Up To Your Old Tricks

As I contemplate what the hell I should do for work in 2012, various bird memories of past projects often come wafting to the forefront of my thoughts. In its own right, my summer on Buldir Island, AK, in 2010 was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. Least Auklets were one of the main characters of the summer that moved the plot along.

August in the Aleutians

Birders drool at the thought of seeing a Horned Puffin. Birders in the Aleutians drool because they are so common and boring. Ok thats not true...the puffins never get old, even after seeing them every day for months. They finish nesting really late in the summer so right now they are probably very busy bringing fish back to their fat fluffy chicks.

This picture is totally not from August, sorry. By now almost all the Least Auklets will be out at sea, as they finish up nesting and fledging pretty early. It's sad when you are out clambering around on Buldir Island's Main Talus and have no auklets for company...you are accompanied by a hole in your heart instead. Note the Crested Auklet and Least Auklet doing weird things in the background.

Aleutian Cackling Geese spend weeks higher up on the island while they molt their flight feathers...by August they have mysteriously reappeared near the coast. I think the front birds are juveniles.

The view from the front door of the cabin. Or, more obnoxiously, "my office".

July and August are stressful because you are just fiending for rare shorebirds (like this Red-necked stint) to appear. Rare birds, especially of the Aleutian caliber, have an addictive quality.

Some Tufted Puffins mingle above a Thick-billed Murre colony. No big deal.

Red-legged Kittiwake battle. So intense. I think those are Black-legged Kittiwake wings sticking out in back.

Black-legged Kittiwakes. Some juveniles (foreground) should be fledging by now.

Aleutian Song Sparrow. I don't know what else to say about them, except that I'm glad they were there. It's weird to not be around Song Sparrows. These are big and dark.

Scumbag.

Our Civil Liberties Will Die By Morning's Light

Red-legged Kittiwake.


"LBB". "LBJ". These are specieist terms. Yup. That's even worse than racism you know...being against an entire species.

Let me explain, nonbirders.There's a lot of birds out there. A lot. Some of them are pretty distinct. Take my friend the Red-legged Kittiwake. It looks like your basic gull....but wait. What are those things dangling off of it? Oh, it seems to have red legs. It looks like its been wading in a pool of blood. That's pretty distinct.


No. An LBJ (Little Brown Job) or LBB (Little Brown Bird) is something else. The definition is simple: a small brown bird. For example, take the Common Rose-Finch, below.

Common Rosefinch. It's rare. When your first child is being born in the hospital, this is the bird you would go see instead.


As you can see, its brown. It's a bird. I don't know about a job. But there you have it. It's brown. It's...indistinct. To the undiscerning eye (that's you, nonbirder), it looks like literally hundreds of other bird species out there. Does that make it any less awesome? No, you ass.

People who know a little bit about birds, but not a lot, will use these hurtful terms. No, scratch that....HATEFUL terms.

Parakeet Auklet. I'm still bummed I didn't get any very impressive pictures of them. They are cooler birds than you know (and one of the worst to extract from mist-nets).

In my opinion, the original reason these terms came about was relatively innocent and humble. People just couldn't hang with these birds. The lacked the skills to differentiate, for example, female Common Rosefinches and female House Finches. They just couldn't do it. It's not that they disliked them or viewed them with distaste, they just had no idea what to do. From 1997 to 2007 I worked for LBJ Enterprises, whom were usually filled with people who would have a heart attack if they were lucky enough to see a female Common Rosefinch on American soil. Thats Little Brown Jobs, not Lindon Banes Johnson.

Flash forward to 2011.

This Lapland Longspur is just checking on some stuff.

"LBB" and "LBJ" are slurs known by all who associate themselves with wildlife, birds, biology or what have you. Budding birdwatchers still use them in the same context as they belong in. But now, its become a derogatory term for everybody else. Its like, "oh, these look the same, so they don't matter". What the fuck? I mean that's a cute attitude and everything, but all it means is that your bird skills are weak and you're too lazy to do anything about it. Why are people racist? Because they are afraid. Why are people speciesist? Same reason.

The path to camp.

People are afraid to try to identify these birds. It's sad.

But let me tell you kids. It's ok. Can't tell a Chipping Sparrow from a Vesper Sparrow? Who cares? Doesn't mean you shouldn't try. The only people who can are some of the world's biggest nerds anyways. You have nothing to lose.

There is not much worse in the world than the willfully ignorant. You people, who use these terrible words, fit this description to a tee.

Thick-billed Murres are not exactly agile, but are gifted enough fliers to deal with raising families on near-vertical cliffs. This is what murre air-brakes look like.

Now that we have that out of the way, I will say that I am happy that there is more out there than those....wonderful birds I've been speaking of. Variety is the spice of life right? So instead of posting nothing but sparrows, pipits and flycatchers, I went with a suite of birds from Buldir Island.

A year ago I was on Buldir, in the western Aleutians, working absurd hours and scaring the crap out of myself trying to avoid falling off cliffs. But the birds were just so good, and the possibilities were endless in terms of weird migrants that could show up.

Horned Puffin.


2011 only turned out to be a so-so year in terms of vagrants, but I do love seabirds. When you can watch tens of thousands of auklets swirling around from the deck of your cabin you forget about bitching about that Eyebrowed Thrush that never showed up.

Right. The weekend appears to be here. I'm not sure how much I'll be working, but if the weather is right (un-frakking-likely) I'll be sure to get out and bird if I can. Someone finally found some Baird's Sparrows, which is the epitome of LBBs and one of the reasons I've come to North Dakota at all. But the plovers come first!

Why does my blog have Halloween colors? Huh.

Tufted Puffin.

I pooped a lot in here last year. I always felt self-conscious because I could hear Song Sparrows and Grey-crowned Rosy-Finches on the roof.

So I Had One More For Dessert

Hopefully this pays of better than my last attempt at posting a video here.

This is a flashback to 2010, when I was on Buldir Island in Alaska's western Aleutians for the summer. Famed Canadian Paul Jones was with us, taking some crippling bird photos and some bonus video as well. This is a peek into some of the birds and daily life aboard the Tiglax and on Buldir Island. Thanks again for putting this together Paul! May you observe many vagrants this year.

Cuddle All Through The Storm

Crested and Least Auklets in the midst of their nightly spectacle off Main Talus.

Tufted Puffin. Their beaks are not all show though....they can and will crush you.

No matter how hard I try, I really haven't been on top of showing off my Alaska pictures from last year, so apologies for that. For some masochistic reason I have largely not even putting up my favorite shots, which I don't completely understand the reasons for. Maybe I don't want ya'll to short-circuit your computers with drool and/or tears. More likely, I'm just a weird dude. It's probably Felonious Jive's fault....I can't stand that guy sometimes. At any rate, all of these pictures are from Buldir Island.

It's time to take my Perpetual Weekend to the next level and get tranquilo. On Monday I embark on my Mexican Roadtrip, and will return to the United States on January 26....so I'll be back then. Hopefully I will have a photograph or two from that.

This kelpy-faced male Bar-tailed Godwit was one of the more abiding sandpiper visitors we had.

For a few weeks, chocolate lilies blanket the island.

Female Lapland Longspur.

So, if you haven't heard already, Saudi Arabia has captured a vulture and claimed it was an Israeli spy. I am not making this up, even though it sounds straight out of The Onion. It is consistent with the region's recent behavior, as Egypt has attempted to blame their recent shark attacks on Israel as well. It is rare that I am surprised anymore about how stunningly retarded people can be, but this takes the fucking cake. I can't believe I just read a real quote from an Israeli biologist worried that his vulture was going to be tortured (its a well-founded concern, I reckon). Now, I'm not on Israel's side on any of the conflicts going on in the region, but they certainly have become the scapegoat for everybody and their mother. The vulture article is all the proof you need.

Ok, I need to go sit on a toilet. Thanks a lot Israel.

Horned Puffin.

Crested Auklet.

Just One More Nasty Glance

Much like people, Crested Auklets get a kick out of rubbing the crap out of each other. Obviously, the good-looking ones get the most action.

As I mentioned before, I have a massive backlog of Alaska photos to show ya'll still. I'm pretty sure people are into that. Not many people get to go out to the Aleutian Islands, and those that do know how bloody hard it can be to photograph anything out there, so hopefully this makes everyone happy. All of today's bird photos are from Buldir Island.

In meta news, I made a page dedicated to myself. Yup, I've got that much time on my hands. It's in the bar above the posts. Check out "The Life And Times of SeagullSteve" to learn more about your favorite nerd, and how I single-handedly defeated the Nazis in WWII.

A Parakeet Auklet peers out of its crevice. This is one of the few decent shots I managed. I'll get you next time auklet, next time...

This is the legendary Coast Guard LORAN station on Attu Island, which was decommisioned earlier this year. Pictured are the majority of the residents of Buldir Island in 2010, who are nerds.

Horned Puffins doing their thing.

Christmas. It's a busy time of year. So much to do. So much....consuming! It makes me gag a little. But it's nice at the same time (the season, not the consuming). I've never really had a bad Christmas, so I can't complain too much. Ever since I was.....3, I think.....my mom and dad have been the only family I've ever spent it with. Our family tradition is putting everyone's presents under the coffee table. Talk about festive. Then we lurk around the house for a few hours, have dinner, then I take off for a friend's house. My mother watches Korean television until about 1 in the morning and my dad drinks a bunch of vodka and passes out on the couch. I guarantee you this is what will happen this year.

Well that was kind of a weird aside, wasn't it? I'm looking forward to taking off to Mexico next month for some heavy birding. I still only have vague ideas of what I will see, but I'm dangerously optimistic. Things may get Weird, but those are the conditions I thrive in. Oh yeah I'll be at the Salton Sea next week as well. I have finally answered the Clarion Call of the Bean Goose.

Speaking of holidays, many of us are driven to the bottle this time of year. Preferably, this is to celebrate being reunited with old friends and family....but for all to many it is simply to cope with said family. Worse, you are spending Christmas with nobody at all, and are entering a state of catatonic depression. If any of these scenarios are applicable to you, you might be interested in this quick read on sustainable drinking. Thanks to Jherime for the link. Happy boozing!

This would make a great quiz photo, but I probably don't have enough readers to really make it interesting. Just keeping it real, you know. That's a Glaucous-winged Gull chasing off a Slaty-backed Gull...different bird than the one I've posted pictures of earlier.

Leaning Up Against That El Dorado

Well I promised something rare, so here you go. This is a female Common Rosefinch, one of two or three that visited us on Buldir Island last summer. It's a rare migrant in the Western Aleutians (and virtually unrecorded on mainland North America), and we were lucky to have them.

As you can see.....they are incredibly plain. I can't think of many birds that are plainer. Pretty much homely. They are the Bean Goose of passerines. But make no mistake...the bird addicts of The Lower 48 would give an arm and a leg (at least) to see one of these on their home turf.

But despite her bland appearance, she was a welcome visitor, spending much of her time right outside our cabin, often with the only Common Redpoll that made it onto the island. One time I looked out the window and she was sitting on some Snowy Owl talons that were drying on the railing.....unfortunately there is no epic picture to accompany this anecdote.

In terms of vagrants, Buldir enjoyed relatively few migrant songbirds in 2010. Aside from the rosefinches, there were a few Rustic Buntings (which are face-melting), some Eastern Yellow Wagtails, some Bramblings, a Cliff Swallow and the aforementioned Common Redpoll. I think that's about it. We did pretty good on other fronts though, so I can't complain.

Well I know this blog was quick and dirty, not the sprawling urbane wordscape that you've come to expect...but I'm a busy man, what can I say? Here's your educational link of the day (via Rob Fowler), for bird and cat fanciers alike: Feral Cat Predation on Birds Costs Billions of Dollars a Year.

I'm Getting Used To Getting Old, But Where's My Ambition?

A broad-chested, short-winged Thick-billed Murre takes evasive maneuvers. 

Goodbye fall. You were a good one this year. Not one for birding necessarily (although spending August in the western Aleutians was fantastic), but for quality of life in general. So thanks to everyone who made that possible. It's been an explosive jubilee of reveling and raising glasses with old friends. And yes, much bourbon was had.

With the passing of Birder's Fall (August-November) and the onset of Birder's Winter (December-February), Californian birders are now beginning to switch gears to adjust their birding habits to better suit the winter months. So many crippling vagrants have arrived in the state in the last month (The Fab Four: Bean Goose, Ivory Gull, Brown Shrike, Black-tailed Gull) that people really have their hopes up. Many a birder has tasted the sweet taste of victory (most people who have looked for the Bean Goose) or bashed their heads into a wall of defeat (most people who looked for the Brown Shrike) after looking for said birds, and there will be more to follow. The rivers may yet run red with angry birder blood this winter. The possibilities of what may arrive here this winter are almost endless.

Here's a couple of new ones for you. They're not great shots, but for most Americans, they're great birds. Wood Sandpipers turned out to be one of the most abundant (well, relatively speaking) shorebirds on Buldir Island this year, much to my....um....delight.

This juvenile Red-necked Stint was the one and only to visit us.

Besides that, what winter means for me personally is I switch out of "WOOOHOOO NO MORE FIELD WORK!!!" phase into "Hrmm, I should probably start lining up my spring field work" phase, which isn't nearly as fun....but does add a light taste of drama to everything. Its quite strange, really. Few other people (outside my line of work) comfortably vacillate from slaving away for months to having absolutely nothing to do to lackadaisically looking for jobs knowing that somehow you'll get one if you apply to enough...I am nothing if not a consumate professional, after all. But its pretty weird. I recognize and appreciate how shitty it is for people to lose their jobs and their homes (the house I'm living in is being foreclosed on, thanks Bank of America), but since I consensually lose my job a couple of times a year....well, it just doesnt have much of an impact for me. Besides, I really enjoy my freedom...if you don't have that...what do you have?

Oh yeah, summers are usually a mix of "LIFE IS PAIN" and "I have the best job in the world!". Haven't found a way to combine those two concepts yet.

All pictures today are from July-August at Buldir Island, Alaska. As usual they have very little to do with what I'm talking about...maybe I'll work on that.

Another shot of one of the scarce Aleutian sunsets we got to see.

Waiting For A Spark To Reignite

Whiskered Auklets are nocturnal, so they rarely offered themselves up for photo ops. Bloody great bird though. Not many places in the world where you can see these duders.

Hey! I didn't get much sleep last night (thanks to Broke-Ass Stuart), so I'm just going to toss you some auklet photos from Buldir. I do miss them. Ciao!

Crested Auklet. The size of the crest has a lot to do with age and social ranking, and how sexy males are perceived by females. They are also sensitive, and are used navigate around in the dark crevices they roost/nest in so they don't hit their heads. This bird, which I'm guessing is a male judging by bill size, appears to be pretty well-endowed.

Least Auklets. Birds like threesomes too.

Not a great shot, but I think it gets the idea across that there are a lot of auklets at Buldir. These are mostly Crested and Least. Feel free to enlarge the photo and start counting.

All The Brutal Tactics That You Always Employ

The Aleutian subspecies of Pacific Wren (juvenile) and Song Sparrow (adult), whom I asked to pose together for your convenience. You're welcome. Photographed on Buldir Island, Alaska.

There's been a lot of bird-blog-buzz lately about the Ivory Gull down in Arroyo Grande, and inevitably the larger discussion has been brought up about how there have been so many records (comparatively) of them in the lower 48 in the last decade, which may be indicative of some foul shit going down in their normal haunts.

Rather than play Devil's Advocate and discuss how dubious it is to draw any conclusions from this tiny sample size (14 south of Canada...much more interesting would be looking at numbers recorded in someplace like Newfoundland, where they are more prone to occur), lets accept the theory that they are having a more difficult time finding food and are putting more time and energy going to faroff places in search of delicious dead things. This, of course, is almost completely attributable to global warming, as Ivory Gulls are one of the few lucky birds who have never been threatened by direct habitat loss or overhunting.

The question is......what are you going to do about it?

The view from the Fish And Wildlife Service bunkhouse in Homer, AK. The fog is concealing Kachemak Bay, which is probably brimming with Stellar's and King Eiders at the moment.

The excuses people often use in situations like this (where it is obviously impossible for a single person to solve everything) is that there is nothing they can do, that the odds are too stacked against us, that people don't care, or that only elected officials will be able to do anything to make any difference. This, my friends, is lazy, self-serving, defeatist bullshit. There are few things that irk me more than my otherwise bright (and vivid!) friends being resigned to not even attempting to make a dent in the world they live in.

Need an example? Ok, let's take the United States. First of all, we are not a colony of England. That was pretty big. We are also not a Confederacy. Also huge. Slavery has been abolished. We have fundamental legal rights. We defeated the Japanese, then the Nazis in WWII. Women can vote. Women can have abortions. We live in an unsegregated society, with equal rights. Its OK to be gay. You can adhere to any religion you want, or none at all. We have a black president who actually took office in a legitimate fashion. Do you get where I'm going with this?

This one-footed Northern Fulmar frequently flew by my murre/kittiwake plots on Buldir Island. If you are ever down in the dumps and want to cash in your chips....remember.....somewhere out there, against all odds, is a one-footed fulmar kicking a whole lot of ass.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm no patriot and am all-too-aware of all the other things we have to be ashamed of as Americans (really, painfully so), but these are not events and freedoms to be taken for granted, especially when you look at how the majority of the people in the world are living. Lots of sacrifice here. Lost lives. You get the picture.

My point? Do something, regardless of the size and scope. It's not all hopeless. Jesus...start a garden, get some solar panels, ride a bike, buy local, watch where your food comes from, consume less, get involved with one of the many great organizations that are trying to make the world a better place for Ivory Gulls and your kids. If everyone walked around with the same hopeless, cynical attitude, saying remarkably dumb shit like "Only the politicians can do anything about that", that would be a world none of us would want to live in. Nazi Germany anyone? Yeah.

Stay posi ya'll!

Shifty Friends Of Mine

Another look at Buldir's first Slaty-back of 2010. String of pearls, baby.

Right off, I have to set some things straight. My toiling minions at BB&B HQ, under the steady and terrible crack of the whip, rarely make mistakes……but they do happen, from time to time. It seems I have gotten the history of the Slatygate story a bit mixed up…the og SBGU that graced Ventura Harbor with its presence so many years ago was actually accepted by the bird committee…12 years after the fact. Hey, its not fast, but its…its….well, its not fast. The controversial Salton City Slaty-backed Gull was not accepted either, and my source told me, rather ominously….never will be. So thanks to Don and Brady for clearing that up for everyone.

Bird committees. Huh. Now there’s a topic for a blog. It won’t be this one….but the basic concept of being part of an undemocratically elected patriarchy of power-birders who decide who has seen what...well, is a novel concept. Not that they don’t have their purpose…and not they are composed of complete birdtards….I know a lot of good people who have/do sit on those committees.

Least Auklets.  Behold their majesty.

Bird committees were one of Roger Higson’s favorite things to rail on, and his tirades will be missed. Roger was a Brit who spent the last several decades in California, primarily in bleak, arid, unpopulated and underbirded regions, finding all manner of rare birds and diligently (and perhaps more importantly, wittily) reporting his findings to rare bird reports, email lists, and finally his blog, which you can still find here. His sharp tongue, distinctly British humor, love of liquor and well-honed birding skills made him one of the more interesting figures of the California birding community. He passed away last spring, and we are all poorer without him.

While over the summer I was bummed to hear Roger making his Great Migration, I was completely stunned to hear that Mike San Miguel had done the same. Others have written much more eloquently of him that I could, but I think it should be said that Mike was not only an outstanding birder (and committee member), but a genuinely heart-of-gold kind of guy who was one of the few people to make a young Steve think, “shit, maybe birdwatchers aren’t so fucking crazy after all.” I haven’t gotten to see him in a long time, but I’ll miss him just the same.

Owl Knob and Round Mountain, as seen from the floor of Gentle Valley in Buldir's interior.

This Chapter We've Been Writing Is Getting Awful Hard To Read

Crested Auklets over Buldir's Main Talus.

So I finally got to go out in Homer for a couple of nights.  It was a lot like Arcata, except there are no street kids heckling you.  There’s even a bar called The Alibi.  One night there was a hipster 80’s cover band playing at the bar we were at, featuring a gifted keyboard player, a standup bass player who sang most of the songs and a striking Samantha Fay-esque banjo player.  The similarities were uncanny.  My camp leader from Buldir kept heckling everyone and at one point was offered $500 to go home with an old woman from Texas.  Unfortunately for everyone, she did not follow through with this.  Good times.

As you can see, we’ve made a few changes to BB&B at great effort and expense, but the rave reviews and frenzied feedback have made it all worth it.  As its been well over a year since I’ve been to Midway, its probably time to do something about our masthead….but with such an ambitious agenda on our cracked and calloused hands, its going to be difficult.  But make no mistake, we are up to the task at hand.

Many great pictures have been taken of the Tiglax over the years.  This is not one of them.  The Tiglax is the primary ship that ferries refuge personnel around the Aleutians, and was how I made it to and from Buldir.

So, back to last spring.  On May 29 we finally arrived at Buldir.  The seas were still rough, so we had to land some distance from our camp.  With the skiff parting a big raft of Parakeet Auklets, we were finally ashore.  Under a puffin-filled sky, we trudged down a cobbly beach toward camp valley.  Wandering Tattlers and Eurasian Wigeon flushed from the water’s edge, while Harlequin Ducks and Common Eiders bobbed offshore amongst auklets and puffins.  The place was brimming with birds.  Distant flocks of thousands of Crested and Least Auklets snaked through the sky, constantly changing formation and direction in order to avoid some real or imagined predator.  It was going to be a good summer, at least as far as birding was concerned.

Northern Fulmars (FOULGULLS) are common in between the islands and nested on Buldir.

Arriving in camp was done with relatively little fanfare, but throughout the day rare birds kept appearing between trips to our distant pile of gear we had to hump over to camp.  Four Sandhill Cranes, which were to stay with us for the rest of the year.  An Eastern Yellow Wagtail.  A male Rustic Bunting.  A female Bar-tailed Godwit.  I was feeling a little melty-faced, I can’t lie.

The view looking east from Northwest Ridge on a nice day.  A glut of Whiskered Auklets nest on this hillside in rock crevices.

Over the next couple weeks camp was set up.  Temporary, canvas-covered weatherports were erected for food storage and for Hannah and Sarah, the Canadians doing auklet studies for much of the summer.  A shower stall was erected, an outhouse set up.  The main structures were the sleeping cabin and main cabin, which included a fully-functioning kitchen (sans refrigerator) and stored a lot of work-related gear.  The camp was solar-powered for basic electricity needs (computers, ipods, camera batteries, etc.).  Heating was with kerosene.  Cooking was with propane.  Considering where we were, it was a really sweet living situation.

Wow, that is one of the most boring paragraphs I’ve ever written…but I feel it was necessary.  After a couple days we started with actual fieldwork and thus began the slow blurry smear of hiking, shivering, sweating, falling, shitting, vomiting and crippling that in its sum total can be described as summer Y2K10.

One of the Forgotten Four Sandhill Cranes that summered on the island.  They were probably heading for the Kamchatka Peninsula off eastern Russia but were forced to spend the summer with us due to bad weather.  They were bummed.