Prothonotary!

I was lucky enough to blunder into a skulking Prothonotary Warbler at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery today while birding with Frank Meyer; please excuse the horrible photos but PROWAR is a damn rare bird here in California, particularly in spring.

While superficially similar to Yellow Warbler in these photos (it's not a particularly bright male...first year bird?), the long, pointed bill and sharply contrasting blue-gray wings set it apart...unfortunately, I was unable to get a clear shot showing the white undertail coverts. Several of us were lucky enough to get some much better views, albeit briefly....it was a sneaky little bastard.

You can see the blue-gray wings through the veg a bit better in this one. Stoked.

Pic Of The Week

Light-footed Clapper Rail vs. American Avocet. The avocet won handily. No wonder rails spend so much time lurking in the grass, they are easily vanquished. Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, CA.

I think I'll start posting a weekly photo every Saturday or Sunday, for your viewing pleasure. Who wants to spend their weekend reading a full-blown blog?

Still Ablaze

The internet is still ablaze after reading Cass' Ode a couple days ago. If you haven't done so yet, scroll down and read the screed that everyone is talking about. Indeed, things may never be the same...particularly how you feel about gymnosperms.

As for me, I'm exhausted, and my normally razor-sharp wit has been worn and weathered into a spongy and entirely uninteresting substance. That said, I do still have some bird photos that I think are worth tossing your direction. All photos today are from Agua Caliente Park.

Ash-throated Flycatchers are common in many habitats throughout the southwest. Although they are the drabbest (ashiest?) of the North American Myiarchus, you cannot help but want to be friends with them. 

California Quail have a plump and delicious air about them.

I really like the plume that sticks out of the foreheads of both Gambel's and California Quail. It is the jauntiest thing imaginable.

I don't know what kind of cholla this is, but I really like it. Such an inviting blossom attached to such brutality. If you haven't seen cholla, imagine what a porcupine would look like if it could assume plant form.

MacGillivray's Warblers are the brightly-colored treat that may or may not be lurking in the center of every shrub this time of year. Like it's cousins from Connecticut and it's other cousins in Mourning, they are adept at not being seen.  

I've been keeping eyes and ears fully popped and open for my first Swainson's Thrush of the year, but it has yet to materialize. Here is its commoner cousin, a Hermit Thrush. UPDATE: Right when this post was finished, I heard a distinctive, water-drop "Whit!" come from my backyard...looking out the door of my cabin, there was a Swainson's Thrush, perched upon the old Olympic racing boat that resides next to my cabin.

Phainopepla female. She's hot.

This male Phainopepla is a featureless black hole. Don't get too close, or you will be sucked in and spat out into some other universe...where Phainopeplas govern the laws of physics.

Bigelow's Monkeyflower may only be a few inches tall, but they bring the desert floor to life.

Dusky Flycatcher. I used to be hella good at telling Hammond's and Dusky apart, in the blink of an eye. Now, more often than not, trying to weave together the proper identification feels more like wiping my ass with stinging nettle. I don't hold it against the birds or anything though.

Well....it almost was a good picture. Black-tailed Gnatcatcher.

Compared to chollas, Barrel Cactus appear friendly and hospitable. It's spines are much more springy compared to the spines of other cactus. Sometimes I want to hug them, but sobriety prevents me from doing so.

Ode to the Drab Gray Birds of the Pacific Northwest

Good day to you bird addicts. Today's post is contributed by no other than the infamously bizarre Cass Grattan, who has told BB&B about how birdwatching has brought about his complete financial ruin and social castration, as well as what exactly he thinks about other birders. Aside from coping with the constant state of terminal Fear and Loathing that a lifetime of birdwatching has reaped, Cass is a master communicator and unrelenting flogger of words. He writes to us from the grim recesses of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, amid short breaks between Northern Spotted Owl surveys. Photo of Drab Gray Northern Fulmar and Crisping Bonaparte's Gull by Seagull Steve.

Welcome. To the Realm of Fog and mist-choked fjords. Home to behemoth gymnosperms that drip moss onto their felled parents that perished millenia ago, only to have a variety of taxa sprout from, and consume, their rotting and vital corpses. Here, the line between Life and Oblivion is blurred, and one is hard pressed to articulate either concept in this environment of elemental fluidity.

Behold. The Gray and its oppressive weight on the observer’s senses. Early explorers of the area felt it. Our peaks and waterways bear names such as Deception, Disappointment, Destruction. Lewis and Clark spent an unbearable winter here. It is certain that visions of the Dismal Niche on the Lower Columbia accompanied Lewis in his final hours before he auto-delivered himself from this world. You, like him, can feel its power and fear its depth, for this is only the beginning of an unspeakable horror that lies westward; the pelagic of the North Pacific.

It is here that the elegant simplicity of the Gull and Fulmar is fully realized.  When these birds wheel against an ashen storm front, stacked cumulus wedged into the dome above, their simplicity and banality are transformed into a subtle and seamless weave of element and beast. Their blueprint is understood in these waters. And it is here that the power and magnitude of that titan of fashion that we know as the Economy of Style reaches its most refined expressions.  

Here our Picoides are smudged, our sparrows darkened, and our Merlin the blackest. All these regional variations in plumage are in accordance, and reverence, to the perpetual desolation of their environs.

Hutton’s Vireo, gluttonous miracle. Unwavering in its quest of woodland sustenance, its attire represents the zenith of neo-Bauhaus refinement.

Pacfic Wren, the tireless troglodyte. Its song a tangle of roots, its rags a humble assemblage of shadows and earth.

The Creeper, or as its known locally, Vermiculated Woodsprite; its get-up a perfect confluence of land and light.  

The ouzel, river god cloaked in shale blue, the color of waterworked rock. It wears its feathers in obvious defiance of the garish and wasteful wardrobe of other deities.  Carved and behaving like a miniature inland auklet, the ouzel's opulence lies not in its plumage, but in its throat. Its song, like the river itself, is endless in its dexterity and imagination.

Soon though, the Western Tanager with its fire-in-the-head, will arrive. As will the Black-headed Grosbeak in all its neotropical anti-glory. The various warblers will return in their whorish clownsuits.  Northwest birders, scorched retinas and all, will sing these tramps and transients endless praises while the clouds of Bushtits that have kept us company all winter long with their cheery industry and immaculately balanced feather toning, will pass unnoticed.  People will suddenly see a Black-bellied Plover in their haughty breeding duds, not realizing they have been here all through our darkest hours, haunting the intertidal with their wraith-like cries and plumage the color of sand and time.

So it goes. I will let the flamboyant and ephemeral excitement of migration, with its promise of imported facemelt, and its band of gaudy breeders pass me by. I will stick to the understory and its understatments. I will seek out the peninsulas, turn seaward and let the megavagrants pass by and boggle another’s mind while I consider the crisping of the gulls, watching them wind the gears of time and ride the wind that has shaped them.

Weathered Out

Rhinoceros Auklet. Photographed off Half Moon Bay, CA.

The long-awaited pelagic trip out of Santa Barbara yesterday was cancelled. This trip is known as a Pterodroma Trawl, a boat capable of netting dozens of birders a pantheon of petrels. It certainly would have been a trip worth getting one's panties in a twist. Alas...it was weathered out. Not that I was planning on going or anything.

All I'm saying is that I feel your pain birders. I too have felt the sting of a canceled boat far too many times. I know what you're going through.

Luckily, the boat I am scheduled to go out on doesn't head out for another three weeks. I'm looking forward to it...I NEED SEABIRDS.

That is all.

Desert Solitaire Is Not A Real Species

Greater Roadrunner. As if I've seen any other kind. She was scurrying to and fro, inside the campground.

The title of this post is some advice for The Jen, who famously used to hate birds. She has not seen desert birds, and must be thoroughly educated before embarking on her imminent southwestern road trip.

Edward Abbey once wrote something along the lines of "There is no shortage of water in the desert, but exactly the right amount." This is true. Any more water, and the desert would no longer be the desert. Have you seen what has happened to our more watered lands? The last thing the world needs is more stripmalls, and their overwhelmingly horrible occupants.What would become of the roadrunners and Cactus Wrens? The Zebra-tailed Lizards and rattlesnakes? The peace and quiet?

As much as I love the desert, my last trip into cactus country was meant to focus on an oasis...Agua Caliente County Park, which floats within the arid ocean that is the Anza Borrego Wilderness. This park, due to its natural springs, is quite verdant compared to the surrounding patches of cholla and ocotillo. Migrant birds love it. Therefore, I had to go. I have fond memories of skulking around famous birding oases from my more awkward years...Butterbredt Springs, Galileo Hill, Deep Springs, Furnace Creek Ranch. I was really impressed with the volume of birds moving through Agua Caliente, it must get it's share of rarer birds later in the northern diaspora...seekers beware.

Here's the first cluster of pictures, I think there's a few species that have never been on BB&B before....stoked? Yeah, me too.

I'm still working on getting the correct Costa's Hummingbird picture. This one is an improvement. How would you describe those colors on it's mustache? It's so refreshing to have things other than Anna's Hummingbirds to look at again.

Brewer's Sparrows love deserts so much, they spend the year touring them. Their summers are spent in the high deserts (Great Basin scrub), and winters are spent in Mexico and the desert southwest.

Brewer's Sparrows assert their dominance. They're proclivity for unique song-writing and energetic performance is unparalleled in the sparrow realms.

Luckily for me, this Wilson's Warbler chose a color-matching place to grab a drink of water. It's one of the most common western migrants in spring, but always leads to dilated pupils.

Don't look too hard, you're not going to find a bird in this photograph. Sorry. It's just a hedgehog cactus. I really like cactus....er, cacti. Me like bird too.

A female Black-throated Gray Warbler lashes a mesquite for insects. In other news, goddamn it is hard to get good warbler pictures.

White-winged Dove. It's a looker. Not quite a facemelter, but it could make you a bit weak in the knees.

This is a young White-winged Dove...it's got a dark eye and grayer facial skin than the more vivid bird above.

This female Black-tailed Gnatcatcher found a nugget of goodness amid the desert duff. If you ever are feeling sadistic, start teaching yourself how to identify silent female gnatcatchers without looking at the undertail. Hellish stuff.

This is the young male Costa's Hummingbird you met earlier in the week. Apparently his tongue is almost as long as his body. Showoff.

I have better Phainopepla pictures, but this is the only one that documents their ability to transform into an umbrella. Desert birds need to be able to handle anything, including rain.

Agave bloom! A wellspring of life in a sea of death. Bats and moths get off on this stuff.

Skimmer Swarm

In my continuing endeavors to avoid showing everyone pictures of desert birds, you will instead be forced to look at this ball (deathball) of Black Skimmers at Crown Point, in San Diego. Here you see some unsuspecting sap about to be engulfed by The Swarm.

After devouring their first victim, the skimmers turn to the suburbs to inflict their wrath on San Diego.

This is the last thing some people ever see. The horror.

While watching skimmer flocks, you will occasionally see some large beaks clashing above the rest of the birds. It reminds me of Narwhal Spar.

Note also that I have unknowingly photographed a Red Knot. Red Knots are neither common nor approachable birds here on the west coast, and I've never intentionally photographed one. How embarrassing.

I bet the bird on the left won.

They are such oddly-shaped birds. I don't even know how they work.

This one is doing some maintenance.

Out with the old, in with the new.

I hope you all enjoyed the local skimmer swarm. May you be blessed by this swarm, or another, in the very near future.