The Emperor Does Not Share Your Optimistic Appraisal Of The Situation

Fuck, Vader sure had some good lines didn't he? That was from one of my favorites scenes in Return of the Jedi. I guess he can credit The Dark Side for imbuing him with a dry sense of humor, which he clearly lacked as Anakin Skywalker. Anakin was a tool.

Over the winter I read a listserv message about an Aleutian Cackling Goose being seen at a coastal golf course. This news, neither unusual nor unexpected, was not exactly on par with learning that Emperor Palpatine was going to come for a visit to potentially force-murder you for your underwhelming project management skills. In other words, I thought "cool story, bro" and moved on.

The next day a very apologetic birder wrote back to the list, saying what he had meant to say was that it was an EMPEROR GOOSE, and that he had a massive brain-shart due to sleep deprivation and wrote the wrong species in his email. Emperor Goose is an Aleutian goose, after all. As expected, the chase wagons were subsequently fired up and the bird was relocated immediately, and following this success the original observer was celebrated instead of crucified.

The Emperor's arrival coincided with the birth of my daughter, but eventually I was able to make it out to the coast to pay my respects. The bird was a lovely adult, no sign of any dark smudging on the immaculate white head. It wasn't in great light, but birders are not allowed to have any complaints when they see an Emperor Goose.

The Emperor kept the local nonnative Canadas for company, which were not impressed by their new, totally superior member of their flock. You can't really blame them...almost any bird looks like shit when it has to stand next to an Emperor Goose.

This was the southernmost Emperor I have ever seen, and the southernmost to show up in California in a long time...a long time. Talk about a quality year bird. Sharp Park, Pacifica, CA.

On the way back I made a detour to a place with nice lawns and a shitload of dead bodies...it had been far too long since I had birded a cemetery. Who doesn't like birding cemeteries??? Anyways, a Vermilion Flycatcher was wintering there and it did not take long to find. While Vermilions are becoming increasingly common in southern California (a very good thing), they are still powerful rarities this far north. "Only Sleeping" indeed...Cypress Lawn Cemetery, Colma, CA.

Roosting American Avocet flocks have a mellowing effect on the soul when viewed at close range. Serenity now. Albany Mudflats, Albany, CA.

Regular Northern Pintail crushings are healthy, especially when you can catch the purple iridescence on their heads. We are balls deep in molting Mallard season now, but soon they'll be back, and in greater numbers. Albany Mudflats, Albany, CA.

California is blessed with huge numbers of Bushtits. They are practically everywhere. If you look at an ebird abundance/distribution map, the state is almost black with Bushtit. They make chickadees look like unadaptive niche-specialists in comparison. Luckily for birders, Bushtits are great. We may complain about Yellow-rumped Warblers, but no one talks shit on Bushtits. Albany Bulb, Albany, CA.

An interesting thing about Bushtits is their lack of repertoire that the human ear can pick out. It sounds as if they have a contact call and an alarm call, nothing more. They don't really have a typical song per se, but they are quite noisey birds.

Look at this diminutive little bastard. I have crushed Least Sandpipers a great many times, and I will continue to do so indefinitely. Maybe one day it will lead me to a Long-toed Stint, which I nominate for "most overlooked Sibe in the U.S.". The Lower 48 is long overdue for another LTST...will this be the year? Richmond Marina, Richmond, CA.

Greater Scaup coming in for a landing, with a bonus Red-throated Loon lurking in the background. Richmond Marina, Richmond, CA.

Such majesty, such scootsmanship, as some would say. Anthropomorphizing is a bitch, but it's hard to accept that waterfowl may not enjoy landing on water. They get to brake, skate and scoot to a stop. Then they shake their tails, and let out some kind of quack/honk/whistle, looking all cute and shit. Come on waterfowl, tone it down.

Perhaps this is where I should have said, "They'll soon be back, and in greater numbers." Eh? EH? GET IT????

Don't worry, I wasn't going to start this post with a crippling rarity then drive it into the ground with abundant brown birds, we can talk about this Peregrine Falcon instead. This very smart-looking bird was at the mouth of Pilarcitos Creek, in Half Moon Bay, CA.

I've seen a lot of Peregrines over the years. The only ones I've seen really closely were either really sick or were trying to behead me because I was too close to a nest. This one was neither. It was mellow. However, due to the location, I had to wonder if this was one of the Ross's Gull murderers. The scene of the crime was about 4 miles away, but this could have been a different bird.

The bird, quite unexpectedly, did not give a fuck about me. Decent photo ops suddenly turned into prolonged bursts of shutter fire when I realized it might be a great many years before a falcon was this nonchalant again. Eventually it began to crumble under the relentless torrent of crushes I unleashed upon it. It surrendered, signaled by flashing the underside of its foot and lowering its head weirdly. How often does one observe the underside of a Peregrine foot?

I'm not sure why the bird was so unwary that morning. It was bloody cold, but falcons are not reptiles. I did appreciate the killer looks though.

Awesome bird! I've never even had a kestrel be this confiding. Random aside: one of my first birding memories was walking out to the mouth of the Santa Clara River Estuary with my dad when I was a kid. It was winter, we didn't see shit except for a Sanderling, which was flushed by a Peregrine and chased with great persistence and glee. This was a very exciting event for adolescent Steve. Back and forth they went; it seemed like the falcon was just terrorizing the Sanderling for fun, as it was such a tiny prey item. Anyways, it was a facemelting experience for me, thought you should know.

September Sickness

September and October in the bay area means GET YOUR ASS TO THE COAST. I feel bad for birders who don't live near the coast in this crucial time...the window is wide open for rarities. Most of the year, it's just cracked, and sometimes it's even closed. Light south winds on September 11 meant it was a day to be out on Point Reyes, and we were rewarded with some juicy birds...American Redstart, Canada Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, and a flock of 3 Clay-colored Sparrows. Clay-colored is rare but regular here, but three together was a bit on the bizarro side of things.

The next Saturday it was nice and overcast, so it was out to San Francisco this time. Across from Lake Merced, the continuing Magnolia Warbler made for a fine county bird (thanks Aaron) and a Black-and-white Warbler was very satisfying as well. This female Bicolored Blackbird did a good impression of a female Tricolored, but was too warmly colored. Approach with caution.

It's always good to be checking listservs constantly in September, you never know when the news of the next MEGA will come. Checking the listserv as I was about to leave Lake Merced proved to be timely, and I quickly abandoned the rest of my plans and went straight to Golden Gate Park for another vague runt that had just been found. While waiting for the tasty eastern warbler, I kicked it with this Brown Creeper, a bird that apparently has never made it onto BB&B before...weird. Welcome Brown Creeper!

This is another common denizen of forests and parks (like tweakers, but creepers and tweakers are unrelated, despite what you might think), and accompany many a mixed flock. They're ain't confiding or abiding though, which I guess explains why I have so few photos of them.

Brown Creeper fact of the day: You probably know the northernmost reaches of their range are in Alaska, but you can also find them as far south as Nicaragua. I'd like to see some of the mixed flocks they travel with down there, Jesus.

Ugh, I just looked at an eBird checklist with Brown Creeper in it from Nicaragua...there's some gnarly stuff in there.

Eventually I refound the Canada Warbler, which much like the Point Reyes bird was relatively easy to keep track of but exceedingly difficult to photograph (I failed entirely with the other bird). I have some kind of nostalgia with blurry rarity photos for some reason, so I am forcing you to see this awful image. It stayed in the same tree for a whole hour, and I couldn't do any better, but I never claimed I was a photographer. Ahhh...getting Black-and-white, Canada and Magnolia in the same morning in California is what September is all about.

September actually isn't all warblers and rarities though, it's also cuddling Bushtits.

I love eastern wood warblers. I absolutely adore them, no matter the time of year. I spend a lot of time looking for them, whether it is in Florida or California or Mexico (not Midway though). However, California gives you the opportunity to see more than wood warblers...we get warblers as well.

Sibes...I fucking love Sibes. This Dusky Warbler was the undisputed highlight of September, not just for me but for pretty much everyone else who saw it. It sounds like the bird was much more cooperative the first day it was found (when I saw it) than subsequent days; the Dusky Warbler found recently in Orange County disappointed pretty much everyone who chased it (sorry Justine). Speaking of Sibes, the Bird of October might just be the Lesser Sand-Plover Matt Lau found yesterday south of Abbott's Lagoon, but we'll see if sticks around or not.

The day after the great Dusky Warbler Victory of 2016, Billy and I went up to Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands to check on some other kinds of migrants. This resident Red-tailed Hawk had no intentions of migrating anywhere, but chose a nice lichenized outcrop to perch on.

It's always so much easier to find Sharp-shinned Hawks at Hawk Hill than anywhere else locally. Not that they are rare here by any means, but if you spend a morning birding and you don't see one, that seems perfectly normal. Spending a few hours at Hawk Hill and missing them would be, well, bizarre.

Here's another one, with a deceptively-shaped tail. Note the barred flanks and "pigeony" expression. Or don't, you're welcome not to.

September 30 is generally a day you must be out birding in California. If the vague runt window is open in September, then by September 30 the window is completely shattered and rare just comes blowing through at will. With this in mind Abe Borker and I went back out to Point Reyes...except it wasn't rare birds we found blowing through, it was the goddamn wind. With strong northwest winds, our chances of landing a huge migrant harvest were quite low. Even this coyote seemed perplexed at the lack of rare birds around.

Our efforts were not in vain, however. This Magnolia Warbler (county bird!) was at the lighthouse, and stayed still just long enough to get brutally crushed. Nice to see one in San Francisco and Marin in the same month.

We got brief looks of the bird below the park housing in the lupine patch, then the bird came around the parking lot and foraged right beneath us. The wind taketh away, but in this case the wind giveth a very sharp, mid-level rarity.

See? Fucking windy. American Redstart was the only other eastern-flavored bird of the day, but who knows maybe it had just cruised down from northeast Washington, where they are not an uncommon breeder. That said, Magnolias aren't a strictly eastern bird either; they breed in eastern British Columbia.

Almost every patch on the Outer Point has Great Horned Owls, where they probably are out terrorizing the Barn Owls every night. This one was down in New Willows, were I had not seen one before. If it is indeed a resident bird, it has probably seen more rarities than you could possibly imagine. It may have even eaten some of them.

October at Coyote Hills

Damn...I'm getting way behind here...many apologies and condolences. I know BB&B readers need TOTAL COVERAGE of what Felonious Jive and I get into...everything from eBird checklists to what Booby Brittany ate for breakfast to what I've dipped on (Yellow Rail) and scored on (Red-throated Pipits) lately...so some catch up is overdue.

There have been many complaints made over the years (and many butthurt defenses) of the tried-and-true "I went to ___ and saw _____" format of bird blogging, but I think its something that must be done today, due to the quality of the visit and number of crushings accomplished.

All photos in this post are from October 9 at Coyote Hills Regional Park in southern Alameda County, along the bay. It has a diverse mix of upland and wetland habitats, and turns up interesting birds in both fall and winter...the locals bird there regularly, and I think it's worth your time if you're just visiting.

Sage Thrasher is a rare bird around these parts, and my first of the year. With the relatively poor showing of vagrants in the bay area this fall, this was one of the "better" birds I've come by.

Of course, we must give respect to our ubiquitous thrasher, the Northern Mockingbird. I don't think I've ever posted one on BB&B before, so here you go.

John Hammond once said, "We've made living biological attractions so astounding that they'll capture the imagination of the entire planet ". Hammond was right, of course, which leads us to this astounding, block-headed, richly-colored Empidonax; a Hammond's Flycatcher, a bird that's hard to come by in fall on the coastal plain. Field guides tell you to expect a dark lower mandible on this species, but I've found that to be an inconsistent field mark.

It skillfully dismembered and consumed a yellowjacket right in front of me. Can you imagine being the size of that bird and getting stung in the face? It could be lethal...what a brave little flycatcher, truly the Velociraptor of its genus.

One of the highlights of the day was the fennel patches...they were swarming with migrants, including more gray-headed Orange-crowned Warblers than most people are comfortable just hearing about. The legions of orestera were practically begging to be crushed; I often stood a mere 15 feet away, firing off hundreds of rounds (er, frames) at incredible speed.

The California birder who goes out in fall without these birds on the radar is doomed from the start. Orestera Orange-crowned Warbler is one of the most frequently-misidentified migrants on the west coast; they are uncommon along the coast in the fall, and many noob birders are simply unaware that gray-headed Orange-crowned Warblers exist...and so birder magic frequently renders them into Nashville, MacGillivray's and even rarer warblers.

Here is a typical lutescens Orange-crowned Warbler for comparison; this is the standard flavor of OCWA in California.

This young Wilson's Warbler was also lens fodder. The avian fennel fruit was plentiful on this day.

Watching a flock of Bushtits at work is a lot like eating comfort food.

It's neither enthralling or exotic, but its a soothing and familiar experience...perhaps less salty though.

A greatly underappreciated field mark for young accipiters is the breast and belly pattern; while both young Sharp-shinned and Cooper's can have streaked underparts, only young (HY) Sharp-shinned Hawks like this one get heavy spotting.

It's always nice to crush the shade-addicts, the birds who seem reluctant to ever make direct contact with full sunlight when a camera is around. This is one of the better Hermit Thrush pictures I've gotten.

That's all from Coyote Hills. One last thing...the Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive recently made his monthly post at 10,000 Birds, this time on how the birdscape/birderscape has drastically changed over the last 15 years. Check it out.

The Shorebird With A Heart Of Gold

Gull-billed Terns are no longer as clean cut as they were earlier in the spring. Making babies is rough...at least they aren't going bald yet. Imperial Beach, CA.

How you doing birders? Is everything ok? I hope all you bourboners, bastards and birders are keeping your heads up. Its a mad world out there people. I'm really looking forward to taking up my Perpetual Weekend once again...it keeps me sane. I have tried working year round...I don't know how ya'll do it. Seems like a pretty soulless endeavor. But then again, the world is filled with people who are absolutely terrified to be forced to spend time alone, so I suppose its not so shocking.

Whats new on the California birding front? Not much. A couple pelagic trips went out last weekend and were pretty boring. One got a Red-billed Tropicbird (rare, but not unexpected), but happy birders weren't so happy when the boat broke down for several hours. How embarrassing. A White-eyed Vireo at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery arrived at a strange time, and appeared to have been a one day wonder.

Shorebirds continue to make their way down the coast, the best of which is a Little Stint that arrived in Humboldt County yesterday...this is the second in the state this year, and I continue to sacrifice puppies, kittens and small bunnies to the bird gods in hopes that I will be able to pluck one from a flock (with my eyes, not literally) here in San Diego. I'd be happy with a Semipalmated Sandpiper though.

I was able to see the Imperial Beach Curlew Sandpiper one more time this month, and got some considerably better looks at the bird. It's still a bland looking thing, but when it comes to shorebirds you have to get stoked on the subtleties. Here it is communicating telepathically with a dowitcher ("Are you an Asiatic Dowitcher? How the fuck do you get to China from here? I tried to go a few weeks ago but somehow ended up at Sea World. That place is fucked up."). Imperial Beach, CA.

One thing the Curlew Sandpiper did that set it apart from other shorebirds was seek out broken stalks of plants, and then jam its bill down inside of it looking for invertebrate goodness. It did this on the regular...here it is about to take the plunge.

Such a good bird. It should be called the Golden-hearted Sandpiper.

This Willet in summer duds accentuated by a long, flowing, kelp robe, was at Border Field State Park, CA.

We need a token passerine in today's post. This is a Bushtit. They are highly-skilled at fluffing and hate-looks. Famosa Slough, San Diego, CA.

Less well known than fence lizards, Side-blotched Lizards aren't any less common in a lot of habitats in California. I don't know much about their variation in coloration, but I am partial to these turqoise-spotted duders. Border Field State Park, CA.

Pondering Death From Above, aka Gull-billed Terns. Gull-bills love eating these things.

This is what a monstrosity looks like. If it could make noise, it would sound like "blllllleeeeennnngghhhhhh. BLLLLLEEEENNNNGUH. BIGLENGUHHHHH".

This monstrous dead crab washed ashore at Imperial Beach, CA. Nerds of the marine persuasion, feel free to tell us what this is.

Heermann's Gulls are a fixture along west coast shores for much of the year, making amateur seawatchers think they're seeing jaegers from Mexico to British Columbia. When they look like this, it's hard to confuse them with anything else though. Border Field State Park, CA.