Still S.E.V.E.N./Breaking Rad(ius)

How long has it been since the last post? I'm really dropping the ball over here. Well, I've been doing a lot of crud, and quite a bit of stuff too, so it's not like I've had ample opportunities to fire up the blogerator...but still. Even though it has not been sheer, bottomless laziness that is to blame, I have let you down all the same.

I have failed you.

But I am here now. BB&B languishes no longer. Withering away into oblivion is not fait accompli...at least, not yet. Before BB&B fades away, I must pass on all that I know. A thousand blog posts will live in you. Someday, this will be your fight.

And what a fight it will be. The truth about birders must be told, even after I am gone. Although our rate of posting has dwindled, BB&B is constantly taking the temperature of the birding community, and our recent findings are disconcerting at best. Birders are still as nonsensical, annoying, petty, anal and pedantic as ever...perhaps now more than ever. They still fail to apply basic concepts of science to their bizarre, baseless theories while claiming to embrace science. They are still obsessed with making everything into a hybrids. They still spew vicious, evil lies like "there is no such thing as a bad day of birding".

Unbelievable.

Someday, dear reader, you will construct your own lightsaber and your skills will be complete. Indeed, you will be powerful. But that day has not come yet...I am still here, and my journey is not yet over. I am still here, still the Global Birder Ranking System's #7 U.S. birder, still a birding master, still capturing the birding Zeitgeist like no blog ever has.

Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease.

Chances are most of you readers are too old or too young to know what that means, but for the rest of you, enjoy that easter egg. Now that we have reestablished my blog wizardry, I feel comfortable admitting to you a deeply shameful fact...September was an utter failure in terms of seeing rare birds. I didn't really chase very much (going to take this opportunity to pat myself on the back here), and while that may be admirable, I also didn't find jack shit locally. I can't remember the last time I went through September without seeing a single vague runt somewhere in the bay area...how embarrassing!

Apparently, I no longer see vagrants. I no longer see uncommon birds. What has happened to me? Can I just go #FULLGERI and retire so I can go bird all the time? If only there were a way...

No, this is not where I direct you to my gofundme page so you can pay for my birding trips. You're welcome.

No matter. The rarities will return, though they may or not be within my 5MR. It hasn't been too difficult to stay in the friendly confines of the 5MR for most of the year though. I've gotten a lot of new radius birds, seen some rarities, and found a couple really good ones of my own. However, that strategy has been backfiring a bit lately, and I think one of the best ways to maintain a good relationship with your radius is to know when to break free of your radial shackles!

So with that in mind, here is some non-radial stuff from earlier this year.

Countless birders went to see this Eastern Bell's Vireo when it set up a territory for a couple of weeks in late spring. Not only was this my first Bell's Vireo of any subspecies in Santa Clara County, this was my first Eastern seen in the state. Easterns are exceptionally rare in California and practically unheard of in spring...it's worth wondering if this split will be revisited again. I've only seen one or two of these before, so this relatively cooperative vague runt gets FIVE STARS. Photographed at Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, Santa Clara County.

A day later, I hiked out on a trail I had previously not heard of for another county bird, an Indigo Bunting. While it wasn't very cooperative, I did appreciate that it dispensed with the suspense and appeared almost immediately upon my arrival. Photographed on the Stanford Dish Trail, Santa Clara County.

Dark-eyed Juncos isn't the slightest bit rare, but I appreciate friendly ones like this. This was photograped at New Brighton State Beach in Santa Cruz County, where I also got my lifer great white sharks! Standing on a fairly crowded beach while a bunch of (mostly small) sharks swim offshore is quite the spectacle, very Jawsish in a low intensity kind of way. Best moment: despite everyone on the beach knowing there were sharks visible just offshore, a dude on a stand up paddleboard tried to be all nonchalant and paddle around anyway, but had to frantically turn around and paddle to shore when a shark came up next to him. Golden!

The easiest, most reliable Red-footed Booby in the Lower 48 has made its home roost at the end of the Seacliff Pier in Capitola for spans of 2018 and 2019. It's still there, being awesome. Of all the booby species, this one has been the hardest to chase in California until very recently, as they had a penchant of dying immediately after being found. This one is holding it down though.

Here it is back in 2018. Back then, it looked a bit more blonde-headed and pink-billed.

I live near sea otters. They are very east to see down at Moss Landing (where this one was) and in the Monterey area. This proximity has enriched my life. Everyone would be a lot happier if they had access to sea otters. Alas, most of the world is a sea otter desert.

And so the world burns.

Unlike otters, summertime Long-tailed Ducks are not at all expected, as they are a good find even during winter. These two decided to pass their time going through gnarly molts in Moss Landing. 

After driving by it countless times without stopping, I finally checked out Moss Landing Wildlife Area. I'm glad I did, because there was a Snowy Plover nest hatching right next to the trail! Crazy timing. Look at that little chickie! It's still wet and has eggshell in its down. I spent less than 30 seconds next to the nest and then booked it out of there to make sure it was minimally disturbed...after all, I am not a photographer. Hey-oh!

Microfishing is all the rage now but Great Egrets have been doing it since there have been Great Egrets. Photographed at Shoreline Lake, Santa Clara County.

Can you imagine connecting with this microtrophy with hook and line? Oh, the stories you could tell. 

Shoreline Lake is also a popular fishing spot for Forster's Terns and a great place to see them up close, since they are very acclimated to fishing next to the well-trafficked footpath. I love me some acclimation. Too bad the Black Skimmers that nest there now aren't so prone to cruising by the shore.

It's not like I'm a photographer or anything, but one of my favorite things to shoot is terns in flight. Shooting many flying birds (swifts, hummingbirds, most passerines, almost anything on pelagic trips) often ends in nothing but crushed hopes, massive disappointments and some mediocre keepers, but terns have such nice lines, some tolerance for people and aren't obnoxiously small. Also, anything that feeds by plunge diving gets extra points from me.

Willets are underappreciated. Nice to see this confiding friend just returned from its breeding grounds...where their obnoxiousness is what is unappreciated. Being near a Willet nest is not a pleasant sensory experience. Photographed at Shoreline Lake.

Cliff Swallows are still occupying their wonderful ovenish nests in late summer. Photographed at the Palo Alto Baylands, Santa Clara County.

At the Casey Forebay pumphouse, I settled in to sort through the swallows that roost there. I don't get to see/study juvenile swallows as well or as often as I would like, and the flock here provides a good opportunity to see birds up close. Here is a somewhat bedraggled adult Cliff flanked by juveniles.

I was surprised to find this white faced juvenile Cliff Swallow. At first I thought it was an abnormality, but then I noticed several other white-faced juveniles in the flock.

This is a different individual. Bizarre. Well it's most likely not bizarre at all, but I did not expect it. Anyone know what's up with this whiteness? How long it is retained? Do only a minority of birds get this or is this a pretty typical part of their molt?

In the back of my mind, I had an alterior motive for standing there with the swallows. I wanted to find a Bank Swallow. They are a rarity in Santa Clara and I had never seen one here. You can imagine my surprise when one casually swooped in and landed on the railing 15 feet from me, allowing me to crush it through the chain link fence.

Uh....what? Finding rare birds usually does not work like that. Finding a rarity...a county bird...is always ace, but finding one in July is the icing on the cake. Having the bird come to you within scope and tripod hurling distance is the crushed up painkillers sprinkled on the icing on the cake. This business with betraying one's radius is not so bad after all, eh? Although they nest at a couple places on the coast, I don't often get to see Bank Swallows and this was my one and only of the year.

While the Bank Swallow was confiding, it did not stick around for long so I was left with the other swallow species. It was cool to have all the other brown swallows represent in the swallow roost, which made for a great comparison with the Bank and with one another. Here is a juvenile Tree Swallow.

And here it is bellowing.

Here is a juvenile Violet-green Swallow, showing just a tad bit of white above and behind the eye.

And last but for once not least, here is a juvenile Northern Rough-winged Swallow. Yes, typically this swallow is one of the absolute drabbest North American birds, but they are pretty cool looking as juveniles! So many rich colors...relatively speaking! A veritable rainbow of browns. I'm probably about done taking swallow pictures for the year, so I hope you enjoyed the brownbow!

Boy Scout Woods: Facemelt, A Lifer, The Faint Scent of The F-Word

On the first morning of sweet sweet UTC birding, This Machine Nate, Officer Shaw and I headed straight to Boy Scout Woods on High Island. Upon getting out of the car, it was obvious there were a lot of birds around; it was happening. The first (and last) Yellow-throated Warbler of the trip was out along the road as soon as we left the parking lot.

The crowds of birders that I expected did not disappoint...there were so many birders....or, in festival parlance, so. many. birders. It was ghastly. But the birding....ohhhhhhhh the birding was off the chain. The cold front that just blew through left hordes of migrants in its wake...there were birds everywhere. It was everything I had hoped for and more. I even managed to find my lifer Swainson's Warbler there that first morning (no photos), which was a huge relief...in part because I didn't want to owe someone an hj. Meeting the big brown ground warbler with the long bill and rusty cap was a very pleasant experience, and like the multiple others we would see later in the week, it was within a few feet of a Wood Thrush. You show me a Wood Thrush and I will show you a Swainson's Warbler. I'm already working on the paper, don't steal my idea. We also found our first Cerulean Warblers of the trip, which we would go on to see somewhere almost every day we were there.

Boy Scout is probably the best known Audubon sanctuary/birding site on High Island, though arguably not the best to bird - the habitat there undoubtedly has huge value as a stopover site, but much of it is fairly homogeneous and doesn't have a whole lot of openings/edge habitat, which can make viewing canopy species difficult. The ponds/drips are nice though, for sure, if you can cut through the Geri to see them (we never bothered trying to get into the photography blind). So much of the sanctuary is great for Catharus and ground-loving warblers, but due to the closed canopy one has to work a bit harder for many of the other warblers that prefer to be above eye level. I went three times, so that makes me an expert, right? I also highly recommend birding the road/across the street from the entrance.

Another afternoon Dipper Dan and I spent some time at the "grandstands" near the entrance, a target of much scorn from some birders but placed in a good spot to see birds. A Scarlet Tanager was coming down ridiculously low to feed on precious mulberries, repeatedly within 10 feet of me...what a crippler. It dropped a mulberry on my head so I crushed it.

We saw lots of Indigo Buntings every day, including some pretty big flocks. Stunners.

I know, I know, this isn't a good picture, but bear with me. On the first morning, this Painted Bunting dropped into the trees across from the sanctuary entrance (I believe this is known as "the barnyard", and demands to be birded) and immediately started passing out - it clearly had just finished its Gulf crossing and needed to recuperate - too tired to feed. I don't think I've seen anything quite like that before. We then went around the corner to go after a Cerulean Warbler that This Machine had seen, and was greeted by this bird instead...

A Prothonotary Warbler falling asleep on the ground! Keep in mind this is all happening at about 8:00 AM in the morning, these aren't birds taking mid-day naps in unusually visible places. I would not dare say the F-word here, but with the numbers of birds present we would see at High Island that day and birds doing crazy stuff like this, the smell of F-word was certainly in the air.

Prothonotary eventually woke up to do some preening and light foraging, glad we didn't watch it expire on the ground. We would find no more Prothonotaries after the first day.

This is no ordinary Little Blue Heron, this is a Little Blue Heron (present in this same pond for days) that Geri proclaimed to be a Reddish Egret, the first ever seen in Boy Scout Woods! Hooray!

Kentucky Warblers were common all week long at many sites. I haven't seen hella before this trip, but now I can say I have seen hella and I had a great time doing it.

I just know you were waiting to see some Geri...here they are! I think they were looking at a Blackburnian Warbler.

As This Machine pointed out, how about getting Swainson's Warbler, Swainson's Thrush and Swainson's Hawk all at the same spot? We enjoyed triple Swainson's at Boy Scout our first morning there. Overall we did not fare well with raptors on the trip, but that is not something I am about to whinge about.

The number of birds on the ground at times was staggering. Thrushes, catbirds, Brown Thrashers, Ovenbirds, Hooded and Kentucky Warblers, etc., were ceaselessly thrashing and sifting through the leaf litter or parading around on lawns and paths. On several occasions over the week, at Boy Scout and other spots, there were simply too many birds to look at, which is a phenomenon I generally reserve only for birding in the Neotropics. Wood Thrushes were abundant throughout the week, rivaling Swainson's Thrushes in numbers.

The crowds here are no joke.

Another Scarlet Tanager shot, just because.

All photos were taken at Boy Scout Woods, or across the street from it. Much more Texas material coming up!

Episode VI: RETURN OF THE GERI

Seagull Steve has returned to the state of Texas in an attempt to rescue his friend This Machine Nate from the clutches of the vile Geri Birders.

Little does Steve know that the GERIATRIC EMPIRE has secretly begun amassing an unstoppable army even more powerful than the dreaded hordes that swarm South Padre Island.

When assembled, this ultimate army of Geris will spell certain doom for the small band of birders struggling to restore good identification skills to the birding galaxy...

How does that grab you? I don't really have the capacity to do an opening crawl in blog format, so this will have to do. Though the Jedi were obviously the protagonists in Return of The Jedi, the Geri are decidedly not the heroes of Return of The Geri. They are the rising darkness, and we are the light to meet it. 

Always in motion is the future, but I can see it now. The mosquitoes will be thick, and Geri will be thicker. Photographers (Geri and otherwise) high on bird lust and low on almost everything else will inspire anger, fear, aggression. When brightly colored birds in plain view within spitting distance are pointed out, Geri will struggle mightily to locate them and demand more instruction so I cannot enjoy watching the birds myself. Birds will be misidentified constantly. Black-and-white Warblers will become Blackpoll Warblers. Tennessee Warblers will become Philadelphia Vireos. Eastern Wood-Pewees will become Acadian Flycatchers. Ovenbirds will become Wood Thrushes. All Catharus thrushes will become each other. Red will become blue and one will become two. There will be squadrons of Geri to wade through at many of the sites, indeed, an army I feel I may not be able to defeat. But does it spell certain doom? Perhaps, but much like Lando Calrissian, Nien Nunb and Wedge Antilles defied the odds and destroyed the second Death Star, we may be able to find a way around the legion of Geri and get into some fantastic birding. That depends on the birds, the weather, our birding strategy, and a lot of luck.

Geri may be a force to be reckoned with, but a confiding Hooded Warbler can become more powerful than you could possibly imagine. 

Cheesy/stupid intro aside, we are excited to announce that BB&B will be returning to Texas this spring. Ostensibly, I will be leading a custom trip organized by the up and coming MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS ("No one can find Ortolans like Ortolans!"), and meeting up with famed Bicknell's Thrush expert and Jawbreaker scholar, This Machine Nate. But the real reason I am going is to bend the knee and worship at the altar of Spring Migration. Like most of you, I have never seen a proper fallout...I've been around for some good waves of migrants (what some would call "modest" fallouts perhaps, which seems oxymoronic to me), but not the genuine article...warblers littering the ground, ungodly hordes of exhausted migrants, too much for one birder to possibly take in...one of the great climaxes of North American birding. I've been close enough to the real deal to develop a strong appetite for it though, and so I must head east.

I like to see Indigo Buntings. I like to see lots of them, at extremely close range. For the birder looking to get high on Indigo, spring in coastal Texas is the time and the place to do just that. 

Now, as you may have heard, I am the #7 birder in the country...it's not like I am going into this situation blind. Even if I was going to spend weeks out there (I'm not), I'm not expecting to be so lucky, or for the birds to be so unlucky. I will be completely happy just to reconnect with a bunch of different species and be there when a decent number of newly-arrived migrants drop in to the woods.  I am expecting some slow, perhaps excruciatingly slow, days on the passerine front...but this is what one must endure to have the best chance at being around for an iconic migration event. Or just plain old good birding! It's not like I require 25 species of warblers in a day to be satisfied.

I found this Scarlet Tanager in the middle of the day ("best time to make for great birdwatch", according to one notorious birder), smashing a large moth in the middle of a suburban street with nothing resembling respectable stopover habitat in sight. I shot this crippling lens-cracker out my car window. No doubt this is a bird that meets all standard fallout criteria (tired/voraciously hungry/in weird coastal habitat/totally oblivious to people/facemelting), but unfortunately one bird does not make a fallout.

Aside from seeing a lot of birds and getting some crushing in, I do have one particular target bird in mind - Swainson's Warbler. I have never seen a Swainson's Warbler, and I hope to rectify that unfortunate situation by the time I return to California. While pretty much everyone else is looking up for yellow, green, blue, orange and red, I will be looking down for brown...at least some of the time. I am merely mortal, unable to resist the canopy-loving species, and one in particular has a special draw. If you are new to BB&B, you may not know that I dream about Cerulean Warblers more than any other bird, and I dream about birds with embarrassing frequency. I think it's a fantastic bird to dream about! Just last week, in a dream, I had male Cerulean and Blackburnian Warblers in the same binocular view...what a combo! You could even call it a dream combo. Will these birds make the jump from my subconscious to my binoculars in a few months? And if they do...what are the implications? Can anyone be ready for something like that? If you missed it from back in 2014, From South Padre Island to The Astral Plane: A Cerulean Warbler Vision Quest is a pretty good read. It is completely accurate account, with no fiction or exaggerations of any sort. Big lenses may be raised against me in anger once again, but I am not afraid...

Right. The mind begins to wander. Possibilities of glory on the scale of an exploding Death Star or failure the size of Alderaan seem equally plausible. Is my fate intertwined with that of the Cerulean Warbler? Is my entire life just a Franzenesque cliche? A lot of questions may be answered on this trip.

When the Geri-to-warbler ratio is askew in the woods, there will be no shortage of other great birds to look for instead. Upland Sandpiper is one of a great many shorebird species that use the area in spring, and I haven't seen them since the last time I was in the Lone Star [Beer] State.

Well, now you know the main plotlines we will be working with. Top priorities are freeing This Machine from the carbonite, lifer Swainson's Warbler, ask Cerulean Warbler about interdimensional travel and astro-projection. Eastern Whip and Black-whiskered Vireo are both needed birds as well, but I reckon a lot of luck would be required for either and my expectations for those are not high. Most of the time, it will be all about year birds! And our clients, of course...MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS is famous for going above and beyond to coddle (not cuddle) clientele, and this trip will be no exception.

I guess I should wrap this, considering nothing has even happened yet and it is still winter. The passerines in this post were photographed on South Padre Island, and the UPSA was in some ag fields north of Harlingen. All in Texas, obvi.

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, County Birds

O, what I would not give to see a county bird!

I would part with my first child, my second child,
and quite willfully my third!

 Alameda, San Francisco, Marin,
I plunder your migrant traps with gleeful abandon,
whilst craving rarities like it should be sin!

That phrase, of course, is from the twisted mind of deranged poet-ornithologist, Felonious Jive. He has had a lot of kids, but strangely I've never met any of them. He seems to see a lot of good birds though.

It is the end of September, and birders have been out flogging the brush like there is no tomorrow. It is the season for Vague Runts all across the land...anything can happen. You never know. Birding is hard and often ponderous, but it gets a little bit easier this time of year. Here on the west coast, the more hours in the field you spend in September and October, the more you will be rewarded. You don't have to be #7 to know that.

Unlike with Felonious Jive, the Great Ornithologist, the Vague Runt gods have not been heaping rewards on me lately...which is ok, because I have not been getting totally stiffed. I've seen some birds...nothing good enough to soil myself, but one cannot go around soiling themselves every day while birding. In the name of county birding, here's a few bay area birds I've recently been introduced to.

This Indigo Bunting in heavy molt has been holding it down in Golden Gate Park for over a month now. It was a sweet sweet San Francisco County bird. There was a juicy little eBird/listserv rumour that started getting out of hand, where birders were thinking that more and more Indigo Buntings were actually at this site, even nesting! This never occurred. I was happy with this one bird, for I am a humble birder who needs not bend to sinful cravings of rarities.

This Mew Gull is certainly not a county bird, but it is rare as fuck this time of year. This bird summered at Lake Merced...I did not believe all the eBird reports I saw of it for weeks, but lo and behold it is bona fide. Most late summer "Mew Gulls" that get reported here are young Ring-billed Gulls with wittle itty bitty bills.

This San Francisco county bird (!!!) was one I've been searching for a long time, a long time. I can cruise out to Point Reyes and see thousands of this declining and wonderful bird, but their abundance is a whole different story on the other side of the Golden Gate. This bird was at Lake Merced, where they turn up intermittently.

Blackbirds undergo their big molt in fall, so this scaly bird is a pretty typical looking adult male for this time of year. The famous white epaulet edge often looks quite buffy for a few months, which can confound those not familiar with Tricolored Blackbird molt (99.9999% of living humans).

This is a male Bicolored Blackbird, our local form of Red-winged Blackbird. He has no extravagant contrasting epaulet border. Note the shorter, stouter bill he has compared to the Tricolored above.

Now that September has come (and almost gone...what the fuck?), we finally have a nice variety of warblers around. Unlike last year, but very much like two years ago, this fall hasn't been very big on eastern Vague Runts in the bay area, so I must give pause when a friendly Wilson's Warbler chooses to lurk nearby. Coyote Hills Regional Park, CA.

Local birders perk up when they see a Black-throated Gray Warbler, and I sure as fuck did when I saw this nectary COUNTY BIRD...my Alameda list isn't really worth bragging about, I'll be the first one to admit that. Black-throated Grays are uncommon, sometimes fairly common fall migrants in the bay area when they get up the gumption to not overfly us.

This confiding bird spent several minutes flogging a large moth to death on the ground in front of me. I love confiding birds. Photographed at Coyote Hills Regional Park.

Let's keep the stripey-face theme going. Up until last week, this was the rarest terrestrial bird I've seen this fall. This Black-throated Sparrow, a hell of a bird in both appearance and rarity, spent a number of days at Coyote Hills Regional Park.

It's not a crush by any means, but I was more than happy to see one of these birds (which many birders describe as "handsome", have you noticed that?) without going to the middle of fucking nowhere, which is where they prefer to spend their time here in California. I didn't expect an adult to drift all the way up here, it should know better, but who am I to question a Vague Runt who clearly migrated all the way to Alameda County for me to see it? This is a juicy county bird.

This Lesser Yellowlegs has three legs! Photographed at Coyote Hills.