The Grub Part II: "I, Grub, Have Become a LISTER."

Welcome to the second half of our new interview with The Grub, sponsored by The Human Birdwatcher Project, who have always spoke truth to power..."birders are people too!" Catch the first half of this remarkable exchange right here.

BB&B: The animosity between you and another birder who has been mentioned in this space a lot over the years, Dipper Dan, is the stuff of legend and one of the great birder feuds of our time. How did this come to be, and do you have a message for Dan?

The Grub: The thing about "Dipper" Dan, or "Handsome" Dan, or "Hot" Dan, or Dan "The Awesome Guy With The Sailboat"  or "Soon To Be Married" Dan, or whatever other kind of wild bullshit people want to say about this man...the point is this: Dipper Dan has always felt that he is better than The Grub. This has, of course, been proved grossly false over and over again for many years now, but, blinded by his arrogance, hubris, and obstinacy, he still persists in this belief. Now, as far as birding goes, Dan is actually better than me...right now. But I am convinced this will not always be the case, and here is why: "Dipper" Dan thinks he is better than the birds too! And that is a losing strategy in the long run. 

Yeah I have a message for Dan...see you at your wedding!

[The Grub sounded rather menacing here...this requires some more explanation: The Grub was not invited to Dan's wedding, in fact I can't think of anyone Dan would be less likely to invite, as he had notoriously been trying for years to prevent his fiancee, Sultry Sam, from even having any contact with The Grub whatsoever. But in disastrous fashion, Grub did indeed crash the wedding as he threatened in this interview - see photo above.]

And I will also see you below me on the California list because before The Grub dies he will pass "Handsome" Dan on the California all time list! Don't believe me, Dan? Well no one would have ever imagined I would have seen more birds than Matt "Matt Brady" Brady in Mono County either, but the record stands for itself!

[At left is The Grub's prized trophy he was awarded for passing Matt Brady in the all time Mono County eBird rankings.]

So I know you haven't been doing this very long, but a lot of weird stuff happens while birding. Birders find dead bodies, people having sex, have rednecks freak out on them, get mugged, etc. Has anything like that happened to you yet? 

Well I was up in Seattle a few years ago and I had been birdwatching someplace, and then I was riding a bus back up town. I had my binoculars in my cargo pant pocket, and I think all you could see of them was a black cylindrical looking thing in my pocket. I get off the bus and I'm immediately rushed by two cops! They asked me if I had a gun! Evidently someone on the bus had thought I had a gun and called 911, all I could think of was they saw the binoculars. I didn't realize I had to worry about that when out birdwatching! Of course if I were black or brown that might have ended differently...

Yeah dude. Well, if you are going wear cargo pants in this day and age, you have to accept the consequences. Grub, I want you to look at what you said about rare birds in our previous interview, let's take a look.

[The below passage is an excerpt from the 2009 interview]

Around Mono Lake there is so much obsession for rare birds and birds that get lost. Every birder is stoked about poor birds who get blown across the country, thousands of miles from where they are supposed to be. You should have seen them racing down to the Mill Creek Delta for some kind of gull, something from eastern Canada and the northern U.S. It got blown across the U.S. and everyone talked about how ragged and fucked up it was. It couldn't really fly. It was all beat up and couldn't go anywhere else. People were getting off on this poor bird that flew the wrong direction. Everyone was so happy that this bird was dying alone, lost, from other side of country. Birders aren't about birds being in places they are supposed to be and enjoying themselves, they are about THE LIST. It's like bagging peaks, another thing that happens around here. It's a broish way to behave, to bag birds instead of enjoying them.

So now that you chase rarities constantly and are all about your county list...how do you feel about about what young Grub said? Now you too get off on poor birds that fly the wrong direction.

One thing that eBird brought out in me was something that, as you can see above, I had been most critical of in my pre-birder days: I, Grub, have become a LISTER.

Of course I am going to go find that vagrant that has blown thousands of miles off course, I'm going to find the shit out of it! Pad that fucking county list goddamn it! I mean it's not like people want the birds to get blown off course, or to suffer, but it happens, and if I can see, say, a Long-tailed Duck that's kind of haggard on Mono Lake instead of having to travel to fucking Lake Superior or whatever, well that's fucking awesome. Also, I've since learned that not all vagrants are really that screwed just because they aren't where they usually are. There was that male Grace's Warbler here this summer though, hopelessly singing for a mate that couldn't possibly be found, boy was he fucked. But welcome to Mono County, I guess...

[Grub gestures grandly at our surroundings, apparently forgetting we are in Arcata and not Lee Vining. We had been in the bar for a couple hours now. The Common Redpoll in Aspendell, above, is one of the rarer birds Grub has successfully chased and one I am envious of.]

Young, confused, stupid Grub was a little more on point about Listing and the peak bagging aspect...  and I am now certainly guilty of participating. But let me put it this way: Listing is basically exactly like Pokemon Go, okay? I mean, it's really EXACTLY the same...ya gotta catch 'em all! And of course it's fucking stupid, you don't actually have to catch 'em all...at all!  But which do you think is healthier and more productive, running around staring through your phone trying to catch fake monsters like a fucking moron, or running around trying to see actual creatures existing in actual nature...and then looking down at your phone and recording them on eBird like a moron?

But let me tell you, be careful when you get into Listing too much...especially when you aren't a Big Deal. Last year, in August 2017, I was birding with my friend Kurt, he's a pretty Big Deal, and by that time in the year, I had seen a lot of new shit. So Kurt says, "where are you on the Mono County year list? " And I had no idea that was a thing. So we looked it up, and I was in second place and only three species behind the lead! So from that point til the end of 2017 I decided to try to get the highest county year list, because boy would that piss some people off! And what happened next still makes me pause and look behind my shoulder because it taught me how serious these people are when you try to mess with "their thing".....

I'm not going to name my competition, because I'm not trying to get the shit beat out of me, but let's just say she has the highest Mono County year list every year, and last year I was her only competition. Throughout September-December, we were neck and neck, and by December 29th, I was astonished to find myself two birds ahead of her! I thought she might still win, but I had given her a real run. The next morning, December 30th, she had gained 12 birds, but had no new birds that day...she had saved old lists and purposefully waited 'til the last day to sandbag me! I had been strung along thinking I was actually in there, only to be given a great big 12 species slap in the face on the last day of the year! "Know your place, rookie!" was clearly the message.

[Grub looks dejectedly into the distance, ostensibly at a major victory that was once in his grasp, but inexplicably slipped through his fingers at the last possible second. Remarkably, his fantasy baseball league concluded in precisely the same fashion this year.]

She broke me down and now, though I'm once again in second place, I'm not going to dare try and mess with her... for one thing she's probably got another big wad of lists waiting to knock me over the head with! I get it, it's just like what they do to rookies who first come to the Big Leagues, you fuck with them remorselessly and put them in their place.

Speaking of rookies and getting fucked with, you are a new and enthusiastic birder - are you willing to admit you are probably misidentifying shit all the time?

Yeah I'm positive I'm misidentifying tons of shit. The more I've learned the more I've realized how far I had to come to get to where I am now. I've gotten a lot better, but yeah, I'm probably still one of the sketchier birders in the Mono Basin. It was a while before I heard the term "stringing", but now that I understand the concept, I try hard to not do that.

How would you say your artwork has changed in the years since your first BBB interview? Any avian influence in the last couple years?

Birdwatching is doubtlessly destroying my artwork, like the rest of my life. I've painted some birds recently, sure. I painted a couple of paintings involving the Green-tailed Towhee...I think it's one of the birds that's intrigued me as something that obviously has always been a part of my life, but that I wasn't very aware of until recently. I imagine them having always watched me and wondered when am I going to wake the fuck up. So I paid some homage to them in my stuff. The Lazuli Bunting is another one. I did one of a huge Lazuli Bunting consulting a woman [left]. I think birds are starting to take on certain symbolic tones, the towhee seemed to symbolize aspects of my childhood or where I'm from, and the bunting is some kind of consultant or adviser. I expect the damn Pinyon Jays to interject themselves next, I've been spending a lot of time around them recently.

In your 2009 conversation with BB&B, you spoke of poor health and the distinct possibility of death before reaching 30, which you have avoided. Are you pleased with this outcome? Or do you subscribe to the "life is pain" outlook?

It's even worse than I could have ever imagined, Felonious. Not only am I still here, but I turned into a fucking birdwatcher! It's like someone played a sick joke on me for being so over-dramatic back in 2009 that they were like, "Oh, what's the most ironic thing we could do to this pompous ass? How 'bout make him one himself!".  Life is most certainly pain.

Can you imagine where I might be in ANOTHER nine years? I'll probably own a $10,000 scope or something, and be going on pelagic trips all the time.

I'm absolutely terrified of what is to come.

That will do it for our talk with The Grub, and that will do it for BB&B this year. And what a year it has been! Admittedly we didn't get to do some of the events we had been planning, like "Cape May on Mescaline" or "Bath Salts and South Florida Specialties"....heck, we can't even put together the "Southeast Arizona Acid Trip Report" in any remotely readable form. And so it goes...if birding is hard, blogging is harder. But so what? Thanks for celebrating TEN YEARS of BB&B with us. See you in 2019! 

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: The Grub Awakens

The Grub is an old friend of the blog. In fact, he is one of the fist interview subjects of The Human Birdwatcher Project ("Birders are people too!"), and that conversation is still a great read; it also sets the tone for the conversation we just had with him, almost ten years later! For most of the years I've known him, the Grub was in the unusual position of being in contact with birdwatchers all the time, generally disliking them, but somehow doing things that involved watching birds. The Grub is a janitor (specifically known for his "ground attack" method of janitoring) and an artist; comparisons to a modern day Charles Bukowski have been made more than a few times. Unlike Bukowski, The Grub is also known to dabble in venture capitalism and cryptocurrency, but before our interview he requested that we not delve into those mysterious (and perhaps extremely lucrative) aspects of his life.

These days, Grub no longer exists in that rare niche, with a couple toes of one foot in the birding camp and one foot firmly on safe nonbirder ground. Since BB&B first spoke with him, Grub has fallen for the dark and shameful temptations of birdwatching. A few found this to be predictable, the natural order of things, but many of his friends were shocked. Minds were boggled. The Grub is many things, but neither his detractors nor his friends have ever claimed he was a nerd.

Until now. BB&B recently sat down with him at Toby and Jack's, a Humboldt institution that was just shuttered forever due to its reputation for supplying customers not only with beer and liquor, but powder drugs and pills as well. Grub spent a lot of time here in his formative years, which even led to an attempt to open his own bar, "Toby and Grub and Jack's". It was the perfect place to catch up with him.

It needs to be noted that these are some of the only interviews in the world that document someone's opinion on birding both before and after their transition. Inclusion of these precious documents in the U.S. National Archives is both critical and inevitable.

BB&B: What happened Grub? We have you, on record, describing your life and worldviews as a nonbirder. But you have since undergone a drastic transformation....how? Why?

The Grub: How embarrassing...but I have become convinced that I have always been Doomed...even if you look at that old interview, underneath, you could sense the dread and deep-seated knowledge of Impending Disaster in that 26 year-old idiot's voice... he knew that he would become one eventually... in the end it was The Only Way.

There is quicksand at Mono Lake, real and metaphorical...people get stuck around here as much as their cars do...I know people who came for a weekend and have been here for thirty years. In my case, what hope did I really have? Like I said last time, I was raised in a birding atmosphere, I have always known a lot of birdwatching people...[Grub's voice trails off in a sort of soft, dreamlike disgust]

Something I've realized more recently, I've known a lot of actual birds for a long time too. I don't mean I knew what they were called and all that, but the Spotted Towhee, for instance, has been hopping around me since I was a child, we've shared the same habitat. For many years I was an asshole and I didn't acknowledge them much, but we would see each other around you know?

I've always been Doomed... I tried to drown it with drink, with apathy... at one point I ran up to Humboldt to hide... a lot of fucking good that did! I met even more birders up there! The cards were stacked against me, but I held out pretty long considering, a good thirty-three years before I conceded to the Terrible Reality...

Here's what happened: Maybe I could have ran for it again, left the area, but the mud was too thick. I kept working seasonally for the Forest Service, year after year, ended up buying a house in Hawthorne, Nevada, 50 miles east of Mono Lake. I ended up as the only guy in charge or with any knowledge of a wetland system on the north shore of the lake. I started turning valves and filling ponds, flooding meadows, and I started noticing how the birds were reacting to it and benefiting from these actions...I STARTED CARING OKAY??!!

[Grub's eyes are now wide but fearful, his body strained in a defensive posture]

So it was about 2013-14 I started realizing that I might actually be doing something important and that it might not be done without me, and as I started paying more attention to the birds, I started to realize I LIKED THEM OKAY???  I mean they're so much better company than people. I started valuing the position I had found myself in, that I had ended up in kind of despite myself (but let's not forget the Inevitable Doom)... and so I started trying to understand better about what the birds needed and how I could make better habitat. I of course had a vast array of Ornithological Advisers at my disposal, the foremost of them was The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive....I consulted them on what I could do, and then I decided I had better go ahead and actually KNOW WHAT THE BIRDS WERE I WAS LOOKING AT.

Is this what Doom looks like? One of The Grub's ponds he has been tasked with maintaining. Photo courtesy of The Grub.

But what finally pushed me into Absolute and Irreversible Ruin was when in the fall of 2015, my brother sent me a pair of good binoculars. I had mentioned to him that I had started to try to actually identify all the birds I was seeing at my wetlands, but that the binoculars the Feds gave me were shitty. One day in September, like an unexpected fall vagrant, a package arrived from my brother... it was a pair of Eagle Optics binoculars.

At first I just thought it was funny. The Grub! With an actual pair of high tech optics! I was grateful though because it would help me at work, which is the only place I expected to use them. But shortly after I was out in Hawthorne and I looked at a few brown birds I saw in the bushes with the binoculars. The brown birds transformed into creatures with rich crimson heads like nothing I had ever seen before. I had seen Cassin's Finches before, doubtless, but I had never really SEEN them or paid them any attention.  I was astonished, the binoculars were like a portal into another world.....

So then I started looking at other shit through those goddamn things and now I'm totally fucked.

That's what happened.

This is a two-parter...what do you think of other birdwatchers now? After all, you know what drives them. And since you are one of them...what do you think about *yourself* now? I believe that when a person falls for birding hook, line, and sinker, something awakens inside of them...and it may not be pretty. 

My relationship with other birdwatchers is more complex than ever, I suppose. I guess I understand why they do the things they do better...I can speak more of their language...but just because I know where they're coming from now doesn't mean I want anything to do with them.

[Grub abruptly takes a big drink, too big, and looks around suspiciously at other bar patrons, ostensibly for any birder-types. Birders haven't set foot in this bar for about a decade though, preferring Everett's next door. He looks down at his beer again before continuing.]

One of the reasons I think I've continued to birdwatch is that not only is it something I can do by myself, it encourages me to go to places few other people ever are...if I see other birders somewhere I go, I usually want to get the hell out of there. Some of this is of course due to my lingering Deep Shame at becoming one myself, but I don't look at birds because I am interested in meeting people. Quite the contrary. I look at birds because I like birds more than people. For these reasons I have not become interested at all in the group aspects of birding. That said, there are a handful of [Grub seems to choke back vomit] fellow birdwatchers who's company I do enjoy, and, being very much an amateur still, looking at birds with these few Trusted Confidantes has been helpful for getting better.

A quick anecdote related to this: I got my first real taste of what I am going to term "playground politics birding" i.e., being suddenly thrust into a social situation complete with all the weird popularity hierarchies/competitiveness/awkwardness of the old days on the playground... when one of these Trusted Confidantes I do like birding with, Nora Livingston, and I went up to Bridgeport one cold December morning to look for a Black-Legged Kittiwake that had been seen recently. Now I know better, but at the time I was completely shell-shocked when at 8am I found myself standing in a group of 20 or so other birders looking for the kittiwake. Forced conversation, meeting new people, all the things I go birding to avoid, I suddenly was going to have to do if I was going to see the kittiwake. Furthermore, I quickly learned I was in the company of High-Level, and even Famous Birders, like people who have written Field Guides! [Grub's voice is rising now, and he is beginning to gesticulate wildly] I tried to say as little as possible, but having shown up with Nora, who is locally ranked as "Kind of a Big Deal", I was confronted for my credentials. I mean I didn't get punched in the face or anything, but I was put in my place. We were also the only people there who didn't see the kittiwake...Nora went back a few days later and found it without me, thus distancing herself from the "new kid/piece of shit rook-job". 

So now I know that the rarer the bird, the more you had better expect to have to go back onto the playground, because there will be a bunch of other birders there...and you better bring some rocks in your pockets.

[Grub's eyes narrow, then relax. He unzips a filthy, paint-stained hoodie to reveal...another filthy paint-stained hoodie beneath it. He pulls out his phone from the inner hoodie and appears to be checking what look like stocks. I get a glimpse at a lot of six-figure numbers on the screen before Grub silently slips the phone back into a pocket.]

So that's how I feel about other birders I guess... how do I feel about myself? If I continue to learn how to birdwatch and hone my skills I'm sure that some day I can turn into just as much of a Prick as the guy who wrote the field guide who was at the kittiwake.

You have started birding in the age of eBird. I consider eBird to be a great luxury, while some other newer (whinier?) birders consider it to be a god-given right that eBird is always perfectly functioning, constantly improving, and never inconveniences a user in any way. How has eBird helped you in beginning this nerdy endeavor? Or hurt you?

I definitely give much credit to eBird for creating the monster I now have to look at in the mirror. Once I had the binoculars I was more interested, but once I learned about eBird, which was right around the same time, I quickly found myself more and more eager to go out and record what I was seeing. I never birded before the age of eBird, but I can see how you would find it luxurious. It's very convenient. I've been fascinated at how polarizing eBird seems to be among birdwatchers. I know several birdwatchers of the "Old Guard" who claim to despise eBird (they all still use it though). I guess it's unwashed vermin like me who represent one of the reasons they hate it, now ANYONE can be a birder!

But the petty competition offered by eBird, ranking people against each other as it does, as well as the animosity of the "Old Guard", has been galvanizing for me. I look at the "Old Guard" as being mainly upset that others have moved in on "their thing".  I think I can truly say that vindictiveness is one of my favorite things about birdwatching, and eBird has been crucial for this.

The Grub expounds upon something, probably loudly, at Mono Lake County Park.

I would also say eBird has been very helfpul, not just as a motivating force, but it has also taught me a lot about what birds are rare and when they should or should not be some place, etc. Having to explain myself when I see something that is considered rare has taught me how to pay more attention to field marks, behavior, habitat. In other words, it has made an amateur a slightly better birder without having to go take a class or something, which I wouldn't do anyway.

It seems to me that eBird has become an invaluable resource, not only because of the immense volume of data it is amassing from millions of volunteer surveyors, but it is also turning millions of people who maybe only sort of cared about birds, or didn't care much at all, into bird enthusiasts. I can understand some of the reasons the Old Guard and others may hate eBird, but I can't understand how anybody who loves birds could have such a problem with something that has caused so many more people to appreciate birds.

[I am amazed to be listening to Grub speak eBird fluently and sing its praises without a hint of sarcasm. This is not the same Grub of years past...there has been an awakening. Grub orders a Coors from the bartender, who is looking like he is expecting us to order a little something else as well.]

You go birding regularly, I think it's safe to say it's one of the main things you do in your free time, at least while the sun is up. What would you have been doing instead a few years ago?   

A few years ago I would have been spending a lot of my time driving around dirt roads drinking beer, and sitting around along the creek drinking beer...[Grub pauses thoughtfully] or on a ridge somewhere drinking beer. That is literally what I did with my free time, especially in the summer. So guess what? Now I do exactly the same thing except I bring my binoculars. This is one of the reasons I think I've gotten so into it. It really hasn't changed my lifestyle too much, it's just complimented it. I've enjoyed paying more attention to my surroundings, it's given me a renewed connection to the area. I also have started going to more places that I didn't bother to go very often. But for the most part, I'm still driving around on dirt roads, now I just don't have my head so far up my ass...now I know, for instance, that the Slate-colored Fox Sparrows move through the Mono Basin for about one week in April every year. I think that's good to know.

The Grub is known as the darling of the east side art world. His work inspires many emotions and many patrons, like Eli Brooks, an Art Collector. Here, Mr. Brooks is seen fervently admiring a recent Grub.

I think knowing much more about the area I spend the most time in has been what I'm most interested in so far, but I'm sure before much longer I'll descend into the final Black Pit of Big Year Birding all over the country or something. At this point my Doom probably knows no bounds. 

One other thing I want to say about this though, is I have often thought back to another interview you did about the same time as my first one, with Coco [see the classic "Birding In Tamarisk Is Like A Rectal Exam"]. Coco described how when he started birding, he realized that his boring neighborhood was actually really interesting and diverse... if you watched the birds instead of the people. At the time, this was lost on me, but now I know what he meant. I've had to apologize to all the Sagebrush Sparrows and Juniper Titmice, the Lazuli Bunting couple that lives down the road, and the towhees of course, for living next to them all these years and rudely ignoring them.

Lastly, one thing that has certainly changed in my lifestyle is I might get up at fucking 5AM and drive to some godawful place in 15 degree weather to find a Common Redpoll or something... I have done this to myself and will probably do it again, and there is little I can do about it but proclaim my shame and embarrassment.

That concludes Part I of our interview with The Grub, check back for more Grub later this month!

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: Birding by Flavor Profile

Sibley uses words like "neat, clean, striking" to describe Buller's Shearwater. Dunn uses "gleaming, graceful" and..."striking". All of these descriptions are true, and in the case of "striking", double true, but what if I told you that this bird could be described in an entirely different way? The depth of this bird's nuanced but definitively unsubtle visual flavor profile is nothing short of bottomless. The mellowing effects of the strong vanilla notes fades before the abrupt finish, as the bird disappears into a trough forever, never to be seen again...and you are left needing more. The aftertaste? A hint of calamari and a whole lot of desire.

The foodie. The wine connoisseur. The beer sommelier. The cicerone. The coffee cupper. I don't have a whole lot in common with these people. I still eat Top Ramen with rigor, even though I am 13 years removed from college. I hardly drink wine at all, and I will drink Tecate or Pabst or Hamm's just as happily as most (not all) other beers. I do love good coffee, but there is no way I would ever pay to go cupping. However, there is something that all these food and drink snobs have in common with one another, and with myself...in order to be so in enthusiastic abound indulging themselves in food and drink and trying to convey that to people, they also need to have a love of the language that comes with the territory.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here are excerpts from a breakingbourbon.com (which has some great content if you like your bourbon...and you know how BB&B feels about bourbon) review about Sazerac's 2013 George T. Stagg Straight Bourbon. To wit:

"Sitting with this bourbon for the first time you're instantly hit with a sense that this is a sophisticated bourbon. A smell of aged wood, raisin, caramel and a hint of corn dance across your nose, transporting you right to the middle of an aging warehouse on a warm spring day in Kentucky. While the alcohol wants to overpower the senses, overall the balance of the wood smell evens this bourbon out nicely. Let this one sit for a few minutes, and the smell just keeps getting more and more delicious...Initially a sweet taste of caramel hits your tongue that instantly is replaced with a taste of all-spice and leather... As it mellows, you get hints of candy corn and rubber, finishing on a note of wet wood and tobacco."

Fascinating. Now I'm not familiar with this particular bourbon, but this is a very interesting description, fanciful as it may seem. Candy corn? Rubber? I've consumed a lot of bourbon and those tastes have never entered my mind. It's ridiculous and whimsical but people really get off on this sort of thing. As easy as it is to just call "bullshit" on this sort of thing, I think it's fantastic that folks are being so creative and enthusiastic in describing something that a lot of consumers put no mental effort into characterizing whatsoever...i.e. a lot of people relegate coffee to being either good or bad, hot or cold. Nothing more. But there is so much more!

And now to finally bring this post around to birds...here at the Human Birdwatcher Project, we firmly believe that "birders are people too!", and in the last decade a whole lot of people have bought in to the foodie treatment thing. I think it is time that birds get the same sort of attention to detail that so much of the nonbirding world has been delving into. All too often a bird is described the same way over and over again...beautiful, bright, cute...striking...or on the other end of the spectrum, dull, plain, or even than repulsive cliche that never seems to die, "little brown job". These abundantly used descriptors are ok for field guides, which have little space available and require utilitarian phrasing regardless, but what about all the other bird books? The magazine and web articles? The blogs and the trip reports? We can do better, bird writers! What would it be like to apply these foodcore descriptions to a bird's appearance...a visual flavor profile, so to speak? Well, there is only one way to find out...

Yellow-billed Magpie. This endemic demands your attention. To look away when a magpie is near is to do your eyes, heart, and visual palate injustice. Most of what this bird has to offer, strictly in terms of looks, is a sudden blast to the retinas; it is superbly balanced, with strong notes of oak and dried grass. You see what you get very quickly, though this is a bird that needs to enjoyed both while it is perched and in flight. When seen close up and in good light, you will notice a salty but wet taste - these are the tears flowing down your face, which the magpie's incredible iridescence has triggered reflexively.

Before we go on, all of these food and drink items that get critiqued are typically assigned some sort of score, mostly because people really like to rank things. With that in mind, and because birders still mercilessly use the word "jizz" seriously (birders are still clueless, apparently), I will now introduce the Bourbon, Bastards & Birds Visual Jizz Tasting Scale™! The magpie gets an 8/10 on the scale, with the only significant mark against it being that much of it appears identical to Black-billed Magpie.

Lewis's Woodpecker. Few birds taste as utterly unique...visually...as a Lewis's Woodpecker. This bird is sherbet for your eyes, but also so much more. A big woodpecker almost the size of a crow that is black, green, gray, red and pink...what? How can that be? But just like Jagermeister and soy eggnog sound absolutely incomprehensible together, we know it somehow works. And unlike Jagnog, encountering a Lewis's Woodpecker will never fill you with pain or regret the next day. Your soul will be full, though you may have an undeniable urge to track down some rasberry sorbet.

A criminally underrated species, Lewis's Woodpecker gets the high marks on the BB&B Visual Jizz Tasting Scale™: 9/10

House Finch (juvenile). Not only do species vary in their visual flavor profiles from one another, a single species can vary significantly in plumage as well. Take the House Finch. Despite seeing thousands of House Finches every year, every once in a while I will still be struck by a particularly bright male beaming his cranberried colors into my eyes. They are visually a mess, like they fell into some strawberry compote, but you can't deny that berry-colored birds are well received no matter how sloppy their attire. This juvenile House Finch, on the other hand...well, this just doesn't inspire the visual taste buds. It is overall bland but slightly tart, with textures of dead leaves and clay-laden soils. The more of these you see, the quicker the bitterness accumulates. Looking at this bird reminds me of eating a stale saltine...a stale saltine with no salt. Some of the fresh browns are warm and mellowing, sure, but there is no other shortage of brown birds that are far more inspiring. It doesn't help that the species is also ubiquitous (much like corn syrup and palm oil) and nonnative to much of the country. This particular bird gets points for fresh plumage and not much else; if most birds looked like this, there would not be birdwatchers.

The juvenile House Finch gets a 2/10 on the BB&B Visual Jizz Tasting Scale™.

A harsh review? Perhaps. I have no animosity toward House Finches, but we need to be true to our tastes, true to ourselves, and true to the birds (not to mention the jizz). Like food and drink, birds cannot be savored equally.

How about a couple more? I will now hand over the blog reins to my co-blogger Cass for some additional species, to get his take on birding flavor profiles.

Blue headed vireo. Maybe it’s just the eye ring but this bird inspires a deep lust for rolls. Sushi rolls to be exact. An understated blend of subtle flavors and textures, wingbars and flankwash, covert edging and vent glitz, this vireo was built with the same ethos that went into the architecture an 8 piece Kappa maki….HARMONY. As with most things Japanese, an element of  asymmetry is found in the final analysis. Chaos, i.e. nature, must have the final edit. With this bird it is that hooked crab-cracker glued to the front of its face. The bill is the bite, the wasabi punch that carries the vireo through is flirtation with mundanity and buries its memory deep in your stomach. A point blank viewing will make your eyes water and your grip on reality will be touch and go. As with sushi, the viewer is satiated with surprisingly little, as the visual nutrition is so dense. A gastronomical bonus; the blue headed vireo’s casual foraging speed, somewhere between the boorish/jolting sit-then-sally Empid and the frenetic wood warbler, also promotes proper digestion. Itadakimass!

Wood Duck (female). Belonging to the forgotten 3rd tribe of anatidids, the lurkers (the other two being, of course, the dabblers and divers), this backwater beauty is the chic, ice-veined femme fatale to her overblown, coked-out counterpart in the 80’s power couple known as Aix sponsa. Even the scientific moniker smacks of a New Wave band name.

Now to assess this birds flavor profile. For starters, resist the temptation to pick up this F%#*ING PERFECT duck and stuff it in your pocket. If resistance proves futile then bury your face in her neck and inhale the heady top notes of fermenting algae. Next, place her feet in your mouth in the hopes of ingesting a rogue toad egg she has caught between her toes. The numbing effect of the bufotoxin should kick in shortly, just in time for you to offer her a mouthful of mosquito larva that she will most likely attack with fervor and violence. The feeding will leave you with hideous face scars you'll carry with you for the rest of your days. Though you won’t feel a thing due to the bufotoxin, your heart will soar as you add another tick to your animals-that-have-eaten-out-of-my-mouth list.

Whoa. Well, this just goes to show you how many ways the visual flavor profile can go...who knew things would veer toward Nyotaimori? Birding by flavor profile isn't going to revolutionize the arcane genre of bird writing, but I think there are avenues of perceiving and describing birds that birders should be open to exploring.

"Drown in the soup, in the froth, resurrect": Song of The Setubal

Tomás: birder, surfer, lurker, intertidal scavenger, globetrotter, fungiphile, gourmand, Ween scholar, radio personality....attempting to put this man in a box is like trying to put Baby in the corner...nobody puts Tommy in a box. Nobody.

We caught up with TVS at the Coastal Ecology Lab on the shores of Lac Croissant in Olympic National Park, where he was busy installing a new idler shaft on his rock tumbler. 

BB&B: Sorry to interrupt the shaft work. Please state your name/occupation.

TVS: Tomás Vellutini Setubal/ambulant field scribe and lake visitor.

You are currently dating the educational director of the local Audubon chapter. Did you initially start birding to pick up on women?

No. Birding for me has mostly been a solitary venture, carried out most fervently in periods of emotional distress and crippling heartache. Akin to songwriting for musicians. Which I guess eventually gets them laid.

I see. Your Wikipedia page says you grew up in Brazil. What is the national bird of Brazil? 

Growing up, the Hyacinth Macaw was always talked about there, Arara Azul… an unbelievably blue macaw. Hardcore pet trade victim at one point, and thus a flag-bearer of the conservation movement in Brazil. But I think the national bird is the Rufous-bellied Thrush, the sabiá. Robin-like birdie.The true rockstars of the commons are the Rufous Hornero, a master engineer of cozy cob houses, and the Great Kiskadee, bloodthirsty insect slayer.

Describe what the average birder is to you. What do they look like? What do they think about? Does the average birder vary between countries? What does the Brazilian birder look like? 

Everyone knows the average birder here in the States. A Methuselah-aged seemingly innocent chatty pair of spectacles, unabashed model of the lamest outerwear possible, and proudly anachronistic except for when it comes to tools and technologies that aid in birding. They are white, they are wealthy, and they unanimously exude a deep concern for the state of their feathered brethren, sometimes more so than that of their human brethren. Common as fuk. Boring? Some say so. There’s a school of thought that encourages us to see the beauty in even the most common birders, and I’ve been trying to adhere to that.

Average birders in Brazil belong to a totally distinct class. They are younger, maybe in their forties, but also white and relatively wealthy, therefore far fewer in numbers. They’ve adopted a very European hobby, and must live through ten times the scrutiny of wearing their elitism around their neck or shoulder-strap. Some revel in that uncomfortable reality though, which plagues some areas of Brazilian birding with excessive dick-measuring contests of ocular gear. Because of the gear-centric approach, photography has a much more pronounced weight in birding, and mere accounts or lists may not be taken so seriously. They want photos badly, “registros” or records as they are commonly referred to will really weigh out your “birding” skills. They also wear lame clothing and travel far for bird sightings.

What is the best bird band name out there?

‘King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’ and ‘Cock Sparrer’ come to mind. A stretch? Maybe. Just picture King Gizzard though, the daemonic vulture overlord, and his sorcerous slithering crony. I love it. Both great bands. How about worst bird band name? The Byrds.

Agreed. Pelican is another great band/name. Simple, powerful, big sound. What is the best bird band name that ISN'T out there?

The Cloacas.

Oops nevermind, just googled it, the cloacas are out there shredding. Spitting out impeccable musical guano. Add The Cloacas to the answer above.

How about the Bohemian Waxwings? Seems like an obvious band name. A little hoity-toity perhaps.

I always wanted to start a band called the Chordates. How inclusive is that? Come on feathered ones, titty-suckers, all you herps, fishies, slimy tunicates, brainless branchiostomas, you belong here!

Oh, I get it! And play only power chordates, right? Ugh. Do surfing and birding have anything in common? 

Certainly, both are tiresome attempts at removing oneself from the tungsten, from the neon, from the halogen, from the inescapable humdrum of our anthropocentric existence. This endeavor is of course a fallacy, and thus the birder and the surfer are both fools. Fools fueled by a blind desire to somehow capture a sliver of the overwhelming energy that pulsates throughout this planet independently of our existence. The natural, the holy, the non-human, the earthly, the godly, the divine; all horrible words to describe these slivers that we attempt to find, see, hear, weep from such beauty, write down on our stupid lists, drop in, go up, go down, slash (yeah 
right), get barreled (uh-huh), drown in the soup, in the froth, resurrect, and do it again, over and over.

If you were to only watch Surfbirds (surfbirding?) would that be a close proxy to surfing?

Surfbirds are kooks. Pelicans on the other hand…

Drugs and birding. Do they mix?

I have heard tell of many a midnight revelries that involved the (omni)presence of Owls. As if they were drawn to it. Songbirding on the other hand, is a purifying, sobering experience, the antivenin to debauchery.

What are your favorite places to bird and why?

Riparian birding is the best. Floating down a river, ever done that? I used to do float surveys on the Trinity River, counting hordes of angry Black Phoebes, flushing Green Heron mothers away from their young. It’s a surreal experience, like birding on a conveyor belt.

Also dig birding in urban parks, seeing who’s braving the oases in the concrete.

I'm hip to the Float and Bird, yes. Makes me thirsty just thinking about it. If you could only have 3 birds and 3 books on a desert island, what would they be?

Books and birds. I see. You want emotional value, rather than utilitarian. Here you go, there’s some mystical connection to each:

1)     House Wren. East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

2)     Ruby-crowned Kinglet. The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell.

3)     Yellow-breasted Chat. Tintin in Tibet by Hergé

Heavy. HEAVY. SPIRIT BIRD?

RED-EYED VIREO. Dope migration pattern!

Favorite tasting bird?

Guineafowl, no doubt. Beautiful bird, love their calls, and they are simply the tastiest.

Yum. Let's stay in this vein. If you could eat any bird, guilt-free, no judgement, what would it be? How would you prepare it? With fruits/vegetation from the birds preferred habitat?

I would have a platter of deep-fried Bushtits. Dip ‘em in thimbleberry ranch. Damn.

Damn. DAMN. 

And thus another installment of the Human Birdwatcher Project's highly-acclaimed interview series is shelved. Remember...birders are people too! Some of them anyway. Hopefully our continual quest of understanding the Birdwatcher in all its myriad forms has been enhanced. Thanks to TVS for taking time away from his Eternal Search for the Barrel of Immortality to share some wisdom with BB&B.

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: How To Chase a Rarity

I've seen only three Yellow-throated Warblers in California. All were wonderful, and all found by other people. I used a nominal amount of wit, cunning and persistence to find them. But what is a nominal task for some birders is a seemingly insurmountable hardship for others. It doesn't have to be that way. Photographed at Ferry Park in San Francisco, CA.

According to the Human Birdwatcher Project (where "birders are people too!"), approximately 95% of birders will chase rarities at least occasionally, and 87% of birders will chase a bird at least once this year, be it near or far.

I am the 87%.

I chase a lot of birds, within a certain radius anyway. Always have, probably always will. I love seeing birds, don't care who found them. Sure, self-found birds are way better, but the idea of snobbishly avoiding going to see a rarity because someone else found it is absurd at best. If you are waiting to find your own Ivory Gull instead of looking for one someone else reported...good luck with that. I hope you have a long life ahead of you...you're gonna need it. The trick is not getting into the habit of doing nothing but chasing. But I digress, because this post is dedicated to chasing. More specifically, how to maximize your chances of success and comport yourself with some dignity.

Why write this post? For years, I never really believed that writing this post was necessary. Chasing a bird properly never seemed overly challenging, though of course there is never a guarantee that you will find what you seek. However, birders are a...special bunch. They need help sometimes. I've seen this at stakeout after stakeout, and it is time someone speaks up about the fact that, sadly, many birders are astonishingly bad at chasing birds.

Do you find that you dip and grip more often than you nail your target birds? Do you ever leave a chase feeling confused and embarrassed? The Human Birdwatcher Project is here to help. Let us cut to the chase...

I knew the approximate area where one could find the secret, not-so-secret Common Black-Hawk in Sonoma County, but once I got myself there I did not really know where to look. Mistakes were made. Luckily, some last minute texting got me pointed in the right direction, and all was well in the world. Photographed at a secret, not-so-secret location in Sonoma County, CA.

1) Get directions to get to the right place. This is fundamental, but if you don't have the fundamentals down then you don't have anything. Use Google Earth/Google Maps satellite imagery to pinpoint the exact spot and the correct access route prior to loading up your chasemobile. Know that when birders provide coordinates for a bird, even if that means nothing to you, you can just copy and paste them into Google Maps and that will display the location of where you need to get yourself. For example, I got my lifer Long-toed Stint at 52.371129°, 175.882463°. Plug that in and see where it takes you.

Read all the emails in the listservs, which typically provide better directions than eBird descriptions. It's usually pretty simple, and does not require you asking everyone in the listserv all over again about how to get to see the so and so when directions that could not be any clearer have already been posted for your convenience.

2) This is for you Geris out there...and with that said this is going to be ironic, but here goes: don't be ageist. I can't count the number of times my birding testimony at stakeouts has been doubted by other birders who don't know me, simply because I am unwithered and not wearing a Tilly hat. We "younger" birders don't assume old birders are untrustworthy, so why does anyone under 40 get viewed with suspicion by the ancients? This habit will not help you see your birds, ageist Geri birder.

You would think that any birder chasing a Falcated Duck, one of the most facemelting and unique waterfowl species in the world, would not need help identifying it. Sadly, you would be wrong. Photographed at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA.

3) Study first. Again, this is fundamental stuff, but it bears repeating. What does the target bird look like? What does it sound like? Is it similar to other birds likely to be in the area? What are the clinching, diagnostic field marks? I've seen a great number of birders show up at a stakeout and require the bird to not only be found for them, but to be identified and interpreted to them as well. In short, they need their hand held. Hey, I like to hold hands too, but it's better to be prepared to identify a bird on your own.

4) Look at photos of the actual individual bird you are searching for prior to looking for it. While this was impossible 20 years ago with how long it took to process film and distribute the results (which in turn required a freaking projector if slides were involved), these days it couldn't be any easier. Check eBird, check listservs, etc. While not necessary for some birds, it can be extremely helpful for Vague Runts of many species.

One day, I looked for this Snow Bunting. I did not utilize all the available resources because I did not think finding the right spot would be difficult...I was wrong. Rookie mistake. Not only did I miss the bird, I never got to the right place. Luckily a couple days later I met Flycatcher Jen for the first time and she took me straight to it. Photographed at some parking lot by the Portland Airport, Portland, OR.

5) Utilize all available resources. Check multiple listservs, eBird, forums, rare bird alerts. The more information the better!

6) Birders are notoriously awkward and socially stunted. When at a stakeout, don't be afraid to talk to people to get details. Birders will sometimes be looking at the MEGA RARITY that you drove 3 hours to come see, and they won't bother telling anyone around them, knowing you are there for the same reason they are. Not chill. Talking to people at stakeouts can pay off in all manner of ways. Also, if a bird is not showing and birders are spreading out to track it down, it is wise to exchange phone numbers with someone else scouring the area.

7) Though I encourage birders to communicate, that comes with the caveat that most birders are not experts, and some are downright stringy. It takes practice to figure out the type of birder you are talking to when they are a total stranger. Are they legit? Inexperienced? Stringy? If someone says, "the split supercilium was surprisingly conspicuous from certain angles", they are probably more credible than someone who says "we knew it was different because it was feeding differently". So keep this in mind...when you roll up someplace and someone says, "oh, the bird was just here", that may not necessarily be true.

Unless you pray at the alter of your county list and nowhere else, you don't need to look for the unexpected Surf Scoter, Black Scoter, or White-winged Scoter that turns up. You must look for the Common Scoter. Crescent City Harbor, Crescent City, CA.

8) Sometimes, you just have to go. Veteran birders have a good sense of when they absolutely must drop everything and go for a bird immediately, beginners and intermediate birders don't. This is in part because they are acutely aware of the level of rarity any species has in their area, and to a lesser degree because they have a good grip on what species may be "naturally occurring". As the old saying goes, "look for the Barnacle Goose in January, not the one in July".

There isn't a birder out there who does not regret missing out on a certain chase, but it's better to have one chase regret (California's last Eastern Whip-poor-will immediately comes to mind for me) than ten. When in doubt, go for the bird!

9) Don't be afraid to look for the bird somewhere else besides where it was last seen if it's not showing up. This could simply mean looking a few hundred feet away, or a mile away. There is risk in this, but the reward can be great, and if you do refind the bird elsewhere you won't be standing in the middle of a crowd of birders, feverish with birdlust.

10) Time and tide are not to be ignored. Birds often settle into patterns quickly when they arrive someplace. Take note of the time of day when stakeout birds are being seen. If you are in a coastal area and are searching for a waterbird, tides often make a huge difference on the distribution of birds. I recommend getting an app for tides in your local area.

Cass and I waited an entire day for this Great Gray Owl to appear; many birders came and went, and a couple of them even made fun of me for Brambring. But, as anyone who has seen a Great Gray can attest to, the wait was well worth it. Since then, frankly, things have never been the same. Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Humboldt County, CA.

11) Be patient/try again. This one is simple. Sometimes, it literally takes all day to find a bird. Don't be afraid to put in the work. It may also take 3 or 4 or more attempts to find the bird you are looking for. Birding can not only be hard, it can be pain, and you have to be willing to endure it.

12) If you have the time, don't forget to peruse other birds in the immediate area. The Patagonia Picnic Table Effect is real...ignore the other birds around at your own peril.Vague Runts beget Vague Runts.

13) Most importantly...don't string. I know this is hard for some people (I'm looking at you, notorious repeat stringers). If, for example, you string a stakeout bird and are the last person to report it, there is a good chance you are going to cause birders to drive out to look for the bird from god knows how far away. That's a dick move, isn't it? And when they see your facepalm-inducing photo or bullshit description on eBird, you aren't going to be winning any popularity contests (#birdingpariah). Most importantly, your birding victory is an empty accomplishment, false and hollow. And somewhere, deep down in your heart of hearts, you know it to be true. Can there be anything worse?

Unlikely.

There you have it birders...hopefully you learned something, or at least got a refresher. Forever and always, The Human Birdwatcher Project is here for you.

The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: Big Year Fatigue

This Buller's Shearwater was photographed in 2012, off Half Moon Bay, CA. We had a great many of them that day, which I don't think has happened in a few years here. My YOHOMBSLBFTINFOLF is currently without this species.

For some reason, rabid county listing in all 58 of California counties sounds inane and empty to me. No offense, just being honest. Why anyone would want to drive hours to chase a locally uncommon bird in Amador instead of putting that time and money towards a trip to a Nome or a Oaxaca or a Cuba or a Ecuador is beyond me. I do not care if you have seen Surf Scoter in 20 inland counties, especially if none of those birds were self-found.

I have never been one to really bash county listing or any other kind of listing though. As far as I know, no one appreciates day birds and trip birds more than me. I list the hell out of things, but year birds...I can really get behind year birds. Doesn't it seem like a good idea to try and see a species once a year? It is, I assure you. I love yearbirding, even though the last time I did any sort of big year was almost 20 years ago. I set the Ventura County big year record back when I was still a minor (which was subsequently demolished the next year), so I've got a little bit of history with this.

Yearbirding, of course, goes hand in hand with full-fledged big years, and in the U.S. you can't talk about big years without bringing up ABA big years. The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive and I were talking about this very thing the other day, and Felonious had some interesting thoughts on the subject. I suggested that he put a post up, and this is what he had to say. Remember, if you finish this post fuming and butthurt, please direct all animosity toward Felonious. - Seagull Steve

With 2016 now well in the rearview, what has also passed in birding circles is the constant chatter of what the 4 ABA big year birders were doing last year. To cut to the chase...it is somehow a relief to not be hearing about so and so flying from Alaska to Florida and back to Alaska to get a few ticks, and to not read some sort of rubbish about it being some mystical, spiritual journey. I know that I'm not the only one who has lost my appetite for this sort of thing. I've never been one to get very excited about ABA big years, but they always seemed interesting to some degree. However, by the end of 2016, I was over it entirely. I had Big Year Fatigue.

In 2013 I found myself crushing this Black-capped Flycatcher in Costa Rica's Talamancas. I can rest assured that I will not see one of these for my YOHOMBSLBFTINFOLF that I'm doing this year.

I don't care what anyone's ABA list is, be it one put together in a year or within a lifetime. Those who have really high ABA lists generally have access to wealth, or are tour guides, or both. Sure, if you have 800+ species I am going to be envious of some of your experiences, but it's not like I equate one's list size with happiness. I could actually argue that the inverse of this is true...but that is for another time.

In 2016 I found myself going back to the same topics repeatedly whenever big years came up in conversation, and Seagull Steve thought it was time I shared them with a wider audience. I present them to you now, not as birding gospel but merely birding food for birding thought.

Conservation: Birding in all its forms is great, but conservation is more important. Without conservation, there is no birding, only evil and Rock Pigeons. Personally, if I was going to spend a whole year and a great deal of money birding and burning gas, I couldn't do it without some kind of conservation tie-in. Most big year birders don't do this, though I know at least one ABA yearbirder put his money where his mouth was last year. I respect that. In other cases, it seems like conservation was given lip service and nothing more. Conversation is great, but it's not the same thing as conservation.

Time: A Big Year on an ABA level, or in a big birdy state like California, requires you to be birding constantly. There are very few stretches that are not conducive to adding birds that you might not see again for the rest of the year. It's essentially a full-time job when you figure in the absurd amount of travel time it is necessary to put in, so you have to be in the envious position of being retired or unemployed, or have a job that will let you take a lot of leave for an entire year yet somehow pays well enough to finance this absurd pursuit. Most of us aren't lucky enough to have this kind of time, which is one reason why I find really ambitious big years somewhat difficult to relate to.

White-tailed Hawks were nice to see on the regular back in 2014. Though my YOHOMBSLBFTINFOLF features a modest number of hawks, this hawk is not included. Photographed in McCook, Hidalgo County, Texas.

$$$: Money is a huge factor in big years. It's a lot like politics...the more money you have to spend, the more likely it is you will have success. Think about it...for the typical ABA Big Year, you are taking dozens of flights, with destinations from Gambell to Miami, St. Johns to San Diego. The costs of flights, lodging, tours, gas, rentals must be astronomical. Even if you are doing a Big Year on a state level, you are putting a great number of miles on your car...the costs of constant frantic birding can add up in a big way, no matter what the scale. A large pool of disposal income, another thing most of us do not have access to, is highly conducive to the kind of success you can achieve, though obviously not everyone who does a big year drops in on a rarity with a golden parachute and silver spoon in hand.

Social constraints: Some birders exist in a vacuum...no sick relative to help, no significant other, no close friends nearby that would be missed. No children to raise, or they are already grown and out of the house. Some people never find themselves in a position to do a big year, even if they have the time and money. The big year birder is either very fortunate in this regard, or they have little regard for other people (a common trait in birders).

In 2015, I picked up this nice male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker early in the year. No such luck for my ongoing YOHOMBSLBFTINFOLF. Photographed at Casto Valley Regional Park, Castro Valley, CA.

Reputation: If you are going to do a serious big year, whether it be in a single county or for the entire planet, you want to have the respect of your peers. You are probably trying to set some kind of record, after all. If that is the case, you should be a good birder. I don't think that is a controversial thing to say, but there are not many people out there saying it in public...but hey, that's what BB&B is here for, right? Right. There are records and all involved here that a lot of folks actually take seriously and for this reason, stringers should not be doing big years. However, with the Dunning-Kruger effect in play, we can't exactly expect birders to be policing themselves in this matter. It is also preferable that when you are using tour guides (inevitable in a ABA big year) that you can actually identify the birds that the guides are showing you. Just because your guide saw that Willow Warbler well doesn't mean you can automatically count it. Well you totally can, but in case no one has told you yet, that is really lame.

Hype: We heard about 2016's ABA big year birders constantly from both interested folks and from some of the birders themselves, who varied in their self-promotional habits between seemingly doing none at all (a breath of fresh air) to constantly making themselves as visible as possible online. It's true that if you portray yourself as a big deal that some people will actually believe you...just look at Seagull Steve, the #7 birder in the United States. He would know.

As I said, big year birders are highly variable in the amount of attention they want to draw to themselves...it would not be fair of me at all to try to make any sweeping generalizations about that. I mean, compare the press of Noah Strycker's world big year with Arjan Dwarshuis'. Do you even know who Arjan is? If not, that illustrates my point perfectly...he saw hundreds more species than Noah did in 2016, completely demolishing Noah's impressive record set the year before. Yet there was almost no buzz around what Arjan was doing, at least not in 'murica. So you can go about your business like Arjan did, or have people create buzz for you like Noah did, or you can really make it about yourself and pull some Swallowgate tactics. I think I prefer the under the radar style, but maybe relentless attempts for attention are more your thing.

The book: Many a big year birder has gone on to write a book. This is now about as predictable as Sanderlings flying north in spring and south in fall. While everyone always welcomes a Sanderling when it arrives, the same cannot be said about another big year book. It's a cliché, let's be honest. I'm not saying that all these books are terrible or even bad at all, but it seems like behind almost every big year is a book being written. How many more of these books, which by necessity have the exact same plot, will be written? Of course, many speaking engagements will be planned as well....there's no publicity for a birder like a big year.

I've seen a modest number of green birds, and Mexican Parrotlet is by far the most leaf-like. There are two of them in this photo, you know. I have not yet seen this species for the current YOHOMBSLBFTINFOLF. Photographed in 2016 at Lower Singayta, Nayarit, Mexico.

The big year modifier: Speaking of clichés...as a leading tastemaker in birding, I officially am announcing that the phrase "little big year" has been a tired and uninteresting cliché for a long time, a long time. Just like I put an end to the phrase "Birds have wings. They use them.", it is now time that we put little big years on the proverbial shelf for a couple decades so some of their freshness may be restored. Consider some alternatives, such as shitty big year, fake big year, regular year, modest big year, kinda large year, swollen but not uncomfortably so year, or call it what it usually is...YOHOMBSLBFTINFOLF (Year Of Hopefully Observing Many Bird Species Locally Because Frequent Travel Is Not Financially Or Logistically Feasible).

I do have one resoundingly positive thing to say about the 2016 ABA big years though - the big year deathmarch did have one unique aspect to it. It was not a well-kept secret that the big year birders were not one big happy family, which two of them acknowledged repeatedly on their respective blogs. BB&B, being who we are, fully endorses this. Fear and loathing? Allegations of stringing? Bitter birding rivalries? Where?! Point the way! While some leading birders attempt to portray birdwatchers as one big happy family, BB&B has no such illusions. That's why you are here now. So thanks, 2016 ABA yearbirders, for keeping it real.

Black-legged Kittiwake was a bird I didn't get to see last year, but luckily they were readily available to gobble up for this year's YOHOMBSLBFTINFOLF! Photographed earlier this year at the Pilarcitos Creek mouth, Half Moon Bay, CA.

No need to go on forever about this, I've said my piece. I'm not against big years, I just am not really excited about them anymore, at least on the scale of the ABA Area. Perhaps there are more interesting things to be excited about, no need to get offended. Maybe the fatigue will wear off. At least there is one thing about big years we can all agree on...despite the crazy-good cast, The Big Year was a major disappointment. It sure gave birding a lot of publicity though!