10,000 Oranges

The orange is a fruit of great import to Felonious Jive, the Great Ornithologist. Go to 10,000 Birds and see what the good word is.

And as a side note, for some reason my camera cannot correctly expose a photograph with a male Orchard Oriole in it. I don't know why. Very frustrating.

Birding Is Really Hard

Chuck-will's-widow, a long-awaited LIFE BIRD. I had no idea how freaking big these things were. Blucher Park, Corpus Christi, TX.

Despite the title of this post, I'm not about to pat myself on the back for being a legendary birder, or ramble on about the years of self-inflicted emotional damage birding has brought, or give all the gory details of the various life-threatening situations I've found myself in while in the pursuit of birds. When I tell you that birding is really hard, I mean it in an entirely different context.

Earlier this month I broke out of my habitual South Padre Island weekend routine to head a couple hours north to Corpus Christi, to bird with Nate of This Machine Watches Birds. The ABA just had a rally there, and specifically banned The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive from attending because, in the words of a representative, "His birding skills make our leaders look like noobs, he smells like sardines, and people tend to get blackout drunk around him". Which is neither here nor there, but if the ABA is going to have a meeting there, you know the area has potential.

Wasted potential in this case. The birding was...mediocre...well, somewhere between mediocre and shitty. We hit a bunch of different migrant traps and other spots, but it was windy and the wind had been blowing the wrong direction for several days. On the Gulf Coast in the spring, that means only one thing...

Life is pain.

But is it really? No. Aside from getting to hang out with some people besides my coworkers for a change (refreshing as hell), I got a life bird. And not just any life bird...a gigantic nightjar. So all in all, the weekend was GREAT SUCCESS.

Pardon my grain, but I think you can still infer some of this bird's sickness from this unworthy image. Truly bizarre. I can't get over the birds structure, let alone the crazy immaculate camo the bird is rocking. Blucher Park is known for being a good spot to track this species and Eastern Whip-poor-will (which we dipped on).

This was the first of many Summer Tanagers I would see this spring. Paradise Pond, Port Aransas, TX.

California can have great shorebirding, but what we get in rockpipers and Sibe vagrants, we lose in charismatic eastern species. Stilt Sandpipers is one of those birds that is usually missing from any given shorebird flock on the west coast, and it's great getting to see so many (often in full-blown alternate plumage) here in Texas. Hazel Bazemore Park, Corpus Christi, TX.

Migrating makes Stilt Sandpiper so sleepy.

Blue-winged Teal are common down this way, and are capable of inducing their own brand of facemelt when they feel like it. Just let them whip out a wing. Turnbull Birding Center, Port Aransas, TX.

American Oystercatcher. It's so refreshing to see a black and white oystercatcher and not have to double check that it is a hybrid...that gets a bit old after a while. Jehl must have gone mad. Photographed at Indian Point, Corpus Christi (?).

The American Oystercatcher: a creature cursed with cankles.

Eastern Willets are plentiful along the coast here. Those with higher GBRS rankings than myself have suggested that the Willets will be split one day. Californians have ignored the existence of this subspecies for many years, but any birder who finds themselves near the Atlantic Ocean should get familiar with telling the two apart. Photographed at Indian Point.

"Kedek kidirk kedeek kerdek." - Least Tern. The sound of Least Terns talking to themselves is music to my ears. They are small and seemingly prone to poor reproductive success, but they are energetic and bring life to any beach or wetland they visit. Photographed at Indian Point.

The humble Sandwich Tern is dwarfed by it's orange-billed relative of royalty. Photographed on Mustang Island.

Pollywog Pond was one of many boring/disappointing places we birded. "Birding is really hard", I told Nate during our stroll through some great but lifeless habitat, and I meant it. One of the few birds of interest there was this low-flying Swainson's Hawk, which repeatedly coursed back and forth low over the treetops.

Despite the regrettable lighting, I got a few shots that I like. Swainson's Hawk is one of my favorite raptors, and it's been nice getting to see so many again this spring. Wish I could say that about Mississippi Kites...birding is really hard.

Migrant Chugging

The birds are just chugging through South Texas now...anything and everything seems to be showing up. My sense of birding FOMO is growing quite acute, although my obsessive monitoring of the weather makes me not worried that I'll be missing a fallout anytime soon. Right. I was lucky enough to come across some cooperative Yellow-billed Cuckoos last weekend. Usually shy and reclusive, the cuckoo does not always stick to it's reputation in the company of one #7 birder.

I could get used to hanging out with stationary cuckoos. I feel like they do this a lot. I wonder what these birds mull over when not migrating or casually decimating tent caterpillar colonies.

Scarlet Tanagers are also moving through now, with reckless abandon. Birders are getting blinded left and right...many will never be able to see color again. I swear there is nothing redder than a male Scarlet Tanager. A cardinal appears dull and lifeless in comparison.

The notorious threat posture of the male Scarlet Tanager is enough to make anyone weak in the knees.

Drab birds want to be crushed too. Here is a female Scarlet Tanager. Note the short, grayish bill and contrasting dark wings, which help set them apart from female Summer Tanagers. They actually remind me of female Painted Buntings a little bit.

This is the one and only Veery I've seen this year. On the day I saw it, it was constantly foraging way out in the open. Very few people seemed to notice it though, although it seemed to be begging for the attention of all birders and photographers in the area. Pro tip from #7: if you want to avoid the hordes of birders and photographers at South Padre Island, watch brown birds.

See? Begging for attention. The descending, ethereal song of the Veery is one of my favorites by the way...if you've never heard one, be assured that you are poorer for it.

Although gifted with a Veeryish voice, the song of the Swainson's Thrush doesn't compare. No offense Swainson's Thrush.

I do enjoy Swainson's Thrushes...they are a fun bird to study, and relatively variable. The birds here are much drabber than those of the west coast, but still have a lot of color in the face. And yes, I have seen a couple Gray-cheeked already this spring.

There are piles of Indigo Buntings out on South Padre right now. Talk about facemelting. I'm not really accustomed to crushing helpless birds like this but I'm not complaining. If Scarlet Tanager owns the color red, Indigo Bunting has mastered the color blue.

There are often a pleasant number of birds around. Sometimes there are hella. This is hella. Here are Indigo Buntings, Orchard and Baltimore Orioles.

Dickcissel has arrived!!!! Before this year I've only seen them as vagrants in California. Now I feel like a non-vagrant Dickcissel veteran...I've seen some big flocks on SPI. I'm still trying to make sense of their face and breast pattern...its complicated. Their distinctive, fart-like calls easily give them away as flyovers.

Franklin's Gulls are still coming north in big numbers. Note the limited black visible in the underwing, and obvious white primary tips, which help differentiate it from Laughing Gull. Of course, Laughing Gulls do not have pink bellies.

The other day I went out after some north winds had been blowing, hoping for more migrants putting down than usual. While there was no fallout, there were thousands of Franklin's Gulls around the convention center. Here is a chunk of the big roosting flock.

The Global Birder Ranking System has subsequently informed me that being in the presence of so many Franklin's Gulls has awarded me +8 points. Not a bad way to level up. All photos in today's post were taken on South Padre Island, TX.

Steady Birding at South Padre Island and Suffering Through Years of Failure

Worm-eating Warblers absolutely live for dead leaf clusters. I am tempted to say something like "you show me dead leaf clusters and I will show you Worm-eating Warblers" but that's taking it a bit too far. We are getting deep into April but they are still coming through.

I'm starting to fall into a pattern you guys. When I first got here, I would go birding all over the place. This is no longer the case. Now I only really want to go birding at one place; South Padre Island. South Padre is the local migrant trap for birds coming across the gulf, and as I am a big proponent of spring migration, this is the place to go. You have probably figured this out, as every BB&B post for weeks has featured SPI. Hell, yesterday at the convention center I was confronted by three BB&B readers I've never met from Napa/Fairfield (I hope you guys slayed in Corpus), which probably speaks to how predictable I am. The birding is really picking up out there, although nothing truly epic yet.

What can I say? Sure I could go west, up the Rio Grande, and try to hunt down some ABA birds (White-collared seedeater, Red-billed Pigeon, Muscovy Duck), but I've never prided myself on my ABA list and you just never know what you might find on the coast. And since I've never seen Swainson's or Cerulean Warblers, I have no choice but go to the coast.

It is relevant, at this point, to point that out that I would be willing to do horrific, despicable things to get my eyes on a Cerulean Warbler. The bird haunts me. I have heard one many years ago (Quabbin Reservoir, MA), but that's it. I dipped on one at Sheepshead last week, which was subsequently seen the day after. The weekend before, I went up to Corpus Christi and Port Aransas in a pathetic (but otherwise enjoyable) attempt to find this bird. In my signed copy of Dunn and Garrett's Warblers, Jon writes "find a Cerulean for your county"...talk about suffering through years of failure. I have even seen one in a dream. Maybe they are the whole reason I am here...but that is too heavy to think about on a Monday.

I suspect this may be the last Louisiana Waterthrush I will see this spring. Note the blazing supercilium, lightly-marked breast and long bill.

And here are the other desirable field marks; buffy flanks and obviously pink legs. I've found that Northern Waterthrushes are disturbingly variable in appearance, but LOWA are pretty consistent in the field marks they offer.

Having no previous experience birding the Gulf during spring migration, I knew it was going to be a learning experience in terms of how abundant (or rare) different species are. Blue-winged Warbler is pleasantly reliable to find on any given day.

The Blue-winged Warblers here have a special knack for being really easy to see but a total pain in the ass to get acceptable photos of. This is pretty typical. As you can see, some of them wield mighty facemelt, but take their privacy rights very seriously.

Yellow-throated Warbler is another early migrant (and uncommon winter resident) that are tapering off now, unfortunately. Here is a typically fantastic yellow-lored bird, which I'm told is unusual here. However, members of the white-lored group (albilora) can have yellow lores. Don't know why this isn't dominica though. Do you?

This bird is interesting. The forecrown is not solidly black, which points toward being a female or immature. There is a dull yellowish wash in the supraloral area, but when zoomed in (you'll have to trust me) it is confined to the upper half of the otherwise white stripe...I am inclined to think this is a white-lored (albilora) bird with either pollen on its face (many Tennessee Warblers here get this) or a mild yellowish wash (not unusual either), or perhaps a young yellow-lored (dominica) bird, which as I mentioned is unexpected here.

A couple other things are indicative of the bird being albilora...for one, if that is not pollen they often do have yellowish lores (per Dunn and Garrett) and the very top of the bird's chin is actually white (you'll have to trust me again). I also know how horribly dry this all is, but these are the exercises #7 must run through. 

There are many confiding migrants on South Padre on any given day. For example, yesterday I pulled up next to a male Scarlet Tanager that was lying in the middle of a street. I thought it had gotten hit by a car, because I was way too close to it for the bird to be sane. Nope, I was wrong. It had just decided to kill and dismantle a huge insect right there in the median. Anyways, most Black-throated Green Warblers I run into are similarly trusting. 

Do you see? Trust. This is the face of Trust.

I thought fruit was popular with birds in the tropics...well, put some up in a migrant trap around here and see what happens. The orioles, Orchard and Baltimore (above), devour these things with reckless abandon...not to mention Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Tennessee Warblers, Summer and Scarlet Tanagers, and other good 'uns.

Baltimore Oriole is one of the most abundant migrants right now. About two weeks ago, they would get flagged in eBird. Things change quickly when migration is in full spring.

There is no shortage of horrible-looking young male Orchard Orioles that do their best to trick unwitting birders. Their impression of immature male Hooded Oriole is spot on. In Sibley (original version), a 1st summer male is illustrated (useful) but no identifying features are mentioned whatsoever (humorous).

People are a little more familiar and comfortable with identifying female Orchard Orioles (myself included), despite a similarly strong resemblance to their Hooded counterpart. 

Dropping The F-Bomb or This Is Not A Fallout

Tennessee Warbler. A veteran of many fallouts, they live to migrate another day.

Birders...today I resurrect an old blog post, with some minor changes. Now that I live within striking distance of the Gulf Coast during spring migration, I sure hear the "f" word a lot...

What I'm talking about today is a "fallout". A fallout is the stuff of birder legend, birder lore. They say you never see things the same way once you have encountered one. There is such a force of birds that you are brought to your knees, weeping openly, crying out to the bird gods, thanking them for delivering you this divine gift.

My definition of a fallout is simple. It is a MASSIVE number of migratory birds, usually passerines and landbirds, which inundate an area due to a weather event. A typical scenario is when migrants encounter bad weather on their epic and extremely perilous flight north, such as trans-gulf migrants flying to the southeastern United States directly from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. When said birds are finally able to land on solid ground, they arrive completely exhausted. Sometimes people are able to approach within a few feet of these birds, or even pick them up (I do not recommend this).

Fallouts are the stuff of birders dream of. For reals. We've all heard of them, and we all want to experience them, despite how it is a direct result of the birds' misfortune. Perhaps this is why birders left and right are constantly claiming that they saw one.

Black-throated Green Warbler is an eye-popper that has shown well in many a fallout.

Look, lets be clear. A dozen birds in your yard or favorite patch is not a fallout. A hundred probably isn't. And if they're doing their normal thing, foraging in the trees, singing their songs, then that's all it is. It's bird migration! It's great! It's so, so sick. It's what birds are expected to be doing. Sometimes there are more birds than other times. But that's not enough to conjure up the magic word. Increasingly popular bird migration forecasts seem to suggest a fallout in a region pretty much every week during spring migration. I've even seen the phrase "modest fallout"....what the hell is that? What would an immodest fallout be? The word is just getting a lot of abuse.

A true fallout describes a completely different scenario from your typical flock doing its thing. It is bird apocalypse. There are not warblers "dripping from trees"...no, they are sitting there on the ground because they are dead-tired, and many of their fellow migrants probably did not make it to shore. There is a Cerulean Warbler perched on top of Purple Gallinule in a rosebush. Under a car there is a Gray-cheeked Thrush trying to forage in the back feathers of a passed-out Chuck-will's-widow. Who knows why? Fallouts are crazy. Some old timers claim fallouts don't even happen anymore, because there are not enough birds left for it to happen....of course we all know from radar data and some solid documentation that this is not at all true, but it still seems to happen less than it used to. 

When you abuse the word you are, in a sense, settling for bird populations that may be a fraction of what they used to be...and that, my friends, is doing these birds wrong. So, in closing, think twice before you drop the f-bomb. If you tell someone to drive 5 hours to witness "the fallout" and they get there to find a couple paltry mixed flocks, there will be hell to pay...

Little instills more fear and loathing in the heart of the experienced birder than reading about a fallout that features...Yellow-rumped Warblers. Yellow-rumps possess the special ability to either be horrifically abundant or not present at all. If you are tempted to brag about a "fallout" that mostly consists of this species, you may want to reconsider. All photos today are from South Padre Island, Texas.

Ish Birds...Four In The Pink...Sora! Sora! Sora!

Reddish Egret. Obviously, this is a white morph, probably a young bird judging by the dull base of the bill. Hella elegant though. Speaking of Reddish Egrets, how come no other "ish" birds are in the U.S. and Canada? What about Purplish Sandpiper? That's a winning name right there. Yellowish Rail? Great Bluish Heron? I think I've struck gold.

Ever since the demise of the Perpetual Weekend, Saturdays and Sundays have taken on meaning again. No longer do I think, "Oh cool, my 9-to-5 friends will be down to go to a bar now". This is because A) I don't know anyone here that I would want to meet at a bar and B) because I work hella and I can only get some genuine and sustained birding in two days a week.

This weekend I am taking the nerdism to a much higher and more embarrassing level than usual and combining forces, once again, with Nate of This Machine Watches Birds. He's going to show me around the Corpus Christi/Port Aransas hotspots and hopefully hand me a lifer on a silver platter. I've spent minimal time birding that area, although I am happy to say that I am a Whooping Crane veteran. We'll see what the weather does, but next weekend I'm crossing fingers for a certain couple warblers and crossing toes for a certain couple nightjars. Or it might be a Life Is Pain weekend, but it will be good to escape the grips of the valley for a couple days.

Before BB&B returns to spring warbler madness, I thought I would pay my respects to some of the waterbirds that were around South Padre Island the other day.

Reddish meets Roseate...Reddish wins. South Florida is not the only place to go to see Reddish Egret and Roseate Spoonbill side by side.

Roseate Gull! Franklin's Gulls are migrating through the area now and they are easy to pick out from a distance because they are the only gulls that are glowing pink.

Here's one with a couple boring-breasted Laughing Gulls in comparison. Of course Franklin is not in possession of the most famous pink gull (that would belong to Ross), but I've always liked them.

You probably like them too. Admit it. Viewing this photo gives you the warm fuzzies. According to whatbird.com, this gull was named after Sir John Franklin, (who according to Wikipedia, died a horrible death while exploring the arctic wastes). The original name for this bird? Franklin's Rosy Gull.

Roseate Tern!!! Oh wait...it's just a roseate-colored tern, not a Roseate Tern. Sandwich Tern is an abundant bird on South Padre Island, and many of them are glowing pink now, much like their Elegant Tern cousins on the west coast.

There is a lot of sandwich courtship going on here. It's not as cool to watch as tandem aerial displays, but it is funnier.

The mighty bellow of a Royal Tern is a thing to behold.

I was lurking on the boardwalk at the birding center (which is next door to the convention center) and this semi-snazzy ibis traipsed out of the vegetation, not giving two fucks. I assumed it was going to be a White-faced (the expected Plegadis here), but a closer look proved me wrong.

Seeing no pink face and a depthless brown eye, I was ready to embrace it as a Glossy Ibis. But why the gray face ibis? Glossy Ibis does not look like this either.

Upon photo review, there does seem to be a slight tinge of pink in the face (apparently pink is the theme of this post), and maybe even some redness in the eye...which compliments the pale gray facial skin nicely if the bird is actually a Glossy X White-faced Ibis. Lifer hybrid! Tragically, I noticed that a "Glossy Ibis" was reported from eBird at the same spot that day.

The Sora. The commonest small rail. And yet, their abundance makes them no less difficult to observe from a very impressive proximity.

Soras of the boardwalk apparently do not know they are supposed to hide all the time. I know that not many people are frothing at the mouth for Sora observations, but it's a nice bird to come across when they are in a confiding mood.

I was pretty happy with these photos, even though the angle is kind of weird. Is there a scene more bucolic than a content Sora in a wetland? Clapper Rails run amok under the boardwalk too, hopefully I'll have a portrait of a Clapper Rail eyeball by the time I leave Texas.