One Thousand Posts of BB&B (We Don't Need Their Scum)

Look at these unripe young nerds. Here is Cassidy and myself in Anza Borrego camping out with the 2008 BUOW crew, probably at a high %, a few months before the inaugural BB&B post in 2008. That was a good night. Little did we know that our lives would eventually interwine so much that we would eventually become blog bros.

We have arrived. We are here. We have really done it. We have reached the summit, planted our flag. The peak has been bagged...scumbagged, that is. This filthy, rarefied air is incredible.

The milestone has been reached. With this post, the bizarre bird blog nobody asked for, the bird blog nobody thought they needed, the bird blog of a generation has reached #1000.

One thousand posts...this is not something I take lightly. I'm not even sure how to go about writing this post, but clearly some kind of retrospective is in order...so why don't we go back to the beginning, before post #1. Life has changed greatly since we first launched in 2008, when I took this sacred blog oath:

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children one child. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men birders. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch this blog, for this night and all the nights to come."

If this sounds strangely similar to the vows of the Night's Watch, it is purely coincidence I assure you. There was no Game of Thrones television series in 2008, after all, heheheh....

Right. Since BB&B burst forth into the Birdosphere, I have seen about twice as many species of birds, made many new friends, began and ended The Perpetual Weekend (what is dead may never die), visited and worked in some fantastic places, started a family. On a smaller, blogular scale, BB&B has acquired a coauthor, the singular Cassidy Grattan, who can write better than any bird blogger out there. I have become a better birder, leveled up with better gear and scraped together some rudimentary skills at taking bird photos. We have conducted a bunch of surprisingly good and readable interviews, started the enchanting Human Birdwatcher Project, and offered you Exclusive Birder Coverage that could be found nowhere else.

What has always set apart BB&B from the rest of the Birdosphere was not our love of birding and enthusiasm in discussing birds, but our willingness to take on birders themselves, their behaviors and tendencies, their follies and failures. Unlike most blogs, who will have you think that birders are the most pleasant group of people on earth populated with amiable novices thirsty for knowledge to be dispensed by steadfast, infalliable experts, BB&B resolved from the beginning to not blow smoke up your ass. You, beloved reader, deserve better than that. Our willingness to shine a light on the dark side of birding, to be the light that brings the dawn, is what cemented iconoclast status for BB&B.

It made us Birding Heroes.

In 2009 I had the great fortune of going to Midway Atoll to volunteer for USFWS. I can't even really begin to describe that experience in a little caption (you can check the BB&B nascent 2009 archives for our Midway coverage) but overall it was brilliant. Laysan Albatross is known as the flagship bird there and the love they get is deserved.

In 2010 I again hooked up with USFWS, this time spending the summer on Buldir Island in the western Aleutians. Unlike Midway, where there were dozens of people around and folks coming and going regularly, for most of the time it was just 5 of us on the whole island. Like Midway, the seabird situation was nothing short of stunning. These are Crested and Least Auklets, which would form giant murmurations. Auklet murmuration > starling murmuration.

Or Birding Anti-Heroes? Uncertain am I.

But that is where the uncertainty ends. Now, 1,000 posts later, I know birders now more than ever. My finger is on the pulse. For years we have preached our sermons, spread the tenants of good birding. You have listened, you have learned, although some were reluctant to face The Truth. BB&B has always been strong enough to hold a mirror up to the birding community though, where we have always spoke truth to power.

This is the way.

And who holds the power of birding? Sure, you could say it is The Bird Police, The eBird Reviewer, The Field Guide Author, The AOS North American Checklist Committee. Perhaps it is the so-called "Birding Elite", or the mysterious and obscene Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive. Perhaps it lies with other birding power brokers such as Bourbon, Bastards, and Birds.

In 2011 I connected with USFWS for the third and final time, but did the opposite of going to a North Pacific island...I went to North Dakota to work with Piping Plovers. In addition to spending a lot of time with plovers (which had a horrible breeding season due to region wide flooding) I spent many hours embedded with grassland birds. Baird's Sparrow is a very enjoyable species to come across while on the clock. Photographed on private property in NW North Dakota.

In 2012 I took my first trip to Costa Rica, with Dipper Dan, Frank and Stilt. Hella lifers. One of the fairly common birds that had a big impact on me was the Golden-hooded Tanager. I know they aren't the most facemelting tanager out there but they they struck a nerve nonetheless. Photographed at what is now known as Dave and Dave's Nature Park in the Sarapiqui area.

But they are just the beginning. Birding power is so much more than those few people...it is all around us. It is, in many respects, the status quo. Power is wielded in mansplaining, obsessive compulsion to detail at the expense of the big picture, fixation on hybrids, the growing reliance on the Merlin App to make identifications. Power is reporting a MEGUH with little or no detail, causing widespread Fear and Loathing and sometimes Panic. Power is spamming listservs and FB groups for "likes" and web traffic...how embarrassing. Power is whining, entitlement and butthurt. Power is the need to be Right at all costs. Power is someone wrongly telling you that you misidentified a bird, and power is stringing. Even photographers wield power over birders...just the other day I was sitting at the edge of a pond, off trail, minding my own business taking some Bufflehead pictures. A photographer walks right up to me, between me and the birds, causing them to scatter. Keep in mind that to do this had to go out of her way, and also have not the faintest idea she was being a huge floppy dick. She asks me if I had seen any Bufflehead. Incredulously, I motion to the group of Buffleheads behind me that are now swimming away. She looked confused and responded with "I don't think that's what they are". I walked away in disgust...she could have her Non-Buffleheads. And yes, the now legendary Santa Clara Stringer was also a photographer, she apparently did not even own binoculars. But I digress, the open feuding between birders and photographers should be a post in and of itself...

In 2013 I was lured back to North Carolina for the inevitable OBX pelagic trip, as up until then I had seen hardly any species of Atlantic seabirds. That situation has thankfully been rectified. Trindade Petrel was a huge unexpected bonus bird, something I wasn't even hoping for, and one of multiple lifers.

In 2014 we took advantage of the landlord's vacay home he had in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, and rented it out for a week or so. It was my first and so far only time in the southern part of the Baja Peninsula. Though not strictly a birding trip the birding was good and I learned that Xantus's Hummingbirds are awesome. Photographed in Todos Santos.

What is the common denominator here? These are all abundant traits and habits in birders (and photogs) that serve to turn off people from the birding community, to make the rest of us want to disengage from this scene of sorts altogether. People can be turned off to birds altogether, especially those right on the verge of being potentially hooked on birding. So while true power may look to you like a bird cop saying the record you submitted should be rejected, in reality it takes on many and varied forms.

BB&B was not the first blog to call out birders, to ridicule them (just think about us for a moment...we are asking for it), nor is BB&B the only one to mock them in the birdosphere (I don't think we've ever gone this far). I cannot take credit for that, but if you are reading this now you probably realize that our willingness to confront what is wrong with birding has really resonated with many BB&B readers. To that end, I believe we have been doing something Right all these years...perhaps we were needed after all.

2015 was the year of MAYNERAYGE. Spruce Grouse was one of my top target birds of the trip and we finally found one after putting quite a bit of effort. Hanging out with buddies and this relatively fearless, crippling bird is still my favorite grouse experience of all time. Photographed at Boot Head Preserve in Lubec, Maine.

In December of 2016 I made my last big birding trip before fatherhood consumed me. Dipper Dan, The Eggman and I went to Puerto Rico for Caribbean goodness and endemicos. It was not the birdiest trip but we did well with target birds and had many soul-satisfying views of the lovable Puerto Rican Tody. Photographed at Bosque Estatal de Guanica.

In 2017 I was lucky enough to see the Holy Grail of Vague Runts, the Ross's Gull. Out of all the rarities I have seen (and there have been some great ones), this one is on another level. When I think about the time in the setting sun I was lucky enough to spend with the doomed bird, the timeless Binary Sunset plays in my mind. We may never see its like again, and things certainly have never been the same. Photographed in Half Moon Bay, CA.

So much has transpired since post #1, when I took that first step into a larger world. BB&B has gone on to change lives, and I say that not with hyperbole, or for effect; we are in the real talk portion of this post. BB&B is now The Great Communicator of the birding world, The Tastemaker, The Taker of Temperature, the Birding Messiah at the top of Mount Olympus...ok that actually was a lot of hyperbole. What I should say is that I am proud of what we have done here over the years, and humbled that anyone gave a shit. It is with Great Honor and Immense Humility that I can say I've actually made friends because of this ridiculous blog.

TO ALL MY FRIENDS, who read BB&B (and even the ones who don't), you are loved. Thanks to Cass who has made so many great posts for BB&B over the last few years. Thanks to everyone who has offered their couches, spirits and company while I was on the road. Thanks to everyone who has invited me on birding trips, or have gone along on mine. Thank you to all whom I still owe hjs too, sorry to keep you waiting, I am in your debt. Thanks to Billy for not only understanding that I am a bird addict, but for enabling my habit...and for being a great mom to Annie, who just the other day said, unprompted in any way, "I love birds". That remains to be seen, but there is hope.

Most of all, thanks to Felonious Jive, The Great Ornithologist. I could not have done this without you, bro. You are a truly great birder, a real BROrnithologist. You are my ride or die.

You are my everything.

In April of 2018 I birded the Upper Texas Coast for the first time. The winds and weather were with us, as the lulls in migration were usually short and the birding generally varied between very good and absolutely fantastic. I got to see multiple Swainson's Warblers, which was a lifer and my only lifer for the whole year. Photographed at Sabine Woods.

In January of 2019 Billy, Annie and I made our way to Belize. It was our first international trip together. I won't claim it was the smoothest trip (traveling with a toddler is challenging) but from a purely birding perspective the itinerary delivered as hoped and overall it was very successful. Yucatan Jay was one of dozens of lifers. Also, Annie still occasionally tells me she wants to go to the jungle, so I think it left a good impression on her. Photographed at Crooked Tree.

What lies ahead for BB&B? The impossibilities are endless. It will likely be a long time before I get to post as often as I would like again. Seriously though, I need to thank you readers who I don't know well, or at all, which is most of you. Thanks to everyone who has been a friend of the blog over the years, left supportive comments here or on FB or IRL, has ambushed me while birding and told me the blog is good...or just absolutely punished me, I should be grateful for that too. I never thought I would get recognized by random strangers in the field because of BB&B, especially since I hardly post photos of myself. I really do appreciate all the love I've gotten doing this...I've never done this in an attempt to make money, promote some shitty book about a stupid big year, sell my photos or try to get people to try and sign up for some tour I'm guiding on. I bird for the sake of birding, I blog for the sake of blogging. Many bird bloggers have jumped the blogship over the years, but I intend to keep the old ways alive. BB&B will continue to be the shield that guards the realms of birders, and our watch has not yet ended.

See you next time!

P.S. DON'T WORRY I STILL LOVE BOURBON TOO

The Best Birding of The Year: April in Sabine Woods

I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, but I am pretty awful at finishing trip reports in a timely manner. However, I love trip reports (though they seem to be dying) and I love fantastic birding, so I would be crazy to not make one last installment from this year's trip to Texas. Our second trip to Sabine Woods not only warranted a blog post, it was the best birding I experienced the entire year. So hop on in to the BB&B time machine one last time, as we make the quick leap back to April of 2018...

The day started out innocently enough. After Great Success earlier in the week at Sabine Woods, Dipper Dan and I headed back, hoping for a repeat. The southerly winds that prevailed over much of the previous day had switched to winds out of the north, so conditions were right for a good morning, if not a facemelting one.

At dawn we started the birding the trees at Texas Point National Wildlife Refuge, which is right on the way to Sabine Woods. It's not an impressive looking patch (some pieces of private property in the area appeared better suited as migrant traps), but since this is the UTC it should be checked! It was really slow at first, but after a while we began to see sweet sweet migrants coming in off the coast. Not many were stopping, but it was encouraging. The Northern Parula above was very accommodating, and ended up being the only one we would see that day.

After exhausting the relatively small Texas Point patch, we returned to Sabine Woods. Birding was on the slow side at first...acceptable, but not anything crazy. The forest floor was not crawling with Ovenbirds and thrushes, like it was when we visited earlier in the week though. This Canada Warbler that Dipper Dan found was an early highlight.

After talking to BB&B reader Steve from Kansas City for a while and learning about how terrible fans of the Kansas City Royals are...and looking at the Cerulean Warbler he pointed out to us...I found this Blue Jay getting high on sunbeams in the forest floor. Things were getting interesting.

Incrementally, the birding got better and better as the morning progressed. What began as dull birding became mediocre birding, which turned into decent birding which turned into good birding. A few hours after we arrived, the number of birds in the patch had seemed to double, then triple. By about 2PM there were simply birds all over the place. Woods totally empty of Ovenbirds earlier now were filled with them. The birding had gone from good to great; migrants just seemed to be piling in to the patch.

Eventually, we came to that rare and special realization that it was happening, much like it was at High Island the first day of the trip. This was the birding I had come here for, the birding I had hoped to experience but dared not expect. There were simply too many birds, too many birds to look at, mainly thrushes, vireos and warblers. Migrants galore. At one point, Dan and I split up for a while, and he encountered this Swainson's Warbler (left). It was only a few feet from him, falling asleep inside a bush, so the only photo he could get of it was with his phone. Obviously, the bird had just dropped in from who-knows-where and needed a nice nap before turning up the skulk meter to normal Swainson's Warbler parameters.

Well, when it's happening, it's happening. This is the sort of thing that happens when it's happening.

I missed Dan's sleepy Swainson's by a few minutes but managed to find my own in a different part of the patch. It was slightly more cooperative than I expected, which I was happy about. The brown wonder was a lifer only a few days before.

We birded vigorously through the afternoon. It was great. Not a fallout...lots of very approachable but otherwise normal-acting birds...but I had difficulty thinking that the birding could be much better than it was.

Eventually, we were fully saturated by migrants and the day was drawing to an end. We made our way back to the entrance, where a confiding Worm-eating Warbler greeted me...

...and promptly flopped down to the pavement. I love seeing warblers flopping around on the ground...it is a sign of excellent birding. Sure, some warblers are inherent ground floppers, and some may flop at any height...but it can be a sign. Worm-eating Warblers aren't exactly ground-phobic though, so I merely appreciated the bird's gesture and went on my way.

But I didn't get far. The day's final act was about to unfold, and the few tattered remains of what was once my face were about to melt off completely.

Right next to the entrance, some birders were looking at some Blackburnian Warblers...certainly not an unusual event but I felt these Blackburnians needed some special attention.

It turns out these Blackburnians were especially tired. They were in full just-crossed-the-Gulf mode and treated us with the same amount of caution they would give to an oak tree...in other words, we might as well have been invisible. I've met some confiding Blackburnians before, but these really took it to another level. When one of them started passing out on an open branch about 15 feet away, I knew that not only was it happening, it was happening really hard.

In short order they flopped to the ground and did their best Brewer's Blackbird-in-a-parking-lot impressions. I've been lucky enough to be really close to Blackburnians before, but this was a different level of close.

Incredible.

Here is an uncropped photo - the dark blob on the right is my shadow.

I looked up into the trees and saw a Bay-breasted Warbler, then two. They had been fairly common the past few days, but it was strange to see them perched just a few inches from one another; I got the clear impression that they had just fallen out of the sky together, their long Gulf crossing just completed. The Worm-eating Warbler on the ground had foreshadowed what was unfolding before my very eyes...

Warblers were now flopping around on the ground in front of us. This adult Tennessee Warbler, a known ground hater, flopped about without apologies.

Another Tennessee jumped into the ground frenzy. The growing terrestrial congregation of fearless warblers wasn't completely surrounding us, but were very focused or concentrating on an area in front of us about the size of a small lawn.

A Hooded Warbler, known to groundabout, was especially floppy.

The pair of Bay-breasted Warblers descended from the trees to join the growing flock of warblers in the grass for soul-satisfying looks.

Considering all the warblers on the ground, gravity must have been especially strong. This Blue-winged Warbler felt the pull but mostly managed to stay a few feet above it.

Gravity's pull was so forceful here that it was holding on to a leaf with one foot for dear life. Clearly, this was some sort of Bermuda Triangle for warblers.

This crippling Chestnut-sided Warbler materialized a few feet above the ground-fray.

The Bay-breasted Warblers in particular had little interest in going back up into the trees.

We should probably make sure a combo gets in here...Blackburnian/Bay-breasted ground combo is a sweet one. There were other warblers here in groundtown as well, but this post has to end eventually!

I'm still not sure how to describe this event. This was not normal. Kansas City Steve, who had logged a great many years of springtime birding at Sabine Woods, admitted he had never seen anything like it. It was like what I expect a full-blown fallout to be like, except happening on a weirdly small scale. I have always maintained that there is no such thing as a small fallout, but it appears time to reexamine that position. Keep in mind, of course, that there were huge numbers of birds in the patch that were not acting like this, but I'm thinking a small wave of extremely exhausted migrants had arrived at the edge of the patch just as we were leaving, giving us....well...a micro fallout? It makes me wince to read that but I can't think of a better label for the event. No matter what it was, it was unlike anything I've experienced before, things will never be the same, and I really hope a springtime return to the Gulf Coast happens sooner than later. We ended up getting new high counts in eBird for Acadian Flycatcher, Swainson's Thrush and Ovenbird at this heavily birded site.

I did have one more day to bird in Texas with Dipper Dan and Officer Shaw at High Island, which was ok but nothing like what happened at Sabine Woods the previous day. We then went to Shaw's, where we drank incredibly good beer, I had an incredibly bad allergy attack (how embarrassing), and a freaking Chuck-will's-widow flew over his suburban yard in broad daylight!

This will conclude BB&B's coverage of 2018's fantastic foray to Texas. Thanks to This Machine Nate for coming all the way out to the coast, shortly before being banished to the depths of an uncharted corner of Ohio. Thanks to Dipper Dan for being my ride or die and coming out from SoCal. Thanks to Officer Shaw for meeting up with us (twice!) and letting us crash in the Land of Sugar. You all battled Geri, you all won, and you are all birding heroes.

Smith Oaks, Hooks Woods, Eubanks Woods Sanctuaries

Smith Oaks was extremely productive for us on multiple days and hella fun to bird, generally better than Boy Scout overall. Smith was consistently somewhere between "moderately birdy" and "guhhhhhh birds everywhere" throughout the week...eBird checklists were best characterized as "corpulent". Here are a few of the hundreds of migrants we met there, starting with this Chestnut-sided Warbler.

As expected, the always becoming CSWA was a fairly common migrant throughout the week at all the migrant traps we visited.

A female Blackburnian Warbler with a trophy-sized worm of inches.

This is the same male Blackburnian that was hanging out next to the egret rookery in the last post. I'm still suffering from heart palpitations from seeing so many of these crippling heart-stoppers that week, which were one of the most common warbler species. So many glowing Blackburnians everywhere were difficult to cope with, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Another crippling gasper, Golden-winged Warbler was certainly not a common migrant, but we did connect with more than I thought we would. We didn't come across any particularly confiding birds unfortunately, but who is complaining? Not me. A couple of them were singing, which is the first time I've ever heard them.

Though not a lifer, Cerulean Warbler was one of the main target birds of the trip for Yours Truly, #7. We had great success, and pleasantly saw a modest number of them.

Also like Golden-wingeds, they were hard as fuck to photograph/see well. Fitting, I suppose, for such a sought-after gem of a bird.

Female Cerulean, showing off her distinct long undertail coverts and almost stub-like tail.

Hella Wood Thrushes that week; we saw hundreds of them. This is not something I expected or have experienced before. Stoked.

When one encounters This Machine Nate on a trail, only one thing can be said for sure: you are in for a treat.

Nate's treat was met by a mix of intrigue and revulsion.

We also spent a lot of time at Hooks Woods. It's a lot smaller than Boy Scout and Smith, but it's the closest patch of trees to the coast, the habitat is good, and the concentrations of Geri there seem to vary between "low" and "bearable". This was the first Blue-headed Vireo of the trip; we would go on to see a handful spread out over the week.

I should mention that birding the road in front of the sanctuary can also be productive; this is where This Machine lifered Black-billed Cuckoo.

Here it is, your friend and mine, SWAINSON'S WARBLER, THE BROWN WONDER. This one was Dipper Dan's lifer. This was a good spring for these skulkers on the UTC apparently.

A surprise to one, Eastern Wood-Pewees adorned the migrant traps in large numbers. Lord knows how many of them were misidentified by Geri and friends.

Veeries were uncommon but dependable throughout our trip. Hooks Woods, and the lawn directly across the street from the entrance, was spilling over with Catharus the entire week. Thrushes were just littering the ground. We even saw some poor completely black thrush that had clearly just taken a bath in an oil pan someone had left out.

What a fucking bummer.

Where there are mulberries, there are Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. Mulberry trees are magic.

On our last day of birding the coast (April 27), Officer Shaw picked out this Olive-sided Flycatcher up in the canopy at Smith Oaks. Though not a late migrant on the west coast, it is in the eastern half of the country. It would be the only classic "late" migrant we would end up seeing; we did not connect with Alder, Willow or Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, or Mourning Warbler. We somehow dipped on Least Flycatcher as well, which seemed bizarre to me. I don't know if they are just not abundant on the UTC, or if they simply weren't moving through the area that week for whatever reason. We had several days with tons of Acadians...migration is weird.

Wrapping up High Island...Dipper Dan and I birded the High Island Historical Park (walking back to Guirdy Road) during the one very brief "slow" period we encountered....it was predictably slow, but I could see it being good when there are migrants around. We checked out Eubanks Sanctuary (mostly because we kept driving by it) on a birdy day and found it to be rewarding, although the habitat is overgrown and pretty much the same throughout the patch. Here is our eBird checklist; of note were Cerulean, Golden-winged and Canada Warblers (a new bird for the trip at the time). There is a pond in the back of the sanctuary that attracts a lot of birds, it is worth loitering around there for a bit. And amazingly, there were no other birders there! So if there are birds around and you want to take shelter from Geri, it is worth taking a look. We never did make it to the Crawford or Gast sanctuaries.

That wraps up our High Island coverage; in summary, it was as advertised. Absolutely ace birding, hordes of Geri, rampant misidentifications, and worthy of revisiting repeatedly.

Anahuac is up next!