When Abstinence Is Brilliance

...so here I am, for approximately the 16,000th time, trying to time when I should attempt to see this bird. I will chase the shit out of a rare bird, as you know, but goddamn...I am not a big fan of driving hours and hours, just to turn around and waste my time driving more and more hours. That said, I don't want to be stupid about this...a few years ago I decided not to look for a relatively reliable Gyrfalcon (life bird) and King Eider (state bird) that were wintering in Humboldt, because I didn't have much money at the time (a poor reason) and because...because I was stupid (the main reason). I do not want to be stupid again.

It was not long ago when I shared these words with you, dear readers, dearest nerds. I wrote them about the Great Gray Owl in Humboldt County...but I think they are worth sharing again, because I recently found myself in an almost identical situation. It was not a Great Gray Owl this time, but a Snowy Owl.

Yes, a Snowy Owl, a vagrant that carries much positive baggage. A month after Great Gray appeared, it was replaced in Humboldt (aka the Minnesota of California) by a Snowy Owl. Snowy Owl is an alarmingly rare bird in California, a species that goes years at a time without gracing this birdiful state...and goddamn, that is a bird I would love to see in California. It was located just south of the mouth of Humboldt Bay, in an area readily accessed by the public; totally chaseable. The bird was first found on a Thursday, and was seen by many on Friday. With no obligations I couldn't avoid for the weekend, what was to stop me from going up to look for it Saturday?

I hemmed and hawed all day Friday. I weighed the same exact pros and cons that I have considered seemingly countless times over the years...the 10+ hours of driving that is entailed, the fact that I just did that drive a couple weeks ago, the hordes of birders to be dealt with, friends I would or would not see due to the timing of the visit, and of course the most important factor of all...the possibility that it would be a major dip. Brambring, as you know, is never far from my mind.

Finally, after deep contemplation and much bourbon, a decision was reached: I would wait. I was going to abstain from the chase. If the bird stuck around until the next weekend, I would go for it then. I've seen Snowy Owls before at least, so there was no lifer anxiety that I had to combat. 

On Saturday morning, I awoke with a start. I had felt a great disturbance, as if dozens of nerd voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I feared something terrible had happened. The first thing I did when I got out of bed was check the listservs...and it all made sense. Had the owl been seen yet? No. Noon rolled around...no owl. One passed, then two, then three...no owl. An official announcement was broadcast that evening, claiming that no one saw the owl that day, despite many people scouring the area. Would the bird turn up Sunday? Sunday came and went...the owl was gone. Countless birders had driven from all over the state to see this bird, and all had dipped.

Suddenly, I went from a lowly fate of being resigned to getting gripped off that weekend to reveling in the victory that only a brilliant birder mastermind can understand. I had been vaulted from the depths of jealousy into the high, pure air that winning gamblers live to breathe. I had done it! In the long, storied history of my birding life, never before had I narrowly avoided such a miserable, costly dip...by deciding not to look for the bird at all. Trusting my razor-sharp instincts to put off searching for this state MEGA paid off in massive dividends. 

These three Snowy Owls were all photographed at Ocean Shores, Washington. I may have only seen Snowy Owls once, but at least I saw ten!

So what lesson can be learned here? The only one that I pluck from the ether is that it is good to be the #7 birder in the U.S., you feel me? It takes years of success and suffering to be able to discern when to drop everything and go, and when to stay up late drinking whisky and sleeping in while the sad masses wander the sand dunes like catatonically depressed zombies...luck had nothing to do with this. You just have to accept the fact that you are going to miss things like a Brambring and a Ivory Gull, but will be rewarded with a Common Scoter and a Nutting's Flycatcher. Maybe some day you too can brag about how you didn't bother to chase a Snowy Owl, and came out of the affair a birding hero.

So venture forth, drive hours, dip on birds, and get angry. Loathe yourself. Spew venom about your significant other who prevented you from seeing the bird the day before. Get it out of the way...it is unavoidable. It is your destiny. Then, and only then, will you know if you should stay...or if you should go.

20 Years In The Game: Never Stop Birding...Sentimental HJs...Birds Remembered

Look at all these nerds. Although I am currently retired from bizarre field jobs, they have done a lot for me (and my life list). After the long and glorious LBJ days came to an end in Humboldt County, this was my first job...slavishly censusing Burrowing Owls for Jeff Manning (of "Two Jeffs One Cup" fame) and his mysterious dog Palouse in the Imperial Valley. Those times were good times, and things have never been the same.

As a birder, this month was special for me. Not because I achieved any sort of listing milestone or saw a particularly rare bird (groan), but because I realized that I've now been birding for 20 years. Of course there are a lot of birders out there who have been birding that long (and substantially longer), but I would wager that most of them are not 32. Let's face it...those people are old. OLD. One day I will probably be OLD as well, but other than an increasingly large beer gut and a decreasing amount of hair, I feel pretty good about myself, and I intend to enjoy the waning days of youth.  At any rate, this is truly an anniversary of an incredibly nerdy magnitude, and really, really embarrassing.

When I started birding as a stupid 12-year old, once I started it never occurred to me that I would ever stop birding. It was too good, even if I was doomed to be a nerd for the rest of my life. I became a bird addict, a depraved junkie who just cannot get enough...maybe not the kind who would give an HJ in a back alley in exchange for a life bird...ok FULL DISCLOSURE I actually invented that whole bird-hj bartering system and that is totally me. Buddies, I'm still waiting for all those HJs...

Right. Buddies. While I don't have the endless financial resources that some have to pour into their state and county lists (surely there is something better to do with that $$$...or is there?), I have made lots of friends on the way. And friends, to a birder, are worth more than any Code 5 rarity. Birders, as I'm sure you have noticed, don't have many friends, due to the weirdness in their brains and debilitating lack of social skills. Luckily somewhere between 12 and 32 I managed to trick some people into liking me and now I have many a buddy. So now when I run into an old friend at a bar, they greet me joyous cries of "Number 7!", whether they are a birder or not. I have a girlfriend, Booby Brittany, who forced us to chase a Little Bunting last winter because she knew my soul would shrivel up and die if I didn't (she also has a thing for Sibes, though). It has been an honor and a privilege to have met so many good people on this godawful, shameful journey. So to all my friends I've made while working weird jobs (birders and otherwise) that made life tolerable (birded/drank with me) and to everyone who has lent me a couch or showed me a lifer while on some fucked up birding road trip or were down to be dragged around through the Arcata Bottoms at incredibly slow speeds...you know who you are. I owe you a big fat HJ.

I guess you want to see some pictures or something. I can't share images from the 90's (although I do have slides somewhere) and from most of the 2000's, so I figured I would at least break out the old hard drives and post some random pictures chronicling some more recent Great Successes.

In February 2009, I ditched my desk job in Concord, CA, for a volunteer position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Midway Atoll. I wanted to get to know seabirds...and I got to know them quite well, particularly albatross. Truth be told, they are quite addicting. Anyways, though not really a seabird (although it does overfly vast distances of ocean), one of the birds I met on Midway was the Bristle-thighed Curlew, which is never something I had realistically thought I would ever see up to that point. This is the last North American bird to have it's breeding grounds discovered, and even there it is not very common. Saw hella on Midway though.

After Midway, I went out to Pennsylvania to work with Bat Conservation International, where I got my first taste of the wind energy industry and what it can do to birds and bats. After I finished there, I figured "Well, this is as close as I've ever been to Florida, so I might as well go". So I drove down to the Everglades, and picked up a quantity of lifers. Wood Stork was not one of them, but any place you can go where Wood Storks lurk by the roadside is a good place. Did you know they have pink feet? Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, FL.

In the spring of 2010, I took a job in southeast Arizona, one of my favorite places to bird. It's great getting paid to look at birds where thousands of other birders drool about visiting. We lived in Florida Canyon much of the time, and put up a bunch of hummingbird feeders; this Violet-crowned Hummingbird was one of the more unexpected birds to show up.

After Arizona, I thought it would be best to move to the Aleutian Islands for the summer. I got to meet many Asian strays and a shitload of amazing seabirds, but one of my favorite moments was finding this Ancient Murrelet chick after a night of mist-netting Whiskered Auklets. This little chick, just a few days old, was going balls-out for the water, leaping astonishing distances into the air like a goddamned kangaroo in order to get over the seemingly impenetrable boulder field on the beach. We could hear a parent calling to it from the water. I have no idea what terrain had to be conquered or how far that chick had to go to get to where I saw it, but I have no doubt that it made it to the water.

In 2011, I thought it was time to get weird. I completed a road trip through eastern Mexico, which was rad, although not after getting robbed by a cartel...which was not rad. A month after that incident I was back in Mexico because I am crazy, counting migrating raptors for the spring in Chavarrillo, one of best places on the continent for seeing birds of prey during spring migration. I was enamored with the swarms of Mississippi Kites that moved through later in the spring. Que chido.

After Mexico it was off to North Dakota to do Piping Plover monitoring for Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge. It was a weird scene (though not nearly as weird as Mexico), but the birding was great. We had field sites all over the place and some of them had good numbers of Baird's Sparrows, which worked out quite well for me since they are one of the most lusted-after sparrows in the U.S. This bird was on private property, but if you ever get out that way, look for them at Lostwood or Medicine Lake NWR over in eastern Montana. PS fuck frakking.

In January 2012 we were evicted from the Space Station, our squatter house in San Francisco, which sent me packing north for a doomy road trip. In Washington I finally got to meet the iconic Snowy Owl, one of the best birds in existence.

My most-crushed Vague Runt is this drake Tufted Duck, which has been wintering at Lake Merritt, a few minutes from my house, for years. Hopefully he comes back soon so I can crush him for the millionth time. You want to join the crush party? Come visit!

In summer of 2012 I found myself living in San Diego, toiling with Least Terns and Snowy Plovers for the San Diego Zoo, and living in a cabin in Jim and Jim's backyard. Jim and Jim were great landlords, and their backyard was an excellent place to party. Many good times back there. I managed to survive the toxic birding scene, did a lot of great birding and made a few buddies...and I still like terns and plovers. Here is a young Snowy Plover chick that hopefully is a lot bigger and more feathered now.

At the end of 2013 I migrated south to Costa Rica for a few weeks, which is still being chronicled on BB&B because I am so damn lazy...but not as lazy as Don Mastwell, who still needs to enter a bunch of eBird checklists. Anyways, the birding was facemelting. If you are contemplating taking your first trip down that way, don't let some hippie nonbirder friend of yours convince you to go to some other country down there instead where everything has been clearcut to death. Here is an Emerald (Blue-throated) Toucanet from La Cinchona.

Fast forward to this spring, when I moved to the Lower Rio Grande Valley for another couple of wind energy projects. I had ample time to bird and get to the coast, where I really got a heavy dose of migration in the eastern U.S. for the first time. I didn't really know what picture to put up to represent the birding there (a crowd of annoying/clueless photographers would have been appropriate) but I think this crushed Indigo Bunting from South Padre Island sums it up.

What better way to finish than with the rarest Vague Runt I've ever seen? A beloved albatross, no less? I've lead a lot of pelagic trips the last couple years, and this has been the bird of all birds. Thank you Salvin's Albatross, you were my destiny. Half Moon Bay, CA.

Brilliance Borders On Nonsense

This past week BB&B has pulled stakes from the bay area and has been encamped in my old haunts of Arcata, California. Unfortunately, the weather has been miserable all week so I don't have much to show for it, at least in terms of photography. As a result, you will be getting an eyeful of other winter birds that I've gotten to lay optic nerves on over the past couple months.

I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but my short attention span requires me to generally not post more than one photo of a species at a time. In an exercise of tranquility and mellowness, you are going to get DOUBLE the number today.

Our first bird is no other than one of the Wood Ducks that wintered at Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco. They mostly sat around in the shade under some trees and didn't come out much, so most people had their eyes glued to the Hooded Mergansers that lived in the same pond. Obviously, a Wood Duck is a completely facemelting bird. They're brilliance borders on nonsense. I can't imagine life without seeing these birds once in a while.

That's right....right when you thought the Birdosphere was done with Snowy Owls, I'm bringing one back! This is the infamous Barfing Owl from Damon Point, Washington. I have a vast quantity of pictures of it relentlessly gagging. I've never seen a creature so devoted to trying to vomit.

Look at that face. Know it. Then love it. How could you not? Do you not? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???

Here is a Ferruginous Hawk surveying its grassy domain. It may be thinking about squirrels and kangaroo rats and how it's going to break their little necks and eat them. Or maybe its admiring the view. Or maybe it just realized it needs to poop. Who knows?

Here is a different bird. Can you imagine seeing one of these, back in the day, flying around with frakking buffalo bones to include in their nest? Maybe one day they will again, provided there are enough buffalo. These Ferrugs were photographed on California's Carrizo Plain.

Black Oystercatcher is a west coast specialty. I pity all regions of the country that are not blessed with an oystercatcher of some sort. Of course, you probably pity me because I don't have things like Prairie-Chickens or Golden-cheeked Warblers or Spectacled Eiders or Mangrove Cuckoos...touche, reader, touche.

Although they can be migratory, Black Oystercatchers have very strong site fidelity at nesting sites and do not share their stretch of coast with other individuals. The same pair of birds can occupy the same territory for many years.

Unlike oystercatchers, most of us readily have access to Black-crowned Night-Herons, an extremely appropriately named bird. Not to mention good-looking.

Immature Black-crowned Night-Herons, on the other hand, do not live up to their name very well. They are also not very good looking. Awkward. These birds were photographed at Lake Merrit.

Common Goldeneyes all around the country are going full swing into courtship displays, whistling, farting, splashing, and yes....BELLOWING. These birds were getting kinky on Lake Merritt, in Oakland, CA.

This bird was a bit more subdued, feeding by himself. Either he has a lot of confidence or is not very attractive by female Common Goldeneye standards.

Enjoy your Friday, for freedom will soon be upon you. Rage.

Winter Tour Part II: Ocean Shores Cripplers and Even Snowy Owls Need To Vomit

In one day I went from seeing 0 to 10 Snowy Owls. Thank the bird gods.

After getting less than 2 hours of sleep in Olympia, the one known as "Stilt" and I were whisked away for a deluxe birding trip in Ocean Shores, WA. The birding was incredible, we could not help but see everything we looked for. It wasn't even raining. I quickly came to the conclusion that birding in Washington is amazingly easy. King Eider (lifer!), Snowy Owl (lifer!), Emperor Goose, Rock Sandpipers, Black-legged Kittiwakes, Trumpeter Swans, Merlin and Palm Warbler were among the best birds of the day. Stoked.

Damon Point was a zoo of photographers, but they seemed relatively well-behaved. The owls high tolerance for people probably helped the situation...Tweeters, the Washington birding listserv, has been filled with various hilarious, dumb, and even intelligent messages about birders and photographers harassing this winter's massive crop of Snowy Owls. At least I can claim that our crew did not flush any birds...

Arctic royalty was the theme of the day, between the Emperor Goose and the King Eider (actually, a Queen Eider) being easy to find and readily viewable. I don't think things will ever be the same...thanks to Alex Wang, Charlie Wright and Annie Meyer for all their help.

One of the owls looked like it was attempting to puke up a pellet the entire time we were watching it. This owl was significantly more entertaining than all the other owls.

Snowy Owls make me think of cats, I don't know why.

Sometimes, it feels better if you puke.

Emperor Goose and Canada Goose. Royalty and Peasantry.

The Emperor enjoys putting greens as much as any non-royal goose.

This is the proper way to restrain your dog in seaside communities.

Rock Sandpipers with a Black Turnstone and Surfbird. If you want to see a Rock Sandpiper without trekking up to Alaska, Ocean Shores seems like the right place to do it.

Hordes of photographers were out. The lenses that my group was using seemed small and shriveled in comparison.

They were all looking at this Snowy Owl. It seemed more interested in sleeping than anything else. At one point I saw a dude sitting incredibly close to it...instead of taking pictures, he was eating a sandwich.

Homewrecker!!!

Hey nerds! I am in the midst of my winter tour in Washington, thus the lack of crucial bloggage. Birding is great here because you see everything you look for. There are Snowy Owls everywhere...it's completely bizarre.