I was back on the road steaming toward Cañon City, hoping to get there before 10.

I made it, but it was feeling late in the morning, like I'd missed the bird already. Apparently many have seen the bird around that time, so realistically it was as good a time to be looking as any. But there weren't any other birders around, so I couldn't help but think that the Black-Hawk train had left the station. In 2+ hours I did actually see the Black Phoebe, which is a great bird for Colorado of course, and even a Western Tanager flew by. But no Black-Hawk showed up, and in general the area was very quiet, except of course for the lumbering cement trucks crossing the bridge every couple minutes. By 12:20, I had to leave, and drive 100 miles or so to the airport, and from there, another 55+ miles back to Fort Collins.

So when all was said and done, I'd bagged one new state bird, and dipped on two others. Nearly 500 miles of driving, and $30+ dollars in gas. That's pretty nuts, isn't it? Especially since I'm already thinking of trying again next week!

tags: birds, chasing

List tweaks

2006-09-22T16:51:00.000-06:00

I just returned from a brief non-birding trip to Kansas, during which I curiously managed to do a fair amount of birding. Funny that. Anyway, I managed to see my first-ever Nashville Warbler, which was life bird #799. On the day I returned, neighbor Nick called and we went in the afternoon down to nearby Union Reservoir to look for recently reported Arctic and Least Terns. We didn't find them, but we did find a few Common Terns, and that too was a lifer me, #800.

And so, while updating my lists, I decided to do a little organizing of my taxonomic life list, where I break down my life sightings by family. I thought it might help if I ordered them as they are listed in the AOU list, where possible. (I realize that the truly kosher thing to do here is to list them in accordance with, say, Sibley-Monroe or some other world checklist, but I don't have such lists handy. All in due time, I'm sure.)

I came to realize that some taxonomic changes have occurred, and these have a bearing on my list. Not only that, I discovered that I had omitted a very commonly seen bird from my life totals - the Western Gull! That's right, perhaps one of the first birds I ever learned to identify never made it into my life totals until this week. Well, that immediately pushed me up to #801.

The Scarlet-rumped Tanager, a bird of the neotropics, was also split not long ago into Passerini's Tanager and Cherrie's Tanager. These new species generally occupy the eastern and western coastal areas in Costa Rica and Panama, and although my current lists record sightings for the bird in and around the Caribbean Slope, I do have very distinct recollections of the bird around Corcovado down along the southwest coast. So there's #802 - 2 new life birds, and I didn't even have to leave my couch!

But alas, not all was good news. While sequencing hummingbirds, I realized that I had mistakenly counted Magnificent Hummingbird twice - once in Costa Rica in 2002, and again this year when I saw it up close down at Beatty's Guest Ranch near Sierra Vista, Arizona. Ooops. Back to #801.

I'm mostly done with the list review, but a few other changes have been made, mostly in the arena of species' renaming, based on new splits. For example:

Little Hermit -> Stripe-throated Hermit
Crowned Woodnymph -> Violet-crowned Woodnymph
Gray-fronted Dove -> Gray-headed Dove
Pacific Dove -> West Peruvian Dove

Unlike the aforementioned Tanager case, here I've only seen one of the "new" species that was previously considered a subspecies, so no automatic list bumps.*

Also, the family of Dendrocolaptidae, or Woodcreepers, has been subsumed under Furnariidae, the Ovenbirds. Recent genetic evidence confirms their close association, and the decision has been made to put them all in one family, as opposed to keeping them as subfamilies under one family name. I've also moved a couple European members of Turdidae (Thrushes) to Muscicapidae, in accordance with recent decisions regarding the breakup of the family of Old World Warblers. Namely, these two species were moved from Turdidae to Muscicapidae:

Black Redstart
European Robin

I may find other changes to make soon as well. I also might have to make notes in my guidebooks too, especially regarding the Neotropic name changes. Guides like Skutch and Stile Costa Rica book still haven't been updated since 1989, and probably won't be for a long time.

* Some of these updates were tricky to make - I was able to find out about the Gray-fronted Dove change from AOU Supplement 46 to their 7th Edition, but the other ones involved consulting the latest info on their South American checklist Committee site, which annotates many of their species lists and name changes. Very informative, albeit time consuming.

tags: birds, listing

"huffy underpants"

2006-09-07T09:15:00.000-06:00

My dad in Florida frequently likes to send me newspaper clippings about birds from his small town (Avon Park area). There's a regular segment in the paper called "Wild Bird Sketches", and it's written by a couple bird enthusiasts, the Kowalskis. Recently they had an article about the Northern Flicker, which featured this amusing description of the bird:

This woodpecker is about 12 inches in length, has a brownish-olive back, barred with black and a large white spot near the tail. The huffy underpants are thickly spotted with black and there is a black crescent on the breast. ...

Huffy underpants? Sounds like a great epithet for someone who gets riled up about things a little too easily! Come to think of it, flickers do sound a little crabby sometimes.

Obviously they meant to write "buffy underparts". I can imagine how this malapropism made its way into the article though, maybe if one of the Kowalskis was reading the description out of a book but didn't have his/her glasses on!

Anyway, I thought it was funny. An endearing mistake, to be sure.

tags: birds, malapropisms

Unexcused absence

2006-08-20T18:26:00.000-06:00

Three months. I've been away from the blog for a little while, but I see that people have kept showing up here anyway, waiting for something, anything. Sorry about that!

Believe me, I've not left birds behind, not in the least. And I think my blog entries over the next several days will prove that.

It's rather been a case of stepping away from the blog to do other things, like enjoy the summer. I've also been focusing my online energies elsewhere, not so much in my personal blog even (which should be evident also from my lack of posting there), but instead in reading and commenting on other people's blogs. I've been interested of late in political blogs, which is quite engrossing ... or distracting, depending on how you look at such things. The good news is that I think I've got my groove back.

Just a few list notes: my neighbors alerted me to hummingbirds in their backyard a couple days ago. I was able to confirm among them a female Calliope, making it my 302nd Colorado state bird, bird #271 for the year in CO and #358 for the year in the US. It was also life bird #796, and ABA bird #463.

tags: bird lists, birds

Yellow-throated Vireo

2006-05-10T12:31:00.000-06:00

I got a call from a friend this morning telling me about a Yellow-throated Vireo that she found in Lee Martinez Park in downtown Fort Collins. Oooo, another lifer opportunity, I thought. So I jammed down there, and with the help of another fellow, I was able to find the bird real quick-like.

A very handsome bird, singing sporadically and sounding much like his "Solitary Vireo" cousins. I don't always get these kind of gratifying chase results, and I'm thrilled to also get a decent photo of it. My blog probably makes it seem like I get plenty of good photos from my birding experiences, but that's misleading - I often post the successes, and (obviously) never the failures, of which there are plenty.

tags: birds, Fort Collins

The Fremont Street Experience

2006-03-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

One other amusing bird-related experience we had in Vegas was the Fremont Street Experience, a block-long archway of lights over Fremont Street in downtown that act as a movie-screen for passersby on their way to casinos and shops. High-wattage speakers also line the street providing booming audio. One of their shows is called "American Freedom", a 4-minute long rip-roaring, flag-waving bonanza to the music of John Philip Sousa.

At the conclusion of the piece, a Bald Eagle soars across the screen, and we got to hear the eagle's call. Or rather, we got to hear what the vast majority of America seems to think an eagle call sounds like -- an aggressive, extended high-pitched keeeeerrrrrrr, suspiciously similar to that of a Red-tailed Hawk.

I just think it would be hilarious if the audience could hear what a Bald Eagle really sounds like. Heads would explode from the cognitive dissonance of realizing that our majestic national bird emits whimpering cackles instead of a clarion screech. Of course, that realism would take away from the triumphalist image of the bird, so on we go, perpetuating Bald Eagle myths based only on its striking size and plumage.

Although, perhaps to its long-term benefit - you could argue that the species is well-served by Americans' misconception of its call, which fits a preconceived notion of menace and thus makes the bird more sympathetic to Americans than it otherwise might be. Eagles get shot enough as it is, and there's no need to reduce its stature in the eyes of a country with a history of killing these remarkable creatures.

tags: Bald Eagle, Las Vegas, Fremont Street

Blogless in Las Vegas

2006-03-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

I got back a week ago from a 3-day trip to Las Vegas with my wife, and I've been delinquent in writing anything new here since. Part of it is because as you might expect it wasn't really a bird trip, and as you may have noticed I'm slavishly devoted to bird-only content here. Yes, we did go for a hike one day at Red Rock National Conservation Area, and I even got a few good pics while there. But there was plenty else going on in more urban settings, which was really the point of the trip.

I think the other reason I've not been writing is to save some 'birding' energy for the upcoming migration season. I want to make the most of this coming spring, and with a planner full of scheduled activities already, I expect that I'm going to be in the field a lot the next two months. So instead I've been distracting myself with other interests like watching movies and, oh yeah, doing my taxes (which are horrendous enough, and not very blogworthy). Not that that's an interest of mine...I guess that came out funny.

In any case, onto the wildlife.

The first critters we came across were actually a pair of Desert Cottontails. As I prepared to get a photo of one, it darted out of view but was conveniently replaced by its buddy, who ended up in the exact same pose and position as the first.

I also tallied my first hummingbird of the year, this Anna's Hummingbird which perched nicely on the top of a juniper.

The real birdwatching highlight for the whole trip came when I heard some rustling in the ravine below the Keystone Thrust trail. Following a dry rattle, this Greater Roadrunner emerged, enchanting both me and my wife. She likes birdwatching as much as I do, as long as the birds are big enough to be seen without the need for optics.

Lastly came this Western Scrub Jay, which I took as we were heading out of the park around noonish. It was perched on a yucca so close to the road I couldn't resist.

And lastly, not a bird, but rather a birds-eye view of Las Vegas at sunset, as seen from the top of the Stratosphere tower on the Strip:

tags: birds Las Vegas

Weekend Bird Review

2006-03-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

For some of us, the weekend goes 'til Monday. :^)

In any case, I got to see some nice birds the past couple days. Here are some of my better photos...

Sunday morning I made a trip to Connie Kogler's home in southwest Loveland, to take a gander at a rare Larimer County Sage Sparrow that has been frequenting her feeders the past few days. I got some very nice looks at it, as you can tell. This was only my second sighting ever of this bird (the first being about 7 years ago in Death Valley National Park), so yes, I was stoked.

This morning I dropped by the Grandview Cemetary here in Fort Collins. It was lovely but chilly, having snowed the night before and then clearing off before sunrise. Even this Brown Creeper felt the chill, and puffed his feathers up a bit to stay warm. I was surprised at how docile he was, allowing me to get quite close and take quite a few shots without raising any fuss. It's always a delicate thing, deciding what constitutes a respectful distance from a subject bird. I used my best judgment, edging closer over a couple minutes time.

My main plan for Monday was to do some Boulder County birding, but on the way down I made an impromptu addendum to try to find a special sparrow down in Littleton that eluded me a week or two ago. I realized while driving that I'd get there shortly after 10am, which was reportedly the best time of day to find the bird. When I got there, I easily found this White-crowned Sparrow, hanging out in one of the bushes at the site.

Then, a couple minutes later, the target bird finally emerged. It was a bit of a skulker, forcing me to take several rather crummy shots of it half-hidden amongst twigs and other less-secretive sparrows. This Harris' Sparrow was a lifer for me, and upon seeing it there was much rejoicing across the land. These two sparrow shots were taken at the Carson Nature Center near the Platte River in Littleton.

I eventually made my way to Boulder County, where I initially stopped at Erie Reservoir in Lafayette. As had been reported on the COBirds listserv, it was quite active, with about 600 birds there. Very quickly I managed to spot this 1st or 2nd-winter Glaucous Gull - it was hard to miss with its white plumage and large size standing out among the numerous Ring-billed and California Gulls present. Later at Thomas Reservoir less than a mile away as the gull flies were hundreds more birds, including a Franklin's and a Lesser Black-backed, both adults in breeding plumage. (Thanks to Steve Larson who I linked up with today, who pointed me toward Thomas as a good gull spot.)

Finally, on my way home I stopped by Cattail Pond in Loveland for a quick look at the waterfowl. I've been hoping to find a Ruddy Duck this winter, and I've had no luck so far. But while scanning the water I heard some squealing overhead, and by the time I figured out what was going on one of the two birds tussling landed in a nearby tree. I don't know what the other bird was, but this was a Merlin which let me get close enough for this SLR shot from below. A nice conclusion to a birdy day, and weekend.

And like this Merlin I'm taking off for a couple days with my wife so she can enjoy some much-deserved R&R. I'll be back by next weekend (meaning the one that most people recognize as such). Ciao for now!

tags: birds, Colorado

More navel-gazing

2006-03-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

A Great Black-backed Gull spent a few days on Rist Benson Reservoir here in Larimer County last January, and on 1/20 I digiscoped several decent shots of it in very good light, with the idea that I might submit a report of the sighting to the Colorado Bird Records Committee (CBRC). Well, a couple days ago I finally did submit a report of that sighting to the CBRC. Whether my report and accompanying photos will be good enough to merit confirmation by the committee remains to be seen, although I suspect they will. In any case it was an important step for me in my continuing evolution as a birder, to make a concerted effort in documenting my observations for the benefit of others.

I've written several times on this topic of personal evolution now, noting how differently I approach this hobby of mine from how I did several years ago. At some point I hope to tire of it, and devote my writing energies solely to the subject matter itself, but during the process of submitting that report I was struck by one particularly sharp contrast between "then" and "now", which is actually kinda funny, but also one that I think is interesting to explore.

Part of the CBRC record report form requires delineation of differences between the bird species you think you saw with those of similar-looking species; i.e., how did you know it was a Great Black-backed Gull and not some other gull. In the case of the GBBG, similar North American occurrences include other rarities like the Slaty-backed Gull and the Yellow-footed Gull, neither of which I've seen before. But I took the time to investigate them, especially in the Olsen/Larsson book on Northern Hemisphere gulls. It was then that I made an amusing realization about my evolution as a birding enthusiast.

As recently as 4 years ago, I would never have taken the time to study a species of bird I'd never seen before. That in itself isn't necessarily unusual or damning - beginners or novices don't often take the time for indepth study of unfamiliar birds. But in my case, it wasn't that I didn't have the time, or was confused enough just learning the birds that I had seen. Rather, it was that I purposefully didn't want to spoil the joy or surprise that comes from beholding a bird when you encounter it for the first time. I even felt that knowing its name beforehand seemed to pollute the sense of wonderment.

Where did this bizarre conception come from? I recall a highly formative experience back in 1998, shortly after I moved from Davis, California (where I went to grad school) to the Bay Area (where I started my first job). My first social bird experiences were with the Sequoia Audubon Society on the Peninsula, and at one of my first meetings there was a presentation from someone who went to Alaska and the North Pacific. He had some terrific pictures of species I'd never seen or heard of before, and I was enthralled. Kittlitz's Murrelet, Red-faced Cormorant, Spectacled Eider...it was exciting to think of all the great bird species out there that I had yet to learn about. World birds were like the candies in Willy Wonka's factory - magical and brilliant, mysterious and alluring.

But I then perceived a risk to my future experiences of seeing new birds - that of knowing too much beforehand. I feared that the magic, brilliance, mystery and allure of these birds would be diminished if I'd read too much or seen too many photos of them in advance. Wasn't part of the thrill of exploration not knowing what lies beyond the next bend in the river, or on the other side of the mountain? In that vein I think I subconsciously resolved to put the blinders on, to not to delve too deeply into bird guide books, and instead to just wait for the birds to reveal themselves to me. I didn't want birding to be a science - I already was a scientist, and birding was an artsier side-interest. I wanted to adhere to this aesthetic, an almost-romantic notion of what it meant to be on a journey of pure discovery - even a forced, false one - in which the discoveries would be not for furthering the knowledge of posterity, but solely for my own feeling of bedazzlement.

And it was easy to accommodate this desire until recently, because for various reasons my birding was still a very solitary activity. I did actually yearn to join bird clubs and go on group outings, but my work schedule made that quite difficult, and besides, birding was more personal therapy than an effort to contribute to the broader birding community knowledge base. But after moving to Colorado, where I had gobs more time and a youthful, active birding community to join, my objectives changed fairly rapidly. I think I did continue to bask in willful bird ignorance for a short time; but the newness of the area and the feeling that I had external expectations on me from locals because of my claims of being an avid birder inspired me to give up this phony notion of "not wanting to ruin the surprise" and actually start to have some real idea of what I was talking about.

At this point I freely admit that I haven't really foregone the joy and wonder in seeing new birds when I study them before actually seeing them. What I've realized over time is that the ideal I was hoping to uphold after that Sequoia Audubon meeting in 1998 has been sublimated to a different form of gratification, one derived from the sharing of knowledge and the unraveling of mystery, and not in simply pretending that me not knowing something constitutes a state of purity to be cherished. Furthermore, I now recognize that learning what I can about birds beforehand just accelerates me to the next mysteries, like "What is that bird doing here this time of year?" or "How has convergent evolution made this species so similar to this other one on another continent?"

What it comes down to is that I now trust that I won't run out of things to be amazed at. Nature seems to do a good job at presenting conundrums, and learning what you can when you can about it doesn't diminish its marvel or grandeur. And maybe it's silly that I had to come to this understanding in such a roundabout fashion; but looking back, how could I have arrived here any differently?

tags: birding, navel gazing

Name That Empid

2006-03-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

(Update, 2:30pm: It didn't take long for some to point out that I had originally posted a pic of a Townsend's Solitaire. I should have known I'd embarrass myself somehow.

Anyway, I've updated the images and text to discuss the other bird I saw that day, which I know is an Empid. Otherwise, everything else is the same.)

While browsing my photo collection I came across a photo that I had previously forgotten about. Back in September on the same day that I drove out to Prewitt Reservoir to see the Curlew Sandpiper, I also drove up to Crow Valley Campground mid-day to check out the migrant situation. After a short walk I found an Empidonax flycatcher, although at the time I wasn't able to positively identify it. But I had just purchased my Canon Digital Rebel XT and with a little chasing I got some good shots of it, and hoped to figure out what it was after I got home.

But for whatever reason I filed the photos on my new laptop in a completely different directory from all the other bird pics, and so it remained unseen until yesterday's re-discovery. ~~Looking at the pics now, I can see that in fact I saw two different Empid flycatchers. One of them is shown here (the one for which I have the better shot), and~~ I'm hoping I can solicit some ideas on which one it was, even though these pics are far from ideal. ~~It'll be interesting to see if someone more confident in their Empid ID skills suggests the same bird(s) I'm thinking.~~ Any ID pros out there want to take a stab at it?

There are really just two pics here - each pair consists of an original shot and a zoom-in to show just the bird.

Oh yeah, before I forget - these were taken early afternoon on Sept 19, 2005. Crow Valley Campground is a small riparian "migrant trap" amid farmland and shortgrass prairie located in Weld County, about 60 miles east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in northeastern Colorado. The bird was (not surprisingly) silent.

~~If we can nail this down, I'll put up the pics for the other bird, for a real challenge. :^)~~

tags: empid, bird identification, birds

The First Goshawk Is Always the Hardest

2006-03-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went out with the Boulder Bird Club on their annual search for late-season Winter Finches, in the high country west of town. The highlight and focus of the outing of course is Allenspark, which if you recall is renowned for their wintering Rosy-Finches.

Initially the group centered on the Fawn Brook Inn, but after about 15 minutes of finchless feeders, we ambled up the road looking for other feeders and any other activity in the pines around town. That did turn out to be fruitful, as we found Cassin's Finches and a single female Pine Grosbeak. Then suddenly someone said there was a buteo overhead. Hmmm, a buteo here at 8500 feet just down the slope from Longs Peak? I looked up and saw a very buteo-like bird circling overhead in the wind about 75 feet up; except that it was very pale grayish-blue underneath, not like any buteo I could think of except for Gray Hawk, which this obviously wasn't. I trained my binos on the bird, but it was almost directly overhead, so I couldn't see head markings. And when it wasn't directly overhead it was obscured by the towering pines all around. I was thinking Northern Goshawk, but was afraid to call it out, having never positively ID'ed one in the field before. Fortunately it didn't dash off completely, and I was able to snap a single shot of it after it had drifted even further up. By the time it soared out of sight our group consensus settled that we had indeed seen a Goshawk. A life bird for me, at long last!

Yeah, it's not a terribly great shot, although it does capture the gist of the bird as we observed it. What convinced me most of all (not seen in this photo, but clear to us when the bird was lower) was the very distinctive underwing coloration, in concert with its strong morphological characters (wing shape, head size, and tail breadth). I've wanted to see a Goshawk for several years now, but never during the 5 or so previous possible occasions did I see the bird well enough to confidently identify it as such. Finally, on an outing where we were looking for finches, I managed a fairly sustained look at one. Go figure. Hopefully the next Goshawk won't take me years to find.

It served to remind me that when it comes to accipiters, you should always be prepared to see one if you're anywhere near reasonable habitat. Coopers and Sharpies (and apparently Goshawks too) always seem to be "popping in", and just as quickly popping out. When that has happened before, I always think in retrospect that it should have been obvious that one might show up, and swear to myself that next time - always next time - I'll keep an eye out. Once again I forgot my own advice, but luckily I had the Boulder Bird Club to bail me out.

tags: birding, Boulder Bird Club, goshawk

Solo

2006-03-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

(NOTE: I actually composed most of this on Feb 28, but hadn't gotten around to finish it for posting. Apologies for my unexplained absence.)

I got up very early this morning to do something I've never done before - go owling solo.

The biggest trouble of course is dragging yourself out of bed. It's nice and cozy there, whereas the outside world promises only cold and makes pestering demands of consciousness and mental acuity. Still, you can't get it out of your head that in the dead of night -there- -are- -owls- -out- -there-, so you force yourself up, even as the clock says 5 minutes after 3 a.m.

After the first 5 or 10 minutes though, the drowsiness gives way to excitement, especially as you become aware that virtually everyone else is still fast asleep, leaving you and only you as the sentinel. Pitch dark with the new moon, and no cars on the road - at least for a time, the world seems to belong only to you.

I drove up Rist Canyon Rd, since I'd heard that was a good area to look for small owls. I'm in dire need of seeing, or at least hearing, small owls, like Eastern Screech-Owl, Northern Saw-Whet Owl, Boreal Owl, and Northern Pygmy Owl. After driving a couple miles in, I got out of my truck and just listened. Silence. I then practiced a few of my Saw-Whet pip calls, and after just a minute, a Great Horned Owl some ways up the canyon hooted back. Wow! I'd never had a conversation before with an owl. Granted, I was probably just pissing it off, smack-talking like some intruder owl, but still, we were communicating. It sounds trivial, but it was surprisingly visceral.

I made a few other stops in the next hour or so, but hadn't elicited much else in response until I returned to more or less the same spot I started. I pipped again, and this time, I got a real Saw-Whet reply. It sounded fairly close, and I clambered a short ways off the road in hopes of getting my flashlight onto it. But it was far enough up the hill and in the trees to discourage me, and once it stopped pipping around 5:15am, I gave up altogether. I'll find the owl some other time - at least I now know where they are.

tags: owling, birds

Bird food

2006-02-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night that I went to a market somewhere and saw boxes of hummingbird filets in the frozen section. I remembered being initially shocked upon seeing it, and then thinking that, well, I guess hummingbirds must be the locally preferred birdmeat.

It makes you wonder about me - I mean, my brain actually invented this idea.

tags: hummingbirds, dreams

Cleaning up a mess

2006-02-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

State Senator Hanna recently put forward a bill regarding the feeding of "wildlife" which made it through committee in the Colorado State Assembly. Collective eyebrows were raised among the local birding community when the initial introduced version of this bill included the following:

A BILL FOR AN ACT
CONCERNING HUMAN BEHAVIORS RELATED TO WILDLIFE IN URBAN AREAS.
Bill Summary
(Note: This summary applies to this bill as introduced and does
not necessarily reflect any amendments that may be subsequently
adopted.)
Punishes the offense of knowingly luring wildlife in urban areas with food or edible waste or allowing wildlife to establish housing on a person's property by a fine of $100 for a chargeable first offense, $500 for a second offense, and $1,000 for a third or subsequent offense. Exempts the feeding of songbirds, acts related to agriculture, and acts allowed by wildlife commission rule.

So it's OK to feed songbirds. Great! I wonder what they consider a "songbird" - this is the state legislature, after all. Section 1-4-c:

(c) "SONGBIRD" MEANS ANY SMALL, ARBOREAL BIRD THAT UTTERS A MELODIOUS SONG OR CALL OR WHOSE PRESENCE IS COMMONLY WELCOMED IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS.

Hmmm. Well, that's almost a tautological definition. A bird that is "welcomed" is OK to feed, but perhaps not one that is not "welcomed"? In other words, you're not allowed to feed birds that you don't want around? Yeah, that sounds like useful legislation. And does songbird refer only to passerines? What about woodpeckers or doves? Are they not included?

Fortunately, this horribly written bill was greatly amended and clarified [UPDATE 2/13, 12:00pm: Jen Bolton, lobbyist for Colorado Audubon, apparently prevailed upon the bill authors to reword it], omitting the bulk of the confusion and replacing it essentially with this:

(1) UNLESS OTHERWISE PERMITTED BY COMMISSION RULE, IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR ANY PERSON TO PLACE FOOD OR EDIBLE WASTE IN THE OPEN WITH THE INTENT OF LURING A WILD COYOTE, FOX, RACCOON, OR SKUNK TO SUCH FOOD OR EDIBLE WASTE IN AN URBAN AREA.

Much better. No more mention of any birds, just specifically the four main offenders. This version apparently passed through committee on a 7-0 vote. Now, whether or not this actually solves the given problem, I can't say, but at least it's no longer so broadly and poorly constrained. Kudos to the legislature for cleaning up this messy bill, before attracting the ire of virtually every birder and birdwatcher in Colorado! (It's been so long since I've actually praised any government body for doing something right, I'd almost forgotten how to do it.)

tags: bird feeders, politics, legislation, birdwatching

Stricken

2006-02-12T23:03:00.000-07:00

It was on my list for almost 12 years. But as of tonight, it has been removed. Cassin's Sparrow is no longer a Life Bird for me.

I've been doing some background prep for planning a trip to SE Arizona this coming May. This means creating a target list, as well as revisiting sightings on earlier visits. I have very good recollections of most of my sightings, but was piqued by Bird #83, a Cassin's Sparrow observed sometime in March of 1994 in Tucson. Unlike the other birds I recorded on that trip, I have no memory whatsoever of when exactly I saw that bird, nor where.

In the case of Cassin's Sparrow, I find that problematic. For a number of years after I began birding, I relied pretty heavily on bird range maps in Peterson's Guide to help me determine what bird I was seeing, in cases where there were 2 or more competing possibilities. That's not a practice I believe in anymore, but I have to admit that it played a fair part in several IDs I thought I'd made in years past. I'd already corrected most of those (e.g., Hutton's Vireo), but this one had remained.

I try to be very careful in tinkering with my lists when it comes to revisiting very old observations, and I am cautious not to overly second-guess my IDs. But I am aware of how my identification skills have grown over time, and I honestly don't think I could have truly known for sure that I'd seen a Cassin's Sparrow in lieu of, say, a Brewer's, based on the way I know I used the Petersen's Guide at the time, and my awareness (or lack thereof) of the likelihoods of seeing certain species in certain locations. It may well be, of course, that I did in fact see one, even if I don't remember when or where. But it troubles me that I supposedly made such a careful ID of a tricky bird at a time when I really wasn't attuned to such things, and that I remember nothing about the sighting; and knowing that I'd now have trouble picking one out of a sparrow lineup, I just don't feel comfortable leaving it on my Life List. So, I removed it tonight, lowering my Life, AOU, and ABA totals by one.

I do feel confident that I'll be able to put it back sometime this year. I just want it to count, to identify it from its characteristics, not from deductions or extrapolations from likelihood. Yet another manifestation of how I'm changing as a birder.

tags: birding, bird lists

Berlepsch's Six-Wired Bird of Paradise

2006-02-06T22:58:00.000-07:00

I wanted to be the first person in the history of humanity to have a blog post with this title. This is the name of a recently rediscovered bird, found in a very remote and amazingly undisturbed rainforest in Papua-New Guinea, Indonesia. The bird was known previously from specimens collected well over a century ago, and unseen since, entirely because no one knew where the bird could be found.

Birds of Paradise are part of the aptly named family Paradisaeidae, which has between 38 and 45 extant members, depending on whichever taxonomy you prefer. Berlepsch's, once evaluated by ornithologists, will surely be added to this. Birds of Paradise are truly breathtaking creatures, in many cases ornamented in spectacular otherworldly fashion. And if that weren't enough, the courtship displays of some species are just as outrageous as their outfits.

Listers can be happy to know there is yet another bird to be seen in the world, without requiring some committee-decided species split. Conservationists can be happy to know that this bird, as well as a number of other newly discovered or rediscovered creatures, appear to be thriving in this untouched wilderness. And those of us who are both definitely enjoy the double-whammy.

tags: birds, Birds of Paradise, conservation

Pueblo-area Trip Report

2006-02-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

I got back from Pueblo late Friday afternoon. Saw a lotta birds.

I've been participating in the RMBO's Winter Raptor Survey, having done a route in Logan County back in January, and this time doing one in Pueblo County down south. In these surveys, you basically count the number of raptors you see on a 24-mile long route, noting the particulars of the habitat you're in, and being careful of course not to double-count. You stop at specified locations on the route, and count for 3 and only 3 minutes. With a methodical approach it becomes possible to compare like with like and note changes in populations and distributions over time in a large swath of area like Colorado.

I did run into a hitch early on, however, as the route I was given ran through gated private property. Considering I was in the middle of nowhere, I had to improvise a detour for the route, and did my best to link up that detour with the remainder of the specified route. It wasn't perfect, but hopefully my data will still be useful. I did count 61 raptors on the route, including a few of the characters seen here...

I started off in rural central Pueblo County. The light was lousy (partly cloudy skies at 8am), but I couldn't pass up my first-ever opportunity for a photo of a Prairie Falcon, perched several phone poles ahead of me. For fear of spooking this skittish raptor I opted to stay further back and go for the digiscope shot. A little dark, yes, but a well-behaved bird. I ended up seeing 4 of them on the survey.

A bit further down the road, I spotted this little guy on my left. I was a little disappointed when I saw that it wasn't a Northern Shrike as I'd hoped (for adding to my photo collection), but rather a Loggerhead Shrike. Note the short bill, and very clean breast - Northerns have longer bills, somewhat streakier breast marks, and a thinner bandito eye-stripe. If there ever was a passerine (i.e., songbird) that deserved mention in the same breath as raptors, it would be a shrike. These birds are sometimes colloquially called "butcherbirds", and for good reason - they often cache their prey (insects, mice, small lizards) by impaling them on thorns or barbs.

Next up was a highly approachable Ferruginous Hawk, perched on a power pole. I also digiscoped this shot, and for this image I did something a little different, going more for a "portrait" than a full-body pic. Ferruginous Hawks have been wonderfully easy for me to come by so far this year, in contrast to past years where they've been quite rare. What a spectacular bird this is.

Most of the raptors were along the Huerfano River portion of the route, and those were mainly Red-tailed Hawks and American Kestrels. But I did manage to collect one Rough-legged Hawk circling overhead:
I've been trying to get a shot of one perched, but I've too often approached too closely for them to stay still. In any case, this was my only Roughie for the survey.

The survey had just ended 10 minutes previous, and I was steaming down Hwy 50 toward Rocky Ford, when something caught my eye out the passenger window. Flying parallel to me was a kestrel-sized bird, more or less, but this was no kestrel, and I knew it right off - no, this was a Merlin. In my excitement I quickly pulled off the road so I could follow its path into a field. I looked around, and a moment later I saw it perched up in a tree a little ways up the road. I scooted up into digiscope range, and got another bad-light falcon-photo. Again a bit dark, but I felt very gratified to have recognized the bird immediately while driving 70 mph in poor light.

The Rocky Ford trip was a bust unfortunately, with the weather turning sour in the afternoon. I retired to the motel in Pueblo that night, and on Friday I headed north in much calmer, clearer conditions to El Paso county, to look for a very special bird indeed - the Long-billed Thrasher*, which had been reported at a private ranch a few weeks earlier. This will likely be only the third recorded instance of this species in Colorado, with the first being nearly a century ago. I had to look for this bird.

* In rare bird alerts, the custom for listing extreme rarities is to capitalize all the letters in the bird name, which makes it very attention-grabbing. Really, it's not just a Long-billed Thrasher, but a LONG-BILLED THRASHER. You can practically hear the urgency as you read the report.

Anyway, when I arrived at the ranch I found neighbor Nick and Cole already there (those bums!), having seen it just moments earlier. But before we could talk much about it we found the Eastern Towhee hanging around. Unfortunately my angle here isn't so great, and it's hard to see the spotless upperwing coverts that make this an Eastern and not a Spotted Towhee. (These two species used to be lumped.)

Ah, a thrasher! But dang, it wasn't the one I wanted. This is the Brown Thrasher, a more common variety found in Colorado (although still pretty unusual in the winter months), and in the next couple hours this little bugger would play havoc with my sensibilities, pretending to be the Long-billed and doing a damn good impression of one. Note though, the very rufous coloration and the light brownish breast streaking. I'd also say to look at the relatively short straight bill, but the bird stayed hidden in the twigs, making a clear shot difficult. Hopefully come spring I'll have a nicer Brown Thrasher photo to show. The point is, Browns and Long-billeds look very much alike, but do have clear differences that are perceptible in the field.

Over there! Now there's a thrasher with a nice long curved bill, like the Long-billed. But no, that's not it either - the bill is actually too long and too curved, and the breast is dull spotted green-gray, not streaked. This is instead the Curve-billed Thrasher, a very nice bird in its own right, although again not uncommon for Colorado. This digiscoped shot was obtained after about 6 crummy attempts, where the bird hid in the branches and caused the camera to focus on twigs instead of the real subject. Patience finally paid off, and the bird obliged with a wonderful pose.

Nick and Cole took off for other locales, leaving me to find the Long-billed on my own. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait too long, and although it skulked in the brambles as advertised (something thrashers love to do in general), it peeked out enough for me to get a few good shots of it. Note here, the much grayer head, the browner back (as opposed to rufous), and the sharper, darker black streaking on the breast. Also, although not seen clearly in this pic, the bill is longer, and curvier than the Brown Thrasher's bill.

Southern and SE Colorado are great places for birding in the state. If this Long-billed is any indication, I can hardly wait for spring migration to roll around.

tags: birds, Colorado, Pueblo, bird photography

Out of town

2006-02-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

I'm heading out tonight to Pueblo to do a Winter Raptor Survey route for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, and will be back late Friday. I'll be squeezing in a little off-duty birding as well, and hopefully I'll have some interesting stuff to report when I get back.....

Ciao!

January closeout

2006-01-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

Some highlights from today's end-of-January outing, which like the rest of this month felt more like April than mid-winter....

First up, a White-crowned Sparrow, which I found cavorting with some juncos along the Poudre River trail just north of Mulberry in Fort Collins...

A late-morning Wood Duck at Prospect Ponds, one of 4 males and 2 females there...

A male Belted Kingfisher, at the southernmost of the Prospect Ponds, just north of the water treatment plant...

And now the lovely female...

A Greater White-fronted Goose, amidst a bevy of Cackling/Canada Geese at the pond just south of the ELC. Damn those heat waves, which made it hard for me to get a non-blurry shot....

And lastly, at Cottonwood Hollow, a partial albino Canada Goose.

The sparrow photo was taken with my digital SLR; the rest were digiscoped.

tags: birds, bird photography

Seahawk = Steller's Sea-Eagle?

2006-01-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

I just learned from 10,000 Birds that a 'Seahawk', as in the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL in the Super Bowl, is a colloquial term for an Osprey. And all this time I thought it was simply some mythical composite bird.

But really, look at this bird - does that look like an Osprey to you? The bill is way too big, not to mention the colors are all wrong. I'm thinking it's more like a Steller's Sea-Eagle. Certainly as a football team mascot, Steller's is more fearsome, even making the Bald Eagle look like a runt.

tags: Super Bowl, birds, football, mascots

Site update

2006-01-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

I've just added a new section on the right column below the blogroll, called "ID Tips". It's a compilation, small for now but sure to grow, of sites that offer useful information on more difficult identification problems.

(In the same vein for those who prefer actual books to web sites, I recommend Kenn Kaufmann's Field Guide to Advanced Birding. It's written for the avid birder who wants to separate out with more confidence birds like Jaegers, Dowitchers, Screech-Owls, and of course perhaps the most perplexing of all bird groups, the Empidonax Flycatchers.)

I've also added a few more sites and blogs to right column, namely the blog SE Colorado Birding, a link to the listserv ID Frontiers (hosted by Surfbirds), and the Internet Bird Collection, run by the creators of the Handbook of the Birds of the World Series. The latter site compiles videos of birds from around the world, and they apparently now have almost 20% of all bird species in their collection.

tags: birds, bird identification

Birder Envy

2006-01-25T00:04:00.000-07:00

Time for a little birdblogger navel-gazing. One thing I've noticed a little bit lately is how it is almost anathema among birding company to admit to any human foible or confusion when it comes to bird identification. Some of this surely stems from the kind of credibility issue that BINAC pointed to some weeks back, but I think there's something more going on here, although I'm not sure what.

A few weeks ago I mentioned at an Audubon meeting that while looking for an unusual bird early one morning in the area, I made a silly error when I heard some Cedar Waxwings in some nearby trees, but thought they were American Goldfinches for a short time. Of course, after about 15 seconds, I realized that I was in fact hearing waxwings, and saw them soon dart off to the horizon squealing as they do. I figured I was just plain out-of-it that morning, having just rolled out of bed and gone birding, and didn't ascribe much deeper meaning to it than that. If anything I thought it was kinda funny. But when I casually mentioned it at the meeting, I got a comment from someone to the effect of, "I wouldn't tell anyone that!"

Now, I make every honest effort to identify birds to the best of my ability, but I also feel unashamed of the occasions when I most definitely screw up. I figure that it happens to everyone - we're only human, right? Sometimes, you forget what a particular species sounds like, and you may miss seeing an interesting bird because you assumed that you were hearing something more mundane or commonplace? Or on some other occasion you watch a bird high up in tree branches, struggle mightily to observe some characters, but when all is said and done (it flits away mysteriously) you still don't know for sure what you saw, because maybe you focused too much on plumage and not enough on morphology or bill shape?

Or is it the case that, perhaps, of all the people who consider themselves avid birders, I am the only one who makes these kinds of pedestrian, embarrassing errors? Could that be?

I'm serious here. I make mistakes. Probably plenty. I do think I get it right most of the time, but I'm not so full of myself to want to hide the times when I mess up. I guess I'm a little surprised at the reticence of some birders to say what they do wrong. I find it especially odd because most of the time I find the people I bird around to be very cordial and pleasant. Must we be so concerned about maintaining our credibility and image that we suppress any inclinations toward honesty about our occasional failings?

Yes, I want others to take me seriously and believe me on the occasions when I tell them I saw an unusual bird in such-and-such place. But personally, I think it enhances my credibility to admit that there are times when I mess up, because if anything, it means that I am capable of questioning my own judgment, of recognizing when my initial thoughts or expectations have deceived me. It also means that I don't mind learning that I was wrong, and that I am more beholden to the truth of the matter than I am to maintaining an image of personal rightness, which I could easily do in matters like this by just keeping my trap shut.

If, as birders, we value accuracy and at least some measure of objective reality, why not allow ourselves to admit our own mistakes - even the ones we made just yesterday? It shouldn't be a secret. Birder envy just compounds the original faux pas.

tags: birding, human error

The Magic of Allenspark

2006-01-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

After my previous short post on seeing the Rosy-Finches, I thought I should say a little more about them. I made it sound almost like all I cared about was ticking them off on some of my many lists.

As I mentioned earlier, it was a brutally cold morning. Allenspark is at about 8,000 feet elevation, and it's not far from Longs Peak, the northernmost of Colorado's 14ers. A strong westerly wind was coming down the long slope toward Allenspark, and at 7:20am it was about 12 F with 20-25 mph winds, gusting to 40. Couple that with my lack of good gloves, and I was only good for about 10-15 minutes at a time outside, before retreating to my truck to thaw out a bit.

But I had the Rosy-Finches to cheer me up. I was thoroughly charmed by them, and spent much time studying their behaviors. They were already at the feeders when I arrived, so no waiting or struggling see them. And even though I'm a wuss in this mountain weather, the finches are unflappable, just doing their thing in spite of the conditions. They'd arrive and park in the treetops for a few minutes, as pictured here, and after a few minutes a couple brave finch souls would head to the ground to start foraging, either at the feeders, or more often than not, in some other seemingly random area around the inn. The fun was trying to figure out what on earth they were going for, but whatever it was, it certainly had them interested. A few scattered seeds, perhaps - it was hard to say. But they'd walk and hop around, and even get pretty close to me as I stood there snapping photos of them.

I also spent considerable time studying their plumages. They of course come in what is now recognized as three varieties - Gray-crowned, Brown-capped, and Black. I find their colorations difficult to describe, especially collectively; they consist of a subtle yet elegant blend of browns, pinks, grays, and blacks. And it often seemed as if each bird had a unique blend of these colors, with personal gradations specifying a precise age, wear, and sex. Perhaps it was just the cold affecting my brain, but I found it hard to concentrate on watching any individual for long - trying to separate each bird by species and so on became very difficult after a time. Their behavior borders on madcap in character, and coupled with their exotic appearance, I became transfixed not on details or individuals, but on the whole roving mass. If not for the comparative permanence of the camera, I'm not sure I'd remember what I'd seen today.If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend a special trip to see these birds. Hopefully we'll all see them next in more amenable weather than I had today, but rest assured that whatever conditions await you, the Rosies can handle it.

tags: birds, Colorado

The original spy-cam

2006-01-17T23:04:00.000-07:00

Nothing too deep here, just a funny story about a girlfriend caught cheating with another man, with help from the cuckold's African Grey Parrot:

LONDON, England -- A computer programmer found out his girlfriend was having an affair when his pet parrot kept repeating her lover's name, British media reported Tuesday.

The African grey parrot kept squawking "I love you, Gary" as his owner, Chris Taylor, sat with girlfriend Suzy Collins on the sofa of their shared flat in Leeds, northern England.

But when Taylor saw Collins's embarrassed reaction, he realized she had been having an affair -- meeting her lover in the flat whilst Ziggy looked on, the UK's Press Association reported.

Ziggy even mimicked Collins's voice each time she answered her telephone, calling out "Hiya Gary," according to newspaper reports.

On a related note....did you know that "cuckold" is derived from "cuckoo"? The etymology reflects knowledge of Old World cuckoos nesting habits, wherein the female lays eggs in other species' nests, to be raised by those birds. The modern technical term for this is brood parasitism, but in olden days it was imagined that this was a reflection of the female having 'cavorted' with birds other than its presumed mate.

tags: birds, parrots, cheating

A quick update

2006-01-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

I do have a couple other bigger, more substantive posts in the works, so stay tuned. But for now, a quick birding update.

I had a nice birding day today, commencing with a trip up to Allenspark this morning to see the Rosy-Finches that frequent the Fawn Brook Inn. And I found them, lots of them, flitting about with abandon in spite of brutally cold conditions and howling wind barreling down from Longs Peak. It ain't no thang to a Rosy Finch, apparently, as they were there in the hundreds, and all 3 varieties to boot. It was my first occasion to see a Rosy Finch of any kind since 1996, when I saw them at the 13,000 ft. summit of Mt. Dana in Yosemite National Park.

I also saw lots of geese at Dodd Reservoir outside Boulder, including a Greater White-Fronted Goose and a Ross' Goose. Over at Valmont there were at least 3 dozen Red-breasted Mergansers hanging with some Commons - and on the other side of the Reservoir there were even Western Grebes, and possibly some Clark's, although they were very far away and it was hard to know.

Heading north, I made a fast stop at Walden Ponds in Boulder, and saw lots of nice ducks there, including Wigeon, Redhead, Ring-neckeds, Canvasback, and Bufflehead. And lastly, I stopped in Loveland at Rist Benson Reservoir, and saw the reported Great Black-backed Gull there. And with some luck I also saw a Lesser Black-backed Gull too, on some occasions both were in the same field of view in my spotting scope. A nice finish to yet another great birding day.

That's two great days this month. Does this mean I'm using up all my good bird karma?

tags: birds, birding

Lark Buntings

2006-01-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight's guest speaker at the monthly Fort Collins Audubon meeting was Amy Yackel Adams who spoke about her CSU dissertation work on Lark Buntings and their population status at the Pawnee National Grasslands. It was a very nice talk in front of an attentive and good-sized crowd. Some take-away points:

The Pawnee Grasslands (PNG) are home to the highest breeding concentrations of Lark Buntings (LABU). She says the birds are generally very prompt in arriving on May 1 in spring migration. The males show up about 2 weeks before the females.
It's been estimated that LABU populations overall are declining at about 2.1%/year in recent years, which is quite high.
LABU juvenile survival rates are about 20-30%, which is pretty low by passerine standards.
These low rates are attributable in part to their being ground nesters, and are subject to significant predation, ranging from 13-Lined Ground Squirrels to weasels to raptors. Someone did ask during the Q&A whether chemical contamination may play a part, but Amy couldn't point to any studies that have been done on this. Her anecdotal evidence did suggest some possibility of that, based on failed nests with fragile eggshells, but nothing conclusive.
LABU practices "brood division" during the raising of the young. That is, say, in a nest with 4 fledglings, the male and female with each take two "under their wing" and sequester them separately in different locations, for feeding, etc. Apparently only a couple dozen North American species are known to do this, although this may be because other species haven't been followed and studied to the extent that LABUs were in her work.
Neighbor Nick asked her what she would recommend as the one single thing that could be done from a conservation standpoint in order to improve the chances of reproductive success for LABU at PNG. She suggested something along the lines of reducing habitat fragmentation, which is a very big problem at PNG. In the case of PNG, this fragmentation reduces the ability of coyotes (which get hunted off) to control their usual prey, the ground squirrels - and thus the LABU end up with more predators of their own.

Of course, there was more, but it's getting late and I want to get this off before heading to bed. Bravo FCAS for yet another great presentation!

tags: birds, Lark Buntings, ornithology, conservation

My 2005 'Birdies'

2006-01-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

I promise that this will be my last self-indulgent retrospective posting on my 2005 year. But I had this idea while on a hike last weekend, and thought that I need to do it now if I'm going to do it at all.

Maybe someone else has already done this kind of thing, but regardless, I want to highlight some of my bird observations in the past year with these "awards":

Most Productive Birding Spot, Colorado: A virtual 3-way tie between Fossil Creek/Duck Lake, Lake Loveland, and Dixon Reservoir

Luckiest Sighting. To qualify for this, it had to be a bird that is considered fairly rare or unusual, yet required only the absolute minimum of effort for me to see it. The one that jumps out at me has to be my Life-Bird Glaucous Gull on Horsetooth Reservoir from Jan 2, where I was simply a passenger in our CBC car, and we happened upon a 2nd-year immature after just a half-minute searching some gulls in a scope.

Most Hard-earned Bird: What bird did I try hardest to see, with eventual success? Curiously it was the Lesser Black-backed Gull I saw on the very last day of the year. I had been around some other Lessers (ID'ed by other birders) during the year, but never had good looks at them, certainly not enough for me to feel like I knew for sure that's what they were. It took a rather obvious adult at Lake Loveland to clinch a full year of frustration.

Biggest Failure: A negative category, but should reflect an unsuccessful attempt at a great bird. This would have to be my disastrous attempt to find the Yellow-billed Loon last November on Chatfield Reservoir. I couldn't have picked a crappier weather day to look for it. Luckily I called off the search before I froze away my fingers.

Best Naked-eye Bird: This has to be the Hoatzin in Peru in May. We got such great close-up looks at it. If only I'd had my good camera back then, the pics I could have had. Oh well. I still feel privileged to have been as close to them as I was.

Best Bird Photographed: This isn't the same thing as the best bird photograph, it's just the best bird I got a picture of. My fave is my somewhat fuzzy but still recognizable shot of a Black-throated Trogon in Costa Rica. What a gorgeous bird that was.

Most Common Bird That's Still A Joy to See: Northern Flicker. I just think they're such beautiful birds. I love 'em.

Largest Bird: This is easy. Andean Condor, hands down.

Smallest Bird: Hmmm. Not sure who's smallest, but I think Allen's Hummingbird may qualify.

Best 'Comeback' Bird: This is for a bird that I'd seen before, but perhaps only once before many years ago. I actually had several second-time sightings of birds this year, but my favorite had to be Macgillivray's Warbler at Rocky Mountain NP last June.

Best Colorado Bird: This is a two-way tie for me, between two perhaps unlikely candidates: Cassin's Kingbird and White-tailed Ptarmigan. I picked the Cassin's because this was a bird I saw some years ago in Arizona (may also qualify as a comeback bird), and had expressly hoped to see one again after taking the time to re-study what makes the Cassin's distinct from a Western. It was just a gratifying sighting. And the Ptarmigan, well, I liked it because it was 1) a Lifer, and 2) I had a Zen experience in seeing it. The more I tried to find one, by making it a target bird on trips to Rocky Mountain, the more impossible it was to find. Only by not trying to find the bird, and just spending time hiking in the high country did they come out and make themselves so easily seen for me. On two separate occasions, no less!

Best ABA Bird: I got to make 3 trips to Florida this year. My favorite bird in ABA-land has to be the Roseate Spoonbill. If seeing a bird takes your breath away like that one did, then it almost has to be a best-bird-of-the-year candidate.

Best Tropical Bird: Hmmm, Peru and Costa Rica. Lots of cool birds to choose from there. Way too many. Peru's candidates were Paradise Tanager, Cock-of-the-Rock, Hoatzin, Horned Screamer, and Spangled Cotinga. Costa Rica's candidates included Shining Honeycreeper, Scarlet-Thighed Dacnis, White Hawk, and even the Bay Wren, which I found utterly enchanting. Even these lists leave off other possibilities. But I think the best one of all was Peru's Scaly-breasted Woodpecker. It's a Celeus woodpecker, somewhat resembling its Dryocupus cousins like Pileated, but with a stunning cinnamon full-body coloration, and a bold ivory bill. Just f'in awesome.

Least Likely Bird: Maybe this is the same as rarest bird? I have to think about that. In any case, it would have to be the mind-blowing Tropical Parula that showed up in the Grandview Cemetery in Fort Collins last June, just a mile from my house. It made quite a scene (being only the second state record), and I saw the bird with about 30 other people that morning, all of us suspiciously wandering about the graveyard with our binocs, scopes and cameras.

So there you go. In future years I may have more or different categories. These were just whatever I could think of off the top of my head. If you have any ideas for other categories feel free to pass them on.

tags: birds

It can be a Cackling, even if it's not a Cackling Cackling

2006-01-09T23:10:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to get fully up to speed on the relatively recent changes to the whole Canada/Cackling Goose split. Fortunately there are some good resources out there for those like me - Richard Trinkner posted this link on COBirds a couple days ago to a page maintained by David Sibley which discusses in detail the subspecies alignments among the two species. Like Richard I was a little surprised to learn that all the minima subspecies have been included into the Cackling Goose, and not just the former Cackling subspecies of Canada:

First, to clear up some confusion about the names of the species and subspecies: The former broad Canada Goose has been divided into a large-bodied, interior- and southern-breeding species, and a small-bodied tundra-breeding subspecies. The large-bodied group is still known as Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) while the small-bodied group takes the name Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii). This means that the English name Cackling Goose, which has in the past been more or less restricted to the smallest subspecies (the far western B. c. minima) is now the species name for all four of the small subspecies. This new species takes the scientific name of the earliest-named subspecies and becomes Branta hutchinsii.

Bill Schmoker has some very nice shots of Canada/Cackler combos too, as well as links to a couple other sites that have useful identification tips and more technical information on the split. I have a few photos of my own, with the one above taken recently at Lake Loveland. It shows a Cackler (front right) with 3 Canadas, left behind, and right (off frame). The Cackler is probably a Richardson's, and the Canadas seem like Lessers, although if anyone thinks I'm wrong feel free to tell me so in the comments. And better yet, tell me why!

tags: birds, Canada Goose, Cackling Goose, geese

All in a day's birding

2006-01-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I had one of my best birding days since Costa Rica. And I didn't even have to leave town.

At the crack of dawn I headed over to Rachel Hopper's home to see a Pine Warbler that's been a regular visitor at her feeders the past couple weeks. She had advised a prompt 7:30am arrival (I arrived at 7:20), since that's about when the bird always seems to show up. When I got there we went to her back window and she said to wait for the American Goldfinches first, which always presage its arrival. And sure enough, as if on parade, the Goldfinches showed up, and made their way down from the treetops slowly to the feeders. They even did so despite a Bald Eagle roosting higher up in the branches. We then waited for the Pine Warbler to make his entrance down low, and after about 10-15 minutes, there it was, a hardy male. A State bird for me. Woohoo!

Next, I headed over to Prospect Ponds, about 3 miles away, to look for Barrow's Goldeneye. I found a huge raft of waterfowl on the pond closest to Prospect Rd, but no Barrow's. I did spot a Green-winged Teal and a pair of Wood Ducks. And as I went down the road later to check out the other ponds, I came across a Eurasian Collared-Dove perched on a branch above the bike trail. "Just" a Year bird, of course, but still, it was close and easy to see, and I got my best shot of this species for my photo collection.

By 9ish I headed over to Mulberry and LeMay to look for the Northern Waterthrush, originally found by Cole Wild about 3 weeks ago along the Poudre River Trail and re-found right after New Year's by neighbor Nick. I had only a rough idea of where to find this bird, so I had to employ my bird intuition. "If I were a Waterthrush, where would I hang out?" A short ways up the trail from Mulberry, there was a discharge outlet on the far side of the river next to the water treatment plant, with relatively warm water cascading out of it. The water flowed by some riprap rocks and there was a dead branch jumble at the waterline about 5-10 yards downstream of the outlet. "Hmmm, that seems like a good place for a waterthrush. This must be it." So I parked my scope there and waited to see if something might show up.

I saw a flutter over on the far side near the riprap. I looked anxiously - could that be it? The bird had gone behind the dead branches. A minute later the bird revealed itself to be...a Song Sparrow. Harrumph. Stupid Sparrow. Had me going there for a minute. That's just so weird - it seems like a great place for a Waterthrush to be. Where is it? Why just a boring ol' Song Sparrow? I waited a little longer, still scanning the riprap. Then, in the lower corner of my field-of-view, another flutter. Oh my god. There it is! Northern Waterthrush, a new Life bird for me! And here it is, in Fort Collins, in the first week of January. I strung together a stream of expletives, as I often do either when I'm upset or deliriously happy. I was thrilled to have found this bird by myself, based on just some intuition (and well, reasoning) on where it might be. A personal accomplishment in any case.

High off the success I'd just had, I headed home and unpacked all my birding toys. I went online to read the COBirds mailing list, and what's that? Chris Warren reported a Black Brant in the softball fields of Poudre High School just a mile or so north of my house! I've been looking for a Brant for about 3 months now, with no luck. "It's so close, it's worth a shot." So off I went again, repacking my birding toys into the truck.

Now, he'd reported the bird a couple hours ago, so I knew it wasn't likely to still be in those fields. Geese tend not to tarry too long in any given field. And sure enough, when I got there, no geese. Hmmm. Time for more of that bird intuition. "If I were a Brant, and I'd been in this field a couple hours ago, where would I have gone?" Well, after some feeding in a field, I'd look for some open water. The fact that I'm well inside an urban area suggests that I'm not likely to fly all that far to find it, and the closest ponds around are College Lake up in the foothills, or City Park Lake just a mile from here.

Now, College Lake is closed off to the public, so I could only try City Park Lake. I got there and saw about 300 or so geese on it, which was promising. I got the scope out and started scanning, hoping that it would jump out at me. After about 5 minutes, it did! Beautiful - about the size of a Cackling Goose, but with that gorgeous chocolate brown neck and head, and white necklace. Another new State bird for me, that had eluded me several times back in November and December. The day was just getting better and better.

I hauled the scope a little closer to its mid-pond island hangout, by which time it made its way to shore with about 60 other Canada/Cackling geese to feed. I digiscoped this shot of it for a nice closeup, to cap off this terrific birding day. It was a gorgeous weather day, but I decided not to bird anymore - I wanted to end on a very high note, and not run the risk of disappointment after so much success. I don't get days like that too often, so why tempt fate and spoil it?

tags: birds Fort Collins birding

On the Last Day of Christmas, My In-laws gave to me...

2006-01-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

...Gulls of North America, Europe and Asia, by Olsen and Larsson. OK, so it's not as catchy a tune, but it does spread joy in this household nonetheless.

What a great book, and a great way to cap off the holiday season. Now I have absolutely no excuse for not becoming a local pro on gulls. Gulls are of course the nemesis of most birders - I liken the phenomenon to the way many otherwise intelligent college students treat math. "Oh, I suck at math/gulls - it's just not my thing." I can understand this feeling, too, for I've shared it in the past. All the North American gulls combined can sport over 200 different plumages and appearances, many of which closely resemble each other. Combined with their "trashiness", they unfortunately become low-priority sightings for a number of birdwatchers. And although I did put forth an effort to learn them when I was back in Santa Cruz a few years ago, my effort was limited and unsupported by either a good guide or by anyone in the area who knew gulls well (I was a much more solitary birder then.)

But the commonness of gulls is a blessing. They are gregarious, and because of that many species can be seen together in relatively easy-to-find flocks, including rarities. All you have to do is learn how to separate them out - a challenge to be sure, but something any birder should take the time to do. And with neighbor Nick, Sibley, free time, and now this book, I hope to make some headway on these birds myself. Thanks, Marilyn and Tim - This is awesome!

tags: gulls bird books birds

2005 List Totals

2006-01-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

This should have been included in my previous Year in Review' post, but I instead got all verbose on you. So here are some raw numbers:

The Life List - 214 new birds, bringing my life total to 730. (214 is a personal record - my previous record was 185 in 2002.) This includes a Lesser Black-backed Gull seen on Dec 31. Nice!
The Colorado List - 227 birds. This includes that Gull as well as an unusual Great-tailed Grackle also seen later that day.
The Year List - 508 world birds, 303 ABA-area birds.
The current ABA List - 389 birds, with 72 pickups in 2005. (My previous record was 57 in 1998.) This also includes a Marsh Wren seen yesterday on the Loveland CBC.

Now I start fresh with a new World 2006 List and a Colorado 2006 List. Time to get cranking. Some goals for the new Year? I should get ABA #400, for starters. And for the year I'd like to get 300 species in Colorado and 350 ABA birds. (If I can swing trips to California and Florida I may be able to get 400 - we'll see.) And for the Life List...with a possible trip to Europe this summer I also think I have a shot at Life #800 too.

You can see all the details on my main list web pages.

tags: birds listing

The Birding Year in Review

2005-12-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

It's the last day of 2005. What a great birding year I had - I learned a ton and spent more time than ever in the field actually birding. Imagine that! So what all happened?

By far, the most important aspect to my birding year was that I just had more time to do it. With the luxury of tiempo libre, I began to take birding more seriously than I ever had any previous year. Sure, I'd kept a life list and read bird books, but I never went out with anyone, attended functions with other birders, or even organized my efforts to look for new birds in any way. For various reasons I had done birding more as a personal therapy than as any contribution to the field at large. But with all the new-found time I had this year, I devoted much more to birds, and did it more socially and more academically even. I'll explain what that means toward the end of this post.

This was a big year for listing. With the help of trips to Peru and Costa Rica, my Life List grew by 213 birds, by far my best Life year ever. It easily beat out my 2002 total (which included my first trip to Costa Rica) of 163. But what really made this year stand out was the number of new birds I saw right here in Colorado. 40 of my new lifers were seen in CO.

Back in April, I was inspired by Cole Wild to start a separate Colorado life list, my first state list. (This link is from my other blog, which I started long before FeatherWeather, and is now reserved for non-bird topics.) Already, it's clear that the impetus for this kind of listing is from my increased social activity with other birders, through Audubon, etc. - I think that as long as it's done in the spirit of increasing knowledge and fostering interest in conservation, it's fine to compare lists and engage in the 'sport' of birding. For me this was a revolution in my approach. Oh, and the totals for 2005? 225 Colorado birds. Not quite the 350-400 achieved by Nick and Cole, but a good start, better than I expected early on.

I've even started other lists, which you can see here. One important development with my basic life list was to take the time to make a taxonomic version of it as well. In years past I was reluctant (and well, too lazy) to learn the orders and families of birds, but finally this year I came to understand the insight that can be gained from learning bird classification, in all its idiosyncrasies and controversies. After a couple months of family-name immersion, I felt like I'd really learned something substantial about birds - their origins. What a great way to feel closer to them.

Another inspiration I got from Cole was to buy a new SLR camera in early September, a Canon Digital Rebel XT. I've already posted several shots from it here on FW, and am very happy with the results so far. It makes for a nice complement to digiscoping, which can be quite difficult and hard to do alongside regular birding (at least with my current digiscoping setup). Bird photography as a whole really took off for me this year, and I've renewed my interest in expanding my 'portfolio'. My goal isn't so much to take publication-quality shots (although I try to take as many quality art-ful shots as I can), but just to document what I see and have a nice collection for the sake of remembrance. What's really great is that I can now find enjoyment in going out birding even if I don't see anything new or interesting, as long as I come away with a few new pictures. It makes every trip feel rewarding and worthwhile, and that's always a Good Thing.

Peru in May was a great experience too. Even though that wasn't specifically a birding trip, I picked up another 120 life birds there, 134 total. I did however make a birding-specific trip to Costa Rica in late September, my first such trip ever. I went for a week to Rara Avis, a private forest reserve on the Caribbean slope. For the trip I saw about 48 new life birds, 104 total, and increased my Costa Rica life list (another new listed started this year!) to 228, which yes, is still larger than my Colorado list.

More importantly though, that Costa Rica trip was a great chance for me to feel better about my abilities in birding tropical rainforests. The first couple times I'd ever done it proved frustrating to me, for it was very different from how I'd imagined. This time I went in with better preparation and expectations, and I found it much more rewarding and enjoyable. And by the way, anyone interested in the topic of Neotropical birds is encouraged to read Hilty's Birds of Tropical America, which I discovered during my trip. It was so great to read something that validates all my experiences in tropical birding - his descriptions and experiences are just spot-on and quite informative.

Trips to Florida were fruitful. I visited my Dad 3 times this year, in February, October, and December. I was able to make excursions to the Everglades and the Keys, and saw a number of new birds on these trips. 20 of my lifers this year were seen in Florida.

I participated in my first-ever CBC, for Loveland, CO, on Jan 2. It was organized by my neighbor across the street Nick Komar, a well-known name in Colorado birding circles. (I have to mention that we had no idea in buying this house who our neighbors were - that one would be a big-time birder as well as a great guy was a fortunate occurence.) Through this experience I got an introduction to great birding locations in Larimer County and southern Fort Collins, with all its lakes and prairie. I also learned what it meant to do a 'census' of birds, which was something I'd never done before.

In late June I went on a crazy 36-hour trip to northeast and southeast CO with Nick, his son Nick Jr., and Cole, looking for a variety of migrants and other rarities. I got quite sleep-deprived, but I saw a lot of cool birds, including 9 lifers. One of them was this Mississippi Kite, digiscoped at left. That trip served as the inspiration for another shorter one I did in mid-September on my own to Prewitt Reservoir, to look for the Curlew Sandpiper (which I did see). That trip was another first - it was the first time I'd gone on a trip on my own to look for a recently reported rare bird.

Now, to the academic approach. In June I did a 4-day course with the Rocky Mountain Nature Association, on Rocky Mountain birds, led by Dr. Richard Beidleman. In November I took a 2-day class offered by the RMRP on raptors, taught by Program Director Judy Scherpelz. That was also excellent, and will be a class worth repeating in the future. Having these occasional seminars which take a somewhat more formal tack toward bird-learning was a nice addendum to all the self-learning that I usually do.

Speaking of self-learning, I've recently been reading Gill's Ornithology, a common intro-level ornithology textbook that I checked out from the CSU library. Reading a textbook on birds - now that's something I wouldn't have done just a year ago. It epitomizes the way my interest in birds seems to be heightening (or in Cindy's opinion, careening out of control). To me though, it's all good.

And wouldn't you know, just as I wrap up this post, I can hear a Townsend's Solitaire outside our family room, my first (yard) one of this winter season. What a wonderful and welcome bird. I already am very excited about 2006, about the birds I'll see, and the things I'll learn about them. Isn't that what this is all about?

tags: birds retrospective

The Peabody Ducks

2005-12-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Holidays to everyone, by the way. I hope you're all as fat and happy as I've become these past few days. I've been in KC visiting my folks, getting ready to head back to Colorado tomorrow on the 10-hour drive. Not much birding lately, although I did see a nice Carolina Wren on my mother's back deck, presumably the same bird I saw here last summer.

During dinner tonight I learned the story of the Peabody Ducks, from my mother who herself heard the story on recent trip to Memphis, Tennessee. It's a funny thing, I think, just in that it sorta goes to show how bemused we humans can be when seeing birds (in this case, ducks which are already rather comical) do what we do. Check it out.

tags: birds ducks Peabody Ducks

Florida Epilogue

2005-12-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

The wife and I returned to Colorado from Florida last night. We had a nice time - and I managed to squeeze in some birding into what was really just a short getaway vacation for my hardworking spouse.

The bird stories, summarized:

No Pileateds, like I was hoping for. We were at my Dad's for two days, but the weather was lousy. We biked through the woodsy area where I've seen them before but no dice.
Shark Valley birds were OK, but very sparse. Damage from Wilma certainly must include more than just park infrastructure. The flooding is very extensive, and wetlands which normally are just marshy are now under a foot or two of water, way too deep for waders (and apparently still too shallow for divers or dabblers). It was kinda scary actually, looking out to the horizon for long stretches and seeing virtually no birds anywhere. Overall I counted maybe a dozen Ibises, no ducks, and one sandpiper.

When we did see birds in the Everglades, many of them were Anhingas. The wife got very good at spotting them. In general she also enjoys birdwatching when the birds are large and easy to see, without optics. Otherwise she feels left out, and impatient.
Oh, a Green Herons too. I've never seen so many Greens so easily. But no Night-Herons, either Black- or Yellow-crowned.
One particular Black Vulture we saw in Shark Valley had no tail feathers. None. I wish I'd gotten a photo of it. Its legs stuck out behind it, and even my wife noticed it.
Birds elsewhere, including my Dad's, were also pretty sparse in general. Curiously though, when I visited in October, they had a pretty nice selection of migrants there. Maybe it's just some mid-December doldrums? I'm curious to hear how their CBCs turn out.
At Bahia Honda State Park in the Keys, I saw a visitor report in their nature center of a Bald Eagle in the park last fall. I wasn't sure if I believed it, thinking that Balds would be pretty uncommon down there, which is probably true. I also imagine that many casual observers can confuse Osprey with Balds, if they're not familiar with both birds. However, on our drive back to the mainland, we did spot a Bald Eagle perched high on a power pole in the Keys. I was convinced that the visitor report was likely legit. Who am I to doubt?
An hour after we left my Dad's for the airport, he took this photo of one of his feeders. Having never seen the male Painted Bunting, I'm kicking myself for having missed it by such a small margin.
I picked up one more Year Bird on the trip - Royal Tern.
I got close to getting a Barred Owl too - we heard two of them at Mahogany Hammock in Everglades NP in late afternoon, calling to each other. But they never showed themselves, and my wife tugged on my sleeves to get us over to the Pa-hay-okee Overlook for the sunset.
I did get some nice bird shots overall for the trip. Yes, I will post a couple more soon.

tags: birds Florida

On the Road

2005-12-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

Live from the Super 8 in Florida City...a little mid-trip update. We're having a great time, and although this isn't really a birding trip, I do manage to sneak in a fair amount of bird photography. From earlier today, at Bahia Honda State Park halfway down the Florida Keys, is this shot of a Great White Heron hanging out on an old seawall. Note the thick light-colored legs and the particularly heavy-set bill. Kudos to my wife Cindy for spotting the bird for me, as I was somehow oblivious to it as we were walking along the old Bahia Honda bridge way above the bird.

I also have some nice shots of Magnificent Frigatebird, Common Ground Dove, Eurasian Collared-Dove, and Wood Stork, which I may post at some later time. Tomorrow we're off to Shark Valley and a bicycle ride around the big loop there.

tags: birds florida

Ivory-bills in Florida?

2005-12-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

I'm off to Florida to visit my Dad again for the next several days. I'll have my laptop handy (and my digital camera), but I don't know if I'll have a chance to blog. If I do you'll see an update here.

This trip is my last chance to pick up some warm weather birds for 2005, and to study Ivory-bills. Well, not Ivory-bills directly, but their cousins, the Pileateds. My Dad gets them around his yard every so often, and if I get a chance to see them I'll be looking very closely at their flying gait and color flashes.

I've seen Pileated many times before, but I admit I've not paid enough attention to details like this. It's all part of my effort to "look at every bird".

tags: Ivory-billed Woodpecker birds Florida

My Ivory Tower

2005-12-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

Like most birders I was thrilled to learn that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker had been re-found in the US after nearly 60 years. I read the accounts from the Cornell Lab teams and watched the now-famous Luneau video, all 10 seconds of it. I pretty much took everything I read at face value, and was reassured by the authoritative voice coming from CLO.

But I've recently come across a few blogs and other statements expressing some concerned skepticism towards the identifications, and the subsequent efforts toward conserving the believed habitat of the remaining Ivory-bills. I admit that I was a little surprised to discover this skepticism, but after reading about the basis of it, I've had to rethink my own ideas on the whole matter.

I've only read up on the Ivory-bill marginally, and I make no pretense at expertise. I will say however that while I consider the video to be compelling evidence, I don't consider it definitive, unassailable proof of the existence of the species. For such an extraordinary claim, it just isn't extraordinary evidence. Not yet.

Now, the Luneau video shows a large black woodpecker with a remarkable amount of white in the wings - way more than any Pileated I've ever seen. But the video is grainy and I've also now heard of stories of 'abnormal Pileateds', which presumably can have much more white in them than usual. I've not investigated those claims, and I need to. In either case though, there is just no prima facie logical basis for claiming this bird is either a Pileated or an Ivory-bill.

All this motivates me to read up more on the "controversy", because in the absence of any clear photography showing this bird, we may well be stuck in this limbo state of having to treat the actual scant data as a Rorschach test that ends up saying more about our own standards of evidence and desire to believe than it does about the bird we all want to save. Because so much in the way of public and private resources are about to be committed here, there needs to be transparency and honesty as to what has actually been observed.

tags: ivory-billed woodpecker birds conservation

Cool Birds 2: the Great Horned Owl

2005-12-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

We are blessed here in North America with one of the most fearsome as well as evocative birds - the Great Horned Owl. It is a familiar bird to most people, and yet probably only few have ever had the opportunity to witness them in closer quarters. They are by no means rare, but they are rarely seen or heard by the population at large - in most cases you do have to go looking for them to see them, often at night. The good part is that when you do see them, you will be enchanted by those huge forward-facing yellow eyes staring at you. And even if you don't see them, just hearing their hoots, especially if you're camping in the woods and you wake up to hear them at 4am as I have, can be just as exciting. There's something inexpressibly haunting about knowing there are highly skilled hunters prowling the tree canopy in the dead of night.

The Great Horned Owl belongs to the Family Strigidae, the "typical owls". This is a fairly large family, consisting of over 160 species worldwide, of which 18 live in North America. The Great Horned is not actually the largest North American owl (Snowy and Great Gray Owls are larger), but it is pretty large as owls go. They are most familiar for their resonant low-pitched hoot calls, which are what most people imagine owl calls to be - usually, two rapid hoots, followed by 2-4 slower hoots. They are nocturnal hunters, preferring to feed mostly on small mammals like rodents ands rabbits; passerine birds and sometimes game birds like quail or pheasant; and other small critters like lizards or scorpions. However, they are also capable of taking down even larger prey like skunks - at the RMRP we recently admitted a GHOW that anyone with a sense of smell would know had just been feeding on one. Great Horneds will also prey upon other birds of prey, especially their nestlings. I'll discuss shortly how they manage to do that effectively.

First, a couple images I've captured. Last September I snapped this shot of a GHOW at Cottonwood Hollow, just off Prospect Rd in Fort Collins near the Poudre River. It was kind enough to light onto a branch only yards from the trail, but as you can see it gave me the evil eye as I edged gingerly toward it for a closer look. Even though they are largely nocturnal, Great Horneds can be active during the day too, as this one was. One possibility is that this one was looking for a new nest site. GHOWs don't build their own nests, but rather seek abandoned ones belonging to other large birds. They can also nest in tree cavities, crevices, or stumps.

Speaking of nest sites - earlier in April while on a trip with the RMRP, I got this unfortunately blurry shot of a nesting GHOW in Frank State Wildlife Area, east of Fort Collins. Not easy to see, but there are 4 nestlings being watched over - an unusually high number for the species, which normally raise no more than 3 at a time. Our trip leaders remarked that this wasn't the only fruitful nest they'd seen recently. Apparently last spring was a good one for Great Horneds here.

The definitive outward physical feature of GHOWs is their ear tufts, often called horns, but technically referred to as plumicorns. They are the source of this bird's common English name, but these tufts are not actually associated with its ears. Owl ears are located on the sides of their heads, asymmetrically, so that they are better able to pinpoint sound direction with utmost precision, especially at night. The tufts, on the other hand, serve as both mood communicators to other owls (they can be erected or lowered), and as "shape interruptors", a useful adaptation that makes it harder for prey to identify them as a predatory bird. The idea here is that the "horns" make it more likely that a prey item will not recognize the body shape of the owl, if, say, it is perched nearby in low light.

One of the reasons GHOWs do as well as they do is that their nesting cycle starts considerably earlier than many other birds - some breed as early as January. Their thick plumage and diverse feeding habits allow them to overwinter in colder climes, and to survive late winter freezes. This basically gives their young, who are fledged by March or April, a head start on any other nesting birds in their area, making it all the easier to prey on them and especially their young. Their prey list includes not only small owls, but even the young of other birds of prey like Osprey or Red-tailed Hawks. This early breeding is a remarkable adaptation which helps us understand why their range is as large as it is - an expansive diet increases options especially in places where specific food sources are highly cyclical.

Another reason GHOWs do well, and one reason they are such a cool bird, is that their feathers come with an amazing feature whereby the barbs on the leading edge of the flight feathers are especially long and well-separated. This serves to reduce turbulence and therefore wing noise while in flight - a silencer, if you will. The reduction in flight noise is dramatic - while tending to GHOWs in the large flights (cages) at the RMRP, I'm stunned by how silent those that fly overhead from one high perch to the other are, even while flapping. Not only does this allow them to hear their prey more easily, it gives them an extra stealth factor while honing in on their target. This feature isn't unique to Great Horneds - in fact it is present in many owls, and even some nightjars - but it is one that for them has evolved to perfection.

Just because a bird is familiar doesn't mean it can't also be a cool bird. The Great Horned Owl is a perfect example of that - we in North America should be thrilled to have them right here lurking in our own neighborhoods.
tags: owls birds nature animals

Interview with a Penguin

2005-12-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

Don't let their cuteness fool you - they're testy, aloof, and have stubborn PR handlers. Check it out.

tags: penguins birds

A Winter Sampling

2005-12-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

I made my first-ever venture down to Chatfield Reservoir south of Denver today. My hope was to get there before the bad weather set in, and try to re-find the Yellow-billed Loon and Black Scoter seen there last Sunday. But I was too late, and not bundled up enough, and the bitter cold wind kept me from doing a real search of the water. Bummer.

Still, I got a couple decent bird photos out of it, so it wasn't all for naught. Here's a bird that I first thought was a "bluish" Snow Goose, but may actually be a partial albino or a mystery hybrid. (Any thoughts? Feel free to comment, I'm open to suggestions.) I found it hanging with some Canadas in a field west of the reservoir. While driving to the boat ramp on the north end, I spotted a California Gull hunkered down alone in the middle of a parking lot. Wouldn't have been my first choice for roosting spot, but hey, it's not my call. I headed home not long after that. When I got there, I came upon a grateful Northern Flicker at my suet feeder, on the coldest day we've had so far this season. Memo to myself - next time I want to do cold weather birding, wear thicker gloves. Fingers that get numb after 5 minutes do not help you find rare birds.

Update (8:20pm): I removed the "Snow Goose" ID in lieu of something more indeterminate for the time being.

tags: birds bird feeder

Fish Crowing

2005-12-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

While perusing that Snowy Owl link mentioned earlier, I soon discovered some other nice pages on the site concerning crows. One question in the FAQ archive asks, how do you tell a Fish Crow from an American Crow? An excellent question.

His site offers the definitive breakdown of the situation, but I thought I'd recount my own experience too. I ID'ed my first Fish Crow last February on a trip to Florida to visit my Dad, who lives in Highlands County in the central part of the state (about 90 miles south of Orlando). While biking around his neighborhood (which is in a relatively rural area with new housing developments), I saw a number of black birds which I simply called "crows", meaning American Crow, until they spoke up. I heard the nasal caw-caw, just as depicted in this audio file, and once I heard several individuals with the same tonality, I felt confident that it wasn't simply a begging call from an American. The timbre just wasn't right for an American - more than just nasal, actually, it's...well, I call it "constricted", as if the bird almost sounds like it's being choked. Once I heard it, I actually found it quite distinct, and will never confuse it with any American call again.

I got another chance for skill reinforcement in October on another visit to see my Dad. This time the Fish Crows were all around his backyard, which was quite convenient since I now had a nice digital SLR with telephoto handy. As you can see, they are very similar looking at first blush to American Crow, and without their frequent calling, it would be very hard to separate them. McGowan cautions on discerning the species based on physical characters in the field given their subtlety, and based on my own experience I would have to agree. As much as I wanted to, I was not able to use size difference at all - it is just so difficult to judge that in the field, especially if the birds aren't side-by-side. I mean, sure, sometimes they do kinda look a little small, but that's in no way reliable. Even looking for the "shorter legs" was more problematic than I would have thought, just from consulting Sibley.

Another difficult character McGowan mentions is the relative lengths of P5 and P9 in the Fish vs. the American. I have a couple photos of the bird in flight, and offer one here. Stills of birds in flight must be carefully interpreted, since the appearance of feather length can be distorted by momentary flexure of the wing and the observer's viewing angle. Those caveats aside, both my pictures show P9 to be at least as long or much longer than P5. (I know that P9 isn't actually significantly longer than P5, but I would submit that it is much more likely to appear so, and to appear lengthier in a Fish Crow than in an American, under similar flight postures.) By comparison, this photo by Bill Schmoker of an American with wings outstretched suggests P9 to be about the same length as P5.

Another piece of supportive circumstantial visual evidence was the ruffling of the throat feathers during calling that McGowan mentions. You can see that in my pic on the left of another Fish Crow individual, taken shortly after the one above. Also note his bent-over posture - again, not exactly diagnostic, but given the other data, at least supportive of the Fish Crow ID.

In the end, the calls are always your best bet. Thankfully, crows are rarely bashful or reserved, and can usually be counted on to give themselves away without much cajoling. May your Fish Crowing be as educational as mine.

tags: birds crows

Snowy Owls

2005-12-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

Via BirderBlog, Cornell has posted a page describing Snowy Owl identification (aging and sexing). Very nice - I can't wait for a chance to actually see one of these gorgeous birds.

Snowys are rare winter visitors to the northeast part of Colorado.

A Lesser would have been more

2005-12-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

I got excited for a moment this morning when I saw this bird at my feeder:

The Lesser Goldfinch is a very rare occurrence in Colorado in the winter. But when I lived in California, goldfinches of either type were ho-hum birds even in the winter. I never spent much time trying to learn the subtle differences between Lessers and Americans when I lived there.

But this time, I had to school myself fast on the subject, at least until I remembered to get the camera. I wanted so much to make this female into a Lesser, but after a while I had to admit that the darkish bill wasn't enough to overcome the light undertail coverts, the prominent wing bars, and the largish size for a goldfinch, all of which point strongly to American. Still, occasions like this are good exercises for me, forcing me to crack open Sibley (and Petersen et al.) and really learn the birds. I've now taken to heart an adage I overheard last September at Prewitt Reservoir, while among birders looking for a Curlew Sandpiper amid a slew of Stilts: "Look at every bird."

Excellent advice.

tags: birds birdwatching

Listing Surprise

2005-12-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

Back in April I decided to let my inner Lister go wild, so I expanded upon my Life List (which I have ordered chronologically and taxonomically), and added the following:

A year list (2005, and every year going forward)
A state list (Colorado)
A state-year list (Colorado 2005, currently the same as the CO state list
An ABA-area life list
A Costa Rica life list
A Peru life list

Tonight I decided to create a "retro-list" for California. In all my years living there I never had one, but now that listing is important to me, I went through my ABA-area list and filtered out the non-CA birds, but I did leave in those which I know I've subsequently seen in CA, even if I don't have a date or location for the sighting yet.

To my surprise, my all-time CA life list, which includes birds I saw over a 10-year span, is only 10 better than what I've seen here in CO in just one year (235-225). Goes to show what some time off and living across the street from a list-crazy neighbor can do for you.

Now if I could only count those exotics I saw at the Denver Zoo last September....

tags: lists birds

A Day in the Life at RMRP

2005-12-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

So what exactly do volunteers at the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program do? Well, here's a quick rundown of what goes down at a typical morning treatment:

Initial bird check. Someone looks in all the bird flights (cages) and checks to make sure all the birds are accounted for, and appear to be alive. You never know what happens overnight.
Pulling SOAPs. SOAP is an acronym for Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan, and it is basically the official report and a record of all human interactions with the bird, and a description of how the bird is to be treated on a daily basis. This last part is also called the PPP, or Pre-Printed Plan. Some birds' PPP has them getting fed and having their cages cleaned in the morning, making them a so-called 'AM' bird, while others are 'PM' birds. Owls are generally PM birds while all others are 'AM', but exceptions occur.
Food prep. Birds get fed fresh raw meat, usually prairie dogs (referred to in the center as p-dogs), mice, rats, and sometimes venison or red meat like deer or beef. Occasionally we get duck, goose, or turkey. Food prep involves determining how much each bird gets fed, and butchering however much it needs (as written in the PPP). This is usually the grossest part of the treatment - I make sure never to breath through my nose at this point. P-dogs are the worst.
Cage cleaning. In the summer we can use hoses, but in the winter we have to use water buckets. Because the cages are outside, standing water can freeze, so we have to reduce the overall water usage that time of year, while still cleaning as much as possible.
Meds. While the cage cleaning is happening, an "M1" or medical volunteer begins going through whatever specific regular medical treatments that certain active case birds require, like applying topicals, injecting fluids, inspecting wounds, etc.
Food drop. This occurs after a cage is fully cleaned, and is usually done by the same person. The food is left on a small mat or other surface. Water in the bowl is also replaced.
Special handling birds. These are usually educational birds, the nonreleaseables that are now trained to make public appearances. It also includes nonreleaseables in training, or other special cases which regular 'H' level volunteers are not allowed to be close to, for whatever reason. Sometimes it's because the bird is especially afraid of humans, other times it's because the bird has delicate bandaging on its wings or elsewhere, and needs to be closely monitored by professionals to make sure they don't get damaged.
This also includes the educational birds that have to get fed on the fist. In this case, a qualified 'E1' or ed bird handler can take the bird out its flight, fully jessed (leashed), and personally feed the bird.
Cleanup. All the aforementioned usually creates a mess in the main treatment room, so we do sweeping, mopping, utensil cleaning, and garbage removal. There's also the nasty bit called 'necropsy', in which biomaterials like uneaten food, feather clumps, and discarded butchering remains have to be disposed of properly.
Final bird check. This ensures that all the birds have water, are where they should be, etc., before all us humans go off and do our thing.

Depending on the active case load and how many volunteers are helping in a session, this can take anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. Winter is usually quicker, due to a smaller case load, despite the slowness of bucket cleaning. Summer can be extremely busy, and if only a few volunteers are present for a treatment, it can take up to 7 hours to finish, like it did for a couple times last July.

tags: birds raptors rehabilitation

Bird Morality

2005-12-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

From bootstrap analysis:

Cowbirds have an undeserved poor reputation as being lazy or immoral. Of course, the attitude that birds, or any other animal, can or should follow human expectations of ethical or moral behavior is illogical and unreasonable.

Certainly true, although I hasten to add that a fair number of those concerned with the actions of nest parasites base that concern more on conservation issues. Nevertheless, it is not always easy for us to separate out that visceral response to witnessing what would be an atrocity in its human representation.

I don't intend this to be a lengthy exploration of bird morality, but the topic is interesting. Curiously, though, this isn't the case only with those who react negatively to cowbirds and other nest parasites, but also to certain groups in reaction to March of the Penguins. Roger Ebert:

The stupendous success of “March of the Penguins” this summer has led some political and religious agenda-promoting scalawags to paint weird and disturbing parallels between penguin behavior and human behavior, and to draw insupportable conclusions that do not exactly square with zoological reality.

He's referring to media critics like Michael Medved and Maggie Gallagher. And let's not even mention penguin homosexuality. OK, I change my mind, let's:

Every day at Manhattan's Central Park Zoo the two males entwine necks, vocalise to each other and have, er, sex. When offered female companionship, they decline.

Roy and Silo have even displayed urges to procreate, and once tried to hatch a rock. Finally their keeper, Rob Gramzay, gave them a fertile egg from another brood. Tango, their chick, was born later. The pair raised it lovingly. 'They did a great job,' admits Gramzay.

I believe there's nothing wrong with finding character traits in birds that help us appreciate them more. As long as it remains clear that bird morality is not something we humans are privy to understand - in this we can only gaze from afar.

Back to cowbirds though. If it cannot definitely be shown that cowbird range expansion is causing population drops in host songbird species in these newly penetrated areas, then from a conservation perspective the cowbirds are cleared of their "responsibility", and we can resume concern for decreasing populations of host species due to more direct human causes like habitat destruction and collisions with transmission towers, etc.

tags: morality birds conservation

Cool Birds 1: the Hoatzin

2005-11-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first installment of a new feature for Feather Weather, a regular series on Cool Birds. These posts highlight birds which possess outstanding traits, sometimes beautiful, sometimes scary, sometimes just outright peculiar. These birds surprise and inspire us, and help us appreciate the grand biodiversity of our planet. Our inaugural feature today will be for the very distinctive Hoatzin, a bird that some consider the strangest bird in the world.

I was fortunate enough to go on a 5-day trip to the upper Amazon basin last May, specifically to Manu National Park in Peru. Tropical South America is the only place in the world where you can find the unique Hoatzin (pronounced "waat-zin"). This photo was taken by me on our last day in Manu, on Otorongo Lake (an oxbow lake near the river, a common place to find Hoatzin). We plied the calm lake waters in a small catamaran, and came across a half dozen individuals on a snag over the water. The other 4 left, but this character (and the one in the photo below) hung around to see what we were on about. I only had my Nikon point-n-shoot, but we got close enough for me to get this decent shot. It was a memorable moment, drifting as close as we did, all the while hearing the hiding birds perform their enigmatic wheezy whine calls.

The Hoatzin has a very primeval appearance - a blue patch of featherless facial skin, an upright spindly crest, and bright red eyes. The nestlings also possess something extremely rare among living birds - hooks at the elbow on either wing, to help them clamber back up logs or branches, in the event that they fall to the ground or into the water below. With age these hooks disappear, but their resemblance to fossilized features on Archaeopteryx adds to their prehistoric cachet.

The Hoatzin's digestive system is also highly peculiar. Most birds have a system involving a crop, a gizzard, and the stomach - the Hoatzin's crop instead has evolved into a foregut, making it more similar to a cow than to virtually any bird. (Only the Kakapo of New Zealand has something similar.) It needs this foregut because it digests leaves and other vegetable matter which require an area to ferment. The fermenting process takes on quite a stench though, and sure enough the bird is sometimes colloquially known as the "stinkbird". This foregut adds considerably to the weight of the bird, making it something of a clumsy flier, which was apparent when we saw them flutter into the brush in Peru. (Fortunately we didn't have to experience their stink!) It also means they have to spend some time digesting, which makes them relatively sedate while roosting and not so hard to see for interested birders. As to why the Hoatzin has this bizarre system, researchers remain uncertain.

The Hoatzin has also been difficult to discern taxonomically. Early systematists placed it among the Galliformes, which include birds like quail, grouse, turkeys, chickens, and pheasants. This made some sense, given the unclear relationships between these groupings of birds already - the Hoatzin was yet another mystery set among them. However, with more advanced biochemical and genetic methods, as well as continued anatomical and morphological study, the distinctiveness of the Hoatzin increased, and the closest relatives to the Hoatzin were determined to be the Cuculiformes, the Cuckoos. But including the Hoatzin among cuckoos is problematic not only because of the its aforementioned digestive system, but also unlike any cuckoo, the Hoatzin is anisodactyl, meaning that its feet have 3 toes forward and one pointing back, like many birds. All true cuckoos are zygodactyl, with 2 toes forward and two back. Thus, the Hoatzin is placed in a monotypic family (a family of one species) called Opisthocomidae. A few researchers then go further and place it in its own Order, Opisthocomiformes, while other more cautious types leave it among the Order Cuculiformes.

Regardless of whatever becomes known about the Hoatzin's lineage, it certainly qualifies as a unique and remarkable creature. The Hoatzin is definitely a cool bird.

tags: birds Hoatzin taxonomy

Classy Birds

2005-11-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

The deeper one delves into the study of birds, the thornier (and more intriguing) the issue of bird taxonomy becomes. My own interest in birds began over a decade ago, but only in the past year have I made a concerted effort to learn about family relationships and overall classification - before that, my lack of bioscience background inclined me to stay away from such topics, which appeared to me to be merely academic. (Bear in mind that my own science background has an adage, only semi-joking, that "all science is either physics or stamp-collecting"!)

Once I realized how much understanding bird relationships could help me be a better birder, I started to take the topic far more seriously. I took the trouble to classify my whole life list, so that I could figure out which families I'd seen in my travels. Traveling abroad definitely gives an impetus to studying these things, because it is when you see birds that don't fit at all into your previous experience (or better yet, you see birds that do resemble those you see at home), it is natural to wonder if they are relatives. Also, learning family relationships allows one to consider morphology and behavioral differences between species, especially the subtle ones, and those often are key to making proper identifications on hard-to-see birds. Besides, learning all these things turns out to be quite rewarding in its own right - having context for your observations makes the experience in the field all the more enjoyable. And, it allows you to recognize when you're actually seeing something unusual, if the bird happens to deviate from its usual appearance or actions.

I've been using several resources so far to gain knowledge on bird families, but the main two at my disposal are Don Roberson's Creagrus website, and my copy of Firefly's Encyclopedia of Birds, edited by Christopher Perrins. The Firefly series may be familiar as one popular for getting kids more interested in science, especially animals, as they have similar books to this
on insects, the human body, mammals, and the earth. But this book, despite its supersized photography and eye-candy layout, is hardly a book just for the younger set. The articles are written by the world experts on each bird family (or grouping, strictly speaking), and are quite detailed. Of course, it is only meant as an introduction to the field, and isn't as in-depth as the Handbook of the Birds of the World series, the 16-volume set that covers every single species in the world. But the Perrins' book does its job well, and makes the continued study of bird classification very fun.

And thorny, as I mentioned at the outset. I'll post more soon about some of the more difficult problems of classification, because even to a neophyte like me, it is clear that there are plenty of deep mysteries in bird relationships.

Bird handling

2005-11-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

I've been volunteering at the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program for about 9 months now. One of the chief reasons I started there was to handle birds for programs and exhibits for the general public, so that I could share my enthusiasm and conservation concerns for these creatures. I have been in training for handling the birds the past couple months, which takes a while, but is thoroughly engrossing. So far I've trained with several approved educational birds (nonreleaseable birds which have been trained for regular human contact):

Merlin
American Kestrels (Blind, and the Fractured Humerus)
Burrowing Owl
Swainson's Hawks (Male, and Female)
Red-tailed Hawk (Blind)
Turkey Vulture
Great Horned Owl (Light-phase)

The parenthetical descriptions are there to distinguish one particular ed bird from another of the same species. (Pet names are not given to any birds, the idea being that doing so might give the general public the impression that they are pets, which they are not. It helps retain a respect for the animals.)

There are several other ed birds I've yet to handle. It'll probably be another couple months before I'm fully evaluated as an "E1" (educational bird handler, for all birds except eagles). But when I'm finally legit I'll try to post a pic or two of me in action. Also, I'll be commenting on other personal issues as they pertain to my work at the RMRP in later posts.

Best Backyard Bird (so far)

2005-11-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

Late one afternoon back in late September, a fluttering bird caught my eye through the kitchen window to our backyard. We have a finch feeder back there, and I'm accustomed to seeing House Finches and House Sparrows frequenting it, but something told me right away that this bird, furtively moving around the ivy, was different. I waited for it to move again, and muttered "Oh oh oh oh oh oh !" while scrambling to find my binocs and my camera. Cindy wondered what the hubbub was, so I told her it was a migrating thrush, the first one I'd ever seen in our yard.

We've been here for about a year, and we generally don't get too many really interesting birds back there. The highlights so far have been Townsend's Solitaires, a first-year male Black-Headed Grosbeak, Pine Siskins, a short-lived invasion of Common Grackles, and an inquisitive scolding flock of House Wrens. But this handsome Hermit Thrush was a welcome addition. I photographed it with my Canon XT Digital Rebel with 300mm telephoto, through a glass door (not what I'd have liked, but I didn't want to spook the bird - thrushes are easily disturbed).

This bird hung around for about 15-20 minutes, looking around curiously, and remaining wonderfully calm. That helped because I did have to spend several minutes studying it with Sibley in hand, making sure it was indeed a Hermit and not a Swainson's (or even some unlikely variety like Gray-Cheeked) Thrush. I based my ID on its reddish-tinged tail (not seen in this photo, but in others), the lack of buffy wash on the breast, an overall squat appearance (Hermits are slightly chunkier-looking than Swainson's), and that the breast marks are sharper and not as smudgy as other brown thrushes.

It's nice when you can add a Colorado Life bird and a Year bird without leaving your house.

The Birder I Am

2005-11-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

I recently went on a birding trip with my neighbor Nick and a few other area zealots. We drove down to the southern half of the state, to Pueblo, Cañon City, and South Park, looking for Red-throated Loon, Red-necked Grebe, scoters, and swans. Lots of birding chatter in the car all day, and often in scenarios like that, I get a little introspective. I found myself a little envious of these other guys and their exploits, and their bird ID knowledge. And in my usual self-deprecating way, I began to compare myself to them, unfavorably. I wondered when my skills would ever be as well-honed as theirs, and to have the confidence to call in an ID on virtually any bird I saw, and not be afraid of being wrong.

But later it occurred to me that my evolution as a birder is such that I will probably never feel "comfortable" or "adequate" in this way. The confidence I refer to above is one borne of complacency, of thinking that I will get to a point where I know all that I'm interested in knowing. And that doesn't describe my approach to birding or birds at all. Every year or 2-3 year period of my birding life has been markedly more intense than the period before it, which leaves me with the feeling of being far more interested and focused on birds than I was just a couple years before. For example, back in 1999, I bought a Kowa spotting scope (with a fluorite-coated objective) for the purpose of IDing wading birds in the marshes of San Francisco Bay and around Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay. My life list reflected the purchase too, as I found my first Brant, Long-tailed Duck, Red-breasted Merganser, and Pelagic Cormorant with its help. For me, this was a statement of how serious of a birder I was becoming, and that I wanted to be able to pick out those birds way out on the water. I didn't think along those lines back in '97 or '98.

In 2002, I went to Costa Rica for the first time. I bought the Skutch and Stiles Field Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica and studied it in preparation. I read the bird descriptions, habits, and distribution info intensely when I was there, which helped me in many cases, like in nailing down the Green Shrike-Vireo, Red-faced Spinetail, and Yellow-bellied Elaenia. And even though I got frustrated at times with the challenges of birding in tropical forests, I realized I was taking a step forward in my birding life. I just felt so much more...serious, and intent than I did just a couple years before.

Now, in 2005, with all the free time I've had, my birding life grew again by leaps and bounds. My life list finally grew up, and I took the time and trouble to learn bird taxonomy and sort all my lifers appropriately. For the first time I actually did my birding with other people, which gave me a chance to see how confident I was in IDing around others. I went on frantic bird trips with Nick and others, and my life list grew substantially. Cole inspired me to start other lists, like a Colorado list and a year list. Trips to Peru and Costa Rica had me starting lists for those countries as well. And I've joined two different local mailing lists to share and get info on local rarities that pop up and now and again. I just feel so much more...serious, and intent than I did just a couple years before.

So the cycle continues, and I now think that in a couple years, I just may feel the same way then as I do now. In any case, even if I'm not quite as astute and sure of myself as those other guys I went with a few weeks back, I'm probably the kind of birder now that 5 years ago, I'd have been fairly impressed with. For a normally self-deprecating guy, that's a welcome admission of self-esteem.

The Inaugural Post for Feather Weather

2005-11-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

Birds have come to mean so much more to me than I would ever have imagined. I have created this site to explore the depth of my interest, and hopefully to share that interest with like-minded individuals. Welcome!