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.

Sierra Bravo In The Sierras

The state list is often an important list, when you have been birding for a long time.  After it becomes difficult to get lifers on a regular basis without travelling absurd distances, the birder begins to realize the beauty of pursuing lists other than the all-important List of Life. It is another shot in the arm, a reminder to seek birds besides those that one has never seen. And so, the state list often becomes the second-tier list, a worthy list...even a source of pride for many people (how embarrassing). In many ways, I am no different than the average birder, although I am much better at finding and identifying birds (#7, hello).  I keep a state list.  My state list is very important to me. It's so important that I have seen most birds that regularly occur in the state, which is hella. It's hard to get state birds now, which is why I now squeeze joy out of life by seeing county birds.  I know...how embarrassing...

But county birding is not why we are here...sorry to disappoint you nerds. When I was approached by one Amy Patten to make a quick, two day run to the Eastiern Sierra, I jumped at the chance. The Eastern Sierra is a special place, and I have a long and twisted history with the place known as Lee Vining. I am forced to keep going back, though it typically results in hangovers, and usually much yelling.  And although I'm sure you would like to hear more about the Yelling Club, that is not what I thought of when this opportunity came to be.

I thought of rosy-finches.

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch has been the low-hanging, visually delicious fruit that I have been eyeing for years now. And by low-hanging, I mean they hang over 9,000 feet for a good piece of the year. In California, rosy-finches do not live where people live, so one must travel far (and wide) to seek them out. It turns out there are exactly two (2) places in the state where you can find a rosy-finch, with great ease, without having to embark on a high-elevation death march...or in my case, more like a wheezing walk that is a grim reminder of how out of shape I am and an all too real glimpse of my own mortality.

So after a night of drinking next to Lee Vining Creek, talking baseball with the Grub, and getting shitty morning coffee in Lee Vinging, it was up to Virginia Lakes for rosy-finching. The rosy-finches were mellow, despite their outward brilliance (look at those hot pink wings!).  Lounging on the deck of the store of the Virginia Lakes Resort, it was just a brief wait before this crippling beast came in for seed gobbling. The proprietors of the resort feed birds with reckless abandon, and a few rosy-finches come down from rocky slopes to gorge themselves on the regular.  The lady behind this operation told us that one in particular waits for her outside the door early every morning "and hovers around like a [goddamn] harrier" before she can even get the seed out, which appeared to be somewhat true...when someone came out on the porch where the seed was, instead of flying away sometimes this bird would just hover a few feet away and wait for the person to go back inside. So if you need an easy rosy-finch and enjoy some good geri birding, head up to Virginia Lakes.

For the first time since the Common Scoter, my state list has grown even more swollen and bloated. Sierra bravo! New Lower 48 bird! Lifer subspecies! Great success!

Rosy-finches weren't the only things taking advantage of the seed bonanza. Cassin's Finches were one of the most common birds there, which I was pretty stoked on. I've never seen so many so close before, and I have now rectified my chronic problem of not crushing Cassin's Finches. The cycle has been broken, and the Cassin's Finch has been crushed.  This is a juvenile, you can still see a few wisps of down on its crown.

Here is a male.  The lighting was kinda gnarly, but I'm pretty happy how geri photo sesh went considering I was baptizing a new lens.

It was really nice to be surrounded by Finches of Cassin, instead of Finches of House for a change. It was also cool to get blasted by a variety of Cassin's Finch vocalizations, since these days I get to hear them even more rarely I get to see them it seems. Getting rust on one's birding by ear skills is not something that I encourage, and I recommend avoiding it at all costs.

Hello White-crowned Sparrow.  But you are not just any White-crowned Sparrow, no...you are not nuttalli, our coastal resident, nor are you of our other relatively common California subspecies, gambelii or pugentensis.  You breed in the Sierras, your bill is pink, and lord have mercy, your lores are black. Black as midnight on a moonless night, if you want to get scientific about it. This is oriantha, a bird of deserts and mountains, a White-crowned Sparrow that thinks making babies at 9,770 feet (the elevation of Virginia Lakes Resort) is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Here is a juvenile oriantha, a life plumage for me. Just look at those broad, dark lores...weird.

Damn, take a gander on the bill length of this White-breasted Nuthatch. It's obscene, and I am still struggling to come to grips with it.  This is a member of the Rocky Mountain subspecies (subspecies group?), which sounds absolutely nothing like WBNU in most of California. They have a very narrow range in the state; on the weekend we had them here at Virginia Lakes and further south in Lee Vining Canyon.

For your edification: beneath all the birdlife was a writhing swarm of jiggling Belding's Ground Squirrels.

A walk around part of Saddlebag Lake was not particularly birdy, but had a major highlight in this Pika. A Pika! I've never seen one in California before, and actually pished this one up. That branch to the right is destined to become part of its larder, but with all the greenery the Pika had scattered around on the rocks it didn't look like it was in a hurry to get organized.

Some birds don't like feeders.  Some birds are hard to geri bird. Green-tailed Towhee is one such bird, and is another species I was happy to add to the old year list over the weekend.  Their mellow songs and mild disdain for people brings back many memories of birding Mount Pinos when I was a kid...when lifers were easy to come by, I misidentified birds more often, and I couldn't fucking drive.

And here is a somehat-unsure-of-itself juvenile/fledgling that was following the above adult around. Like the young White-crowned Sparrow above, this bird won't wear this plumage for very long. This also reminds me of being a teenage birder, but for complicated and mostly embarrassing reasons.

Unlike month-old towhees, lilies are very sure of themselves. This is a Sierra Tiger Lily, growing next to a stream at Virginia Lakes.  It is a small lily, modest in size, but big on facemelt. Thanks botany girls for the ID.

Here's a Mariposa lily, I forget what kind, it real pretty though.  A state rich in Calorchortus is a rich state indeed...not sure if I've seen this one before, it was up at Saddlebag Lake.

I'm not a butterfly nerd, but since some of you are here is some kind of copper to gawk at.

The mighty Clark's Nutcracker can be heard bellowing the pines on distant slopes. It is one of the quintessential sounds of the mountains. These birds are one of the most interesting species (bizarrely accurate recall abilities, ties to whitebark pine, etc)  that reside in high elevations, and thankfully they usually aren't very difficult to find. Oh, my friend Jill saw one swallow a Junco fledgling the other day, so they do that too.

The rarest thing we saw over the weekend was a marriage proposal. That is when I learned that proposing in public with all your friends (there were a bunch more dudes lurking out of the frame) awkwardly watching from extremely close range is a thing now. We were actually geri birding when we saw this...geri birding is so good.

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: The Global Birding Ranking System

Seeing Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches earns you a number of points in The Global Birding Ranking System. Seeing the Aleutian griseonucha subspecies earns you even more, due to the population's remoteness and limited range. Having even previously heard of this subspecies can earn you even more points. Photographed at Buldir Island, AK.

Today I wish to speak to you about The Global Birding Ranking System, or GBRS. I have lately been besieged with requests for information about my glowing status as Number 7 Birder In The Nation, and I would like to provide a little bit of clarity about how it all works.

For one, every single birder (not birdwatcher) does actually have a rank. If you are reading this, it is more than likely that we have your stats available. We see everything....I assure you, you are closely monitored.

If you did not suspect this was a Herring Gull, you are scraping the bottom of GBRS. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

The origins of GBRS are a closely-guarded secret. We can only disclose that it has its roots deep within a vain and mysterious man who calls himself "Handsome Dan", a legend in his own mind. Dan does seem to leak more information about GBRS than anyone else however, as he recently has here. GBRS has, in fact, been operating for a number of years now, and only now has anyone been authorized to confirm its existence.

The statistics used to actually determine birder ranking are incredibly complicated...the formulas were actually cooked up by a team of astrophysicists, football analysts and trainspotters. Factors we look at include the ratio of rare birds you find vs. chase, total life list, identification skills, predicting the arrival of rarities, scientific contributions (eBirding does not count for much), your abilities to identify birds in alien and unfamiliar places, and the number of birdwatchers you have made sweet, sweet love to. As everyone knows, if you copulate with a birder, you gain some of their powers.

There are also many things that can count against you....say, how douchey you are, how selfish you are about sharing knowledge of rare birds, the intensity of bird disturbance you cause (hello photographers), how many baseless theories you have to explain bird behavior, and of course the numbers of birds you have misidentified. Stringers beware...

Casually pointing out a Brewer's Duck (that's a Mallard X Gadwall hybrid, for those lower on the scale) is something that only the top 25% of birders can do. Radio Road, Redwood Shores, CA.

Some common questions we hear include...who exactly collects these statistics anyway? Who is out watching the birders? Who can tell if they've been bad or good? Who is the proverbial Santa Claus of birding?

We cannot answer these questions. If it were to be disclosed, the bribery these people would endure from greedy birders would be overwhelming. Being Number 1 in the nation brings immense wealth and fame (not to mention the drugs and sex), and elevates the birder to true celebrity status. Even if you are only at the top of the heap for a few months, things will never be the same. The honor of having the highest Big Year total pales in comparison to being Number 1 on GBRS. So, as you can see, these people must remain safely anonymous, as do their covert and highly classified methods for data collection.

Aging and sexing Great Frigatebirds is a worthy challenge for those wishing to raise their GBRS rating. Photographed at Midway Atoll.

Of course, everyone is frothing at the mouth, waiting to find out where they stand on the ranking scale. The fact of the matter is that only the Top Ten in the nation are aware of where they stand, and only the Final Five have access to the Global Birding Ranking System Mainframe....at least for now. With great power comes great responsibility....the birding world is ridden with enough hubris as it is.

I hope you found all of this helpful. May you all strive for the almighty Higher Ranking.

I'm The Worst Storyteller Around

Tufted Puffin, Common Murre (standing behind puffin's tail) and Thick-billed Murres lounge and loaf on a cliff at Buldir Island, AK.

Phew. There's been a lot of blogging lately. A lot of blogging. It ain't easy coming up with all of this gold for you people. We here at BB&B have a firm belief in the DIY ethic, which keeps us ad-free and unbeholden to any organizations or sponsors (i.e. optics companies), and god knows there insn't much in it for us. We're just doing it for The Cause. Unlike the recent rash of multi-author collaboration on many of the more popular bird blogs, BB&B and is run by myself, with only a small team of subservient lackies and interns at my disposal. Of course, The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive puts in a word or two now and then, which is indispensable.

Tufted Puffins spend considerable time sitting around and looking at stuff. I can appreciate that.

How do you think the blogkrieg is going? I've been trying my best to maximize my output for ya'll, which can be hard.  Unlike other birdaholics, I do think other things are important (i.e. girls, music, a social life), so I don't always have time to......whats that you say?  What is this thing called "a social life"? It may be too late for you my awkward friend. Your human relationships may be few, but at least your lists are high. 

There must have been a tea party.

Juvenile Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch.

On that bizarre note, I'm not entirely sure that 4 days in Vegas is good for someone suffering from an acute case of Post Ivory Gull Fail Traumatic Stress Syndrome, but it is what it is.  Have a positive weekend!

I'm not really confident about what is going on here, but it was not unusual to see Black-legged Kittiwakes and Thick-billed Murres having aerial skirmishes. The kittiwakes always won.

Burning Exploding Sound

Gray-crowned Rosy-finches are common in the Aleutian Islands.  This one mingled with auklets and puffins on Buldir's Main Talus.

Huh.  When was the last time I posted a picture of a passerine on here?  I don't even remember.  How embarrassing!

Verdins.  The Jedi of nest-builders.  This one was at Patagonia Lake State Park in southeastern Arizona.

Whenever working on a (field) particular project, you often meet people who have a narrow view of what they would like to be working with.  Some people are way into raptors, some are way into seabirds, some are only into songbirds.  Seriously though, whats up with that?  I love all those birds.  Why limit yourself?  Perhaps when people take their first field job they just keep going with whatever group of birds they were originally working with......which is understandable, but also pretty lame.  I mean, this is BB&B, and honesty is our policy.

One of the many Pacific Wrens that hung out inside our sleeping cabin on Buldir.

And therein lies one of the fundamental differences between biologists and birders.  Birders, in their lust to see as much as possible (be it on a local or global scale), are interested in anything with wings and feathers.  Biologists are less likely to be so open-hearted in their bird love, preferring a particular group of birds.  But they share many of the same basic elements.  Both groups are badly dressed, are catatonically awkward, are overwhelmingly nerdy, have an absurd obsession with wildlife, and are stunningly unsavvy in any given situation that may require anything resembling "people skills".  Consider yourself warned, lest you be foolish enough to attempt a coversation with one of these people.

In other news, Ive been pretty sick.  A cocktail of whiskey, tea, excedrin, ibprofin, nyquil, sudafed and multivitamins has been deployed, but to little avail so far.  Ive also updated my ABA list, which now stands at a healthy 620.  For those who dont know the ABA (American Birding Association), its one of the bigger organizations that lords over the mainland United States and Canada, for whatever reason ignoring Hawaii and other islands under U.S. jurisdiction.  Seeing 620 species in these parts is not the biggest of accomplishments, but considering that I'm not exactly wealthy and I don't spend all my time tracking down new birds, its a pretty good number.

Right.  Time to go drain some more snot.  Have a positive day.

A Dusky-capped Flycatcher.  A common and depressing breeder in southeast Arizona.  This bird was photographed in the Chiricahua Mountains.

You Should Have Seen Your Face

Kittiwakes do it diagonally.  Find the Red-legged.

Just to reiterate.  BB&B is here for YOU.  It’s a resource.  A look into a self-loathing people, a cannabilistic race.  A culture of nerds and geeks, dweebs and douches, dorkiness and deception.  A discussion of a people that celebrity birder (yes they have those) Bill Oddy accurately described as being fueled only by envy.  It’s embedded journalism.  And I guess its kind of about birds too.

I have been doing a poor job at dwelling on the general malaise of the birdwatcher lately…and for that, I’m truly sorry.  There’s a lot of shit happening, you know?  I just don’t have the time.  I’ve barely been birding this month.  IT’S SEPTEMBER.  If there is one month of the year to go birding, its this month.  But you know what?  I don’t care.  I really don’t.  Do you know how many crippling birds Ive been exposed to this year?  On the boat ride from Buldir to Adak Island alone we had everything from Least Auklet to Short-tailed Albatross.  Yeah, I know right?  Throw in a lifer Mottled Petrel, a bunch of Sperm Whales…..you get the picture.  Oh yeah and I was being paid the whole time too. 

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch buddy.  One of the few songbird species that nest on Buldir.  They frolic mercilessly.

Of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I don’t want to look at birds (I did manage lifer Boreal Chickadees this month), as that would be going against my true nature, and lets face it….you come here to read true things.  And to continue in that vein, I’m not exactly sure what I’m talking about anymore.

Right.  You are here to learn about birdwatchers, and what makes them tick.  You wish to understand them.  And if you are reading this fellow birdwatcher, perhaps you are trying to understand yourself, no?  Regrettably, of late the BB&B team has been unable to continue with your lessons with much regularity, as they are still hard at work for the Fish And Wildlife Service until the end of the month.  Don’t think I’ve forgotten our goal here….the mission statement has not changed.  Come October, I’ll have more than enough time to sing you the sad song of the birdwatcher.

Dinner.  J/k.  Glaucous-winged Gulls have learned how to turn birds inside out, which this Crested Auklet demonstrates pretty well.

But as long as I have your attention, I hope you enjoy a few more pictures from Buldir.  If you haven’t figured it out already, they look a lot better if you blow them up.

Black-legged Kittiwakes and Thick-billed Murres at our Spike Camp.

Mortal Combat Puffin.