Upper Beaver Meadows, Rocky Mountain National Park

Colorado. I ain't ever been there. I ain't ever birded there, but it offers some damn fine birding considering it is a landlocked state. Sure, July is not the time to go if you want to do the grouse/chicken rounds...but why not check it out? After all, Rocky Mountain National Park is there, and has a reliable spot for a species I very much wanted to meet...White-tailed Ptarmigan. So Billy and I planned a quick trip based out of Fort Collins, which was within striking distance of the park and Pawnee National Grasslands.

Since I only had a shot at one life bird, the best thing to do was go after year birds and birds that Billy hadn't seen. Some years I don't care about year birds (otherwise known as YBs, otherwise known as Yankee Bravos), but this year is not one of them. This is what happens when you start your year in Mexico and see an abundance of exotic species on a daily basis.

Our first stop in Fort Collins had Northern Flickers instead of the Bobolinks. I would have much rather have seen Bobolinks (who doesn't love Bobolinks?) but instead I was forced to wonder at how adaptable flickers are. You show me a habitat that features land, and I will show you a flicker. We did connect with some common species that I don't see very often; Eastern Kingbirds, Blue Jays, Gray Catbird and Common Grackles were good year birds.

The next day it was off to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was hard to figure out where exactly to go, as there are a lot of choices...you may or may not be able to get Scott Roederer's Birding Rocky Mountain National Park for a reasonable price (I could not at the time), which could help a lot. Upper Beaver Meadows is a popular place to bird, so that's where we started. Because I am stupid, we went down the wrong trail, but it was still mellow.

The first flock we ran into had a bunch of juvenile Red Crossbills practicing their face-scissors.

Types 2 and 5 are the most abundant Red Crossbill types in the area; judging by what they prefer to feed on and the surrounding habitat, these birds were likely Type 2 ("Ponderosa Pine Crossbill").

Mountain Bluebirds are one of the kings of cripple in western birds. Few other western birds are so obscene in their salient beauty. If everyone paused and took a good look at a Mountain Bluebird, there would be a lot more birders out there. Now, I'm not saying that is a good thing (have you ever talked to a birder? yeesh), but it is the truth.

Juvenile Mountain Bluebirds don't start life coated in mesmerizing, sky blue plumage. Because of this, they all wear frowny faces instead.

On the trail, I noticed this flower getting pollinated. On the way back, Billy pointed out that the pollinator was dead on the petal. Pollen overdose?

Napes. This perfectly camouflaged crab spider had been lying in wait. When the yellow death pulls your card, there is no escape.

Rocky Mountain National Park lies with the eastern Rocky Mountains. Downslope (east) from the park, the Great Plains begin. A large number of western species are at the edge of their range here, including Pygmy Nuthatch.

Like many other species in the area, Western Tanagers were busy making food deliveries. An absurd proportion of the birds we saw were either recently-fledged juveniles, or were carrying food to waiting young. So goes birding in late July.

One of the target birds for any birder at Upper Beaver Meadows is American Three-toed Woodpecker. We failed to find any (here and elsewhere in the park), but again this is probably due to going down the wrong trail. However, the wrong trail did produce another very good species, a yankee bravo, and one that I hadn't seen in several years. This juvenile female Williamson's Sapsucker was following around it's mother, which was detected by giving an unusual rolling/churring call, very different from what I've heard from other sapsucker species.

Life plumage! This is also the first Williamson's to ever make it to BB&B...rejoice! Hopefully it won't be so many years before I connect with one again. This is, after all, the best sapsucker.

Unlike bluebirds and tanagers, faded Vesper Sparrows do not make people weak in the knees, do not illicit stuttering speech. This is not a bird beloved by the lowest common denominator, this is a bird that strikes fear into the timid heart of the beginning birder...when you were just starting out, do you remember how many Savannah Sparrows you tried to make into Vespers? Dozens? Hundreds? Those birders that overcome this identification hurdle do eventually accept Vesper Sparrows as what they are...a pleasant singer, and champion of The Economy of Style.

While I only saw one Vesper Sparrow in RMNP, Lincoln's Sparrows (a Mellowspiza) were abundant in areas with riparian and aspen growth, where we were bombarded by repeated volleys of their mellowdious song. I always forget what gifted singers these otherwise unobtrusive birds are. In California, they absolutely refuse to sing away from high elevation breeding habitat, which I have but limited and irregular access to.

Coming up next...after mixed success at Upper Beaver Meadows, we were off uphill to visit the alpine.

The One Bird Theory

Prothonotary Warblers are great...I was more than happy to see this one in Goleta, in Santa Barbara County, last fall on the way to visit friends/family/birds in Ventura. In 2015, eBird has records for Prothonotary Warblers from 10 different locations in California. Could this just be the same bird wandering around? Of course not, but birding is rife with empty questions like this.

According to The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive, there are more birders now than ever. I am inclined to agree with him. Birders are birding harder than ever before. Birds, in much of the country, are really getting birded.  Perhaps as a result of increasing coverage over the years, I am constantly hearing the same thing...the one bird theory.

The one bird theory is simple, though a bit cumbersome to explain. If a Ruff is seen in Oregon one day, and another Ruff is seen in Washington a few days later, birders will wonder if it is the same bird. If a Common Crane is seen in New Mexico, and a Common Crane is seen in Texas a few days later, birders will wonder if it is the same bird. If an Emperor Goose is seen in Humboldt County one day and an Emperor Goose is seen in Sonoma County the next day, birders will wonder if it is the same bird. So rather than assuming or deducing two different individuals are involved, a birder will wonder (and that is the key word here) if the same individual has been found in both places.

Now some of you might think they know where I am going, that I think the one bird theory has nothing to it. That is not true. The one bird theory turns out to be correct quite often. What does bother me is how often I hear or read the phrase, "I wonder if the [Species Blablabla] seen at [Location A] is the same bird that was found at [Location B]." It is usually just left at that, without any discussion. Well friends, you don't have to just put your wonderment out there for the world to behold, you can actually have an informed opinion...you could even decide yourself!

But how can one do this? Why think when one can wonder? Examining the one bird theory is not so difficult, it just comes down to considering a few factors and asking a few questions.

Elegant Terns are obvious birds...you know when they are around. It is important to know when birds are around, and when they are not.

Were they seen at the same time?

Overeager birders who quickly spout their one bird theory hypothesis often don't even check to see if the different individual sightings involved were actually happening simultaneously. A bird can only be in one place at a time, not two. Do your research people, don't make others do it just to answer your own question.

Migratory habits of many North American species are well understood. Black Terns go south in winter, north in spring. Not too complicated.

What direction is it going?

This question is especially important to consider during migration. Let's revisit our Ruff example from above. Let's say the sighting happens in October. In October, shorebirds migrate south. If a Ruff is seen in Oregon, it is incredibly unlikely it will turn around during the height of fall migration and show up in Washington. The Ruff will not suddenly figure out it is in Coos Bay and then try to hightail it back to Siberia in order to find the correct continent before it continued its southward migration. So, keep migration and dispersal patterns in mind when pondering the one bird theory.

Cassin's Finches, like several other high elevation species, periodically "invade" unusual places every few years in search of food, which can take them to unusual habitats and places where one would not expect them. When such patterns are evident, one need not spend much time contemplating the one bird theory.

Is there a pattern?

For various reasons (often unexplained), a region will occasionally experience an irruption of a vagrant species, such as with Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks, seabirds and northern finches. So when a lot of Common Ground-Doves sightings are popping up in the Midwest, which happened last year, there is obviously no reason to think it is just the same bird miraculously choosing to stop in heavily-birded vagrant traps and being found repeatedly.

An out of range Western Gull would be a worthy candidate of the one bird theory. They are not highly prone to vagrancy, and would stand out in a lot of places. A bird wandering around the east or the interior west could definitely be found in more than one place.

How rare is it?

There are rare birds, and then there are rare birds. If two Golden-cheeked Warblers were seen in two different places in California in one year, one should rightly consider if the same individual is involved...it is just incredibly unlikely one would get here in the first place (and we do have a record!), let alone two around the same time. However, if two Chestnut-sided Warblers show up in different places in California in the same season, the idea of them being the same individual would be a ridiculous notion unless both birds were melanistic or banded or something like that (we will get to that soon). Chestnut-sided Warblers are not at all unexpected in California, and the state gets many records every year, up and down the state. It's quite rare for the one bird theory to be in effect when a "expected" species is involved.

In the eastern United States, there is no shortage of habitat a wayward Western Tanager could use spring through fall. How many Western Tanagers are eastern birders missing? Probably hella.

Think about birder coverage.

In most, not all, parts of the country, birders are not covering all available habitat very well. Most is inaccessible, due to lack of birders, roads, trails, or because land is private or government property that the public can't get to. When this is the case, think about all the area where birds are being missed...what are the chances that the subject of your one bird theory will somehow be found in more than one place, and somehow not vanish into the abyss that is all this other unbirded habitat? Think about the odds...they usually are not very good.

Ah, the Common Nighthawk. An easy bird to see in some places, but how many of the Common Nighthawks out there are people really seeing? Nightjars are hard...they can be hard to identify, but just finding them is typically the problem. Finding them roosting is blind luck, and birders can't see them foraging in the dark. The unfortunate truth is that the vast majority of nightjars go completely undetected in their normal range, let alone as vagrants! 

Think about detectability.

Some birds are easier to see than others. An Ivory Gull is easy to see. A Common Poorwill is not. A Ferruginous Hawk is easy to see. A Gray-cheeked Thrush is not. A Long-billed Curlew is easy to see. A Wilson's Snipe is not. A Black Skimmer is easy to identify. A Common Sandpiper is not. A Laysan Albatross is easy to pick out. A Tristram's Storm-Petrel is not. When birds are hard to find due to their habits or simply hard to identify, you can bet that a lot of these birds are going undetected, even when they are right in front of us! Then there is the fact that most birds in our area go undetected because they are in places where we don't bird, or because they fly right over us during migration...when birds migrate, they don't stop in every single county on their way to their destination. Think about this: a Yellow Rail seen in one place is practically guaranteed to never be seen in another. So to put it all together, one must ask how many of a certain species we are missing in a certain area. This has everything to do with likelihood of the one bird theory holding up for a vagrant. Keep these things in mind when the one bird theory is wracking your brain...the more you think about the detectability of a species, the more the one bird theory has a tendency to lose water.

This Pink-footed Shearwater is a good example of what a bird can offer that would help identify it on an individual level. This bird has a lot of molt going on in the flight feathers, definitely something to key in on, and the underwing pattern is a great thing to examine as well.

What does it look like?

I saved the one of the most obvious things to consider for last. These days, many rarities are photographed well. So before you put your public wonderment out there, see if you can compare photos of the bird(s) in question. You can compare age, plumage, sex, molt, wear, patterning, bands, etc. This is what typically provides a definitive answer when questioning if the same bird is involved.

And there you have it...it boils down to knowing status and distribution, what the birds look like, and some focused questions about the odds of the same bird being found twice versus the odds of a different individual being involved. The one bird theory will always be out there, and for good reason, but now you are equipped to test it. You are ready. Wield the hammer of this knowledge in listservs, forums and Facebook groups, and you too can make birders better.

San Francisco Runts and Grunts

Fall is slipping away, my fiends and friends. Where has it gone? Though gulls (goddammit), raptors and fowl of water will still be pouring in for the next few weeks, most my grunts have passed us by, bound for Central and South America. Gone are the days where I can head out to Point Reyes and expect to see a warbler rarer than the dreaded-but-still-appreciated Palm Warbler. Nor can I sort through a flock of peeps, grinding my teeth in anticipation of a stint to pop out. No...those days have passed, and we are hurtling toward winter faster than we would like to admit. Before we know it we will be donning our armor and diving into hectic internet battles, trying to diffuse bombs...meaning convincing people that a certain bird is just a damn Herring Gull, not a backcross Yellow-legged X Iceland or some similar nonsense. Gulls...they are coming...will you be ready this winter?

The sudden passing of fall is particularly sad for me in Y2K15, as I've had the pleasure of nabbing a couple of lifers, a state bird, and a healthy number of rarities as birds are heading south. September was almost a dud until the last week of the month, but the momentum of rarities was strong for quite a while, and October was seemingly raging with Vague Runts. I would have seen more of them if I was still living The Perpetual Weekend (White Wagtail immediately comes to mind)...but alas, I am not.

Here are some assorted runts and grunts from San Francisco earlier in the fall. Some are rare, some are typical, but they are all Good Birds.

I had just seen the Painted Bunting in Golden Gate Park, and was walking around in a euphoric, blissed-out state...but the sky was overcast, and it was the end of September for Christ's sake, and I would be an idiot to not keep birding...so it was off to North Lake, which seemingly always has migrants, and has the added bonus of being popular with Western Tanagers. Why does that matter? Because I've never seen a Scarlet Tanager in the state, and North Lake seems like a perfectly reasonable place to find one. So I lurked around, looking through migrants, when I met this bird. At first, I had only a head-on view, seeing a short bill, gray wings contrasting against a yellow breast...could this be the bird? But quickly the bird turned and showed a decidedly reddish tail, and Scarlet Tanager was quickly shot down.

It was a bizarre bird, a female-type Summer Tanager, but decidedly duller than any one I (or most birders, for that matter) have ever seen. So, not the tanager I was looking for, but a satisfying self-found rarity nonetheless. Though it was too dark for crushing, it sat out in the open for quite some time, dismantling this yellowjacket. I seem to recall the last Summer Tanager I saw in SF was also feasting on meat bees.

As hoped, there were obscene numbers of Western Tanagers at North Lake that morning, so it made sense that something different was lurking in their midst.

I thought this shot came out pretty well. It was good to see so many of you this fall, Western Tanager, I fear we may not meet again until next year.

This is the best American Robin I've ever seen...talk about a rarity. What a cool bird.

Townsend's Warblers have been holding down the bay area for a couple months now, they love it here.

When an adult male Townsend's Warbler dangles itself in front of you, it is impossible to look away.

On the contrary, there are no shortage of birders who would gladly look away when an Orange-crowned Warbler dangles itself similarly. Beginners hate Orange-crowned Warblers because they are drab and resemble half a dozen other warblers. Power birders hate them because not only are they abundant, they are insultingly dull to look at. Even their song is boring. But I am not most birders; I am #7. And goddammit, I will look at Orange-crowned Warblers.

There was a time, a long time ago, when I would post a picture of a bird and write some kind of caption for what the bird might be thinking, if said bird had a full grasp of the English language and also had the exact same values, worldview, and sense of humor as myself. What a coincidence! But I stopped doing that when I suddenly noticed EVERYONE was doing this, both in blogs and on Facebook, and 99% of these captions made me wince, they were so bad. This has nothing to do with this Orange-crowned Warbler, just an observation.

Ok, fine, for old time's sake, I'll give it a shot. I might be a bit rusty, but here goes..."Oh fuck look at this spider web! There's go to be one of those tasty fuckers in here! I am going to find that little shit and fucking kill it, even though it might be the size of my goddamn head. I don't give a fuck. Christ I'm hungry."

How was that? Was that ok?

Have I even posted a Chestnut-backed Chickadee on BB&B? I don't know, I may not have, although that seems weird. In case I have not, here is one. They are cute and super common and mellow and I like them.

In early October, a Mourning Warbler showed up at Ferry Park in San Francisco. You easterners reading this do not care, but locally, this is a hell of a bird. In a bizarre twist of county listing and geography, there have been dozens of records of Mourning Warbler in San Francisco County...but until now, all of these birds have been found on Southeast Farallon Island. Not a single one had ever been seen in mainland San Francisco, so when this bird was found it brought widespread panic among local birders. In typical fashion, a hilarious majority of my attempted photos of it looked something like this. Mourning Warblers do not want to be photographed, it is known.

Here is a highly pixelated, but ultimately acceptable portrait of the bird. I've only seen one of these in California before (almost 20 years ago!), so this was a great rarity to be able to catch up with here on the west coast.

My, what a heavy bill you have, Mourning Warbler. The bird spent a lot of its time scurrying around some short, knee-high plantings, but eventually was foraging 20 feet high in a poplar with a mixed flock. Bizarre. Great bird, stoked I got to see it.

Blogger is still giving me formatting trouble, so I'll go back to my old school photo layout for the time being, we'll see how it goes. Hope you all had a good weekend, and enjoy fall while you still can.

Adventures In Birding Online: The Truth Is Out There...But Not Always.

This is a Least Sandpiper...but I could just post this as a Long-toed Stint, and most birders would be none the wiser. Kind of a bummer, huh? Photographed at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary, Alameda, CA.

I am the Global Birder Ranking System's #7 U.S. birder. That means I am a great birder and an anointed expert*...there's no point in being modest. Being a leading light of the birding community, my gaze knows no bounds. And that is how I noticed that Dave Irons, an Oregon Bird Policeman, recently wrote to a listserv, "When unknown folks present themselves as authorities on the Internet, you really need to be cautious."

He is absolutely right.

Birding is hard. It is known. Finding birds is hard. Seeing birds is hard. Identifying birds is the hardest of all. And so, in the age of the internets, let us examine one particular aspect of bird identification...the Google image search!

That's right...not only do we have field guides, reference books, eBird and apps, we have the entire fucking internet at our disposal to use as a tool for bird identification.  If you have a bird you are trying to identify and it doesn't quite match your typical sources, you can just say "fuck it" and go cruise the interwebs to find even more pictures of species x and species y. It's really a fantastic thing. Ever wonder what Slaty-backed Gulls look like in Japan? Boom! I would say that covers it pretty well. Do you get stoked on American Dipper pictures? You do?! Well, try googling it, and you will see hella dipper pics. Amazing stuff, really.

So it's that easy, huh? Well...no. If something is too good to be true, then it is not a true thing. It is a lie, a dirty falsehood, just like all the misidentified Philadelphia Vireo photos that litter Flickr. Having just read these groundbreaking words, you might find yourself feeling filthy on the inside, and I don't blame you.

You will notice that the gull link above goes to a site operated the Ujiharas, esteemed experts on gulls who even put a gull book out. And you will note that dippers are singular birds...easy to identify, and lacking any relatives on the continent.

Well, what happens if I look for random Veery pictures?  I only have to scan through a few pics from an image search before I come across this bird, which clearly is not a Veery. Hmm...what about Willow Flycatchers? Wait, what the hell is that?  Well...Northern Goshawk? Yikes. I'm not sure if any of the photographers here are necessarily presenting themselves as authorities on their subjects (lets hope not), but whenever they say THIS bird is THAT species, that's a pretty authoritative act, I reckon.

Ok, why don't we call this bird a hatch year Western X Flame-colored Tanager, put it online, and call it a day? That's what this is, obviously, and who is going to stop me? I kid, my friends, I only jest...this is a Western Tanager, but it is a scary thing that I could just make some fanciful claim and lay it out there. It happens every day. If shit like this keeps you up at night, remember...you are not alone. Photographed at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

So, there are two factors at work here with these blatant misidentifications. For one, there are a lot of birders with cameras out there who are just not highly skilled. They make identification mistakes on the regular. Go to someplace like South Padre Island and watch the inaccurate carnage unfold. Secondly, there are a lot of bird photographers out there (who are not birders) who are even worse at bird identification, and a lot of those folks are dying for you to see their images. That's really all there is to it. When surfing the web for bird porn, caution is warranted. Unless you know the source and know you have a highly discerning eye, be very careful about the birds you look up. This is where reputation is huge...trust the folks you already trust! I can peruse the Ujihara gull site and be pretty confident they are not fucking up, despite their difficult subjects, but blindly searching the web for Vega Gull images is a daunting task.

So next time you are having an ID discussion in your favorite birding Facebook group, be careful when referencing online images from people you don't know or trust. You might get burned, and things may never, ever, be the same again.

* = I do misidentify birds, and there probably is one...or two...or three, somewhere in BB&B's sprawling past. I'm not saying Trust No One, but as a modern birder, never turn off your bullshit detector, and you'll be just fine. 

It's A Carnival Of Carnivores, Heaven Help Me

The humble Hermit Thrush is arguably one of the most gifted singers north of Mexico (I prefer Wood Thrushes).  Birds in Arizona are typically much paler and grayer than California's Hermits.

It's been fun Arizona, but I'll be damned if it's not good to be back in California.  Arizona Green Partiers, Democrats, Independents and other champions of The Human Spirit, best of luck to you....keep those backwards Republicans and that god-foresaken Tea Party in check, and stop that fucking mining company from putting a crater right in front of Madera Canyon. 

Mourning Doves are notorious for their lack of effort when it comes to nest building.  This one's not too bad though.
Arizona is the new laughingstock of the Western World, seemingly an ugly afterthought of the Bush Administration.  But SB 1070 isn't Dubya's doing....it's simply old white people indulging in their sense of entitlement and white privilege, and putting yet another law in place that will help keep poor, non-white people from voting (they don't tend to vote Republican, for obvious reasons).

The most recent additions to jars of grape jelly across the state are Western Tanagers.  We ended up having Summers, Hepatics and Westerns at our cabin, I should have smeared the whole roof in the stuff....

Well I'm all tuckered out over here in Ventura, so more on the state of affairs in Arizona later.  Adios!