Sierra Summer Birding Part II

Ahhh...this next batch of blogs is going to be very refreshing. Refreshing like how this Osprey feels when diving into a lake at 9,770 feet at Virginia Lakes. You see, I've largely managed to escape the "summer doldrums" this year, which is an important thing to avoid if you want to keep your birding sanity. Mountains have everything to do with it, not to mention early fall shorebirds...but that is for a later post. For now, its back to the Sierras.

After breakfast with the rosy-finches, Billy and I rolled down to the Bodie Hills to track down Pinyon Jays and Juniper Titmice. A jay abided, the tits did not. We did get a quality wildflower show, and Billy managed to find a solitaire nest under a boulder...a lifer nest! After leaving the hills, it was north to Bridgeport Reservoir, which I hadn't birded in many years. The south end was very birdy and coughed up a few county birds, the best of which was a distant Bald Eagle. In the afternoon Lee Vining Creek Delta (just north of Lee Vining, on Mono Lake) relinquished a few more interesting birds, in the form of Whimbrel, Caspian Tern, and some Great-tailed Grackles.

The following day we birded along the south shore of the lake and the "Mono Mills" area. Navy Beach was hella birdy, but since it was early June the diversity of species was abhorrent. Bleak, but as all the local birders must know, the potential here is real.

All in all it was a solid trip. We birded, we camped, we drank, we transported Art, and I turned 34. I'll just put up some photos now.

MacGillivray's Warblers were everywhere in the mountains. This bird was vigorously singing at our campground in Lee Vining Canyon, former home of The Grub. The Grub now lives at a nearby undisclosed location, where he has hummingbird feeders up that are currently being very well attended. That's right, The Grub has become a Geribirder.

This bird had raging hormones and let me approach as close as I could while it sang away...pretty crippling looks, probably the best I'll have of the bird this year. And who was MacGillivray you ask? William MacGillivray was a Scottish ornithologist. John James Audubon was his bro (brornithologist), and named the bird after Willie Mac. The species was actually discovered by John Kirk Townsend (of solitaire and warbler fame).

This Gray Flycatcher was south of Mono Lake, just west of the big Jeffrey Pine forest, out in the sage flats. We also had another Pinyon Jay out here, which is pretty typical despite the fact that we don't associate them with treeless areas.

As the #7 U.S. birder (according to the Global Birder Ranking System), I have something to admit to you all...aside from Buff-breasted Flycatcher, Gray Flycatcher is the easiest Empidonax to identify north of Mexico. Think about it...Willows look like Alders, Leasts can look like all sorts of things, Duskies look like Hammond's, Pacific-slopes and Cordillerans are identical, Yellow-bellieds can look like Leasts and Westerns, and Acadians can resemble all manner of things if seen poorly enough. Unlike these other species, Gray Flycatchers look incredibly consistent...in my experience they display little variability in color of the lower mandible and overall plumage. The long bill, dull color, stubby primaries, and amount of orange/yellow in the bill are very dependable field marks...the most variable field mark to me is the eyering, which can be weak to moderately bold. I reckon it is a pretty easy bird to identify, even without their distinctive summer/winter habitat preferences and tail-dipping habit that a lot of birders like to key in on.

The Jeffrey Pine forest south of Mono Lake was carpeted in Dwarf Monkeyflower. It was most mellow. This is a Pinyon Jay stronghold, the most reliable place to get them that I can think of. I imagine that every Pinyon Jays knows of this place, for it is sacred to them.

Huge blankets of the stuff turned the forest floor pink. Facemelting.

I thought this was a boldly-marked Sagebrush Lizard at the time, but now am not so confident about that. Birding is hard.

The Mono Basin is filled to the brim with Sage Thrashers in spring and summer. Funny how out-of-range Sage Thrashers tend to be so approachable, but they have always kept their distance from me in the places they "belong". One thing is for certain though...they belong in my heart.

Absurd numbers of Violet-green Swallows breed around Mono Lake. Tufa towers make very good homes apparently.

They also make good perches. For crushing. This Violet-green is not only sitting on tufa...it is being framed by tufa. Does anyone want to see my exif data for this photo? This was not in Colorado. And if any of you get that joke, my work is done here.

Ok, my work is almost done here. I'll leave you today with an excerpt from William Dawson, who has no equal in the realm of birdwriting.

What shall we do for the Violet-green Swallows? Simply this: we will call them children of heaven. 

To appear to the best advantage, this child of heaven should be seen on a typical California day, burning bright, when the livid green of back and crown may reflect the ardent glances of the sun with a delicate golden sheen. The violet of upper tail-coverts and rump comes to view only in changing flashes; but one catches such visions as a beggar flung coins, and adds image to image until he has a full concept of this rainbow hue. At such a time, if one is clambering about the skirting of some rugged precipice in Yosemite, he feels as if the dwellers of Olympus had come down in appropriate guise to inquire his earth-born business. Not, however, that these lovely creatures are either meddlesome or shrewish. Even when the nest is threatened by the strange presence, the birds seem unable to form any conception of harm, and pursue their way in sunny disregard. Especially pleasing to the eye is the pure white of the bird's underparts, rising high on flanks and cheeks, and sharply contrasting with the pattern of violet and green, in such fashion that, if Nature had invited us to "remold it nearer to the heart's desire," we must have declined the task. 

Split, Lump, Whinge, Repeat

I am now king of the scrub-jays, having seen California, Florida, Island (above) and Woodhouse's. With that milestone, I now just need to become the king of...lots of other things. 

When I first started birding, I had seen one species of scrub-jay. This is not because I hadn't yet been to places like Santa Cruz Island, Arizona or Florida, it is because the only scrub-jay that "officially" existed was the Scrub Jay. Now, the Scrub Jay has been left by the wayside, stripped of its capital letters but gaining a hyphen...and most notably was made into four separate taxa. We've come a long way.

The newest American Ornithologists Union (AOU ) supplement just came out, and a lot of birders are happy with it...you gotta love armchair lifers, or at least I do. Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay was my only addition from north of Mexico, but I got several more from Mexico and Costa Rica. I did not delifer at all, which is how I prefer it when these supplements come out. I'm not anti-lump, I just dislike losing birds. You understand. The vast majority of birders in North America bend the knee to the AOU (the king in the north!) regarding what is considered a full species and what is not, though we are rarely totally happy with what they decide.

Lesser Violetear was one of my armchair lifers. While I am pleased that I now have Mexican Violetear and Lesser Violetear instead of plain old Green Violetear, many are left wondering why the name Lesser Violetear was chosen...there is no Greater Violetear, after all. But hey, I'll take yet another poor bird name if that means a legit split got to go through.

What fascinates me is that there are a number of birders out there who are can't stand all this tinkering with species. They are neither splitters nor lumpers, they just dislike the amount of splitting and lumping that goes on. They are essentially against taxonomic revisions altogether. They dislike the new names, the new species. To them, this is just a nuisance, something they have to endure. Why is this so?

A poor grasp of science comes to mind immediately. Believe it or not, a lot of people fail to comprehend that our understanding of science is constantly changing, and overall these changes are improvements. Like many people, many birders don't really understand basic scientific concepts. People like to pigeonhole things, it's in our nature, at least culturally, and the tendency of pigeonholing is at direct odds with the changing ways we perceive and describe the world around us. We don't want to find out that the planet is not round, that the sun does not rotate around Earth, that American Coot and Caribbean Coot are conspecific. So while a lot of folks are really hung up on things staying the way they were originally taught, science marches on.

There is another reason birders advocate for a static taxonomy...they have trouble being up to date. In other words, they are simply unaware that the AOU is responsible for making these decisions and that it happens annually. A surprising number of birders believe that the American Birding Association (whose primary focus is advocating birding, not science) is "in charge" of splitting and lumping, which is indicative of the general ignorance on this topic out there in birderdom.

Finally, there is a distinction between birding and ornithology. Not all ornithologists are birders, at least not in the traditional sense. One does not simply earn the title of ornithologist after a few years of birding. Almost all birders are not ornithologists (no, "field ornithologists" don't count in this case). Science does not have to answer to the whims of birders; that's just how it is, but some birders have great difficult accepting this.

There is no doubt that birders have a lot to contribute when it comes to the field of ornithology, such as documenting the abundance and distribution of seabirds like Long-tailed Jaeger. That does not entitle reluctant birders to a moratorium on updating avian taxonomy. The AOU does not have a list enforcement arm (unlike bird record committees), so if you don't like what they do, you don't have to play by their lists.

Obviously the AOU is not perfect. If you follow the AOU very closely, you are probably aware there is no shortage of criticisms that can be lobbed at them. One could say that they act extremely slowly, they give birds poor names, they split things that should not be split and they lump things that should not be lumped. However, no one who is well-versed in taxonomic relationships, and science in general, advocates for keeping taxonomy static. There is no reason to release a single AOU supplement every 25 years just to make sure all the whinging birders are ready for it. Advocating for a fixed list of species is basically just saying "Fuck off, science. I don't want to be bothered by things changing"...and that, obviously, is a myopic, selfish and bizarre way of viewing the world. If you want to reject the fact that our collective knowledge of birds is constantly growing and changing, then you can go ahead and reject the names of birds and established species altogether. Call the Common Gallinule an American Coot instead...no one can stop you. Lesser Nighthawk? Pffffft...no, that is a Greater Daybat. Island Scrub-Jay? Napes. Mainland Blue-Flapper.

A lot of species that we now take for granted were once considered two or more species, or lumped in with other species. Long-billed Dowitcher was once considered a subspecies of Short-billed Dowitcher (above).

It all comes down to change...the last thing the world needs are more people who cannot accept the fruit of new studies and research, and the accompanying changes in the way which we understand said fruit. Sure we can be skeptical and not accept everything the AOU does as ordained by the gods of ornithology (though much of what the AOU does is ordained by ornithological gods), but change is going to come and that isn't something to be afraid of. You don't have to agree with it. The science in this field is not always perfect (the infamous Kumlien's Gull study comes to mind), as we are imperfect beings...but all the world's authoritative entities on bird taxonomy (the AOU, the IOC, the Clements checklist) can agree on one thing...taxonomy should be updated regularly. In attempting to refine the relationships between the world's birds, trying to figure out the passenger manifest of Noah's Ark is not going to cut it!

Will Red Crossbills ever be split? There was a lot of hype about it for years...but maybe an 8-way split is just too gnarly, and perhaps it is just simply not deserved...these "types" are thought to have diverged less than 100,000 years ago (for comparison, Eastern and Western Willets diverged 700,000 years ago). Whatever new information that can be gleaned about Red Crossbill types and how they are related will be fascinating to learn. Whole new frontiers of bird knowledge are opening up, and I hope those who would rather drag their sluggish feet in the past will eventually want to keep pace with the rest of us, regardless of whether field guides change or not.

Sierra Summer Birding Part I

Back in early June, Billy and I ditched the bay area and headed east into the Sierras. We were destined for Mono County, but to get there we had to endure the grotesque and horrible Yosemite National Park. Most people go to Yosemite Park, but I have a habit of just driving through it on the Lee Vining-Oakland commute. There are worse places to have to endure...in fact, most places are worse. We did stop and walk around a few random spots...no complaints about Mountain Quail, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Townsend's Solitaire, Nashville and MacGillivray's Warblers, Green-tailed Towhees...not to mention delicious, fresh mountain air. A few Mountain Bluebirds were taking in the air at Tuolumne Meadows (above).

This yellow-bellied marmot was holding it down at the meadows as well. Good luck getting this as a lowland vagrant.

Nothing was blooming in the meadows yet...a good portion was still under water. The marmot was probably still groggy from being asleep for months, unlike their Pika relatives who stay awake through the winter.

That afternoon and the following day was spent bouncing around Mono Basin...Vesper, Brewer's and Sagebrush Sparrows were quality year birds, and what I think was a Black-throated Sparrow (only sang once from a great distance away) was almost a nice year bird as well. Some Brant at Mono County Park (later seen at Rush Creek Delta on the south side of the lake) were pleasantly rare, and a bewildering number of Virginia Rails made a cacophony of unfamiliar sounds...they do more than just grunt, take that to heart. A couple random Geris (not birders) pointed out a Golden Eagle nest up Lundy Canyon, and thus I got my lifer Golden Eagle chick. The Grub showed us what he had been doing with the DeChambeau/County Ponds...I think he is determined to pull in some kind of meguh vague runt there some day, but he is currently content to nurture the sizable Yellow-headed Blackbird colony; a lone ibis and Blue-winged Teal were deec county birds for me. White-breasted Nuthatches of the Great Basin flavor were fairly common and scattered about, patiently waiting to be split into their own species. Looking for Black-backed Woodpeckers at a burn along Owens River Road was fruitless, but we did get White-headed Woodpecker, Bank Swallow and a weird sunbow (above).

That night I got hammered at the Mono Inn, which was entirely predictable.

The next morning we headed up to Virginia Lakes, which is heck of high, hella scenic and features one of the few decent Geribirding spots in the entire state. Mountain Chickadees were there (not shocking), and I hung out with this particularly confiding bird for a bit as it foraged close by.

Mountain Chickadee is my favorite chickadee...maybe from birding Lockwood Valley (Ventura County) as a kid, but I'm not entirely sure why. They sound superior to all other chickadees, in my opinion, and they've got that white eyebrow that sets them apart from everything else. Boreal Chickadees are cool, but all the others haven't built a cavity nest in my heart like Mountain Chickadees have. I guess I can't comment on Gray-headed Chickadee, but when the fuck am I going to see one of those?

Where there is Geribirding, there will be finches of some kind. Because Virginia Lakes is so damn high, Cassin's Finch was the only finch on the menu while we were there.

Living in Oakland the past few years, I don't get into high country often enough, so Cassin's Finches are still fun to look at...familiarity breeds contempt and all that. Note the classic streaking on the undertail coverts.

Take a gander at the length of those primaries...that is a bird built for wandering. You wouldn't want to get into a dispersing contest with a Cassin's Finch.

Clark's Nutcrackers were raging...I'm not sure if I'd seen so many at once before. It looked like whole family groups were coming in to eat peanuts.

Nutcrackers, as some of you know, are vital to the health of whitebark pine forests. It's not often you see a bird that essentially manages the forest you are standing in.

Judging by the short bill, this is a hatch year bird. It looks like there are a bunch of very fresh tertials growing in as well.

While Virginia Lakes is always dependable for nutcrackers, birders come here for another reason...Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch. There is no better place in the state to see them in the summer without burning a few thousand calories in the process, which is very unappealing to most birders.

The Rosy-finches finally came in to the resort's feeder after almost two hours of waiting, and promptly got down to the business of gorging. It's not the most "natural" setting, but rosy-finches are crippling birds and they are damn hard to get to (at least in this state) so I'm not going to complain if they want to frolic in a pile of seed right in front of me.

Why there are so few pink-feathered birds is unbeknownst to me. It's a very fetching color on birds, especially passerines. Rosies are just killing it with the pink-black-gray-chocolate brown combo.

Speaking of combos, here is a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch-Least Chipmunk combo. Of all the avian and mammalian visitors to this Geribirding oasis, rosy-finches are probably the least wary of humans. It warmed my small, shriveled nerd-heart to see these creatures close up once again...so much so that I am going to Colorado this month just to look at Brown-capped Rosy-Finches to keep that rosy flame burning. Well that is not the only reason, but it would be a damn fine year bird, no doubt about that. If I had a dollar for every day I've seen Brown-capped Rosy-Finch, I would have...one dollar.

I would prefer to have two.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo

It's that time. The Big Rain has returned to the thirsty Sonoran.

San Pedro River Valley, southern Arizona. Monsoon season.

Boiling morning water on the edge of a field. Botteri's Sparrow in duet with the dry, rustling grassland. Coffee and milk put to sound. The conversation is sparse and sleepy at first. We are all overwhelmed by the simple fact of having seen so many staggering birds in such a short period of time. Everyone is wincing even though we are taking our coffee in the shade. Too much beauty over the last few days. It is a tolerable pain. 

Who was Botteri? How did he die? The talk drifts between open-ended inquiry and observations of the surrounding phenomena. Rustle of cottonwood leaves. Ants circle the coffee pot. What winged facemelt awaits us today? The timing of the coffee's detonation within our brains coincides perfectly with our mounting bird lust. Camp is quickly broke and we set off across the field to the riparian and the promiscuity of more birds.

Already, the seeds of cumulus clouds are above us. They will grow steadily throughout the day. The monsoon is a slow and relentless clock, its ticking the strange midday darkness that creeps in and replaces the desert light. Great gray billows that will rip open under the weight of water, stitches blown out and the world below violently bathed. Mexican-born butterflies will saturate the air in the wake of this deluge and later, after the sun ignites the torn clouds during its setting, we will fall asleep listening to elf owl families work the night. Dreams of violet-crowned hummingbirds disappearing into sycamore cavities and emerging with firestones. Of finding a covey of scaled quail tucked away in the bottomless pockets of your coat. Wake up and live the day over again.

The field is slowly crossed. We bow to the singing Botteri's as we pass. The cottonwood and willowwall of the river loom large before us. The sounds within this riverine cathedral are kaleidoscopic. Waterwords and morning chorus. Our eyes in the treetops, we are startled by a nearby voice that joins the divine racket. 

'What a place. What a place,' it sings. 

A squat elderly man ambles toward us, his bird head cane swinging wildly. Bohemian in dress, he regards us from out the corner of his weathered and watery eyes. Ancient but excellent field glasses hang from his neck. 

'Sure is beautiful in there. Feels like I just been to church.' 

Spontaneous river spirit, his talk and demeanor at this boundary render him wise and gnome-like in our minds. None of us can manage a morning hello to this wraith.

'Looking for any birds in particular this fine morning? I know this spot pretty good.'

'A cuckoo would be nice,' someone eventually offers.

'Oh, there's cuckoos alright,' he chuckles. 'Take a seat, get comfortable and they'll come and find you.' And with a wave of his cane, the strange sentinel teeters off into the field, his quiet cackling mixing with the dry rustling of the grasses, with the Botteri's.

We turn back from him and regard the river, nay, this church, before us. In the old man's wake, a vast reverence has befallen the world. We are hushed and our pace slowed as we advance towards the water.

Gray hawks and kingfisher calls pepper the air, rising staccatos that spike the blood.

Thrashersongs in the distance and Myiarchus flycatchers darting through the mid-canopy, calling between their crushing of insects bodies.  The drunken hiccups of a summer tanager. Various makes of warblers, yellow, Lucy's, beastly chat, scrawl through the treetops. The river reflecting the world above it, whispering back all the songs it hears. I shut my eyes. It is too much. All together, it is too much.

By themselves, the sights are breathtaking. Alone, the songs an ecstasy. But taken together I feel as if my heart will give out. Which would be welcome. Let me expire in this place, my broken body tumbling into the river. Warm near-corpse floating downstream. The splinted sunlight as a heron descends to pluck my eyes are the last things I see of this world. Let every one of these beautiful winged souls take a bit of me as I sail away, bloating in the day's building heat, fish and water bugs feeding in my shadow from below.

Still alive. Eyes still closed. With effort, I can still make out Botteri's song.

A faint misting against my face. Too early for the monsoon. Haven't heard the boom of the thunderclap yet, either. The boom always comes first, a great gong announcing the imminent reckoning. 

No, this is just a sprinkling. I make mention of it and everyone can feel it now. Eyes skyward to check the clouds. Someone notices movement in the branches high above. We raise our binoculars in unified ritual. Supplication to whatever lurks above.  

A cuckoo, yellow-billed and wild-eyed. In its beak is a massive caterpillar. The bird is beating the larva to death against a branch and with each whack, guts of the caterpillar explode from it and rain down upon us.

We are being bathed in innards.

When the clouds finally broke that day, it was the great cuckoo in the sky at work. Feeding the earth with its violence, the rivers swollen with hemolymph. The world baptized in viscera.