The Birdist

Would Unrealistic Field Guides Be Useful?

2012-01-29T22:51:00.000-05:00

Debates about new field guides these days usually focus on whether the book uses illustration or photographs. There is agreement, as far as I'm concerned, on the strengths and weaknesses of both strategies. Photographs do a better job showing how birds actually appear in the field but are difficult to obtain (the new Crossley ID guides take a very thoughtful approach). Illustrations look less "realistic" by virtue of the fact that they are artistic creations, but they are much more easily manipulated to show different plumages and for comparisons.

Though illustrations are representations, it seems that the one constant for both types of field guides is the quest for realism. This make total sense, of course: if you want to help people recognize the birds around them you'd want your images to look like the birds. More than that, the subtle differences between many species mean that the more realistic the representations in a field guide, the better the user will be able to make the correct ID.

Part of me wonders, though, whether there is a point that increased realism comes at the expense of usefulness in learning. I use field guides in two ways: for study and for reference. I study the guides to learn about the birds, the goal being to bring the knowledge into the field and use it to ID birds without further consultation from the guide. I reference a field guide when I can't remember something, like whether it's the Sharp-shinned or the Cooper's Hawk with the squared-off tail. Even my earliest days of birding I studied the guide much more than I referenced it. I knew that for all good birders, birding in the field was a closed-book exam - when one talks about the "skill" of a birder they're usually talking about the ability to identify quickly and without consultation. If I wanted to be a good birder I had to learn the birds and remember them.

Increasingly realistic imagery isn't the only strategy for the study (i.e. learning and retention) of birds, but it is the only one (visually, that is) used in any of the field guides I know of. Would unrealistic imagery help? I'm thinking that if a birds' colors were shown in with more contrast or the diagnostic features of its structure exaggerated, it might serve as a memory trigger when the species is seen in the field, like some kind of visual mnemonic device.

To help make my point I've made a series of crappy drawing of raptor heads. PLEASE DON'T LAUGH AT THEM I KNOW THEY'RE NOT GOOD.

These images clearly show a limited set of plumages (and these raptors might not, in retrospect, have provided the best example), but simplifying the birds' features (i.e. falcon facial patterns) and exaggerating the colors could help in identifying the birds later on.

Are Birds Dislocated By Global Warming "Countable"?

2012-01-25T23:34:00.001-05:00

"Wild" means that the bird's occurrence at the time and place of observation is not because it, or its recent ancestors, as ever been transported or otherwise assisted by man.

-Interpretation of ABA Rule 3

We all agree that global warming is caused my man, right? If birds start showing up in strange new locations because those locations now have more suitable climates because of climate change, are those birds considered to be "otherwise assisted by man"?

No, because that's crazy. Hummingbirds that over-winter in northern climes subsisting on feeders are countable, and birds that cross on ships are countable.

I'm just thinking about it because I've been thinking a lot about Rule 3, namely how hard it is for bird records committees to judge whether a bird is an escapee or a wild bird. Okay, okay, I'm upset that I drove forever and missed the Chaffinch today. Are you happy? I missed the Chaffinch. I don't even care.

But seriously, the escapee/wild problem is the biggest problem facing records committees, correct? How could it not be? If a bird - a Common Chaffinch, say - is found in an odd place - I don't know, like, western New Jersey - and it doesn't have any obvious marks of confinement, how can the correct answer possibly be determined? If both potential explanations - escapee or vagrant - are possible then anything after that is a guess. Informed or not, without further evidence any decision is just playing the odds.

I don't know much about the subject, but it's interesting. I'm going to try to work on some posts coming up here to tackle the issue. Hope they'll be showing up soon.

Which Bird Has The Weirdest Range?

2012-01-21T10:41:00.000-05:00

I like looking though field guides at birds' ranges. I like the neat little stories that they tell about migration, and the things you can learn about the natural characteristics of the US. OK, I also like the pretty colors.

There are a couple different kinds of ranges. There are the neotropical migrants with summer ranges in the northern US or Canada and winter ranges either absent or in Florida or whatever. There are the elevation migrants (I'm sure there are scientific names for these things), like Townsend's Solitaire, that stay in the mountains during the summer but spread out to lower elevations when they're forced out by snow and cold.

Then of course there are the non-migratory birds. These guys are the "downers" of the range pages. They're boring (just one color) and many of their ranges are broken up by man-made habitat fragmentation (see: grouse). I try to flip past these guys pretty quick.

The antidote to the lame-o non-migrants are birds with weird bits in their ranges. I'm using a Peterson guide for this, and there plenty of great examples. Why are there holes in the American Redstart range in South Dakota and Illinois? What does the Whip-Poor-Will find objectionable about western Ohio and the Binghamton, NY area? What's up with that weird spot in south-central North Carolina where Vesper Sparrows can be found?

The bird with the weirdest range, though, is the Black-crowned Night Heron. Look at this thing!

What a kook! Stays year-round in Louisiana and south Alabama but skips over Mississippi? Has no problem getting up into the depths of Alberta but won't touch Wyoming? What's up with that little dot on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan? I love it.

Congrats, Black-crowned Night Heron, stay weird.

Am I The Only Birder Who Didn't Know...

2012-01-03T22:03:00.002-05:00

...that Savannah Sparrows are named after the city of Savannah, GA and not the synonym for "grassland"? I figured that since they're most common in fields and meadows, they were named for that habitat.

According to a little thing called "the dictionary" (I'd never heard of it either), both "savanna" and "savannah" are proper spellings of the landscape, but the sparrow was named because the first specimens were taken there by Alexander Wilson.

Quick: Without cheating, there are four other North American species named after American cities. What be they?

Birding 2011 Year in Review!!!! With Graphs!!!!

2011-12-31T17:31:00.000-05:00

It was a great year for bird a-findin' and a-identifyin' (the new terms I am going to use in 2012 instead of 'birding'). I saw 38 new birds in the ABA area and broke through the 500 barrier. I saw 347 species in the USA, my biggest year ever. I birded in Mississippi, Florida, Oregon, Louisiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, Maine and Tennessee. I took boats out to the Dry Tortugas and the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. I sat in a suburban backyard in St. Louis and talked with the owner about Eurasian Tree Sparrow. I seawatched into the Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf.

Here are some graphs and other visual illustrations!

This maps shows all the spots I got life birds this year. Drag the map around and click on the blue flags to see what I saw and where.

View 2011 Life Birds in a larger map

Here's a graph showing my accumulation of year birds. The first bird I counted was a Swamp Sparrow at the south end of Sardis Lake, and the last was a vagrant Black-headed Grosbeak in Denton, Maryland. Steep sections in the middle represent trips to Oregon and Florida (March) and Monhegan Island in Maine (September). Click to enlarge:

Here's a graph of the number of species I saw in the 17 states I birded in this year.

And another one for the counties:

Here's a picture that I didn't take to celebrate my 500th ABA bird - and a pretty damn good one if I may say - a Kentucky Warbler.

Looking forward to a big 2012!

New York Celebrity Sightings

2011-12-13T13:28:00.000-05:00

I was in New York City this past weekend for a friend's party. I got into Penn Station early and had some time to walk around the city. Having always wanted to see the Guggenheim Museum, I decided to take the 3-ish mile stroll up 8th avenue, through Central Park and over to the museum.

8th Avenue was packed, and after a minute I saw a tall guy with a white mustache walking towards me. John Cleese! I've been a huge Monty Python fan forever, and seeing him in person - even if he was just walking past on a sidewalk - was a huge thrill. Here's a cell phone picture I snapped:

Haha nah I didn't have time to take a picture.
Anyway, I figured my celebrity sightings were over for the day. After checking out the Guggenheim (very cool) I headed back down 5th Avenue. After a couple blocks I heard the distinct screeching of a Red-tailed Hawk. Pale Male! In the world of birding, I don't think there's a bigger celeb.

OK, it's not the best picture, but like those paparazzi who have to get whatever shots they can get when they see a skinny-dipping starlet, I did the best I could. New York! City of the Rich and Famous!

Birds At Large: State Quarters

2011-12-07T21:39:00.001-05:00

The commemorative state quarter program that ran from 1999to 2009 gave each state a chance to show itself off to the rest of thecountry. Something the stateshould be known for, something pleasant to stick in the minds of the rest ofthe citizenry. No surprise to me,then, that birds were depicted so often.

My count shows birds appearing in twelve of the fifty-sixquarters produced for the program (that’s fifty states plus quarters for DC,American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Northern MarianaIslands). Birds appear morefrequently than any other subject, more than boats (9), bison (2), and stupidrock formations that fell to the ground in 2003 (1).

The frequency of birds on these quarters is easilyoverlooked, but I believe its important. Because each state submitted its own design, these quarters show thestates as they think of themselves. Clearly, states are keen to tie their identities to birds, which areboth literal and symbolic representatives of natural beauty. That, or Oklahoma just genuinely didn’tknow what the hell else to stick on there. Either way, let’s take a look.

South Carolinawas the first state to feature a bird in their design, in 2000. It’s a Carolina Wren, a choice thatperhaps fits less comfortably with my “literal and symbolic representations ofnatural beauty” crack and more comfortably with a “let’s put a bunch of crapfrom South Carolina’s Wikipedia page on there” strategy. State nickname? Check. State tree? Check. State bird? Check and check.

Louisiana isnext, with a Brown Pelican. Itsits among another hodgepodge of state-related stuff, but it’s a cool bird andeasier to etch than the state’s first draft design: a big steaming bowl ofjambalaya.

Maine, my belovedhome state, is a bit of a cop-out. Two McDonald’s-arch gulls drift above a ship-and-lighthouse scene. No, I’ll admit they’re just backgrounddetails, but drifting gulls is just the image Maine wants to project! We don’t need to detail our seagulls,there are so many of them that they’re just around, everywhere! Maine rules it.

Arkansas featuresa mallard duck flying into a floating diamond. It’s the trippiest design, and I’m sure that duck is aboutto be gunned out of the sky in a hail of shotgun fire, but it’s a bird.

California hasthe California Condor. Awesomebird, good choice.

Minnesota’squarter show a Common Loon cruising along a lake past a couple of (probably drunk)fishermen in a boat. Minnesota’s apretty relaxed place.

South Dakota’squarter stirred up some controversy by featuring three invasive thingies: theMt. Rushmore carvings, wheat (which replaced a lot of native prairie grasses)and the Ring-necked Pheasant. Somepeople felt that since the state has the highest percentage of NativeAmericans, putting all-invasive items in their quarter was a dumb idea. Those people are right.

Idaho just has agiant picture of a Peregrine Falcon. It wins the award for everything.

Oklahoma is aprime example of a state finding beauty in a bird. What else would Oklahoma put on its quarter? A dustbowl? Kevin Durant? The Oklahoma state PR guy – down on his luck ever since his Oklahoma IsOK license plates became a national joke – totally redeemed himself bysuggesting the state feature the lovely Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on theirquarter. Welcome back,friend.

US Virgin Islandsfeatures a Bananaquit, which is cool, and TheNorthern Mariana Islands quarter features an awesome pair of FairyTerns. USA! USA!

Birding the north Mississippi Delta

2011-11-29T23:49:00.001-05:00

Last year, my first after grad school, I took a year-long position in Oxford, Mississippi. A (mostly) life-long New Englander, my knowledge of north Mississippi was shaped primarily by O Brother, Where Art Thou? and a handful of William Faulkner stories. I figured the place to be bleak and desolate, and I expected the birding to be the same.

Quite to the contrary, I absolutely loved birding in north Mississippi, and especially in the delta. The state is split pretty much in half down the middle, the eastern half comprised of hills and forests while the western half leading to the Mississippi River is a flood plain, flat as a pancake. The river is a natural highway for birds migrating southward, and most birders have heard about the Mississippi Flyway. Heard of it, but maybe not so many have seen it. I certainly wasn't prepared for the numbers of birds that I found in the delta and how fun it was to be one of the few birders there.

Here is a map of some of my favorite spots (click on the blue pins for details):

View Mississippi Delta Birding Spots in a larger map

Catfish Farms

It's too hot to do much of anything in the middle of the summer, but that's ok because the birding doesn't really start to get good until August. That's when the shorebirds start coming, and when it's time to visit the catfish farms.

Catfish farms, like these near Tunica as seen from Google Maps, are huge manmade ponds in the delta. There are dikes built up to keep the water in, meaning that you can't see what's in the ponds until you drive up onto the dikes. I loved that moment of anticipation of climbing the up the dike road, hoping for a giant wader-covered mudflat to be uncovered.

Many of the catfish farms in the delta are no longer operational or are, for whatever reason, pumped clear of most of their water by August. The resultant mudflats are rich with shorebirds: stilts, avocets, sandpipers, plovers, willet, yellowlegs, and occasional godwit. In the winter, ducks and geese can be found in the ponds that hold water all year around.

Access to catfish farms is sorta weird. Some have "no trespassing" signs, so don't trespass. Others don't have anything: no nearby houses, no one working there, no nothing. Twice I was approached by people while birding catfish farms: one just asked if I was fishing and when I told him I wasn't he left me along, the other gave me a bunch of crap about being on private property without permission (there was no indication anywhere of how to contact the owner) and told me to leave. Birding catfish farms is fun, primarily because there are so few birders and so many birds - the potential for discovery is high - but do so courteously and cautiously.

Fields

In winter, the desolate-seeming delta comes alive with wintering birds. Almost the instant you make the abrupt shift from eastern hills to the floodplain, you start to see large flocks of blackbirds (rustys, red-winged, cowbirds, grackles, etc) and geese (snow, ross' and greater white-fronted, primarily) in the air. The area is also a wonderful place to see wintering hawks, especially red-tails. It's common to see Krider's, Harlan's and eastern subspecies of red-tailed in a single day.

The flock above is part of a massive snow/ross' flock near Tunica, MS. Such flocks are common in winter at the north Mississippi delta.

Also a surprising number of gulls can be found in the delta. A careful search of gulls wintering near Tunica (especially if you've got Gene Knight or Jeff Wilson helping you out) can turn up Thayer's, California, Franklin's or Iceland gulls. I found one of the state's few records of black-headed gull on nearby Sardis Lake this past year. If you happen to bird after a hurricane has swept up from the Gulf (harmlessly to humans, I hope), everything from frigatebirds to storm-petrels to skua are possible.

I wasn't sure what birding north Mississippi would be like, but I got out nearly every weekend and enjoyed every minute. I hope it someday gets the recognition it deserves for being such a hotspot.

Birds at Large: The Big Bang Theory

2011-11-14T22:10:00.004-05:00

Welcome to the return of Birds at Large, the hard-hitting series where I ridicule the non-birding world's failed attempts to talk about birds and birding. I do it for three reasons: 1) how hard is it for these producers to just get the right birds? 2) things like this are what nerdy microgenre blogs like this are meant for, and 3) it's fun.

Today's installment comes via John at A DC Birding Blog and involves the popular comedy show The Big Bang Theory. A subplot of the episode involves a bird landing on the windowsill of one of the main characters - who just happens to suffer from (the real affliction) of ornithophobia. The guy identifies the bird as a Blue Jay. It isn't.

It's a Black-throated Magpie-Jay, a Mexican species that is sometimes kept in captivity (and apparently available as animal actors).

There's a twist here, though. Normally I would throw petty insults at the producers of The Big Bang Theory for the incorrect ID and then congratulate myself with some Mountain Dew Code Reds in my parent's basement, but I've been beaten to the punch. Soon after the episode aired The BirdChick tweeted to Bill Prady, the show's producer, about the misidentification. Mr. Prady responded, admitting the bird was actually the Magpie-Jay and claiming that its misidentification was due to the character being unfamiliar with bird species due to his phobia. An after-the-fact rationalization though it is, it's perfectly plausible and shows either some quick thinking from Mr. Prady or some commendable foresight on the part of the show.

Unfortunately, the video of the show expired (?) before I was finished watching it, so I don't know how the episode ends. Thanks to John, BirdChick, Bill Prady and the rest of the outraged online bird misidentification culture (who've already updated the Black-throated Magpie-Jay's wikipedia page about the error) for this one.

Virginia's Warbler in Maine

2011-11-10T15:09:00.006-05:00

Monhegan Island is very well known as a migrant trap and rarity hotspot. In May and late September, during peak migration, you can't round a corner without running into a birder. The problem is hardly any birders get out there in late October and November, mostly because the stores and hotels shut down. But this is when Maine usually gets its oddball migrants.

During a weekend trip in late October we were even told by an island resident, "You're too late, all the birds are gone." The hundreds of warblers moving through daily were gone but we topped that: Ash-throated Flycatcher! These were being reported around New England (esp Massachusetts) so it actually wasn't much of a surprise when we found one in the yard at the Trailing Yew. This was only Maine's 9th record for this species.

I just spent 11/7 to 11/9 on the island and still can't believe everything that happened. Winter birds (Snow Bunting, White-winged Crossbill, etc) had started to show up but a few unusual birds were still around. A late Black-throated Green Warbler was exciting but a Red-headed Woodpecker (rare in Maine but near annual in fall on Monhegan) stole the show, especially when we found it in our house!

The real story came when on the 8th I was birding near Burnt Head and a skulky warbler caught my attention. I spent a few minutes working that bird before it finally showed and turned out to be a Common Yellowthroat. While taking photos, another warbler flew in. My thinking went something like: "Huh, that's pretty gray but yellow under tail... Funky Orange-crowned Warbler? Wait, why does it have an eye-ring?" Click click click:

8 seconds later the bird was gone. Virginia's Warbler was no where on my radar but it had to be... I eventually took a photo of the screen on my camera with my phone and sent it to a few people who would have had experience with the species. First response was: "Dude its a Virginia's!!!"

Overall gray color, full white eye-ring and yellow on the rump all sealed the deal. The bird had no sign of yellow on the chest which likely makes it a first year female. Unfortunately I wasn't able to relocate it.

There have only been two prior records for Virginia's Warbler in Maine and both of the come from Monhegan! The first was May 21, 1998 by G. Dennis; check out his photos! (NAB V.52 n.3) and the second from September 28 & 30, 2006 by V. Laux and L. McDowell (NAB V.61 n.1)

So if we went out for a few random days in the end of October and found Maine's 9th Ash-throated Flycatcher, then I go for a couple days in November and find the state's 3rd Virginia's Warbler... what was out there in between? What is out there now?

More Successful Birding Movie: The Big Year or The Starling Murmuration Video?

2011-11-07T19:45:00.004-05:00

A blurry, rain-soaked video about a flock of starlings titled "Murmuration" has been making the rounds on the birding listservs. According to Vimeo it has been viewed 3.6 million times.

According to Box Office Mojo, the start-studded Hollywood blockbuster The Big Year, which was supposed to invigorate a whole new generation of birders, has made $7,013,887 since it was released four weeks ago.

The National Association of Theater Owners says that the average price for a movie ticket in 2010 was $7.89. Doing the math, that would mean that about 889,000 people have seen The Big Year - about 1/4 of the number that have watched a flock of starlings fly in the rain.

Eye Witnesses and Listserv Suggestion

2011-11-02T20:08:00.009-04:00

The Supreme Court heard a case a few days ago that I think is of special relevance to birders. It's about the unreliability of eyewitnesses and the power of suggestion.

One early morning in New Hampshire, a woman looked out her fourth-floor window and saw a "tall black man" breaking into a neighbor's car. While talking to a police officer in her apartment later that morning, the woman pointed from her window to a tall black man who was standing in the parking lot speaking with another police officer, and identified that man as the robber. When asked to select the robber's photo from out of a lineup, the woman could not do it.

The impact of eyewitness testimony on a jury is strong and well documented. Equally as well documented is the unreliability of witnesses. Lawyers in this New Hampshire case argue that the woman's testimony be thrown aside, claiming her identification was based upon the fact that tall black man was talking with a police officer when the woman identified him as the robber. The mere fact that the cop and the man were talking, it's argued, was enough to "suggest" to the woman that the tall black man was the tall black man.

Does this have anything to do with birding? No. Haha I mean yes, this is a birding blog of course it does.

Birders are "suggested" of ID's all the time. We use the term often to try to nudge ourselves in one direction or another, as in "the distinct eye-ring suggests Alder over Willow Flycatcher," or "primary length suggests Short-tailed Hawk" (Okay, I don't get to say that all the time but I wish I did).

We also get suggestions from other birders. When chasing after a rare bird we are really only chasing after someone's suggestion that the bird is in a certain spot. Usually, the effect is minimal: if someone reports an Ivory Gull at the wharf, and you go down and see an Ivory Gull there, everything's fine. A closer call may be the example of selasphorus hummingbirds found at a feeder in Maryland in November. Say a birder got a great picture of the tail feathers and wrote to the listserv that the bird was a Rufous. Subsequent birders visiting the site are likely to call the bird a Rufous, regardless of whether they get their own pictures or otherwise ID the bird themselves.

It happened to me: last year I visited a Mississippi backyard famous for its overwintering hummingbirds. When my friend and I arrived we were told by the homeowner that Allen's and Ruby-throated were currently visiting the feeders. We saw both species, got photos and left. Later we heard that hummingbird banders had visited the yard that same afternoon and had caught the Allen's and an Anna's hummingbird - but no Ruby-throated. By looking at the photos and comparing the placement of the few remaining gorget feathers on the Anna's, we determined that it had been the bird we saw in the morning. We may not have been able to ID the Anna's without capturing it, but because of the suggestion of the homeowner that the bird was just a Ruby-throated, we didn't even try.

I believe the the power of suggestion also applies to birding listservs. When a species is reported on a listserv, especially a slightly-unusual bird, it gets placed on (or moved up) the mental radar of local birders who, I'll argue, are 1) more likely to see the bird, or 2) more likely to think they see the bird.

I'm thinking of two species in particular: Connecticut Warbler and Clay-colored Sparrow. Both of these birds have similar-looking species - first winter and nonbreeding Chipping Sparrows for the Clay-colored and other oporonis warblers for the Connecticut - and both have a small window of migration during which they are usually seen on the East Coast. From watching the listservs, I know that both species were also publicly misidentified several times. My assumption is that misidentification was aided - nudged - by the fact that at the time of the mistaken sightings, each species had been reported at a number of other sites in the area. I think it's likely that since the birders heard the suggestion that Clay-coloreds or Connecticuts were in the area, they were more likely to rule in favor of that species instead of one of the similar species.

Or of course it could just be the simple errors associated with getting quick looks or blurry photos. Birders - especially myself - make mistakes all the time. But birders also know that finding and identifying birds requires using all the information we can get. Some usable information might be that "these birds are being seen around here now." However, letting other people's sightings suggest for us our own, like the women in New Hampshire possibly being suggested by the presence of a cop that the man on the street was the robber, can lead to misidentification.

Predicting Vagrants: Ross' Gull

2011-10-27T21:21:00.004-04:00

The 1975 Ross' Gull was a thing of legend. It made the cover of the New York Times and got three minutes of coverage on the NBC Nightly News. However, since then there has been quiet a few records of this high arctic breeder reaching some southern clims.

In 1985, Anthony H. Bledsoe and David Sibley wrote "Patterns of vagrancy of Ross' Gull" for American Birds where they compiled subarctic records and (on pg 223) charted them in half-month intervals. Since then, there have been at least 34 additional records which hint at when these birds are likely to occur.

Kinda looks like there are two movements of these gulls that send them to the lower 48. So now that we are entering the first wave, keep an eye out for any gulls with gray underwings and wedge tails!

Birds in Video Games: Adventure Island II for the NES

2011-10-20T21:21:00.003-04:00

The bird is just numb to it at this point. At first he was angry; screaming questions into the bright tropical sky. How did I get here? Who made me like this? A giant tubular beak for eating...what? There is no food on this island. Sharply hooked, footless legs...why? For what? There is nothing here to cling to.

Endless flying. Circling without stop. Anger led to depression. How could it end? Please let it end. Depression led to insanity, and now the bird can't even recognize the baseball-capped, hula-skirted savior under its beak. One well-timed jump from this shirtless, noseless man could end the nightmare. But the bird, eyes not focused but staring still through half-drooped eyelids, flies on.

Random Observations on The Big Year Movie

2011-10-15T16:43:00.003-04:00

First, and most importantly, I enjoyed it. Here are some observations:

Like Moneyball, another adapted screenplay currently in theaters, The Big Year suffers from the constraints of having to stuff the story into two hours. A lot of the fun and interest derived from being able to roll around in the details and history of birding (or baseball statistics) is lost when you have to rush a story out.
I'd like to see Owen Wilson's "sprint around with your binoculars held to your eyes" style in practice.
10,000 Birds said they sent some products to the filmmakers in hopes that they'd appear in the movie. I didn't see anything from them...but there's a Two-Fisted Birdwatcher mug beside Jack Black's bed at one point.
No Pink-footed Goose records anywhere near Colorado, nor any Great Spotted Woodpecker records in the Pacific Northwest (other than AK).
There's very little in the movie about identification issues, which I think is what birding is mostly about. Birders in the movie raise their binoculars and see the bird, without any discussion of what differentiates one species for another or that it is that ability to differentiate - in addition to the difficulty of getting to the birds in the first place - that IS birding.
The soundtrack is made up of bird-related songs: a nice "Blackbird" cover, "Bird is the Word," and an old, nearly-forgotten favorite of mine from my pre-birding days, the Eels' "I Like Birds."
I have been to Al Levantin's home in Colorado, and I gotta say the movie captures it pretty well, right down to the remote-controlled gate.
Lots of great "that guy" actors: Brian Dennehy! That guy from The Big Bang Theory! Joel McHale! Kevin Pollack! Anthony Anderson! Dianne Wiest! Tim Blake Nelson! Steven Weber! Well done.

I'm glad I saw it, I'm glad it happened, and I'm glad I can get back to thinking about real life birds.

How To Talk About Inaccuracies in Movies Like The Big Year

2011-10-14T22:00:00.003-04:00

The Big Year is coming out and birders are wondering how upset they should get at the mistakes it makes. Some birders instinctively roll their eyes and shake their heads when things are out of place. Others say "let it go, it's just a movie!"

Chuck Klosterman once gave an interview (I think it was on Bill Simmons' podcast) about the TV show The Wire where he spoke about how he bought into the reality of the show. The lives of policemen and drug dealers presented in the show were so convincing that Klosterman - who had never been a policeman or a drug dealer - believed that they must be an accurate reflection of those real lives. He was convinced of this realism until the final season of The Wire, when the show took on a topic that Klosterman had a lot of experience in: newspaper journalism. Klosterman found that the "reality" of being a newspaperman presented in the show was so inaccurate, so far from his own experience, that he was forced by logic to retroactively call into question the realism of the previous seasons' depictions of police and drug dealers.

I think about this when I see errors related to birding, that thing I have experience in. If the birds are wrong, what else is wrong? What other corners are being cut?

I've recently caved to peer pressure and began watching Breaking Bad. In the pilot episode the main character has a reflective moment sitting by his pool in New Mexico. Blue Jays and Eastern Towhees - birds not found in New Mexico - sing clearly in the background. Not only can I not ignore these sounds, but, like Klosterman, I'm forced to reconsider the rest of the world presented to me by the show.

When I watch The Big Year (tomorrow, I think), I'll be looking for mistakes. Not because I'm a debbie-downer or a cynic, but because it's almost insane to me that there could be bird-related mistakes in a movie about birding. It's not that difficult, and they knew we would be watching closely, so the number of errors will simply be direct evidence of editorial laziness. Or something else? I don't really know. Either way, I encourage birders to see the movie and to leave comments or email me with inaccuracies they find.

Learning Bird Flight Through .GIFs

2011-10-13T16:18:00.008-04:00

I saw lots of Wilson's Storm-petrels before I ever saw a Leach's. In the Gulf of Maine, though, a Leach's was always a possibility. In those summers a couple years ago I would ride a $45 Odyssey Whale Watch out of Portland about once every two weeks, always keeping a close eye on storm-petrels. After taking many trips without seeing a Leach's, that fear began to haunt me: were they out there and I was just missing them?

"They fly like nighthawks," people said. "They bound. You can't miss them." Can't miss them? I knew their wings are longer, but would it be obvious? I understood that they flew differently, but would I be ready to see that when presented with it?

The trouble with identifying birds by their flight pattern is that it's difficult to study ahead of time. You can say the words or put a dotted line behind a drawing in a field guide, but you need to see the flight to understand.

GIFs, those ubiquitous, ridiculous tools of meme culture, may help. GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) aren't movies, really, but electronic flipbooks: a bunch of images in a row that make an animation while taking up much less file space than movie files. Many of them loop, creating an endless repetition that might just be really handy for studying.

Below are some storm-petrel GIFs that I created using videos from YouTube. Wilson's, Leach's and Band-rumped are represented, each showing (to the limited extent that I could - and I'll talk about that in a minute) each species flight characteristics.

A quick disclaimer: I am still a GIF newbie. They tend to play much more quickly than they should, and I don't know what to do about it. Yet.

Wilson's Storm-petrel. This bird is picking along the surface of the water, as WISP often do. This image is helpful in showing the relationship of the wing size to the rest of the bird.

Leach's Storm-petrel. The wings are clearly longer, and the bird is flying steadily, if erratically, above the water, unlike the Wilson's.

Band-rumped Storm-petrel. This image shows the Leach's-sized wings, but the more casual, shearwater-like flap-and-glide.

Many identification issues could be helped by GIFs, from sparrows to finches to woodpeckers to raptors.

The difficulty is getting the videos to make GIFs from. YouTube really lacks for good quality bird videos, especially birds in flight. Once those videos can be obtained, then making GIFs and sharing them among novice birders is a snap.

By the way, I finally saw my first Leach's Storm-petrel on a pelagic out of Bar Harbor, Maine, in August of 2010. It was pretty obvious once I saw it...

Birds in Video Games #1: True Lies for the Super Nintendo

2011-10-08T10:37:00.003-04:00

To: CAbirdslistserv.net
From: Governator33@hotmail.com
Subject: MAHSKED BOOBIES AT DA WHUF

Deah Califownia buhdurs - I spent two houuhs at da L.A. whuf dis aftuhnoon on beesnis. Deah wuh TWO MAHSKED BOOBIES. De fuhst buhd was flying ovah a crate neah a guy with a bazooka. De second was sitting on da whuf neah a Chinese blowtoach guy and anuthuh guy with a macheen gun. All de guys are dead now. Access to dis site may be limited due to da poleece and all de blood and unexplowded nucleah bombs, but eBuhd says dat dese ah some of da few recohds foah dis county, so get down deah!

Good buhding-
Ahnold

A Birder's Apprehension to The Big Year

2011-10-03T20:14:00.007-04:00

I am a little bit protective of The Big Year. I picked up the book randomly in an airport in 2004 and it was my first introduction to the sport of birding. 6 months later, after buying an old Peterson guide in a used bookstore in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the flip was switched and I have been birding every single day since. I credit the book with introducing me to what would become a life's passion.

So I should be beyond thrilled that the movie version of The Big Year will be coming to theaters in just a couple weeks. A movie about birding! With a great cast! So why am I - and, if I'm judging the temperature of the birding community correctly, most everyone else - so apprehensive about the film?

Well there are a couple reasons.

1. We don't want to look like idiots. Let's face it, birders are ripe targets for parody. We're an eccentric bunch, and many of us regularly tuck our pants into our socks. Hollywood loves an easy target, and we birders are afraid that the movie will skip over trying to legitimize our passion and just skip straight to calling us dweebs. The book, for its part, did a great job respecting birders...here's hoping the movie does too.

2. They're going to get a bunch of stuff wrong. Being a birder makes you watch movies differently. A cowboy in the American West sits sketching a passing Augur Buzzard - a bird native to Africa. Bobwhites sing in South Africa. We've learned to tolerate the "regular" world's ignorance of bird ranges (though I still think it's hilarious), but can we put up with it in The Big Year? Birders are already grumbling that a Swainson's Hawk appears on a snowy mountainside in the trailer. Jack Black's eye cups aren't out in the poster image, shown above. Birders may fall victim to their own expertise and end up being distracted by the very movie that they should enjoy.

3. Big Year Bump? The Navy said that enlistment went up 500% after Top Gun came out. Thousands of kids took up martial arts lessons after watching Karate Kid (I was among them). Is the same thing going to happen to folks who see The Big Year? It's an interesting question. On the one hand, it'll be great for the sport to get more interest and exposure. On the other - and I'll be totally honest here - I feel a little bit of that same resentment that music fans feel when a band they've been into for years suddenly hits it big and gains a wider fan base. I'll be cranky if parking lots are clogged or trips are filled. It's illogical and it's counterproductive, but it's a real feeling.

I'm excited for this movie, especially after the release of the most recent clip narrated by John Cleese. For better or for worse, birding is about to get a moment in the sun. Let's hope my apprehension is unwarranted.

Back in the Act

2011-09-30T18:35:00.002-04:00

Yeah, we're coming back. Stay tuned for breathless, erudite, mind-sweetening commentary on birds and birding.

Thank You to the lovely and talented Rachel McFadden for the redesign.

2009-03-03T20:44:00.002-05:00

I love writing and I love birds, but I no longer have time to write about birds. Just the way it is. Please continue to read the great websites along the sidebar.

Adios!

Stimulus

2009-02-11T21:06:00.002-05:00

Hey, here's a quick news update. The stimulus package, which will likely be signed by President Obama very soon, will include (finally) some serious funding for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency which will (hopefully, is the money earmarked?) use the funds to fix some of the problems at our National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges and with drinking water systems. Although, and of course, the money is not enough to fully address the enormity of the problem, I'm glad so finally see a step in the right direction.

Read the AP story here.

Dog Bar Gulls

2009-02-02T20:04:00.006-05:00

Okay here's a look at the gulls I see on this breakwater. Click on the picture to enlarge.

1,2 - These are first or second winter Glaucous Gulls. I know it's not fair, but you're just going to have to trust me on that. I was there.
3,4,5,6 - These are non-adult Iceland Gulls
7 - adult Iceland Gull
8 - adult Greater Black-Backed Gull
9 - one of many non-adult Greater Black-Backed Gulls
10 - one of many adult Herring Gulls
11 - one of many non-adult Herring Gulls
12 - now, this is tougher. I know I saw Ring-Billed Gulls on that breakwater. Patrick left a comment below to that effect. However, I'm not sure I can find any in this picture. Look, I'm no gull whiz, but I'm stumped. My best guess is number 12, which may be a dark adult Ring-Billed, but is more likely a Herring Gull. If you are better at gull IDs than I, weigh in.

What Gulls Do You See?

2009-01-30T00:08:00.010-05:00

This is a picture of the Dog Bar breakwater, outside of Gloucester, Mass. As a guy used to seeing only white-winged gull at a time, I as amazed at how many were on this single breakwater. How many white-winged gulls can you find? (Click to enlarge)

While I'm at it, here are a lot of other, better pictures taken by Doug Hitchcox from our Mass/Ivory Gull trip last weekend. Why are there no Ivory Gull pictures? Because when we finally got to Plymouth, the bird was, like, a mile out and the arctic wind was blowing at 400 miles per second, slicing through my skin and turning my marrow into icicles. Hey, we saw it, though. Other than that slight disappointment, it was a great day.

Lapland Longspur

White-winged Crossbill

Iceland Gull

Tons of gulls following a fishing boat

Bird-Related Sports Uniform Designs: Part 2

2009-01-20T15:21:00.021-05:00

In the world of bird-related sports teams, the Baltimore Orioles stand head and shoulders above the rest. Not only is their logo among the most ornithologically-accurate of all the sports teams (except for the eye and bill color), but they are the only team whose name is the same as the whole species' common name. Baltimore Orioles and Baltimore Orioles.

It's a great idea, and one that more cities have unfortunately not taken advantage of. Why can't I go catch a California Towhees football game? Who wouldn't want Key West Quail Dove season tickets?

Although there's no good reason for these teams not to exist, there's also no reason I can't use my imagination to invent them. So here we go. Based on my previous post about current bird-related team uniform redesigns, here are the plumage-based uniforms of some teams I'd like to see:

The Carolina Chickadees

A pretty sharp-looking ball team, if I do say so myself. I like the peach-gray combination. The pants could be either gray or white, I suppose.

California Condors

California Condors are a no-brainer. It's a big, intimidating bird. It's endangered. As you can see in the photo above, they've got their own uniform numbers already! I would be terrified of a team wearing the above uniforms. Actually, it looks like the team already exists (although I don't know how good the unis are): the Southern California Condors Mixed-martial Arts squad.

California Gulls

Okay so the Gulls maybe aren't as tough as the Condors, but I think gulls match the laid-back beach attitude of SoCal pretty well. Plus, I can't pass up a chance to make a baseball cap with gonys spots.

Other potential California birds are the California Gnatcatcher, Thrasher and Towhee. These birds don't really, in my opinion, have plumages that translate well into uniforms. Sorry, guys.

Oregon Juncos

Oregon, I assume, is a good place for a hockey team. This bird translates into a pretty cool uniform.

Connecticut Warblers

Cape May Warblers

If Cape May, NJ had a pro team they'd have to be the Warblers, right? Not my best artwork, but I think it'd be a cool helmet in the right hands.

Myrtle (Beach, S.C.) Warblers

I really like being able to use the armpit and back sections of this jersey to mimic the yellow sections of the Myrtle Warbler, the Eastern race of the Yellow-rumped Warbler.

American (University) Oystercatchers

Note the bird's red eye as reflected on the top button of the hat.

Canada Warblers

Of course the Canadian team would be a hockey team. A real sharp jersey I think.

If any other artists out there have other designs you like, or uniforms for any of the other possible bird teams out there, let me know!

Bird-Related Sports Uniform Redesigns: Part 1

2009-01-16T09:53:00.014-05:00

I really didn't want to do this yet, but I just got excited and couldn't stop.

While writing a couple posts on bird-themed sports logos for 10,000 Birds I got to thinkin' about a couple things. First, I wondered what it would be like if sports teams modeled their uniform designs on the uniform designs (aka plumages) of their mascots. What if the Philadelphia Eagles dressed like Bald Eagles?

So I found a bunch of uniform templates online and made some crude redesigns of current teams. Here's what I've got:

Philadelphia Eagles

Although I suppose they could be the Golden Eagles, I think Bald Eagle plumage translates better into a uniform. It's pretty simple: A white helmet with a yellow facemask paired with a brown and white jersey. I think it actually looks pretty good: it's dignified but still intimidating. If I were on the team, I'd wear red gloves to mimic a pair of blood-stained talons.

Atlanta Thrashers

The Thrashers have one of the worst logos in sports. I think it's because Brown Thrashers (the state bird of Georgia) are basically brown, buff and white and because they average sports fan is likely less familiar with Thrashers than, say, Cardinals or Eagles. Bullsnarky, I say. You designers just weren't being creative enough. Work around a bit with those buff, brown and white colors and you've got yourself a pretty snappy little jersey. Toss a few brown spots down the sides to mimic the chest streaks of Brown Thrashers and you've done yourself a sartorial AND ornithological favor.

Toronto Blue Jays - Compare with actual

St. Louis Cardinals- Compare

Baltimore Orioles - Compare

Okay so I didn't like the baseball template as much, but here are the three designs. The Orioles and Blue Jays jerseys really aren't too much far from uniforms that the teams have worn in the past. Baseball caps are good for bird-themed teams because you can use the bill to mimic the, well, bill. So, the Orioles now have a metallic-gray brim and the Cardinals have a pinkish brim.

Okay well that's all for current teams, but stay tuned for Part 2 where I answer the age-old questions: What would the uniforms of the Carolina Chickadees look like? What about the California Condors? The American (Univ.) Oystercatchers? And more?!

Interview with Peter Vickery on Ptarmigan in Maine

2009-01-12T11:48:00.008-05:00

I was messing around on the internet yesterday and came across the 1905 Journal of the Maine Ornithological Society. It's pretty interesting reading, both because it's nice to see that people a century ago were just as passionate about birds as we are, and to compare what birds were being seen then and now (check out the writer on page 11 excitedly relating the increasing numbers of Mallards).

I paused, though, at a sentence on page 3 discussing the taxidermy collection of Mr. Manly Hardy: "Among the Maine novelties is the specimen of Willow Ptarmigan taken at Kenduskeag..."

Iiiiinteresting, I thought. I had thought before about ptarmigan in Maine and wondered whether they could, or had ever, been established in the state. Researching a bit more, I discovered a quote from none other than John J. Audubon claiming that Theodore Lincoln of Dennisville (the father of Thomas Lincoln, for whom the Lincoln's Sparrow is named) had shot several ptarmigan in the state and knew where to find others.

With my interest rolling, I sent a message out to my local listserve looking for other information on ptarmigans in the state. Luckily one of the first to respond was Peter Vickery, one of Maine's most respected birders and, according to another respondent "the source of all things historical." Peter did indeed know of a handful of Maine ptarmigan records, and agreed to take time away from working on a book of Maine Birds to talk with me about them.

Birdist: Maine ptarmigans are mentioned by John J. Audubon as having been taken by Theodore Lincoln of Dennisville, ME and in the 1905 Journal of the Maine Ornithological Society as having been found in Kenduskeag. Are there other old records of ptarmigan being found in the state? What do you think of the authenticity of these early reports?

Peter Vickery: Both Knight (Birds of Maine, 1908) and Palmer (Maine Birds, 1949) list the Kenduskeag bird. This record was published in the AUK 9:300.

Audubon's account has been discredited, as it true for many of his distributional remarks.

This is part of the Willow Ptarmigan account from our book:

"Palmer (1949) noted that Audubon (1834:528) mentioned that Willow ptarmigan occurred in Maine. 'No doubt this report, generally believed to be erroneous, furnished the basis for inclusion of this bird in the Maine fauna (Palmer 1949:171).' ... Audubon apparently stated that Theodore Lincoln, of Dennysville, Washington County had shot as many as seven birds in one day. Everett Smith (1882-83:224) communicated with Lincoln on this subject and stated that Lincoln 'informed me that he could not remember ever finding the ptarmigan in Maine, and that ‘probably Mr. Audubon referred to those shot further North. Mr. Lincoln speaks of the Canada Grouse [Spruce Grouse], as ‘spotted grouse,’ and it is my belief that the incident of the seven birds shot in one day near Dennysville, Me. related by Mr. Audubon, was probably referable to the ‘spotted’ or Canada Grouse.’ (Palmer 1949:171-172)”

The other records include: Sherman Mills in 1951, Harpswell, 1977, Brooks in 1990, Great Chebeague Island, 2000.

Birdist: Here is Audubon's quote about the Maine ptarmigan:

Although I have not seen this beautiful bird within the limits of the United States, I feel assured that it exists in the State of Maine, as well as in the northern districts bordering on the great lakes. THEODORE LINCOLN, Esq., of Dennisville in Maine, shot seven one day, not many miles from that village; and the hunter who guided me to the breeding-grounds of the Canada Grouse assured me that he also knew where the "Red-necked Partridge" was to be found. The places which he described as frequented by them, seemed to bear as near a resemblance to those in which I found the species in Labrador and Newfoundland, as the difference of latitude and vegetation could admit.

If we rule out Lincoln's birds as mistaken Spruce Grouse, we still have the "hunter" who, although providing nothing except hearsay, makes a clear distinction between Canada [Spruce] Grouse and "Red-necked Partridge." Have you come across anything about this "hunter" in your research or know anything more about this story?

Peter Vickery: As I understand the situation, Audubon attributed the shooting to Lincoln, who specifically stated that he didn't shoot ptarmigan in Maine. Seems very clear to me.

Also, how likely is it that anyone would shoot 7 ptarmigan in a day in Maine, even in the 19th Century? That's inconceivable.

Birdist: I see, so it's accepted that Lincoln and "the hunter" are the same person. It seems to me that from that passage Audubon could be referring to two different people, but I will certainly defer to those who have done a more thorough study of Audubon's work that I have.

Where do you think these birds came from?

Peter Vickery: I doubt that ptarmigan bred in Maine in recent post-glacial times but that they might well have been breeding in Maine as the glaciers receded, perhaps 5 - 8 K years ago. But that's just supposition.

It seems clear that these birds are misdirected migrants. Interior populations of ptarmigan make substantial migrations south in late fall, traveling hundreds of miles. Most Maine records occur in spring when these birds should be migrating north. No one is clear why some of these birds fly in the wrong direction, but it seems to be the case with many species of birds, including ptarmigan.

I would add that there is a single record of Willow Ptarmigan for Massachusetts. This record was initially dismissed as a captive bird but is now generally viewed as a legitimate vagrant.

Birdist: I'm intrigued by the Great Chebeague bird from 2000. Were you one of the lucky few to see this bird? Do you believe it was of wild origin? Based on your "reverse migration" idea for Maine ptarmigan records, do you think this bird came to Casco Bay after mistakenly flying too far south (much like fall migrants on Cousin's Island)?

[Note: Here's a website with pictures of the Chebeague ptarmigan and some information on other Maine sightings.]

Peter Vickery: Yes I did see the bird and have no doubt that it was a misguided vagrant.

The origin of the Great Chebeague ptarmigan was fully consistent with the reverse migration pattern, so that's what I think happened with this bird. ø

Northern Hawk Owl - Bristol, Maine

2009-01-10T14:06:00.006-05:00

Look, I started this site with the idea that I would post nothing but interviews. Every other birding site I read was some variation on "Hey look at this bird I saw near my house," and I wanted to do something different.

But, hey, look at this bird I saw near my house!

A Northern Hawk Owl! Actually, I drove an hour to Bristol, Maine to find this lovely guy (or gal) and stood for half an hour in 10 degree weather looking at it. Totally worth it, it was beautiful. I also saw a Ruffed Grouse while I was there and got to spend an hour seawatching at Pemaquid Point afterwards. Here are some pictures (I have more, but it was hard to tell when the bird was looking at me, and so most of the other in-focus pics are of the back of its head):

Also, not all bird blogs are lame, I'm just being a snob. There are a ton of great, informational, in-depth sites out there that I hope someday to either emulate or destroy. Emulate, mostly.

I and the Bird #91

2009-01-08T10:18:00.002-05:00

Hey ch-ch-check out the newest edition of I and the Bird over at From the Faraway, Nearby.

Tufted Duck in Westbrook, Maine

2009-01-04T18:59:00.008-05:00

I mean...what did I do? What did I do to deserve all these awesome birds delivered to my doorstep? Just days ago I gave thanks to the birding gods for my 2008 bounty of rare birds, thinking that last year's feast would mean this year's famine.

Not so.

After spending a beautiful morning birding Biddeford Pool I got an email (good lord, iPhone, what would I do without you?) reporting a possible Tufted Duck in the Portland-area city of Westbrook. Yeah. No big deal, just a duck that usually winters in the UK. This is Maine, remember?

So I went up and there he was, right off Main Street. Easy peasy, right? Well maybe not. There is some talk on the Maine Birding List about whether or not this bird is a pure Tufted or has hybridized with either a Ring-necked Duck or a Scaup. I met my friend Doug at the site, and we did not see much evidence of hybridization aside from the shorter-than-expected tuft. However, my new Kaufman Field Guide (thanks, Santa) specifically notes that tuft length is not a determining factor. Likewise, pictures of Scaup/Tufted hybrids do not match, as our bird was completely lacking the back-barring shown in that photo and in the Sibley drawing.

So, it seems that, for now, the bird may be a pure Tufted. I have no previous experience with the species, but Doug and I (and others) had great looks and the bird in great light and did not see too much to dissuade us. Doug has let me post some of the pictures he took, feel free to weigh in.

This final one is one of the two Barrow's Goldeneyes Doug and I found at the mouth of the Royal River in Yarmouth at the end of the day. Good times all around.

2008 Year in Review

2009-01-02T21:44:00.003-05:00

Hi Friends -

2008 is just two days in the bag and I'm already feeling nostalgic. 2008! Those were the days! I was so young!

Unlike 2007, I didn't do much birding outside of Maine. OK, I spent a week in Colorado and a couple days in Quebec, but I didn't see a whole lot. It was good, though, because sticking around really cranked up the ol' state list (from 178 to 236). My ABA list, too, jumped from 363 to 391. Here is the list of new birds for 08:

363. Bohemian Waxwing - Portland (After a looong time searching)

364. Upland Sandpiper - Kennebunk Plains, ME

365. Prairie Warbler - Kennebunk Plains, ME

366. Curlew Sandpiper - Seawall Beach, ME (really fun twitch on the coast)

367. Virginia Rail - Scarborough Marsh

368. Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow - Scarborough Marsh

369. Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow - Scarborough Marsh (all three of these birds found on one beautiful day)

370. Mississippi Kite - Newmarket, NH (a real crummy twitch. The load of other birders were really acting like jerks. This search was the inspiration for this, one of my favorite posts on this site)

371. Roseate Tern - Eastern Egg Rock

372. Atlantic Puffin - Eastern Egg Rock

373. Razorbill - Eastern Egg Rock

374. Wilson's Storm-petrel - Matinicus Rock

375. Common Murre - Matinicus Rock

376. Arctic Tern - Matinicus Rock

377. Red-billed Tropicbird - Matinicus Rock (371-377 all came on one incredible Audubon pelagic trip. It was an absolutely stunning day, and the birds were plentiful. The highlight was easily the Tropicbird, a real rarity who appeared only after a local biologist came aboard the boat and announced that the bird hadn't been seen for days and was presumed gone. Unreal.)

378. Whimbrel - Pine Point

379. Marbled Godwit - Pine Point

380. Black-legged Kitiwake - St. Lawrence River whale watch.

381. Stilt Sandpiper - Scarborough Marsh

382. Northern Wheatear - Cumberland, ME (Days like this remind me why I love birding. A cool morning alone on a beautiful little hill I had never heard of before, and would never have found had a Northern Wheatear not been reported there.)

383. Lesser Black-backed Gull - Dyer Point (I had been chasing LBBGs for awhile, and had a nagging doubt that I had just overlooked them previously. I got a boost of confidence, though, because I knew this bird's ID the moment I saw it.)

384. Greater White-fronted Goose - Yarmouth, ME

385. Barnacle Goose - Yarmouth, ME

386. European Golden-plover - Scarborough Marsh (Great bird, and great fun tracking it down.)

387. Lapland Longspur - Scarborough Marsh (One of the highlights of a great day birding with Abby, Don and Becky)

388. Cave Swallow - Two Lights SP

389. Dickcissal - Yarmouth, ME

390. White-winged Crossbill - Falmouth, ME (hometown CBC)

391. Varied Thrust - South Portland, ME (a real target bird hanging out, still, at a feeder in SoPo)

What's up for 2009? I gotta say, being a full-time law student has been tough. The obvious target is 400 ABA birds, but getting them without leaving the state may be tough. Things are looking good so far, the first bird I saw in 2009 was one that I missed all through 2008: A Red-bellied Woodpecker in Central Park, NYC.

Here's to another great year!

Birds at Large VII: Xmas Birdfeeder

2008-12-24T12:48:00.004-05:00

My dad gave me a hanging birdfeeder for Christmas. Great gift, right?

No. The greatest.

I haven't hung the thing up yet, but if the tag is any indication, this is the best birdfeeder ever made. Take a close look at the picture below. Not only will this feeder attract birds that are unknown to science, but it will bring them in WITHOUT EVEN NEEDING TO FILL IT WITH BIRDSEED.

Thanks, Dad. You're the best.

Interview with Brian Sullivan of eBird

2008-12-17T13:39:00.007-05:00

I'm ashamed of the pun, but eBird kills two birds with one stone. On the one hand are birders who are tired of keeping complicated lists of their sightings, and are looking to simplify. On the other hand are scientists that are frustrated with extrapolating bird population data from banding stations and estimations and are looking for more complete data.

This is where eBird comes in. In addition to providing birders with a format to track and manage their lists and observations, it also allows scientists access to vast amounts of continent-wide data on bird populations. After starting slowly, eBird now records millions of individual sightings each year. In addition to being a great success story in the citizen science movement, eBird has become an indispensable tool for many birders, including myself.

And guess what: there's a new version in the works. I recently talked with Brian Sullivan, one of the three guys in charge of eBird, about the site's past, present and future.

Birdist: Let's start out by talking a little bit about your role, and the history of eBird.

Brian Sullivan: Well, eBird was launched in 2002 by the Lab and Audubon as a joint project, and the goal was generally to harness the power of the observations of birders, and put them into an archive where they could be used and accessed by scientists and conservationists. So, that was sort of the overarching goal. Internally, our big hypothesis was that observations made by birders could be used by scientists for scientific purposes, and we're still in the process of proving that, because eBird is relatively young. You know, birders have collected data and made huge contributions to our knowledge of ornithology from the start, and this was sort of a no-brainer idea in terms of pulling all that data together into one useful format.

And so on your end, on the science end, it's very useful in terms of gathering data and those things. On my end, as a casual birder, it's very useful as a way to keep track of what I'm doing and what I'm seeing. So, when you guys started it up, did you really start from the scientific end of things or did you also think that this would be something that casual birders are going to need to keep track of their sightings?

Well, when eBird was first launched, it was built by scientists, for scientists. It was less birder-friendly than it is now. And that was fine, and a certain number of people will participate when they just want to contribute their data for the good of science and conservation and things like that. The flaw was that there was no reward to the user back at the beginning. So, basically you submitted your data into the vacuum and it was sucked in and put together with everyone elses, but you didn't get any reward back, even simple things like keeping a life-list, and things like that.

So we saw a decent amount of participation in the beginning, but then it plateaued. In 2005, they brought in Steve Kelling, who is the Director of Information Science at the Lab, and John Fitzpatrick, the Lab Director, decided to come at it from a different perspective and try to hire some people who would turn eBird on its head, essentially, and develop it from a birding perspective. So, late 2004, early 2005 they brought me and Chris Wood on to basically try to increase participation and redevelop eBird in a way that would be more widely used in the birding community. Chris and I basically vied for the same job, and then they decided to hire both of us because our ideas were so similar about how to get eBird to get to the next level.

The big piece that we brought in were some simple user rewards, like various lists that birders keep. So, when you input data, it automatically updates your lists based on the location where you submitted your data, things like that. Simple stuff.

Simple, but necessary. For someone like me, who didn't have a long history of keeping records on paper, and had grown up being very comfortable with computers, eBird was a no-brainer. I think the very first day I discovered eBird, which was the middle or end of 2005, I signed up and started inputting. And so, if it was your intention to get people like me into eBird, it certainly worked.

Yeah, our goal at that point was to make eBird a tool for birders that they would want to use and not feel like they had to use. That was you begin create participation but also sustain participation because the people who use it, like it, and continue to use it. And so that was the major change in 2005 that took us from, you know, three to five thousand checklists a month up into the thirty and forty thousand checklist a month range. And its grown steadily since. We've had some months with over one-hundred thousand checklists, which is over one million observations.

So we're happy with that. This nice thing about the growth is that it allows us to leverage more development, funding and personnel, to build Version Three. Version Three is essentially going to continue with the same line of thinking that we had before, but we'll sort of beef it up a little bit so that birders have more control over how they want to keep their lists in eBird. One of the big aspects that we're developing is the ability to build a community around birds, and open things up in a way so that it's less anonymous. Birders love to be congratulated when they find a great bird, they love the reward they get for their hard work. We're trying to figure out how to built mechanisms so that other users can give each other a pat on the back, and can also communicate with them when something is wrong.

So are you looking toward social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace in terms of figuring out how these types of online communities operate or look?

Yeah, absolutely. Facebook's a great model for how that would work. At this point we're trying to figure out how to tie in to some of those community sites by, basically, bringing pieces of eBird out so they can be embedded into your Facebook page or things like that. So, if you wanted to display your Maine list on your Facebook page you could put a little gadget into your page so people could see it.

Which is like the gadget I know of now, which is the pull-down menu by state, where you can see notable sightings broken down by state, correct?

Exactly. We're trying to, with 3.0, built a very sophisticated home listing base, where you can enter data, manage your data, and manage your lists like you were never really able to before. But also we're really interested in pushing eBird out to some of these other websites. You know, when you're a birder you want people to see what you've reported, and you want to know what other people have seen. So, we're trying to figure out ways to make that happen. Say, like on Twitter, where you're following what a friend is doing, well maybe on your Facebook page you could set up a feed when you could follow some of your local Maine birding friends and see what they're reporting immediately, either on Facebook or Twitter or your cell-phone. We're trying to make a more open atmosphere to eBird and also a more immediate atmosphere to it. Now it takes a long time to get information back...birders want to know about a rare bird yesterday, not a couple of days from now.

If I was going to offer a suggestion for something I'd like to see in a new version, it would be better searching features. One thing I sometimes do is sit around in Maine and plan trips for myself, or think about what birds I could see if I were somewhere else. That involves looking at eBird and figuring out, you know, what birds I could see in Oregon in December. Or April. And that has been something that's been a little bit difficult to do on eBird. Are you working on anything for Version Three in terms of searching?

Yeah, absolutely. In the next few weeks, actually, we're going to put out a Google-map, where you will be able to search for a species and it will give you a Google-map of, say, California with all the reported sightings of a certain species. Then you can click on those points and get data for each sighting. That'll be a big step in the right direction in terms of data-out.

One of the other things we've talked about, that we'd really like to develop for Version Three, is, you know when you go the data entry and you get a Google-map and it's got all the hotspots on it? Well we're thinking about turning that around and making it and input, so that you could go to a map of Oregon, click on a hotspot and then get all the barcharts with everybody's data together. So if you clicked on a species there you might get the most recent sightings of that species at that hotspot. That's what we're looking at in terms of hotspot output.

Those hotspots are recommended by users, right? Then you guys go in and approve the ones that you agree are actually hotspots? Because one of the other problems with searching is that people label different sites with different names. So, when someone has seen a certain bird at, say, Bridge 4, it could be hard for me to tell what that location is if it's not a commonly-known hotspot. Is that someone you guys could address?

Well, hotspots have always been sort of a thorn in our side. The hotspot concept was essentially a "wiki" concept before "wikis" were even developed. This was back in 2002, and the idea was that we would let the community create and define hotspots. So we have this system in place where people can suggest hotspots, but we still have to manually approve them. And that is a bit clunky. One thing we have on the table, and I'm not sure it's going to happen in 3.0, is moving the entire hotspots process over into a wiki framework, where the users can provide information about hotspots and manage them. All of the things we do now we would add to that mapping output.

That would be helpful because hotspots are really something that is done on a local level. If five or six people in Maine visit the same site, but call it something different, then the data doesn't back to you and doesn't get back to us as well as it could.

Right, yeah, and we're painfully aware of issues with hotspots. What we struggle with all the time is that we have a certain amount of time and resources we can put towards development and we have to prioritize what we think will give us the biggest bang for the buck. Hotspots is definitely on the list, and it has been for some time, we just have to figure out how to tackle it the right way, and that is probably to put most of the work in the hands of the birders. You know, birders are fanatical about their birding locations, and it would be an amazing resource to click on, you know, Higbee Beach in Cape May and figure out exactly where to go to find a certain species from the locals who bird there every day.

Plus, it's really the only way you could do it. You guys are good birders, but you can't be in every single spot. If you want to make a comprehensive site, you have to leave it with locals, the people who know places the best. Are there any other Version Three tricks up your sleeves?

Well we're planning on launching eBird worldwide for Version 3.0. It'll be great because you could enter data from anywhere. We get asked for that alot. We're spending a lot of time and energy now to develop the network we'll need to launch worldwide. It's going to be hard in some places. The first step is just allowing people to enter data. Then it's going to be...you know, the nice thing about eBird is that you can always re-run the data through finer filters. So, the data in Bangladesh may not be squeaky-clean right off the bat, but when we have better filters we'll be able to reprocess that data through those filters to make sure they're good. But the first step is to allow people to enter data so they have it on their lists.

It takes awhile for any community to give polished data. I remember when I started using eBird, I was putting all kinds of "Xs" and "sp." in, and I wasn't reporting all the birds...I think after awhile you learn the sort of etiquette of eBird, or simply which inputs produce the most useful results.

That's interesting that you'd say that, that's something we're very interested in at eBird is knowing how eBird has changed the way people go birding. We've always designed and developed eBird with that goal in mind. We don't just want people to use it without learning anything. We want them to know why it's important to report all birds, or to provide some effort information with your records. It's great to hear that you learned those things without much prompting, really with just interaction with the program.

This goes to the question of, you know, eBird was started with scientific interests in mind, what have you learned in the five or six years that eBird has been around?

The amount of data we're collecting at this point - you know, eBird is a young project - but the amount of data we're collecting really allows us for the first time to look at the distribution and abundance and, sort of overall patterns and dynamics of bird populations at the continental scale. We can start to look at the movements of Nashville Warblers all the way from their breeding grounds all the way down to their wintering grounds. It's just amazing to look at an entire species' range as it shifts across the continent. We're really excited about that.

Right now we have a group of scientists that the Cornell Computers Science Department that are using eBird data in a number of ways to try to model bird abundance at the daily level, on a continent scale. It's pretty amazing. They've actually succeeded in doing that for species like Tree Swallow and Eastern Pheobe, species where we have a lot of data. The scientists are taking that data and tuning it up so we can start to look at some of the stuff for rarer species, obviously the goal being things like: what do these species need, where do they migrate, what is the connectivity look like between breeding grounds and wintering grounds in terms of habitat available, how do you prioritize conservation of those habitats? Basically making models that help identify species-habitat relationships and fill gaps where there are huge bits of information that are lacking. Like, where are LeConte's Sparrows during migration? Where are they between Michigan and Mississippi?

I think that as we continue to collect data, and as birders continue to learn that providing effort-based information and giving checklists with complete species helps us in terms of analysis, we'll be able to learn even more. Beyond eBirds organizational use as a database, which is great also for sort of the day-to-day record keeping on a regional scale, it's a great tool for organizing information for local journals, state journals and even national journals. All of those things are being tied in now. From an analysis standpoint, we're just at the tip of the iceburg with what we can do with the information.

On the same end, you've learned a lot about birds, have you learned anything about birders that you didn't expect?

Well, Chris Wood and Marshall Iliff and I are what they call the "three-headed monster" that runs eBird now, and all three of us have been birding for a good portion of our lives. We're pretty dialed in about what birders want. I think some of the scientists at Cornell have learned a lot about birders by seeing the results we've got with eBird by making some simple tweaks that appeal to birders. It's been a great learning process for citizen-science in general to learn that when you build a project you need to consider the needs of your audience instead of the needs of the scientists. Or, I should say, as well as the needs of the scientists. You need to not only develop a project that will gather useful data but it needs to be a project will result in some sort of useful reward for the user. That's been the biggest thing that's been learned from this entire process, and I think a lot of citizen-science projects in the future will be based on that model. ø

Interview with Sharon Gray of Ridge Bird Feeders

2008-12-13T23:46:00.004-05:00

Ridge Bird Feeders doesn't just produce excellent-quality birdfeeders, they produce GIGANTIC, excellent-quality birdfeeders. In fact, as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, Ridge Bird Feeders has built the largest birdfeeder in the world. The thing is 8 feet tall! It holds 135 pounds of seed! It's in the great state of Maine!

I don't usually "pimp" products here, but this holiday season I encourage you to buy Maine, buy birdy, and buy Ridge. Plus, you can say your feeder is the cousin of the largest in the world.

I talked with Sharon Gray of Ridge Bird Feeders about the world record feeder.

Birdist: When did the idea first come about to attempt to make the world's largest birdfeeder?

Sharon Gray: Well it all started when I asked Bill [Cote] to make me a large bird feeder. All and all, I did not need it that large because all the feeders that we sell are large and beautiful. After it was laid out we talked about the possibility of using it for advertising and then on to Guinness.

How was the feeder constructed? Was the process different for your normal-sized feeders?

SG: It was constructed as a duplicate of our feeder design, just larger, white cedar, longer stainless screws, etc. The process was the same with the only difference being Plexiglass braces on the inside of the hopper to keep it wrapped. Of course it is varnished also!

How much seed did it take to fill the feeder up? How were you even able to fill it?

SG: The feeder takes 136 lbs of black oil sun flower seed to fill. If we feed with a smaller seed it might hold more weight. We use a tall ladder and five gallon pails to fill it. We normally only put 50 to 60 lbs at a time in it. Bill just muscles it up.

How did you hang it up and how long did you leave it?

SG: It appears to be hanging but is on a perch. Once it is up it stays up and only comes down to be repaired from the damage done by red squirrels.

Oh so the feeder has been in operation since it was built? How much seed would you guess you've gone through?

SG: The feeder has been feeding for a while, I think it was built in 2006. Seed, that is a good question. We do not go through as much as some people but maybe 800 lbs of black oil sun flower a year.

Do a lot of birds come to the feeder? What species have you seen?

SG: We get quite a few depending on the time of year. We get cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, finches, grosbeaks, pine siskins, blue jays, doves, woodpeckers and all the ground feeders that go along to name a few.

Can you tell me a little bit about the Guinness process? Did someone have to come out and verify what you made?

SG: The Guinness process is pretty cut a dried. You register with them and tell them what record you want to go for and wait for their reply. Once you have it then they send you all the info and all you have to do is follow them to the letter. It took us a year but this was due to the firm that set up our web site and let the ball fall with Guinness. Bill had to pick up the pieces and start all over again...

When we were ready to go for the record we had a reporter from a TV station, WABI TV Bangor, and two people from a community radio station out of Blue Hill, Me., WERU. We had to take the feeder down, measure it, weigh the seed, fill the feeder. We had to take the statements and send a video from the TV broadcast to Guinness. I think we waited 8 weeks and they sent us the paper work that we had the world record.

If you want somebody to come over the pond from Guinness it is extremely expensive and is not required, but the process could have taken only a couple of weeks.

Do you have any plans to build and even BIGGER feeder? Is anyone challenging your record?

SG: Bigger feeder I do not know. Same answer for someone challenging the record. We have not heard. ø

A Few Gull Notes

2008-12-10T22:16:00.002-05:00

First, big news. I got a message today from local Audubon naturalist Eric Hynes. He was looking at an unusual gull off Back Cove in Portland, possibly a California Gull. By the time I was able to get back to Eric, the bird had been flushed by a dog-walker (curses!) and could not be relocated. I checked a couple spots around the Cove to no avail.

Too bad, too, because after inspecting the photos Eric determined that it was not a California Gull but Maine's first recorded Mew Gull. Check out some lovely pictures right here. Congratulations, Eric.

Second, I've noticed a whole bunch of Thayer's Gulls being reported across the East Coast. I've been looking at Thayer's Gulls, and, man, are they hard to tell from Herrings. For some help, here is a real helpful webpage showing the differences between the two species.

2008-12-06T21:18:00.006-05:00

Birds and Sports Logos

Hello 10k Birds readers! Thanks, Mike, for the invite, this is one heck of a site you guys got yourselves.

OK, so, on my own site I sometimes like to explore the ways birds and birders are misunderstood by the media and the general public. It may be nitpicky, and the people may mean well, but I've spent a lot of time honing my power of bird-observation, and I'm not going to turn it off just because I'm at home on the couch. Plus, if you're producing a big-budget American TV commercial, how hard is it really to make sure that the bird you're using isn't restricted to, say, the South American rainforest? Isn't that your job? I mean, there's a reason he's named Smoky the Bear and not Smoky the Wallaby, right?

Regardless of whether some hotshot commercial producer cares, I care. You know what else I care about? Sports. And, as it just so happens, sports teams represent (and misrepresent) birds all the time in their team logos. So today I'm going to do a breakdown, Uni-Watch style, of the best, okay-ist, and worst bird-themed sports logos in sports. Grades will be given out based on ornithological accuracy and whatever other criteria I see fit. [Note: I'll be sticking primarily to professional American sports: MLB, NBA, NFL and, I guess, the NHL. For a list of bird-themed college teams with some snarky commentary, look here.] Let's do it.

Major League Baseball

Baltimore Orioles. Although they are a perennially crummy baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles represent the pinnacle of bird-sports achievement. First, they are the only team that I know of which includes the team's geographic location as part of a species name: the bird is named the Baltimore Oriole, and the team is the Baltimore Orioles. Genius. I really wish more teams would do this, and someday bird-nerds around the country could celebrate when the California Condors play the Nashville Warblers in the World Series.

Second, the Orioles logo is, ornithologically, spectacular. Although the logo hasn't always been so accurate, the current version, at least compared to some of the logos we'll see later on, looks to be right out of a field guide. Closer inspection reveals some discrepancies, however. Unlike the bird in the logo, actual male Baltimore Orioles have gray/blue bills and no cream eye-ring. Real birds also show a good deal more white in the coverts and secondaries than the logo bird. I'll let those details slide as artistic license, though, and at least the team isn't making a mockery of the bird. Oh, wait...let's move on. Grade = A

Toronto Blue Jays. Another mediocre, American League East baseball team which has chosen a smallish, not-particularly-intimidating bird as its mascot. I love the logo, though. At least, I love the one the one they used to wear, before they started to make a mess of things.

Like the Orioles, the Blue Jays logo isn't ornithologically perfect. The biggest difference is, of course, that real blue jays have black bills and collars, not dark blue. It's a pretty logo, though, and it's not a bird that traditionally gets the sports-team treatment, so it's OK in my book. These guys, however, must be destroyed. Grade = A-

St. Louis Cardinals. As far as I can tell, the Cardinals are the oldest bird-named team in the country since changing over from the weirdly-named Brown Stockings in 1900 (and that would be this kind, not this kind). And it's a good thing, too, because their logo is classic. It's not perfect, though. The beak and legs are bright yellow, while on a real male Northern Cardinal they are red/orange and dark pink, respectively. The eye of the logo is also not the black it would be in real life, but, as with the Orioles, I'll let that slide as artistic license. Note that the logo used by the Cardinals from 1967-1997 get the beak and legs colors a bit more realistic, and adds a funky little hat. Good work, St. Louis. Grade = A

Boston Red Sox. What do the Red Sox have to do with birds? Am I just putting them on this list because they are my favorite sports team? Well, yes and no. Check out the Red Sox "B" emblem. Got it? Okay, now turn the B ninety degrees clockwise. What do you see? Yes, it's an owl. Isn't that cool? Somewhere along the line I thought that it was used as a logo for some college (Rice Owls? Temple Owls?) but I haven't been able to confirm that. Grade = A for coolness

The National Football League

Atlanta Falcons. Alright, here is the time for some real tough, badass birds! None of these wimpy orioles and jays, we want some tough birds to represent some tough guys! And what could be tougher than a falcon? The fastest birds in the sky! Lightning-quick raptors that swoop from the sky! Surely the Atlanta Falcons would honor this noble family through a cool logo!

Excuse me. Excuse me. What the hell is that? Is THAT your falcons logo? That looks awful! That's nothing like what falcons look like! OK, maybe it's just a "hip, new" thing, and your older logo was better. No! Awful!

Ugh. Where to begin? First, falcons have very distinct, angular wings, a feature completely botched in the logo (the logo bird's wings look more like, what, passerines?). Second, although there is such a thing as a Black Falcon, it lives in Australia, not Atlanta. And what's with the leg sticking out? Is he injured? Sigh. So much wasted potential. Grade = D-

Philadelphia Eagles. I mean, it's OK. It gets points for being intense, it loses a bunch of points for being green and silver. I'm not gonna hate on it, but eagles are done much better in other places. Grade = C

Arizona Cardinals. Unlike the baseball team, these Cardinals just went with the head. Like the baseball team, though, the Arizona Cardinals have miscolored the bird's break and eyes. I'm generally in favor if this logo, but it's nothing to write home about. Grade = B-

Seattle Seahawks. As been covered on this website before, a Seahawk is another name for an Osprey. Although this logo isn't exactly realistic, it's done in the local Native American style, so I'm not going to dock much points. Seattle sports are miserable enough right now without me piling it on. Grade = C

Baltimore Ravens. Look, I really want to like this logo. I think Ravens are a great mascot, and an underappreciated bird. I like the Baltimore - Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" connection. But...it's purple. It's unoriginal. It's ugly. Grade = C-

The National Basketball Association

Atlanta Hawks. The NBA is the league with the least number of bird-related teams, with only the Hawks representing. Annnnd it's a pretty crummy logo, at least from an ornithological perspective. I researched as best I could (great website there, by the way), and I don't think there are any red hawks like the one in the picture, and certainly not in Atlanta. It's not so bad, though. It's a pretty good hawk, for a generic one. Plus, the Hawks get a few bonus points for making one my my favorite logos ever. Grade = B

The National Hockey League

Before we get into the real teams, there are a couple quasi-birdy NHL teams we need to get out of the way. First, the Chicago Blackhawks are named after Chief Black Hawk, not a bird. Second, while the logos for the Detroit Red Wings, Philadelphia Flyers and St. Louis Blues use wing imagery, they are not countable here. Moving on.

Pittsburgh Penguins. The Penguins have a couple of logos, and they are both awesome. For the skating penguin, regardless of whether or not it's a real bird, how could you not love that? Adorable. For the older penguin head logo, it appears to be modeled on the Emperor, and it looks pretty good to me. I also give the team a lot of respect for picking such an untraditionally friendly bird for a mascot (it's a winter thing, I think). Great job, Penguins. Grade = A

Atlanta Thrashers. Oh, Atlanta, what are we going to do with you? Three bird-related teams, and three crappy logos. Atlanta's hockey team is named after Georgia's state bird, the Brown Thrasher, which is convenient because "thrashing" is also one of those macho sports words. Too bad the logo looks like crap. Ugh. I'll grant that actual Brown Thrashers aren't visually distinctive, but that logo is embarrassing. Atlanta, for shame.

Quick News and Notes

2008-12-04T11:29:00.003-05:00

It's law school finals time, so I haven't been spending much time birding posting. It sucks. But I'm still working on some things for the near future, so don't give up!

First, from the world of Birds At Large: Look, Gmail, if you're going to be reading my emails and subjecting me to targeted advertising, at least make sure the things are spelled correctly. So, no, I am not looking for "Effective ways to keep Squirrels off Bird Feaders."

Second, I've got interviews in the works with the company that built the World Record bird feeder and Brian Sullivan from eBird, talking about potential changes in version 3. Stay tuned for those.

Third, I'll be posting a guest post on 10,000 Birds in the next week or two about the bird-themed sports logos, a topic I'm way too interested in.

Quick Question: Birds and Color Vision with Anders Ödeen

2008-11-24T10:23:00.008-05:00

The other day I was rewatching the "Signals and Song" episode of The Life of Birds and took special interest in the section about avian eyesight. David Attenborough, ye giver of knowledge, explained that many birds possess color vision far superior to our own, often allowing birds to see light in the UV spectrum. The ability to see UV light means that in some cases - examples in the program include Budgerigar and European Starlings - birds appear to each other much different than they appear to us.

This got me thinking, then, about whether or not it matters what colors birders wear in the field. My winter coat is bright red, and sometimes I wonder whether I'm scaring birds away unnecessarily. I got in touch with Anders Ödeen, an animal ecologist at Uppsala University in Sweden who has done work with birds' color vision, and asked him about whether or not the color of birders' clothes matters. Turns out, it probably does. Here's Anders:

"Birds have a more advanced colour vision system, with one more class of photoreceptor involved in colour vision and a wider spectral sensitivity than humans. The conspicuousness appears to be correlated between vision systems. A colour contrast conspicuous to a human will in most cases also be conspicuous to a bird. For all practical purposes, we can therefore assume that most colours that blend into the background for humans do so also for birds. There are some combinations of foreground and background colours where the difference will be much greater for birds than humans. They will however depend on the specific combination and requires spectrophotometry and retinal modelling to identify. However, human camouflage might differ from the background with respect to ultraviolet reflection, to which we are blind but birds in general, Passerida passerines and psittaciforms in particular, are sensitive. The biggest difference between passerine and raptor colour vision seems to lie in the UV spectral range."

So, just as it would for humans, my bright red winter jacket will make me conspicuous to birds in the field. It seems obvious, but it really isn't something that had ever crossed my mind before. Looks like someone is going to have to put "camouflage coat" in his Christmas list...

How Many Field Guides Do You Own?

2008-11-18T19:35:00.002-05:00

I began birding when I pulled an old copy of Peterson's off a shelf at a used bookstore in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I flipped through the book and noticed that someone (whom I later deduced to be an old woman in Florida) had written the date and location of each sighting next to the bird's picture in the book. "What a cool idea!" I thought. I bought the book, crossed off that old woman's chickenscratches and began watching the skies.

Just a few years later, my collection of field guides has grown by leaps and bounds. I purchase new ones every year to keep year lists in, and I try to obtain as many exotic ones as possible. My bookshelf currently includes:

1 copy of The Sibley Guide to Birds (This is the book I keep my life list in. I mean, it's just the best. Best pictures, most detail.)

2 copies of The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America (Both given as gifts before I moved to Colorado)

2 copies of National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (Where I kept my 2007 and my current 2008 year list. I like the NG because it has a lot more rarities than Peterson or Sibley. However, it lacks Sibley's detail.)

3 copies of Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America (My original copy is gone. I kept my 2004, 2005 and 2006 year lists in this guide. I like it, but some of the art is dark or tough to see. I haven't looked much at the new, large edition.

1 copy of Peterson's A Field Guide to Western Birds

1 copy of A Field Guide to the Birds of East and Central Africa (JG Williams, 1964 ed.) (old, worn copy given to me by Uncle Mike)

1 copy of The Book of Indian Birds (Salim Ali, 1979 ed.) (Another cool old guide given by Uncle Mike)

1 copy of Stokes Field Guide to Birds, Western Region (1996) (my only guide using photos. Not a huge fan)

1 copy of Birds of Ecuador (Awesome book. I bought it before my trip to Ecuador's west coast [which is probably the least birdy part of the whole country...]. I had an incredible time leafing through this book and scrambling to identify the birds I would see.)

1 copy of Peterson's Gulls of the Americas (My most recent purchase. I really love the idea of a Gulls guide, but I have to say I'm a little disappointed in this book. A lot of the photos are very old, there is no index at the beginning, the birds aren't separated clearly, and the inclusion of South American gulls is confusing. I understand that it's not meant for use in the field, but it's still tough to use at home. It's OK, but there is a lot of room for improvement in a Gulls guide.)

1 copy of The Shorebird Guide (This is what the Peterson Gulls guide should be. The Shorebird Guide is incredible: beautiful, easy to use, lots of rarities.)

1 copy of National Geographic's Water, Prey and Game Birds of North America and Song and Garden Birds of North America (1964) (A box set of two companion volumes given to me by my grandfather. At the back of both books are birdsong recordings which can be played on a record player!)

Those are all the bird guides I've acquired so far. I'm looking forward to being an old man with an entire bookcase dedicated to different bird guides from around the world and from different eras.

How many do YOU have?

The Birdist: "As Refuted By David Sibley!"

2008-11-09T10:44:00.003-05:00

Master birder/fieldguidist/artist David Sibley has recently picked up the discussion of "how many rare birds to we miss?" on his personal blog, Sibley Guides Notebook. Since I had interviewed John of A DC Birding Blog about that very topic back in March, I left a comment with the link in Sibley's comments. On Thursday Mr. Sibley posted his own answer to the "how many do we miss?" question, suggesting that the number is somewhere around 3 to 10 percent.

And you know what? He's right. What made me think so? It wasn't that blog post, but it was an example Mr. Sibley used: the search for the European Golden-plover.

Mr. Sibley began the discussion of finding rare birds by linking to a video of a moonwalking bear. Well, the search for the EUGP in Scarborough Marsh was pretty much exactly like the classic sniper training scene (careful, there's a swear word in there) from A Clear and Present Danger: a bunch of guys with binoculars staring into a field, failing to locate something they know is there.

Standing at Seavey's Landing that morning, I realized how truly difficult it is to find an extralimital bird. Here, completely surrounding this one square mile of marsh, were probably 50 of the best birders in New England, all with their scopes trained. For hours. No bird.

If 50 experts with scopes can't find one little bird in a field, what chance does one expert have? What about one non-expert? What is the EUGP had landed in any of the many less-birded or less-accessible areas of Scarborough Marsh? The odds become miniscule. I mean, there are only a handful of birders in Maine good enough to suspect that the bird was anything but an American Golden-plover (I'm not one of them, but thank goodness that Robby Lambert is), and that's if they were lucky enough to get a good look at it to start with.

Secondly, I came to a separate realization about finding rare birds while looking for the EUGP. After hours of sitting on the outskirts of the marsh, waiting fruitlessly for the bird to appear, some Mass. birders and I decided to start walking through the marsh, hoping to locate the bird closer to where it had been last seen. During our walk we repeatedly kicked up birds that no one else had been seeing, including American Bittern, Snipe and Pectoral Sandpipers. All these birds, like the EUGP, were hunkered down in the grass, unseen by the mighty 50 and their powerful scopes.

Scarborough Marsh is probably the most heavily birded area in Maine (except for maybe Evergreen Cemetery in early May), and yet it took a mighty effort to refind a single extralimital bird there. Mr. Sibley is right, the actual find-rate for extralimital birds must be much less than my estimate of 1/3. Well, unless you've got Robby Lambert on your side...

The Onion is Funny

2008-11-07T14:08:00.004-05:00

Check out this article from The Onion about the lack of gratitude Peregrine Falcons have been showing since their removal from the Endangered Species list. Also includes a Maine shoutout!

However, since there's no one else in the world to criticize and correct tiny, passing minutiae regarding the representation of birds in the media, I'll say this: the sentence in the article reads "hunting prey off the coast of Maine as though it were 'master of the fucking skies.'" Peregrines hunt near the coast, sure, but aren't a bird you'd find hunting off the coast. OK? That's enough.

Birds at Large VI: Mark Trail

2008-11-02T14:53:00.006-05:00

The other day I broke down and bought the Peterson Gulls of the Americas book (review to come later, probably). I've looked through the thing a ton of times since it arrived, and darn if I can't find either of the two gull species that appear in the above Mark Trail strip.

I mean, let's think about it. It looks like the two birds on the left of the second cell (the detailed ones, not the faraway ones above the people) appear to be the same: white-headed gull, no black on the wingtips, unmarked bill. What could that be? The lack of color on the wingtips could indicate an adult Iceland Gull or Glaucous Gull, but both of those species have bright red gonys spots.

As for the rightmost gull, the one with the black head (or, as Peterson puts it, the "masked" bird), the combination of black head, black bill and unmarked wingtips leaves an adult Little Gull as the only possibility.

So Mark Trail has apparently found himself on a pier with two aberrant-billed white-winged gulls and an unusually large Little Gull. Holy Moses, Mark! Alert someone! Ditch that boring chick and put something out to the listserv! If you want to protect natural resources for future generations, you better start with this magical, rare-gull attracting pier!

Much more probable is my assumption that Jack Elrod just drew generic gulls thinking that no one would notice. Well, guess what, I noticed. Mr. Elrod, I implore you, as this nation's preeminent naturalist/cartoonist you have a duty to present your drawings with the highest of accuracy! How are kids going to know to value our national resources when they're presented inaccurately?

I mean, how hard is it to stick a little gonys spot on there?

Interview with Dr. Keith Arnold, founder of the Texas Bird Records Committee

2008-10-29T23:16:00.009-04:00

Records Committees are those bodies of expert birders who examine unusual bird sightings from within their state to determine their validity and accuracy. As a regular birder, I have a tendency to romanticize such proceedings. What power! Are the Committee members sitting around a big round table like the Knights of Camelot? Do they spend late nights in the backrooms of nightclubs, smoking cigars and politicking about Canada Geese subspecies?

It's an extremely interesting subject, and I am very thankful that Dr. Keith Arnold has agreed to help me clear up my imagination. Aside from being one of America's most respected ornithologists, Dr. Arnold is an author, a Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M and a founder of the Texas Bird Records Committee.

I'm grateful (and honored) that Dr. Arnold was able to take the time to help me clear up some of my misconceptions about Record Committees, and give me a glimpse of what actually goes on behind those closed doors:

Birdist: What was the impetus for the creation of the Texas Bird Records Committee?

Keith Arnold: Birders have a problem with rare birds and acceptance by the scientific community. Our committee started [in 1972] when George Newman, then president of the Texas Ornithological Society [and also my graduate student] asked me to form a committee to examine such records and to develop a state checklist for all birds. I did so initially by recruiting a well-known birder from each of the 8 T.O.S. regions.

What exactly were the problems? A lack of uniformity in terms of what birds were countable? A lack of knowledge of what existed, or what was common or uncommon, in Texas?

KA: Where to start?
1. The reputation of the birder for "finding" rarities...usually not "re-found" by others...
2. Species easily confused...
3. Need for documentation, even written details, but photos, recordings, etc., preferred...
4. Where are records available...
5. How does one evaluate a record that appears simply as a name in a printed account such as in American Birds or its predecessor or successor...

Given a bit of time, I'm sure that I can add to this list, but it should give you an idea as to what the birding and scientific communities face.

So you sat down with your 8 T.O.S. birders and began examining records. Because these pre-TBRC birders didn't realize that they needed a certain amount of proof for a sighting (because the TBRC didn't exist yet) did you find yourself disallowing a large number of sightings?

I imagine there must have been some controversy, or at least heated discussions, among the members of the committee and with local birders, do you remember any specific incidents?

KA: After the formation of the committee, we only considered records that were submitted to us by birders. After Greg Lasley joined the committee in the 1980s, he began to dig into the birding literature for rarities. He and Chuck Sexton complied a list of "review species", based on less than 4 records a year over a ten-year period. The committee adopted that list as its staring point, although it has been modified -- birds added or deleted and, in some cases added again; at least one committee member didn't think that we should remove ANY species because of a loss of information.

And yes, we had some "differences of opinion" with some birders, some to the extent that they refused to submit details on any rarity they encountered. Along those lines, we have a number of birders who will not submit details on a species that occurs almost every year, but does not meet the criteria for removal, simply because they know that they can find the bird in Texas almost any year. The parrots and parakeets have been a problem in that we now have sustaining populations, but the origin is in doubt; one of our former members [I think he is now back on the committee] took it upon himself to survey for breeding birds of the Red-crowned Parrot and Green Parakeet and we added these species to the Texas list, based on his findings.

While I'm sure I could dredge up some controversial records, I don't think it would do the birding public any good to do so. As stated above, we have enough difficulty in gathering details on rarities, even though dozens of birders saw [and many photographed] that particular bird. I will give you one example in which I was directly involved. I refused to accept [vote for] records of Lesser Black-backed Gull for a number of years because the only species considered in those reporting was the Greater Black-backed Gull: I wanted the committee [and birders] to consider other "black-backed" gulls. Since that time, mostly in the 1970s, the birding community has become more adept at IDing gulls and we have since added Western, Slaty-backed and Kelp and possibly Yellow-legged -- all dark-backed gulls. I continue to struggle with Iceland and Thayer's Gulls.

How are Committee members chosen and how long do they stay on?

KA: Current committee members suggest names for open positions; if more are nominated that the number of positions - usually two, then those receiving the most votes at the annual meeting will be elected. We have two members rotating "off" each year, with each serving a 3-year term, and eligible for a second term if so desired. The committee chair and the academician [the position I hold] are elected each year, usually without opposition, and have no limit to the number of terms that person can serve.

How is a sighting presented to the committee? Is it like a courtroom, where a birder or a committee member presents the information and pleads his case, or does someone in charge present each case and opens it to discussion?

KA: The TBRC has a form on the T.O.S. web site that anyone reporting a Review Species can use; we occasionally get information in a less structured way, however. We ask that all relevant photographic materials be submitted: today, that usually means digital images sent as e-mail attachments. The record [usually one of at least six] is then sent out to the committee members via an e-mail, with access to them on a web-site.

A record that receives no more than a single nay is accepted on the 1st round; those that receive 2 or more nay votes, but at least 5 yea votes are sent as a 2nd round, with copies of votes and comments of all committee members; this may be repeated in a 3rd round with the same criteria. If the record still has at least 2 nays and 5 yeas, it goes to a fourth round for discussion and a final vote at the annual meeting; we try to hold an actual "in person" meeting and, because of the size of the state, not all members may be present. A few years ago, we modified the bylaws to permit electronic or tele-conference meetings. That came into play this year as the annual meeting was scheduled for the day Hurricane Ike hit Texas!

We don't say that we "reject" a record, but that it is a "non-accepted" record; any record can be recall for the committee if additional evidence comes forth and such a recall is usually initiated by a TBRC member.

What effect did the advent of records committees have on birding?

KA: Has this affected birding in Texas? Without doubt. We have some birders who, having submitted a "non-accepted" record, simply will not submit another record. That is unfortunate, not just for that person, but also for Texas birding. On the other hand, many Texas birders have begun to write better field notes [or begin to keep field notes], carry a camera with them and some, even a recorder, since in some cases, vocalizations are better evidence than photos. I also think that having the TBRC and a Review Species list has sharpened the skills of a number of Texas birders, as they come to understand the difficulties in identifying certain species complexes. ø

Quick Question: Birds and Apple Trees with Nancy Coverstone

2008-10-16T13:06:00.005-04:00

My mom has some apple trees on her property. Each autumn the apples fall to the ground and my mom (or me, if I can be wrangled into it) rakes them up so we can mow under the trees.

I was thinking, though, wouldn't these apples be better for birds if they are laying on the ground all delicious and eat-able? I've seen Robins eating my mom's fallen apples, but would other birds eat them as well? Would leaving them on the ground mean that I won't asked to mow?!

I did a little research and turned up this informational page produced by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. I wanted to know more, so I emailed Nancy Coverstone, the Extension Educator at the UMaine Cooperative Extension, with my problem. She gave a great response, including some thoughts on how birds will benefit not just from eating the apples themselves but from eating the things that eat (or grow on) the apples. Many thanks for Nancy for her thoughtful response. Here's the interaction:

Birdist: My mom has three apple trees on her property. Traditionally, my family has raked up the fallen apples in autumn and put them in a pile in an out-of-the-way part of the property. I want to start thinking about other strategies in order to maximize benefit to birds. However, I also have to take into consideration more domestic considerations, like mowing. As far as I can tell, here are my options: a) continue to rake and pile fallen apples, b) let apples fall and leave them there all winter, don't mow under the trees, and c) something in between. What do you think of these options? Which will be best for birds?

Nancy Coverstone: I’m assuming the fruits are not persistent (staying on the tree, and above the snow line, into the winter.) Persistent fruit, whether apples or other kinds, are particularly beneficial for resident bird species, because the fruits are not buried under the snow and are available during winter, and are made palatable by the freezing and thawing that takes place.

The trees you have, both while the apples are still on the tree and when they’ve fallen to the ground, are eaten by many birds, mammals and insects.

Once the apples have fallen, I don’t think it matters that they remain under the trees. It makes sense to mow under the trees, so that other vegetation does not compete with the apples trees and also that the apples as they rot attract wasps in the fall and some butterflies too. It’s great to have a fall food source for wasps and other insects, but conflict does arise if you are mowing.

So – raking up the windfalls is fine to do. I would, however, put them in an out of the way place, in the sun and spread out, rather than in a pile. I would also locate this “apple spread” near some shrubs where birds can perch, before they might move to the ground to eat or peck at the apples. Being in the sun is beneficial for butterflies, bees and the other insects that might feed on the rotting fruit, because they need the warmth of the sun on them to be active.

Whenever I think of what might benefit birds, I also consider what benefits other forms of life, because usually what’s good for one is good for others. An example is that during the winter, chickadees may eat the larvae of wasps who fed on the rotting apples. See what I mean?

Also, the cover and nesting opportunities provided for some bird species is not affected by your management of the fallen apples.

Just some thoughts.

Since you found the fact sheet on apple trees and wildlife, I assume you’ve found the other Habitats fact sheets on UMaine Extension’s publication site. Check out some of the books now on offer through this site – under Yard and Garden and Natural Resources especially.

http://extensionpubs.umext.maine.edu ø

Also,
I and the Bird Number Eighty-Six now up at The Drinking Bird

European Golden-Plover in Scarborough, Maine

2008-10-11T17:38:00.007-04:00

Look, it's hard to post thoughtful interviews and explorations of the birding world when so many goddamn awesome birds keep showing up in Maine to distract me.

Today I had planned on sleeping in, cleaning my place and meeting friends for lunch. However, a morning email check forced me to reconsider my plans: a European Golden-Plover had been found at Scarborough Marsh. Did you hear that? A European Golden-Plover. Never been seen in the lower 48 states. Room-cleaning can wait.

I got to the marsh at 1030, and iphoned up an email which told me that the bird had flown in the direction of Seavey's Landing (right below where it says "Scarborough River" on the map below) at 10. So there I went. Nothing. I waited there for the tide to lower with about 6 other birders from Maine and Mass. A few birds here and there, including a fake-out Black-bellied Plover and a FOY Pine Siskin, but no Europeans.

View Larger Map

At 1:30, two other birders and I were getting antsy and decided to walk out into the marsh from Eastern Road (see the road that shoots off onto the river, about the "9" in the map above? That road keeps going straight all the way across the marsh and is the famous Eastern Road). And so we did. For about an hour and half we trekked across the grasses, spooking up occasional shorebirds (including Snipe, Pectoral Sandpipers, a White-rumped Sandpiper and my Maine-first American Bittern), but finding no Plover. As the three of us (myself, a Mass. birder named Jeff and another Mass. birder who's name I didn't get) turned back, tired and hungry, we met my friend Robbie walking across the pannes.

"I just flushed the bird" he said, "it's around here somewhere." Unbelievable. Robbie is an excellent birder, and within minutes he had refound the bird and we were all getting full-scope views. I got some pictures, but, as is my thing, they aren't very good.

Much, much better pictures from a Mass. birder named Richard Heil can be found here.

The bird is a transitional adult, and is a real beauty. Huge thanks to Rob for pointing us in the direction of the bird.

One final note: Apparently some people watching from Seavey's Landing did not like the fact that Jeff, the other MA gentleman and myself were walking though the marsh. Local birders know that walking through the marsh is perfectly fine once nesting season has ended. There were plenty of hunters in the marsh today. I consider myself sensitive to bird-chasing issues, and had there been any rules against doing anything that I did, I would certainly have followed them. It's also interesting that once the bird was refound, all of those birders who were heckling us from the shore were the first ones bounding into the pannes with their scopes.

Barnacle and Greater White-fronted Geese in North Yarmouth, ME

2008-10-06T18:01:00.007-04:00

Let the good times roll!

First it was a Northern Wheatear in Gray. Then it was a White-winged Dove just down the street in Portland (which, to my knowledge, did not return after I watched it fly off). Now there are geese in North Yarmouth.

The place is Thornhurst Farm in North Yarmouth, a lovely working farm with rolling hills and fields. The place is always a great southerly migration spot for Canada Geese...and whatever other birds get caught up in the flocks.

A few days ago I went up to find the reported Greater White-fronted Goose, and today I returned and found the reported Barnacle Goose. Good times all around. Here are some terrible pictures:

Greater White-fronted, front and center, head down looking left.

Barnacle Goose, facing right, just over the cow's left ear.

Barnacle Goose, looking at camera, over the big cow's butt.

The question with Barnacle Geese is whether they are wild vagrants or escaped domestics. I don't really have anything to say about it. The usual mark of a domestic bird is a big, deep belly - fat accumulated from a comparatively sedentary life. To me, this bird did not appear any fatter or deeper than any of the other geese. Of course, much more study of this bird is required to make the best decision.

Secondly, I was unable to find any of the handful of Cackling Geese present at the location. Cackling Geese are a lot more difficult to pick out of a flock than a Barnacle or Greater White-fronted, and time has not permitted me to linger at the farm, so it looks like I'll just have to take another trip to the farm.

White-winged Dove in Portland, Maine

2008-10-03T18:03:00.005-04:00

4:38 PM: Received e-mail report of a White-winged Dove on Washington Avenue in Portland.

5:16 PM: Leave my house.

5:30 PM: Pull into the First Baptist Church at Washington and Canco. A few birders are in the lot, but the bird is nowhere to be seen.

5:31 PM: A grungy-looking-but-unmistakable White-winged Dove hops into some bare branches right in front of us.

5:34 PM: After a few minutes of photographs, the bird tears out of the tree and flies south, toward some pines at the Tamerlane housing complex. I was unable to tell whether or not it landed there or kept flying.

6:00 PM: Back at home enjoying a delicious sandwich.

FIN

And while we're on the topic, there is a great little marsh on the other side of the parking lot from where this bird was discovered. I've birded there a few times (it's right behind the Portland office of the Maine DEP, where I worked this summer), but never long enough to see if it might live up to its potential. Maybe next spring.

Cape Wind Draft EIS Excerpts

2008-09-30T22:55:00.014-04:00

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), one of America's first comprehensive environmental laws, requires federal agencies initiating "major federal actions significantly affecting the human environment" to first prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Although the statute does not require the agency to follow any recommendations or mitigation measures included in an EIS, the requirement has given strength to environmental causes by a) establishing a public record of a project's potential environmental impacts and b) providing a basis to slow or prevent a major federal action if the EIS is ignored or insufficient.

In response to a permit application from Cape Wind Associates, the Army Corps of Engineers has prepared a draft EIS for the proposed Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. It's hundreds of pages long, and includes information on the farm's potential impacts on everything from sediment to recreation to shellfish and, of course, birds.

Reading through the section on possible impacts to birdlife makes me feel very happy that someone is putting so much thought into this. As I have said on this blog before, the issue of birds and turbines is much more complicated than many non-birders initially think it to be. Potential threats vary from family to family or species to species, depending on each of their individual behaviors. This EIS does, I think, a great job of laying out what is different about each group of birds and how an offshore wind farm may affect them.

Not everyone is happy with the bird-related content in the EIS. Susan Nickerson of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a group "discouraging the development" of Cape Wind, insists that the Minerals Management Service should suspend its review of the project based on the views of the US Fish & Wildlife Service's comment in opposition to the project [I can't find the USFWS comment on the DEIS, can someone help?]. Ms. Nickerson's piece, though impassioned, does not indicate much actual consideration of the DEIS proposals. This quote from her article:

At California’s Altamont Pass, thousands of birds are slaughtered by spinning wind turbine blades every year, despite efforts at adaptive management. If this technique does not work for land-based wind, how could it work for an offshore project like Cape Wind?

clearly misses the fundamental point (as laid out in detail in Section 5.7.2.2.1 of the DEIS) that the comparative risk to birds from the Cape Wind project and the existing Altamont Pass site are very different.

Environmental Impact Statements are made to be read. It is the public's duty to make sure that the agencies in charge of these projects are taking everything into account, and a lot can slip by if nothing's said. Below I'll reproduce the section called Risk By Bird Group, but there are additional materials at the pages of the Minerals Management Service and the Conservation Law Foundation. Section 5.7 discusses the project's potential effects on "Avian Resources," but birds are mentioned many other places. Below I've reproduced (poorly) a portion of Section 5.6, Risk By Bird Group:

Interview with Steve Vose, the Rabid Outdoorsman

2008-09-27T19:36:00.008-04:00

Like it or not, birdwatchers are not the only group of people out in the woods looking for birds. Every year, millions of Americans participate in a sport that long predates recreational birding: bird hunting. Millions of individual birds are taken annually, and the range of species includes turkey, grouse, dabbling ducks, sea ducks, mergansers, mourning doves, rail, coot and more.

Hunting is something of an elephant-in-the-room for the sport of birding. It is undisputed that birding owes a lot to hunting - from the role that hunting played in early species collection and exploration to the introduction of game birds that have now become common species - but the idea of shooting and killing a bird is so foreign and, frankly, appalling to most birders that any meaningful reconciliation between the two groups seems unlikely. [Or maybe not. In full disclosure I've participated in a stocked pheasant and chuckar hunt in Ohio and had a great time. I also hunt deer in Maine, but have never shot one.]

Whatever factor makes some people bird-watchers and other people bird-hunters, doesn't change the fact that both groups together know birds better than anyone else. In order to start bridging the gap between the two groups I talked to Steve Vose, the Rabid Outdoorsman, author of The Maine Outdoorsman website. Steve is a great writer, and had some very interesting things to say about the ethics of hunting. He also gave a great answer to my guilty-pleasure question about just what these birds taste like. Here's Steve:

Birdist: When did you start bird hunting? What birds do you currently hunt?

The Rabid Outdoorsman: I suppose mine is a classic tale of being introduced into hunting from a very young age. First following along behind Dad as he hunted for grouse and woodcock and then progressing to using a BB gun to learn proper gun handling techniques. As I aged, I progressed to more powerful gauge firearms and finally began going out on my own by the age of 14. In my current phase of hunting, I have incorporated the use of a dog that adds an entirely new level of hunting enjoyment. Not only is she a loving and faithful companion but she also aids in the discovery and recovery of game.

I currently hunt or have hunted all legal game birds.

Were you interested in birds before you started hunting them, or did hunting lead you to birds?

I have always been interested in all animals big and small. I remember as a kid my brother and I had an old TV that was gutted and fitted with a Plexiglas front that we filled with bird nests, animal skulls and small fake birds we would buy in craft stores. Hunting to me is another outlet used for enjoying the outdoors as much as the other pursuits I enjoy such as fishing, rock climbing/mountaineering, photography, hiking or kayaking.

Can you briefly describe some different hunting techniques for hunting different birds?

Volumes of books have been written concerning this question. A majority of the fun associated with hunting is that you are constantly trying to outsmart the game animals you are pursuing. I currently hunt turkeys, grouse, snipe, woodcock, sea and puddle ducks. Each of these endeavors requires a completely different skill set. Just hunting turkey will vary in technique depending if it is spring or fall, hunted with bow or gun, from a blind or by actively stalking. If there is one “technique” that not enough hunters understand it is that one must thoroughly scout outside of hunting seasons to determine where game animals are in the highest densities. Unfortunately most hunters do not invest enough time in this most critical of steps and seriously negatively impacts their success rate.

What is the process in Maine for someone to become a bird hunter?

An individual who wishes to begin bird hunting should first take a “Hunter Safety Course”. Bottom line is that attendance at these now mandatory courses have saved countless lives since their inception. Interested individuals should also hunt for their intended species with a licensed Maine guide or a competent and safe hunting companion that knows how to successfully hunt for that game animal. Scheduled youth hunting days are also a great option for kids under 16 as they allow kids to hunt in the woods during periods of time when adults are unable. In theory this allows game animals to be much more plentiful, available and less pressured.

What does a hunter do with his killed birds? If he eats them, does he eat ALL of them?

Ethically killing for the sake of killing is not hunting. For many individuals outside of the hunting world I think this is an extremely difficult concept to grasp. Hunting is much more than pulling a trigger it is about an individuals primal connection back to the woods and waters as a source of sustenance that dates back a million years. Legally Maine has a “Wanton Waste” law that requires hunters to consume all reasonable parts of every game animal. Additionally, hunters legally can only be in possession of a certain number of game birds (same as daily bag limit) so they must be immediately eaten. Aside from the “law” a good hunter has an obligation to eat what he kills.

I almost hate to ask this as a birder, but what do they taste like (and you can't just say "like chicken!")? What are the different tastes between categories of game birds (i.e., grouse v. ducks)? Do freshwater ducks taste different than sea ducks? Do, say, Green-winged Teal taste different than Blue-winged Teal?

The tastes are unique and varied with every species having different and unique textures, tastes and aromas. As an “outdoor” chef you need to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives. Obviously some species are more desirable to eat than others. Sea ducks and mergansers (fish and mussel eaters) are at the low end while wood ducks (acorn eaters) and teal are at the higher end.

I personally have different recipes for every different game animal depending on its specific culinary qualities. Turkey is typically deep fried in peanut oil, sea ducks and mergansers are combined with pork and beef and made into sausage links that I then hickory smoke, grouse are slow cooked in a dutch oven with bacon and baked beans over the coals of a campfire and puddle ducks are plucked and roasted with apple or honey glaze.

Do you ever run into birders while you're hunting? What do you see as the differences between birders and bird-hunters, and what do you think about those differences?

Sadly, I rarely see others out and enjoying the great outdoors like I have seen in decades past. It is unfortunate that a high percentage of kids these days do not seem connected with the outdoor like they used to. If you get a chance read “Last Child in the Woods” by Louv it is a wake-up call.

There are many similarities; both sets of individuals are “hunters” one group simply uses a camera and the other a gun. Both are serious about their respective sports and both are searching for opportunities to experience nature and the great outdoors in their own unique way. Unfortunately, both groups also have individuals that poorly represent their peers. I have meet inconsiderate hunters in the woods and I have also met inconsiderate nature watchers.

Do you ever feel guilty for killing birds?

If anyone says that while hunting they are never disturbed or “guilty” I would wonder if they are telling the whole truth. No ethical hunter ever wants an animal to suffer needlessly, however, there is nothing “planned” or “perfect” in the hunting world. Whether I get my steak wrapped in plastic and resting on Styrofoam from a slaughterhouse or direct from nature something ultimately had to die for me to eat it and no matter how you cut it this is not a “pretty” process. Eventually, if you hunt long enough something will disturb you and it is how you handle this pressure as a human being that will ultimately determine how and if you develop as a hunter.

What was your most memorable bird hunt?

I literally have gigs of photos and video from different bird hunts from present back several decades. Certainly tops on my list are times spent hunting with family. I remember back in 2001 hunting with my brother for 4 days in Washington County on a productive grouse hunting trip. The weather was beautiful and the birds plentiful but even more importantly was the quality time I was able to spend with my brother. Hunting is only about 10% about pulling the trigger the other 90% is about the family and friends you spend quality time with and the memories shared. ø

Northern Wheatear in Gray, Maine

2008-09-19T18:08:00.010-04:00

I was fortunate enough to catch up to the stray Northern Wheatear that was discovered yesterday in Gray, Maine. It was at the top of Dutton Hill, a beautiful little blueberry-barren-topped knoll just off the turnpike. I showed up at 7:45 and was the only person there. I found the bird after about 25 minutes of nervous searching, and had great looks for the whole hour I stuck around. Just an absolutely beautiful morning.

This is the first look at the bird, a nonbreeding adult [eds. note: Expert identifiers are now calling this bird a juvenile/1st year bird. Thank goodness for listservs!].

Here's some wheatear information. Check out how not-close they live to Maine! Key ID points here are the white rump, the white supercilium and the overall buff color.

At one point the bird flew up to the top of a tree . . . an odd place for a bird that prefers tundra, beaches and grasslands.

Birdist Symposium: Do Birders Have an Obligation to Report Exceptional Sightings?

2008-09-15T12:37:00.012-04:00

I've been thinking recently about the social network created by birding listservs and other reporting mechanisms. The benefits of birding listservs (of the kind best catalogued here) are many: they help birders find birds, meet and coordinate with other birders, improve their identification skills, etc. I, for one, am almost entirely dependent on my local listserv to plan, understand and coordinate my activities.

However, birding is, at its base, an individual pursuit. Birders become dependent on listservs because they are convenient, not because they're necessary. Sightings are posted voluntarily, and users are therfore reliant on the volunteerism of others to make the activity worthwhile. I find that the nature (and volume) of this mass volunteerism raises a tricky question: since birders receive the substantial benefits of listserv messages for free, at some point do they become obligated to "pay back" into the system sightings of their own?

I posed the following scenarios to several people, both birders and non-birders, to get their take. I have personally witnessed variations on both scenarios, and I can only imagine that they are common to every birding listserv around. I purposefully did not mention the ABA's Birding Code of Ethics, in part because I wanted to see if people brought it (or a similar system) up on their own and in part because I don't necessarily see its provisions followed in the field.

Below is the question I presented, and answers from: Norm Saunders, founder of MDOsprey; Professor David Owen, professor of Environmental Law at the UMaine School of Law; John Beetham, author of A DC Birding Blog; Professor Joseph Grange, professor of Environmental Ethics at the University of Southern Maine; Jeff Harding, a birder from Oregon and finally my own thoughts.

Scenario #1: Carried astray by some natural force, a Wood Stork lands in a marsh in Maine. Although the area is rural, a birder happens to be at the marsh and, luckily, finds the bird. Knowing that there are only a handful of records for the state, the birder excitedly photographs the bird and returns home. He reports the find to his birding friends and emails some of his photos off to the local Audubon chapter for ID confirmation, but does not report the sighting to his local birding listserv (though he frequently relies on the listserv for sightings in other parts of the state). The local Audubon naturalist speeds out to the marsh and rediscovers the Stork that afternoon, but none of the other birders with knowledge of the sighting are able to make it to the marsh until the next morning, after the bird has disappeared. Word of the sighting makes its way onto the listserv the next day.

Scenario #2: Placed by those same mysterious forces, a Northern Hawk Owl is found at the edge of a high school soccer field in Virginia. The birders who discovered the owl quickly alert their local birding listserv and report the sighting on eBird. In a matter of hours, birders are arriving in the dozens. The majority of these birders have never seen a Northern Hawk Owl before, especially in Virginia. Soon, birders cars have clogged the high school's parking lot and have begun to spill out onto the street. The school's soccer team complains about the lack of parking and about the large group of birders milling about the field. Photographers work to get as close as possible to the owl. Several birders talk loudly or bring their dogs, irritating those visitors who see themselves as more respectful and cautious. After several days the bird flies off having been seen by hundreds of birders.

Keeping in mind the factors on both sides: i.e. the intent of listservs to alert all interested birders v. the possible drawbacks of a large influx of birders to a particular site, do you think birders have an obligation to report exceptional sightings?

NORM SAUNDERS, founder of MDOsprey

My response to both of the scenarios is pretty much the same. Yes, you should report the sighting to your local listserv but only after you’ve done two things:

1) Ensure the well-being of the bird and 2) ensure the well-being of the site.

If reporting the bird will endanger it (this is particularly true of many owl sightings) then you should work with local birders to make sure ground rules are laid down for visiting the bird, for proper behavior while visiting, and for reporting troublesome birders (and photographers) to the local listserv. Make sure these ethical considerations are spelled out in detail when the observation is reported to the listserv.

If the location of the bird will be problematic to those living or working around the location, then every effort must be made to let the people there know what to expect. Tell them why the bird is interesting and enlist them in the process of policing birders who show up. Give them the name of someone in the local birding community who will work with them to deal with problem issues as they arise.

My feelings about NOT reporting a good bird to the local listserv are that this should be done only if the bird is an endangered species, if the bird is on private property with no easy access and the property owners are adamant about no trespassing, or any other reason that would put birders in a bad light with the local community or landowner. Otherwise I think in this day of competitive birding that we all have an obligation to report good sightings.

Refer your readers to the ABA Code of Birding Ethics at: http://www.americanbirding.org/abaethics.htm

Look here for an interview I did with Norm about the beginnings of online birding, and here for the archives of MDOpsrey.

PROFESSOR DAVID OWEN, Professor of Environmental Law, University of Maine School of Law

I am not a bird-watcher in any formal sense, but it seems to me that at the core of birdwatching must be a love of wild birds; why else would one engage in the activity? And that love, I would think, should be accompanied by a respect for birds' needs, both individually and as species, for it would be a false love that harms its object.

That means that in selecting his course of conduct, the birder ought to be guided not just by his own desires and the needs of the birding community, but also by the interests of the bird itself. The bird's interests ought to be particularly important if the bird is rare, or appears in a location where it is not typically found, for such a bird is likely to be particularly vulnerable, ecologically valuable, or both. And if, as this excerpt suggests, a stampede is the common result of a posting about an exotic bird sighting on the list-serve, it seems to me that our birder could not justify posting his siting to the list-serve. The posting might serve his own short-term interests by repaying the benefits he has derived from the list-serve, and it might benefit other birders by allowing them to see the bird. But it would be destructive to the bird itself, and that, I think, forecloses posting as an ethical option.

That conclusion also suggests that our birder, though he has relied on the listserv to find birds in the past, ought to be careful about using it in the future. I am not sure he should be absolutely foreclosed from using it to locate birds, but I think that, having determined that he cannot post because it might lead to harmful birdwatcher stampedes, he at a minimum has an obligation to ensure that he never relies on someone else's post to become a participant in a stampede. To do otherwise would be to wrong not just the bird but also the community.

These conclusions suggest that perhaps the existence of the listserv itself is problematic. Unless birders, like some other recreational hobbyists (rock climbers, for example), can develop a group ethic that prevents stampedes, a listserv seems like an invitation to trouble.

JOHN BEETHAM, author of A DC Birding Blog

I would not advance a general obligation for birders to report rare bird sightings to state or local listserves. In some cases it might be better not to report them right away; for example, someone whose identification skills are weak would be better off finding a local birder or two to confirm the identification before reporting the sighting and prompting many birders to drive miles to look for it.

In your first scenario, I would suggest reporting the wood stork to the state listserv as soon as possible. For someone who regularly gets tips from other birders, there is an obligation to reciprocate when the opportunity arises. (In this I am following a Golden Rule-type principle.) In the second scenario, I would hesitate to report the sighting since I have read often not to reveal owl roosts since attention could force an owl to change locations or disrupt its hunting. I am not sure how susceptible Northern Hawk Owls are to disturbance, but that is something I would want to research before reporting the sighting.

Read A DC Birding Blog.

PROFESSOR JOSEPH GRANGE, Professor of Environmental Ethics at the University of Southern Maine

My response may be too abrupt but it is what I consider to be the correct one. Since these are all voluntary organizations, they should create their own rules for such incidents. If they [the rules] are offensive, dangerous or otherwise illegal, they will quickly come to the attention of the public.

Birdist: If rules were created and adopted, how would a voluntary organization - without overseers or administration - enforce them?

Most voluntary organizations have an array of options for dealing with those who 'break' their rules, from expulsion to fines to public expression etc.

JEFF HARDING, birder, Oregon

To answer the question, do birders have an obligation to report exceptional sightings, no. There is no obligation, but in balance, they ought to. It is totally situational. A birder who has used a listserv, presumably chasing rare birds reported there, has a duty of reciprocity and would be remiss if he failed to pass on a good sighting as soon as he can. In situation #1, assuming there were no issues of private property or disturbance to the bird, he should have phoned the rare bird alert from the site, or a pay phone down the road (if such things still exist), or certainly posted on the listserv as soon as he was home. On the other hand, if the marsh was private, without public viewing space, and the birder was there with the permission of the landowner, it would depend on the landowner. Her permission would be required, and if there would be damage to the habitat or landowner’s facilities, perhaps the location should not be disclosed, although the bird should be reported for the record.

From the ABA code of ethics: 1(c) Before advertising the presence of a rare bird, evaluate the potential for disturbance to the bird, its surroundings, and other people in the area, and proceed only if access can be controlled, disturbance minimized, and permission has been obtained from private land-owners. The sites of rare nesting birds should be divulged only to the proper conservation authorities.

The problem in your second scenario is not with the reporting, but with the birders who were not respectful. Bringing dogs is rarely appropriate and in this case really bad form. Interfering with the soccer game would be bad too, but in a public setting, the birders had a right to park, and use the facilities as much as the soccer team, except for the pitch itself. There is no question that the bird should have been reported.

From the ABA code of ethics:

2(c) Practice common courtesy in contacts with other people. Your exemplary behavior will generate goodwill with birders and non-birders alike.

There is no mention in the code of an obligation to report birds.

BIRDIST, birder, Maine

I think birders do have an obligation to post exceptional sightings on listservs. Of course the bird's welfare is the top priority, but something bothers me about an individual being able to decide what is and what isn't good for a bird that would provide a lot of joy for other birders. One of the best things about a listserv is that everyone is equal. In your inbox, each email appears the same, regardless of the sender's expertise or lack thereof. I think this group mentality is hurt when birders make the decision on their own to deprive others of a bird. If a bird requires certain etiquette, make it very clear in the post. If it is on private property and access is limited, make it clear in the post. When everyone knows the rules of a particular site there can be better enforcement or self-regulation. I believe that working towards effective self-regulation or more acceptable methods of enforcement against birders who break the rules is the ideal, not limiting sightings based on personal discretion.

Birds at Large V: Just Don't Do It

2008-09-14T10:16:00.004-04:00

Oh it's a classic. A classic! Watch, and listen, to the Nike commercial below.

Hear that noise around the :12 second mark, when Dirk's shot is in the air? What screaming call that must certainly have come from that Bald Eagle?

Whelp, it ain't. Every self-respecting birder/television-watcher knows that sound is produced by Red-tailed Hawks, not Bald Eagles. To those in Hollywood, though, the hawk call must sound a whole lot satisfying than the call of the eagle, because nearly every time I see a Bald Eagle in a commercial I hear that hawk call associated with it. It's become a canned noise, right up there in the ranks of legendary canned noises with the Mountain Dew Scream:

Arizona Park Fees Rise

2008-09-10T22:15:00.004-04:00

As reported on A DC Birding Blog, Arizona has recently raised the cost of its recreational (i.e. birding and hiking as opposed to hunting and fishing) state park permit from $15 per individual and $20 for a family to $50 and $75, respectively.

That's bad, but who gets hurt the most? People who can't afford the $50. Who's that? Well, in Arizona, it's likely to be Hispanics.

According to this and this(.pdf), 1.5 million Hispanics live in Arizona, making up 28% of the state's population. The national poverty rate among Hispanics is almost twice the national average: 26.6% compared to 15.4%. Simple economics dictates that when you rise the cost of something, you will lose those consumers who are no longer willing or able to pay the new price.

Although it's not something that pleasant to admit, birding is one of the least diverse activities there is. This great study, Relative Prevalence of African Americans Among Bird Watchers(.pdf), says that one of the major factors that keeps African-Americans away from birding is that they are less likely to be exposed to birding and birders as other people. The phenomenon is called the Don't Loop: when you don't meet people who engage in an activity you are less likely to participate in that activity yourself.

African-Americans, like Hispanics, are another minority in this country with higher-than-average poverty rates. It's possible that a study on Hispanics and birding would find similar results. Raising state park fees by more than 300%, then, can only further disenfranchise Hispanics from birding by making is less likely that they can be introduced to or participate in the activity.

For some, raising fees to state parks may be more than just an annoyance, but a barrier to experiencing public (yes, public) lands and outdoor activities.

Offshore Wind Map Issues

2008-09-05T20:44:00.006-04:00

Real cool new (for me, at least) offshore wind power mapping site: OffshoreWind.net. It shows (via those googlemap pins) proposed North American offshore wind farm projects.

What's surprised me the most? The proximity of some of these sites to major bird migration areas. For example:

1. Zoom in on the Leamington Project in Lake Erie (just right of Detroit). Zoom in nice and close. See that point of green land? See it? Do you know what that is? It's Point Pelee, Ontario, one of the World's greatest migration spots (ranked the 5th best birding hotspot in North America)! Look how close that pin is!

Look, I am a HUGE proponent of offshore wind power, even for freshwater. A large part of my enthusiasm, however, derives from the fact that many land-based siting issues (including: bird migrations, NIMBY, transportation restrictions, potential human effects from rotations) can be avoided by siting turbines on featureless, windy bodies of water.

Why, then, is the Leamington Farm positioned directly in the path of one of the world's most celebrated flyways? Because the OffshoreWind.net person messed up. Below is the project map for the Leamington and Kingsville projets, from the South Point Wind website:

As you can see, it's not set directly off Point Pelee. It's close, though. In the end, here is my point:

Offshore wind allows much more flexibility in turbine siting than land-based wind. While siting turbines as close to power users is ideal, offshore wind farms should be sited to take maximum advantage of their location, i.e. away from birds and away from people.

2. Same issue with the Wind Energy Systems Technologies project proposed off Jefferson County, Texas (the northernmost pin on the Texas coast). It's located between the mega-important High Island and Sabine NWR.

I'm conflicted on Gulf of Mexico offshore wind power...or could at least use some convincing. The winds in the Gulf aren't as strong as a lot of other offshore spots. Lighted oil rigs in the Gulf already as many as 300,000 birds a year.

The point is almost the same as the one above: Since offshore wind allows us to put turbines in a wider area, why put them so close to High Island and Sabine NWR, where the birds are possibly flying at a lower altitude to prepare to land?

3. No proposed projects for the coast of Maine? For shame.

A Few Scarborough Marsh Photos

2008-08-28T12:36:00.007-04:00

A couple days ago I birded the pannes off Eastern Road, in Scarborough (Maine) Marsh with my friend Doug Hitchcox. It was an absolutely stellar day, highlighted by three Stilt Sandpipers (life bird for the both of us) and three Northern Shovelers - a bird that is uncommon in Maine. Doug was nice enough to send me a couple pictures he took, and I'll share them with you.

Although there are hundreds of fish-filled ponds in the Marsh, all the herons (and other large waders) congregated around one at a time. Doug and I assumed that this was either for social reasons or because it somehow made catching fish easier. Here is a shot of one of those ponds and its birds. I see Great Egret, Snowy Egret, juvi Little Blue Herons (they're white with blue/black bills instead of Snowy's yellow bills) and some dark birds that are either adult Little Blues or Glossy Ibis.

Here are those same birds in flight. There were a lot of birds-of-prey around: Doug and I saw Cooper's and Red-tailed Hawk, Osprey, Bald Eagle and Northern Harrier. When the smaller raptors (Cooper's and Harrier) would buzz the marsh it was mostly sandpipers and other waders that would take to the air. When a pair of Eagles came into view, however, it was the herons that got spooked. The sight of nearly a hundred giant herons in the air above our heads was really something. Note the four Glossy Ibis in this shot (not sure what the dark bird in the back is...). Below the treeline I can see a Yellowlegs sp. (white rump, middle of the photo) as well as a bunch of smaller birds.

Here's a shot of one of those Northern Shovelers. We were also pleased to identify a whole bunch of Green-winged Teal in the Marsh - birds we assumed to be first-of-years for the area. Thanks to Doug for the shots.

Capitalization of Bird Names

2008-08-26T17:13:00.002-04:00

I've never quite known what the proper format was for capitalizing the names of bird species. I was under the impression that no species were capitalized, unless the word was a proper noun, i.e. Baird's Sandpiper or American robin. From looking at my post below, I can see that I have been inconsistent. I capitalized "Black-legged Kittiwake" in the second "St. Lawrence at Tadoussec" paragraph, but kept "semipalmated sandpiper" and "semipalmated plovers" in lower case.

Thanks to this site from Audubon, now I know that the formal rule is that all species names should be capitalized. Therefore, my below post should read "Semipalmated Plover" and "Semipalmated Sandpiper." I was correct, however, in keeping the "legged" in "Black-legged Kittiwake" in lower case.

I will try to follow this format from now on.

Love,
Nick

Birding on the St. Lawrence

2008-08-21T10:04:00.014-04:00

It always kinda weirded me out that there exists an entire civilized country north of Maine. In the States, Maine is thought of as the Great White North, all frigid and isolated. That there was a country that didn't even begin until after the most northern of Maine's northern forests had passed just seemed illogical. But exist it does! And, as proof, my girlfriend and I spent a couple days there, along the St. Lawrence River.

Now, this wasn't a birding trip, but of course I took every opportunity to find birds wherever I could. I really had no idea what I was in for: there aren't a lot birding websites for the St. Lawrence and very few eBird locations on the St. Lawrence east of Quebec City. [Aside #1: eBird, I love you but you need to make it easier for me to search birds by location. When I am preparing for a trip I want to be able to easily plug in my location and see what other people have seen there. I could just be an idiot, but I can't figure it out. Aside #2: How did Maine sneak into the top spot for Checklists Submitted in August? What's up with that?]

So we left from Portland and headed north.

Interesting stop: Mars Hill Wind Farm in Mars Hill, Maine.

It's no secret that I love wind power, and I have to say that I was filled with pride at seeing Maine's only (for now) large-scale wind farm in full glory. Mars Hill, the hill, seems to rise out of nowhere (this is flat potato country), and really towers over the Mars Hill, the town. The 28 turbines were spinning like mad. I took these pictures at a gas station in town and while I was there I asked the woman at the counter how she felt about the project (some people living close to the turbines have complained about the noise): "Doesn't bother me, I don't live close to them."

"Where does the power go?" I asked. "Canada." She replied with a smirk.

[Aside #3: While in Quebec I saw another set of turbine rotors (4 total) and a nacelle traveling from east to west. I wonder where they were made and where they were going? Starting a wind turbine construction company would really help Maine's economy...]

Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec

One reason we wanted to go to the St. Lawrence was for the epic whale-watching. At a certain spot on the river, where the warm water of the Saguenay River meets the cold subarctic water of the St. Lawrence, science happens and lots of delicious shrimps and krill are created. Whales love it, and people love to look at whales. Done and done. Usually, people drive to Quebec City and then up along the north coast of the St. Lawrence to the town of Tadoussac, where the whale-watching is easier, but we decided to stay on the south coast and take a trip out of Riviere-du-Loup.

While we waited for our boat to leave, I scoured a gigantic mudflat between The Point and the town. See photo below:

Though the birds were very far away, there were thousands of peeps out there. Only a few groups came into range where identification was possible, and they were all semipalmated sandpipers. A small number of semipalmated plovers walked on the beach much closer to me. With some planning, and on the right day, this mudflat most likely produces some spectacular shorebirds.

St. Lawrence River at Tadoussac

The wind was ferocious during our few days in Quebec. Unrelenting and intrusive. The wind made birding difficult (very hard to keep a zoomed scope steady) and our whale-watch uncomfortable.

But there were birds. Specifically, there were Black-legged Kittiwakes. I had never seen a kittiwake before the trip, but then the boat returned to Riviere-du-Loup I had seen probably 15,000. And Minke Whales leaping out of the water. And Finback Whales, the second largest animal in the world.

Here's a picture showing how rough the seas were. Those are kittiwakes, identifiable from, say, ring-billed gulls by the jet black wing tips lacking any white and yellow unmarked bills. There were very few other species out there: a few black guillemots, herring and black-backed gulls and an odd flyover greater yellowlegs.

Also missed were cooler whales. Blue, Humpback and Beluga are all quite possible here, but the combination of rough seas and the necessity for a long haul back across the river to Riviere-du-Loup cut the trip a bit short. I would advise anyone looking to whale-watch on the St. Lawrence to make the trip around to the north side of the river at Tadoussac instead of trying to go from the south side.

Parc National du Bic

An absolutely beautiful little National Park on the St. Lawrence just west of Rimouski. Mountains really come out of nowhere and form huge cliffs at the riverside. The wind, again, was ferocious, and it hindered birding to a large extent, but I was able to see quite a few species.

That's a shot of the muddy beach in the Baie du Ha! Ha! (Yes, that is what it's called. Translated into English it's Ha! Ha! Bay. I don't know what to tell you), which probably hosts lots of shorebirds when the wind dips below gale force. Around the rest of the park I saw the usual seabirds, gulls, black ducks, a single juvi kittiwake and a thousand or so of the park's famous eiders. Inland, I managed to avoid most of the boreal species I was hoping to see in Canada, but I saw a few more boreal chickadees and heard a small group of red crossbills at a treetop. A pair of nashville warblers were a nice surprise. I'd love to bird this place again, with more time.

Rimouski

Rimouski is a very nice little city just a few miles from Bic National Park with a big ol' mudflat out front. I got there just as the tide was rising, but still caught over 30 great blue herons (the largest number I've ever seen at one time), 1000+ American black ducks (ditto), thousands of gulls (nothing unusual, however), red-breasted mergansers and a smattering of semipalmated plovers. I was a bit surprised that there were no other peeps out on the flats but, like at Riviere-du-Loup, things were pretty far away.

Whelp, that does it. I had an absolute blast in this part of Canada and would love to return with less wind and more time to bird. Au revoir!

EDIT: Here's a nice little Quebec RBA website I just discovered (plus it's in English): Recent Bird Reports from Quebec

Field Guide Review: The Shorebird Guide

2008-08-15T11:14:00.006-04:00

Maine's coast is currently packed with shorebirds. I've been down to Pine Point in Scarborough three times this week to scan the flocks (Marbled Godwit? Check). The problem is, identifying shorebirds is hard. How hard? Let me count the ways:

Everything looks exactly the same
Birds of different molt, age, sex, species and subspecies in one flock
They're tiny
They're far away
They spook easily, and don't stay in one place
They're usually in a place that smells bad

There are more, but you know. Every birder knows. This year, though, I've come prepared. I got The Shorebird Guide.

Look, I know I'm not exactly breaking new ground by writing about this book, but I'm justified by the excitement of being able to better identify a whole new group of birds.

The book details about 75 species of shorebirds that are possible in North America. It uses photographs: lots of big beautiful photographs. Each species gets a full treatment, with photos of juveniles, breeding, nonbreeding and male/female plumages. Most helpfully, many of the photos include several species, mimicking the mixed flocks that are most often encountered out on the mud flats. Special attention is given to species that are likely to be mixed up most often (dowitchers, yellowlegs, etc).

In short, I love it. The photographs are much more helpful than paintings for the detailed challenges that shorebird identification present. The GISS method provides probably the easiest framework for tackling a daunting flock. I'll be at several shorebird spots in Maine, Mass. and New Hampshire in the next day or two, and this book will be at my side the whole time.

Here are a couple picture I took at Pine Point on Tuesday:

Black legs? Plump body? Straight, blunt bill? Short primary projection? I'm gonna go with a molting juvenile semipalmated sandpiper.

Dark back? Single breast band? Half-orange bill? Breeding semipalmated plover.

Interview with Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater

2008-08-07T10:59:00.006-04:00

The shared area in the Venn-diagram of "cool rock stars" and "avid birdwatchers" is pretty thin. In fact, it may be occupied by just one man: Jonathan Meiburg.

Since I am not a music critic - and therefore not qualified to use terms like "heartbreaking" and "narrative acuity" - I will try to define the music of Meiburg's band, Shearwater, in birding terms: Think of a cross between the spiraling hymns of a Wood Thrush song and the lonely insistence of a Broad-Winged Hawk. Got it? It's fantastic, and the band is considered one of the most exciting acts in indie rock (if that's the proper term...I don't know).

Mr. Meiburg also loves birds. And not just the animals themselves, but the idea of birds, the world of birds and their history and evolution. His admiration comes across in the lyrics and imagery of Shearwater's new album, Rook, as well as in an incredible series of videos chronicling Jonathan's return to the Falkland Islands to study the Striated Caracara (aka the Johnny Rook).

As a big fan of Shearwater's music, I am beyond delighted that Mr. Meiburg was able to answer some questions I had about his dual life as a musician and a bird-lover.

Birdist: At what point did you realize you'd spend the rest of your life looking for birds?

Jonathan Meiburg: Like a lot of birders, I had a conversion experience, though I was lucky enough to have it in a really exotic place. After I finished college, I won a strange grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to study human communities 'at the ends of the earth' for a year, and one of the places I ended up was the Falklands. I'd been there for about two weeks when I met Robin Woods, a British ornithologist who's been studying birds in the islands since he first traveled there in the 1950s. Our meeting was completely by chance - we were staying in the same little boarding-house - but when Robin told me that he was there to lead a survey of Striated Caracaras in the outermost islands of the archipelago, I started trying to convince him to take me as an assistant. Eventually I wore him down, though I hardly knew anything about Falkland birds, much less birds anywhere else! But the six-week crash course in field ornithology that followed beggared all description. When we weren't at sea, we were walking the coasts of wild islands, covered in giant native grasses and huge colonies of albatrosses, penguins, burrowing petrels, and some odd endemic waterfowl like the flightless Steamer Duck or the curious little Cobb's Wren.

And then there were the caracaras themselves - crafty, charismatic, social raptors with very little fear of humans, equally at home walking or running on the ground ('very much like pheasants', as Darwin says) or soaring on the never-ending westerly gales that buffet the islands.Needless to say, I had no idea that the world contained places like this, and I was completely bowled over by the experience. As I kept on traveling to other remote places throughout the year, like the far north of Australia's Cape York, the Chatham Islands of New Zealand, or the Inuit settlement of Kimmirut in Baffin Island, I kept encountering more strange birds (and people who cared about them), and I came home a year later with my circuits blown wide. I'd bought some binoculars and an NGS field guide within weeks.

But the caracaras in particular - and the mystery of why their range is so small compared to the ranges of their close relatives - were stuck in my mind, and I went off to graduate school with the idea of trying to find out more about them. I was delighted to find that one of the best early accounts of the species comes from Darwin - he wasn't especially enamored with the Falklands in general (they paled after the tropics), but he paints an endearing, bemused, and altogether lifelike portrait of Striated Caracaras in the Voyage of the Beagle, along with a line in one of the notebooks he kept on that trip that I took as a challenge: "This species, doubtless for some good reason, has chosen these islands for its metropolis". That sounded like a glove hitting the ground to me, so I spent six years writing a thesis about it.

How would you describe yourself as a birder? Lister? Scientist? In your Falkland videos you appear to have more of a scientific interest than most casual birders...

JM: How many ways can I fall in between those categories? I love seeing new birds, of course, but I've also been resistant to keeping a list. To me, listing can be a way to turn the momentary and ephemeral appreciation of an animal for its being - my very favorite thing about birding, and one of the most pleasantly egoless experiences there is - into a sort of acquisitiveness that can be pernicious. But my aversion may be because I know how easy it would be for me to go down that path...really, I just love birds for what they are, and I'm grateful that I'm able to be here on the planet while they're still here, too. We came too late to see so many incredible animals! I love seeing live birds in the field, I love seeing dead ones in museum cabinets, I love watching the feeder and I love reading about the evolution of the different avian families. I also enjoy standing on a beach with a spotting scope trying - and failing - to tell small shorebirds apart at a great distance. I'd say I'm an average birder, trying to improve. Songs and calls are my weakest point right now.

Touring with a band seems like an ideal life for a birder. How regularly do you bird while on tour? Do you find yourself scheduling an unreasonable number of shows in Portal, Arizona and Attu, Alaska?

JM: Sadly, touring often means long drives between cities where you see great birding spots only as you pass them at 70mph. That said, I always have my binoculars close by, and you'd be surprised how productive rest stops can be. I like pointing out raptors to the rest of the band since they're big and exciting, but for smaller birds I usually keep my mouth shut. On tours this year I saw my first Brown Creeper up in Vancouver, a Calliope Hummingbird in San Francisco, and a White-Throated Swift at a rest stop in Arizona.

In the liner notes for Rook you thank, among other creatures, Turkey Vultures. Why?

JM: There was a night roost of TVs near the studio where we made the album, and in the evenings there'd be huge columns of vultures circling in a thermal above the studio. One night I counted 65. We took some pictures of them and posted them on our web site - it was really spectacular. I should have thanked the Barred Owl that lived in the ravine behind the building, too - after a long night's work I could step outside and call to it, and it usually answered.

How did the Striated Caracara trip to the Falklands come about? Are those islands really as eerie as the videos make them seem?

JM: The first survey that I mentioned, which was my real introduction to the world of birds, was in 1997, and in 2006 Falklands Conservation did a repeat survey. Robin led it again, and I did my best to make sure I could be involved. It was wonderful to re-visit the islands and to see how the caracara populations had - and hadn't - changed, and we also made it to some new islands we hadn't managed to get to the first time around. I felt very, very lucky to be able to return, especially with a broader understanding of the birds and their world.As for the second question, I don't know about 'eerie'... I'd guess I just say 'wild', with all that word implies. There are islands in the outer Falklands that feel as if they've never known human presence, where the animals aren't afraid of you since they have almost no experience with you and your kind. To be there is humbling and strange. Those places are some of the last, tiny remnants of the pre-human world, which is fast disappearing, never to return. I think of Rook as a kind of meditation on that disappearance. By the way, the URL for the "Looking for Johnny Rook" videos is http://www.matadorrecords.com/shearwater/quicktime.html.

How do you approach the use of birds in your lyrics? Is there a struggle in your writing process between thinking of birds scientifically and thinking of them in an artistic or archetypal sense?

JM: Actually, I'd rarely used birds in my songs until Rook, when I figured that I should probably throw some of them in so that I could have a better answer to just this kind of question. But no, there's no dissonance for me between thinking of birds artistically and scientifically, just as I think there's often not really as much of a difference between art and science as people suggest. Art and science both rely on using your intuition to cast your line into the great unknowns...it's just that you use different techniques once there's a tug on the hook. Ø

Delaware Wind Project

2008-08-04T19:05:00.003-04:00

State officials in Delaware gave the OK to a plan between Delmarva Power and a wind farm developer that may lead to the first offshore wind farm in the USA. Great news, I say.

But, just to get the ol' brain juices flowing, here are some lists of birds and sea mammals found off the coast of Delaware at different times of year (Look under "Lewes").

The Lewes pelagics usually head for the Baltimore Canyon, which is about 30 miles offshore, and the proposed wind farm would be 11.5 miles offshore. I'm not really sure what that means, but certainly a farm too close to shore or too close to New Jersey could effect birds migration to and from Cape May. Based on the map below, however, it doesn't look like that should be a problem.

Real Actual Arguments

2008-07-30T14:34:00.003-04:00

In 2002, the US District Court for the District of Columbia heard the case of Center for Biological Diversity v. Robert Pirie, Acting Secretary of the Navy (191 F. Supp. 2d. 161). The case involved a Migratoy Bird Treaty Act challenge to the US Navy's bombing of a small island near Guam for training purposes. Here are two real actual arguments employed by the Navy:

1. "[The] use of the area as a live fire range has the beneficial effect of reducing the negative impacts of human intrusion.” *167

In other words, the bombing of this island will benefit birds because no humans won't come to the island for other reasons. The court called this argument "surprising."

2. "[B]ird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one.” *173

That's right. The more birds killed by Navy bombs, the more rare those birds become and, therefore, the more enjoyment birders get from finding them. The Judge replies, "The Court hopes that the federal government will refrain from making or adopting such frivolous arguments in the future."

Quick News: Piping Plover Protection in Maine

2008-07-30T09:23:00.001-04:00

Quick bit of news: Piping Plovers, which have not been doing well in my homestate this year, may get increasted protection on some beaches.

Hiatus and Quote

2008-07-26T11:34:00.003-04:00

To Whom it May Concern-

I will be very busy for the next two weeks working full-time in Augusta during the day and full-time on a law journal write-on competition at night, and will therefore not likely be able to post much. I just wanted to make it official so it doesn't look like I'm just lazy. I'll be back sometime soon after August 11 with posts about: Birds and Cape Wind, John Xantus and, hell, maybe and interview or two if people will friggin' respond to my inquests.

Anyway, thanks for understanding.

Love, Nick

P.S. I'll leave you with this nice quote (which is related to the journal writing I'll be doing) taken from testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform, May 16, 2002, from Representative Bob Barr (R-GA):

"We need some tough leadership from the Department of Defense. We need hard decisions that, while perhaps not politically correct, are correct when it comes to doing what is right for our men and women in combat. What is right is what will better prepare our warriors to win and survive on the battlefield, not limiting training so we don't run a risk of trampling blades of grass or upsetting the nesting habits of a cockamamie warbler. When things go wrong on the battlefield, people, and the importance of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or the Noise Control Act pale in comparison."

Agree or disagree? I want an answer by the time I get back.

I and the Bird #80

2008-07-24T08:57:00.001-04:00

Browse the best in birding blogs.

IATB #80 at the Hawk Owl's Nest.

Birds and Other Types of Turbines

2008-07-21T09:37:00.008-04:00

Traditional propellor turbines are not the only possibile solution for harnessing energy from wind. Here are a couple more designs, along with my unscientific musings on how they will effect bird strikes.

WingWing

The WindWing was developed by W2 Energy Corporation in California. Wind pushes two sets of wings (it looks like the Wright Brothers' plane) up and down and...well...just read the diagram.

How will it affect birds? Well the real question, when thinking about a traditional turbine, is: Do the blades kill the birds or does the tower? As far as I can tell, it's the tower (and the lights associated with it) that's the most dangerous part. However, I think it's safe to work with the assumption that bird strikes are roughly proportionate to the amount of surface area on a structure.

How does that bode for the WindWing? Well the surface area of the blades has been consolidated into the wings, and so overall the total surface area of a WingWing is probably at least the same as a traditional turbine. If lights are mounted atop the tower, bird strikes may increase as birds are attracted to those lights because more of the structure exists closer to the tower than on a traditional turbine.

Completely unscientific conclusion: At least the same amount of strikes.

FloDesign

FloDesign "is a Contract Engineering Corporation built around the application of aerospace technology to new product development." I'd tell you more, but I don't have the login to get into their super exclusive website. Their efficient turbine design just won a prize from MIT.

Birds? Hmm. Well the blades are gone, and now the majority of the surface area is placed at the very top of the tower. My worry about this design is that aviation lights are also usually placed at the top of the tower, depending on what the FAA decides. If birds are attracted to your lights, and there's a lot of mass around the lights, there may be more collisions.

Completely unscientific conclusion: Probably about the same number of strikes.

Selsam Superturbine

Holy cow look at that thing! California-based Selsam is a small company with big dreams. That website has a lot more photos, but the basic idea is to replace large, single turbines with a whole bunch of little ones. They can be put in the water, they can be put on top of buildings, and, as seen above, they can be attached to bimps.

Operating from my "strikes = surface area" theory, the Selsam turbine would have about the same number of strikes as a traditional turbine. The surface area of the two styles is (roughly) the same, it's just broken into smaller bits on the Selsam turbine. I gotta think, though, that it would be easier to devise a system to repel birds from a relatively contained rope of turbines than from one with a wider reach.

Completely unscientific conclusion: Slightly fewer strikes.

M.A.R.S. (Magenn Power Air Rotor System)

Magenn Power Inc. wants to float lighter-than-air balloon turbines up to 1000 feet in the air, where wind speeds are stronger and more consistant.

According to The Always-Reliable Awesome EverythingSite, Wikipedia, most birds migrate at altitudes between 500 and 2000 feet. If this is correct, the Mangenn turbine may just float right smack into the middle of the majority of migrating birds. This factor, combined with the consolidation of the mass around aviation lights may have the effect of increasing bird strikes.

Completely unscientific conclusion: More bird strikes.

So, there you have it. Any other turbine designs out there? Disagree with my off-the-cuff reasonings? Let me know.

Birds and Offshore Wind Energy II

2008-07-18T09:49:00.006-04:00

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has recently released this map showing global wind energy potential. I didn't realize how much of a difference there was between summer and winter winds.

Looking quickly, it appears that the best sites in terms of sustained yearly wind speeds are: off the coast of Northern California, around Australia and New Zealand, Southern Chile, Somalia, Southern Vietnam, and the Caribbean.

How does this affect birds? Well I think that's still kind of up in the air. Offshore (in federal waters, more than 3 miles from land) wind development would avoid many of the problems usually attributed to migrating birds (especially raptors, which don't migrate over water at all), but could still pose problems for birds that do migrate or travel well offshore.

Here is a satellite tracking map showing a Black-Footed Albatross meandering off the coast of Northern California, one of the areas I mentioned above as having sustained yearly wind speeds and a possible area for deepwater wind farms:

Similarly, some of the migrations shown on this Alaskan USGS site - a really fantastic website - show Brant and Red-Throated Loons migrating well off the coast of California, likewise for Short-Tailed Shearwater and Arctic Terns on the map below (not sure how precise it is).

How would deepwater offshore wind farms affect seabirds? No idea. The only study I know of focuses on wintering Common Eiders. The birds were lured through the turbines using decoys set deeper and deeper into the farm. The fact that these birds were overwintering is important, I think, because their flight patterns are different than birds that are migrating (like the Brant) or foraging (like the Albatross).

For example, most birds - except raptors - migrate at night. Though it is likely that nocturnal migrants fly high enough to avoid rotating blades, lights placed atop turbines for navigational purposes may prove to be a much bigger problem ("In the Gulf of Mexico, a 2005 showed that 300,000 birds die in collisions with pipes and wires each year"). Technological developments in lighting may help.

Birds that feed at sea, storm-petrels, albatross, shearwaters, etc., may also be at risk of hitting turbines. These birds don't generally fly at night, but birds on the lookout for food are not on the lookout for structures. This reasoning has been used to help explain the large numbers of raptor mortality from the Altamont Pass wind farm. It's unclear if there will be a similar effect among seabirds (most sea foragers rely on their noses rather their their eyes), but the topic certainly needs to be studied.

The effects of offshore turbines on seabirds - and maybe more importantly on marine mammals, who may be seriously affected by increased underwater noise and vibration - needs to continue to be explored. I still believe that large offshore wind farms will, in the long run, be easily more environmentally sound than our current sources of electricity, but finding sites that minimize impacts while maximizing energy is key.

Tropicbird Pics

2008-07-15T19:59:00.001-04:00

Wanna see a better picture of the Matinicus Rock Red-Billed Tropicbird? Check here.

Interview with Myself, Matinicus Rock Trip Participant

2008-07-12T20:39:00.009-04:00

Nick Lund was a part of the memorable July 12, 2008 Maine Audubon pelagic trip to Matinicus Rock. After much prodding, Nick agreed to discuss the trip with The Birdist, and even offered to share some of his photographs! Oh boy!

Birdist: Good evening, Mr. Lund. Gosh you're looking handsome this evening. Have you been working out?

NL: No, not at all.

I see. Well, whatever you're doing, keep doing it! So, I understand you took a trip to Matinicus Rock. How'd it go?

NL: Well it was outstanding, really. The weather was very cooperative; no clouds, and very little wind resulted in glassy seas and limitless visibility for the entire 25 miles. We left from the Todd Audubon Sanctuary in Bremen, Maine and stopped at Eastern Egg Rock before motoring out to Matinicus Rock. The two rocks are nesting colonies for puffins, razorbills, common murres and several species of terns, and there were chances at shearwaters, storm-petrels and phalaropes, but the bird we were all (quietly) seeking was the red-billed tropicbird that has summered on Matinicus for the past two summers.

Did you find it?

NL: Let's just go to the pictures. Here's looking out from the Todd Sanctuary towards the ocean. Notice how calm everything was! As far as I could tell, no one got seasick the whole time.

Laughing Gull at Eastern Egg

Razorbill

The lighthouse on Matinicus Rock

Razorbill rafts off Matinicus Rock

Arctic Tern (note the sharpness of the dark line on the primaries). Matinicus Rock is one of the few places where arctic terns outnumber common terns, here by about 3 to 1.

Common Tern (see how the dark line on the primaries spreads to the rest of the wing?)

Wow look at all those common murres!

NL: Actually, those are all decoys placed as part of a social attraction program. There are only a handful of common murres on the island, our group saw about four.

immature great cormorants

atlantic puffin, a fan favorite

Look, these are all great, but did you see the tropicbird?

NL: OK, well let me just say that I was too busy being a helpful, ocean-scanning birder to be a photographer. Aside from one or two pictures at the start, I wasn't taking any photos at Matinicus. The fact that it seemed unlikely that we would see the tropicbird didn't help. A pair of biologists rowed out to meet us when we reached the Rock, and when one of them announced over the ship's loudspeaker that the tropicbird hadn't been seen for 10 days, there was a noticeable deflation of many of the trip participants.

Imagine our elation, then, when a few minutes later the tropicbird appeared, in all it's brilliant glory, and soared just a few feet over the boat. It was incredible. The bird made several very close passes, and many close up photos were taken. Not by me, though. Like I said, I had put away my camera to focus on seawatching and only remembered to grab it after the tropicbird's interest in the boat had worn off. I managed to grab a couple awful pictures:

Are you joking me? God I'm disappointed.

NL: Screw you, This interview's over.

new life birds from this trip: atlantic puffin, wilson's storm petrels (100+ seen on the trip back), common murre, razorbill, roseate tern (two on eastern egg rock), arctic tern. 422 world list

new ABA birds: the above, plus red-billed tropicbird (i've seen them before on Isla de la Plata, Ecuador. 377 ABA list.

new Maine birds: above plus greater shearwater (seen well, but the only shearwater on the trip [we were not chumming]) 213 Maine list.

Port Clyde, Maine

Birds At Large IV: Brian Regan

2008-07-06T16:42:00.004-04:00

I've been a fan of Brian Regan's stand-up since that first special of his was on TV a bunch of years ago (the one with the jokes about looking like an idiot when you walk into a spider web because no one else sees it but you...). Here's a bit from his most recent special where he talks about the fake bird noises pumped into golf telecasts. He busts us birders pretty good, but gets a Birds at Large tag for involving the Blue-Breasted Whipper-Willow.

Birds at Large III: Molson Canadian Commercial

2008-07-03T18:56:00.003-04:00

Check out the woodpecker that cruises in at the 10 second mark of this commercial:

Black face, white belly, red crest? Clearly not a Pileated Woodpecker, the only Canadian species remotely like the one in the commercial. How aboot some background research, eh?

HILARIOUS

Anyway, I couldn't figure out what bird that is in the commercial. This is the best reference I could find. If anyone reads this and can figure out what species it is, I'll give you a prize.

Someone Oughta Punch This Jerk

2008-06-28T12:38:00.001-04:00

Also, it's tough times for the ol' blog. I am busier than ever. No one responds to interview requests. I'll keep working on it.

Birds and Wind Power

2008-06-14T11:13:00.005-04:00

I love wind power. It's cheap and it's clean and there is enough wind in the open oceans around this country to more than fulfill our current electricity needs. Historically, birding groups were opposed to wind turbines. As more information is gathered, though, people are finding that the danger to birds isn't nearly as extreme as feared.

I'm trying to put some interviews together on the subject. For now, check out this very interesting graphic of an eider study done on an offshore wind farm in Europe:

(If you're having trouble viewing the image, click here)

See how the ducks' flight patterns shift to avoid the turbines? The early data seems to show that seabird mortality due to turbine strikes will be low with offshore wind. Other factors, such as how to site the turbines to avoid feeding grounds, still need to be looked into.

Birds at Large II: Windex Commercial

2008-05-31T17:25:00.001-04:00

Would you expect a Pied Crow to have a New Jersey accent? I wouldn't, because Pied Crows don't live in the United States. This Windex commercial, though, sees nothing wrong with it. Yeah Yeah, he narrator has a non-American accent and maybe the commercial was made in another country and just played here, but I don't care. You can't pass off a clearly foreign bird as having an American accent and get away with it. Thx.

I and the Bird #76

2008-05-29T15:27:00.003-04:00

I was too lazy and forgetful to submit anything, and the new edition of I and the Bird is probably better off for it. Check out the collection of the best birdblog posts at Wanderin' Weeta.

Curlew Sandpiper - Seawall Beach, Maine

2008-05-25T17:03:00.007-04:00

I had plans at Popham Beach this afternoon so I jumped at the opportunity to look for the Curlew Sandpiper that has been seen for the past few days at nearby Seawall Beach. It took a LOT of walking - four miles round-trip on Morse Mountain Road, at least another mile or two of wandering back and forth on the giant beach - but I finally found the bird with a group of twenty or so Semipalmated Sandpipers and a single Dunlin.

Life birds make sunburns itch like victory. Mediocre pictures below.

Also, the walk in on Morse Mountain Road was absolutely beautiful. I kept up a good pace to reach the beach, but I did manage to find my first-of-year Blackburnian Warbler (a few of them, actually) on the way in.

Guys That Birds Are Named After #2: Thomas Lincoln

2008-05-23T12:15:00.001-04:00

Ah, Wikipedia! Scourge and savior!

I love Wikipedia and am quick to defend it against those who say it's uncertain or incomplete. Sure, I say, it may not be the best reference for controversial topics like George W. Bush, or the Arctic Refuge Drilling Controversy or Barry Manilow (Trust me, it's true), but what reason could there be to lie about mundane things like Sibbach v. Wilson or, say, Lincoln's sparrow?

No reason that I can think of. Yet, there it was. While I was doing research for this post I clicked on the link (now changed, by me) for Thomas Lincoln, the man James Audubon named Lincoln's Sparrow after. The link brought me here. Lincoln's sparrow named after the future estranged father of Abraham Lincoln?! That's blogger gold!

Fool's gold, however (I'm a great writer). Wikipedia led me astray. Further research - something every good journalist (and me) must always do - allowed me to discover that Audubon's friend who first shot the sparrow that would later bear his name was not Thomas Lincoln, father of Abraham, but Thomas Lincoln of Dennysville, Maine.

Turns out: still gold. Thomas Lincoln was a cool guy. Plus, he's from Maine. Here's what I could find out about him:

According to page 109 of this book, Thomas Lincoln was born in 1812. Thomas came from successful stock, his grandfather being Benjamin Lincoln, a Revolutionary War general, a fatso, the recipient of the sword of surrender at Yorktown, and a friend of George Washington (I knew presidents would be involved somehow). Benjamin's fifth child, Theodore, was Dennysville's first settler, a Harvard graduate, a Judge, and Thomas' father.

Coming from such a prestigious family, it's amazing to me that Thomas is most responsible for the Lincoln (of Dennysville) family name being remembered. While I couldn't find a whole lot about the man himself, what I could find painted a portrait of a man who wasn't quite as exciting as his relatives. According to this page, Thomas was "a successful farmer, taciturn neighbor and a staunch abolitionist." A taciturn neighbor! If, in a hundred years, the only thing people remember me for is being shy around the people who live nearby I'm going to spin in my cremated remains.

Regardless of how infrequently he spoke to his neighbors, Thomas Lincoln will be always be remembered as the man the Lincoln's sparrow is named after. The story is short and sweet: Lincoln, a friend of Audubon's son, hopped aboard Audubon's 1833 trip to Labrador in search of new bird species. One day in June, Audubon heard a song he didn't recognize and challenged his crew to find its singer. Lincoln, being an excellent marksman, shot the little bugger and presented it to Audubon, who named it "Tom's Finch" (or "Lincoln's Pinewood-Finch" as it appears on Audubon's first sketch of the bird) on the spot. Audubon wrote that he named the bird for Lincoln because he was a favorite among the crew, and Thomas was given three cheers for the honor. Good times!

So that's the story of Thomas Lincoln. Being a good Mainer, I wondered whether other "Lincoln" named things in Maine were named for Thomas or the Dennysville Lincolns. Turns out: No. The Town of Lincoln and Lincoln County were named for Enoch Lincoln, Maine's first governor. Also, Fort Gorges, that beautiful creaky deathtrap in Casco Bay, was engineered by a man named Thomas Lincoln Casey. Thanks for all your help, Wikipedia, I'll never say a bad thing about you again.

Birds at Large: Jeep Liberty Commercial

2008-05-21T14:24:00.003-04:00

New feature here: Birds at Large. It could also be called Media Birds or Commercial Bird Errors or I Can't Believe It's Not A Real Bird or People Are Stupid and Lazy. BaL is essentially this: as a live my life and interact with the world around me I notice that birds are often misrepresented or presented incorrectly to non-birding public. I want to point out those errors and mock those involved. Cool? Let's get started with this wicked stupid Jeep Liberty commercial:

Around the 30 second mark a pair of birds fly into the Jeep and start singing along with the idiot driver. Notice anything weird about those birds? I do. What do I notice? They aren't a real species of birds. Not in North America, anyway. The commercial was created by hotshot American shop Cutwater, themselves a branch of the terrifyingly-named advertising juggernaut Omnicom. I say this because I presume that the commercial was shot in America and designed for and American audience, thus ruling out the possibility that this freak-bird is a species elsewhere.

So what is it? The crest-feathers are reminiscent of a quail or something, but the body is clearly different. The long, thin body and the small, flat, sharp beak reminds me of something in the lark family. India's Malabar lark (pictured) or a gray, mutant version of the good ol' Horned Lark.
But it ain't neither of those birds. It doesn't exist. So many annoying questions arise: Why wouldn't the people behind the commercial just use a bird that actually exists? Why go to all the trouble of inventing a new bird when you can use any of the perfectly good ones we've already got? There are no answers to these questions except "laziness." It's a dumb commercial, and it's a dumb mistake.

Here Are Some Photographs Of Birds I Have Recently Seen

2008-05-09T17:42:00.009-04:00

Hey! I know I'm supposed to only to interviews here but, as I explained below, I have been too busy with finals to get any interviews going. BUT that don't mean I 'aint been out lookin' for birds! It's migration for [swear words]'s sake! Here are some pictures of poor quality I've taken in the past few weeks for your viewing amazement.

This Herring Gull appears to have partially swallowed a rubber band or something. Poor guy. When I saw him I thought it was some crazy extralimital "Red-Bridged Gull" but it wasn't.

Another shot of the unlucky gull.

Laughing Gull at Back Bay, Portland, Maine.

Kennebunk Plains in Kennebunk, Maine is a weird place with some great birding. Miles of deep woods suddenly give way to midwest-style grasslands. As far as I know it's the best place in the state to see Upland Sandpiper, Prairie Warbler, Vesper Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, the endangered Black Racer snake and ticks. Lots and lots of disgusting ticks.

Anyway, the Pulitzer Prize-winning shot below is my first ever Upland Sandpiper. Huzzah!

I'm sure National Geographic will be kicking in my door and forcing my to sign a lifetime photography contract when they see this shot of a Vesper Sparrow, again from Kennebunk Plains.

Field Sparrow at the K'bunk Plizzains.

Spotted Sandpiper at Higgins Beach in Scarborough, Maine.

Law School Finals Time

2008-05-02T20:28:00.003-04:00

I'm not just jerk who's not posting anything because I'm too busy playing Grand Theft Auto 4 in my mom's basement, I'm a jerk who's busy studying for 1L finals in my mom's side-house.
I'll try to get some HOT NEW INTERVIEWS when I'm done this living hell.

I and the Bird #73

2008-04-17T20:54:00.000-04:00

New edition of I and the Bird available at A Snail's Eye View!

Interview with Steven Valleau, Bird Carver

2008-04-12T14:26:00.007-04:00

Steven Valleau has got it made. He's a master wood-carver, and he gets to pursue his passion of bird carving as the Carver-In-Residence at the Wendell Gilley Museum. He get to share his skill with the local population. Finally, and perhaps best of all, he gets to spend a lot of time in Southwest Harbor, Maine.

Last week I spoke to the Executive Director and Curator of the Wendell Gilley Museum, Nina Gormley, about the history and current state of bird carving. This week I talked with Steven Valleau about the finer points of carving birds: what birds make good subjects, how to choose your tools and, yes, his driveway.

What drew you to carving birds over other subjects?

SV: I started making bird images in the form of colored pencil drawings when I was about 10 years old. That’s forty years ago now. I had always been interested in drawing since I could hold a pencil. My father Dr. William G. Valleau was a Zoology professor at the University of Maine so I had access to pictures and information about animal life. The first big piece that I remember was a huge piece of paper covered with dinosaurs probably done in pencil and crayon.

As we now know my drawings and the actual beasts evolved into birds. I really began focusing on birds when my uncle Jack Hartleb who was stationed at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor began taking me birding during his weekends off in about 1967. It seems funny now but much of the time we just drove around in his big old barge of an Oldsmobile and would look and occasionally listen for birds. We often drove through the Bangor (Caribou) bog, drove by the Bangor Pool in the Penobscot checking for ducks and eagles. Once someone got credit for a flock of golden Plover at a farm pond that was where Home Depot is now that my Uncle was the first to spot.

I could elaborate on birding in the Bangor area in the late sixties but I’ll spare you. During the years he was in Bangor before being shipped out along with all the B52s to Thailand my uncle Jack and my father started to carve some duck decoys. My father had a student, Don Mares who had some success with a Black Duck decoy at the Sports Show competition at the Bangor Auditorium so they started some duck heads that never got bodies. So my first bird carving is a Black duck body with a head that my uncle carved. I never got his permission to do that. A bit late now.

From my conversation with Nina Gormley, it seems that your development mirrored the general development of bird carving: duck decoys into artistic pieces. How long did it take for you to start carving other species?

SV: Those initial carvings of duck heads for the most part were very crude. My Uncle Jack’s black duck head was quite good which is why I procured it but the ones I did were pretty bad. At first my only tool was a 3 inch diameter sanding drum on a drill press and the wood was just 2x4 ends left over from my parents’ new house. It was probably around 1970, when I was old enough to cut blanks out on the band saw, that I started carving owls, wrens and chickadees. The first non duck I carved was a saw whet owl.

Along with a change in tools my uncle and father found out that Basswood was the wood you wanted for carving birds. The construction lumber that we had been using was just about the worst wood for ease of carving. One nice thing about carving decoys is that the challenge of making feet is avoided. I tried many methods of making metal feet including casting them in lead and using twisted wire. Making a carving with legs is of course the only way give full expression to a representation of a bird. At this point I spend at least as much consideration if not time on the habitat that grounds the bird as on the bird itself. Carving a decoy is like a vacation from work.

So do the idea for your carvings start from the habitat up or start from a particular species and work down?

SV: We start from a particular species although for a particular bird blank the perch has to be reflected in the design of the individual bird because it's body has to actually perch on the base. One leg may have to be forward of the other or the body may have to be tilted for the bird's center of gravity to located where it would be in a natural pose. So we start by choosing a species to carve and assembling as much reference material as we can get our hands on. I maintain a couple photos files, one for myself, one for the museum, which consists largely of photos from magazines but also postcards, cards, newspaper clippings and photo prints.

Wendell Gilley also did this as well as making his own taxidermy collection of bird mounts. Over the course of fifty years Wendell Gilley put together a collection of most North American ducks and owls and many other bird groups. We still use this collection at the museum. I teach bird carving classes and I would say the biggest downfall in my students involves not looking at reference material. How can you carve something without knowing what it looks like? I suppose a person has to learn how to interpret photos. A given photo may not be of a bird in the desired pose but it may show an actual crease between feather groups that in a head on shot only looked like a difference in feather coloring.

When I design a bird if I don't have a particular habitat or bird in mind I at least know that the landing place can accommodate the bird or birds I've designed . The habitat has to be big enough for a flock if that's what's called for. That's why I sometimes make models before committing to a design to be put into wood. I can 'sketch' out a bird very quickly in floral foam and get a rough idea of whether it will physically fit on a branch or if really looks the way I imagined or if it can look better in some other place.

Right now I'm working on a tangle of bittersweet that was only intended for a pair of chestnut-sided warblers that is part of a collection of warbler pairs that I'm making for the Wendell Gilley Museum but I have reference photo of an immature yellowthroat that may end up scolding them from one side of that vine. Sometimes the habitat does suggest the species of bird.

So once you've got a firm idea and know that it will work out (fit on the branch, etc), what's the first step of actually carving the piece?

SV: After I had the designs for the piece drawn I transfer them to a piece of usually basswood and cut them out on a band saw. Most carvings are two pieces of wood: one piece for the head and one for the body, as in a decoy. This is sometimes because of the size of the piece but usually because we want to use the wood’s grain direction to add strength to fragile extremities like bills and necks.

So the more fragile extremities (herons, sandpipers etc) the more difficult the sculpture? Which species are harder to carve than others?

SV: A bird at rest is relatively easy to carve. Birds are very aerodynamically formed creatures so their parts naturally flow into each other. They are somewhat less articulated than mammals. Think of a chimney swift or penguin vs. a race horse or a cello player. I consider fish even easier to carve because they are even more highly evolved to be aerodynamic. This is not to say that it doesn’t take just as much skill to shape a fish well but the nature of the possible poses is less complex. It isn’t so much the fragile nature of the bill that makes a heron more difficult but that the neck is a significant form that you just don’t have to deal with in humming bird.

There are two basic approaches to carving. The first, perhaps more pure one is a form of subtractive sculpture, in that no pieces are added to the original single block of wood. These blocks are usually of highly figured wood and are unpainted to show the beautiful patterns created in woods’ growth. In these sculptures if part of the bird is fragile it must simply be carved and handled very carefully. Truth be told, repairs are made if only because clients are clumsier than creators. (Remember hiding repairs is also an art.) Charles ‘Chippy’ Chase (deceased) of Brunswick, Maine and John T. Sharp of Kent, Ohio are probably the most well know natural wood bird sculptors. Chippy used the term subtractive sculpture to describe what he did but he really thought the word sculpting means taking away so that ‘sculpture’ was description enough.

The second approach to carving is what Chippy called assembling. I prefer additive sculpture, I suppose, but modeling might describe it better. Modeling is what one does with clay because they are no limits to changes one can make. Unlike clay, wood has grain and lines of fracture and since our carvings are intended to be painted anyway we put together pieces of wood in a way that enhances the final product’s strength and/or ease of carving. The woods of choice, Basswood and Tupelo are homogenous, devoid of the figure sought by subtractive sculptors because this makes for easier carving and painting. The use of separate pieces of wood can be extreme. In the early eighties the state of the art was to cave hundreds of feathers separately and attach them to the body form. This thankfully was just a phase.

This brings up another aspect of birds that makes them somewhat unique as a subject. Once you pluck ‘em they all look like a chicken. Their legs and beaks may vary but with the exception of penguins and maybe kiwis anything from an eagle to a titmouse isn’t very different. Their shape is all in their feathers. Of course their feathers can be extremely different from species to species even within a species or an individual for that matter. The flat nature of their feathers, and the fact that the texture of feathers can be easily reproduced by woodburning or grinding, has allowed the extreme realism approached by the best bird carvers. The same is true of fish but not most mammals. I understand even computer animators have a hard time with hair and fur.

To answer the second part of the question, some birds I wouldn’t even attempt to carve. Birds with long plumes like peacock or even a rooster with raised hackles is beyond what I want to attempt. Of course painting is more difficult than carving. I find the colors in a blue jay very hard to get right and the vermiculating on a mallard can take days.

What tools do you use to carve your birds?

SV: The tools I use to shape a carving start with a band saw which is a large shop tool. My band saw is capable of cutting curved edges on wood with sectional dimensions as large as 14” x12”. That’ a big piece of wood, larger than anything one is likely to find in this area. The band saw is also capable of cutting out blocks as small as hummingbirds so it is a very versatile tool.

The first shaping is laid out using a plan view and a profile view that are drawn using various reference materials. Some carvers continue roughing and shaping the blank using nothing but power rotary tools. These tools are familiar to most people as Dremel tools which is a hobbyist brand of the professional Foredom rotary tools that most serious carvers use. If time permits I prefer to use hand tools because one reason I enjoy carving is the sensation experienced in pushing a sharp blade through wood. For large pieces I use draw knives, spoke shaves and large chisels.

The carving tool that I use more than any other is a small knife with a 11/2” blade that has a razor sharp replaceable blade. This knife is one of several models made by Warren Cutlery Company in Rhinebeck New York. The final texturing of the carving is done with a piece of sandpaper, a wood burner or a small rotary tool. Textured carvings are almost always painted so the next step is sealing or priming the surface in preparation for paint.

If a novice wanted to start carving birds would they need these same tools or could they start with something simpler?

SV: A novice carver can buy blanks already cut out from various suppliers such as sugarpinewoodcarving.com. We sell blanks at the museum and I will do custom cutting up to a point. I’ve had people want so many blanks that t I can’t supply their needs and those of my classes. Adult education programs often offer wood shop classes that offer instruction and access to a band saw and other large shop tools. You can also buy basswood blanks on eBay and for a knife use an X-acto knife. That’s probably the simplest way to go. Patterns are available from several sources including mdiwoodcarvers.com which is where I get most of my supplies.

Do you have a favorite bird carving of all the ones you've done?

SV: I don’t really have a favorite carving but there are commissions that stand out as most memorable or satisfying. I made a life sized Osprey th for a man with a house in the Bahamas about 15 years ago. Because of the combination of the species, a new level of price, a certain level of challenge and my personal feelings about the client, that commission was particularly satisfying.

I paid for the driveway of my first house with the money from that bird so it had a lasting significance beyond daily living expenses. The osprey had to be shipped by air to the Bahamas so I spent 20 hours plus making the foam lined plywood crate. Probably most importantly, I really liked the man for whom who I made this carving. I made many carvings for him including at times when one or the other of us were going through hard times. Although bird carving is a job for me the friendships I’ve made over the years seem dearer than the pieces themselves.

What a great story. It must be very satisfying to create a life for yourself based on your artwork. OK one last question: If time and money were no option, and you had a gigantic block of wood, what would you carve?

SV: I am working on a collection for the museum of all the species of warblers, male and female, that breed here on Mount Desert Island. Life has intervened and I have only done seven of those forty individual birds. Once that project is done, I’d like to make a flock of sea ducks floating amongst a series of granite waves. You said unlimited. ø

Red-Tailed Hawk Attacks Girl at Fenway Park

2008-04-04T18:21:00.004-04:00

The media up here in New England is all atwitter about a red-tailed hawk nesting at Boston's Fenway Park that attacked a young girl named Alexa Rodriguez (which is close to Red Sox arch enemy Alex Rodriguez which, according to newspapermen = HILARITY). The girl was scratched but unhurt.

While I am sad that the inevitable friendship between the hawk and Manny Ramirez did not have a chance to develop, I'm glad that the nest and the egg were removed from the stadium. It wouldn't have ended well.

I and the Bird #72

2008-04-03T16:42:00.001-04:00

Hooray! New edition of I and the Bird available at Ecobirder.

Coming soon: Interview with professional bird-carver Steven Valleau.

Interview with Nina Gormley of the Wendell Gilley Museum

2008-04-01T18:22:00.009-04:00

The Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor, Maine is the finest of the few museums dedicated to the art of bird carving. Originally begun as a collection of the works of it's namesake, a native of Southwest Harbor and one of the pioneers of American bird carving, the museum has expanded to include the works of other artists and offers workshops taught by their carver-in-residence.

I talked with Nina Gormley, the Executive Director and Curator of the museum, about Wendell Gilley and the world of bird carving.

How did the Wendell Gilley Museum start?

NG: Wendell Gilley’s wife, Addie, collected 110 examples of her husband’s work from 1931-1981. The couple had thought of starting a museum on their own eventually, but realized that they were no longer up to even the 100+ visitors that came to the home/ workshop with no advertising. Happily, many other people felt that a museum should be established to ensure that future generations could enjoy Wendell’s unique cultural legacy.

In 1979, Steven Rockefeller spearheaded efforts to incorporate the Wendell Gilley Museum, set up a board and raise funds to build it. The Museum purchased the Gilley’s collection as the core of its permanent collection. Roc Caivano was chosen as the architect and engaged to design a building that would not only showcase the bird carvings and other art exhibitions, but serve as a model of energy efficiency and environmental awareness.

Most of the crew that built the Museum had worked with Wendell Gilley when he was a plumber. He was well-liked and respected and their workmanship on the building reflects their admiration. The building opened to the public in July of 1981 and the Museum has been welcoming visitors to discover art through nature and vice versa ever since.

What drew Wendell Gilley to start carving birds over other subjects?

NG: He had a passion for bird hunting. His Yankee spirit made him feel badly about using only the meat and tossing the skins, so he took up taxidermy to learn how to “stuff them and save them.” When he went to the Boston Museum of Natural History in 1931 to look at the taxidermy exhibits, he was drawn to a display of miniature bird carvings by Elmer Crowell. When he got home, he whittle out a little mallard drake, enjoyed it and the rest is history. His taxidermy mounts became his models.

Aside from Mr. Gilley, who are some other famous names in the world of bird carving - past and present?

NG: Besides Wendell Gilley’s inspiration, A. Elmer Crowell, the first bird carving pioneers that spring to my mind are Charles “Shang” Wheeler, Lem and Steve Ward, Arnold Melbye, Grainger McKoy, Ernest Muehlmatt, Harold Haertel, and Bruce Burk.

There are so many styles and so many great carvers these days, it’s tough to give a short list, but my favorite contemporary carvers known on the competitive scene are Larry Barth and John T. Sharp and Todd Wohlt. He does not enter competitions, but the Gilley Museum’s Carver-in-Residence, Steven Valleau, is on my short-list for his outstanding, graceful work and his enduring patience with students of all ages.

Do most bird carvers work toward realistic depiction of their subjects or are there different styles as in painting?

NG: There are many different styles. Some carvers, for example, do not even use paint, such as John T. Sharp, whose “interpretive” style depicts birds (and other subjects) in hardwoods such as black walnut with an oil finish. The grain of the wood is integral to the design.

Speaking of such carvers, I neglected to mention John’s mentor and one of the foremost early interpretive style carvers, Maine’s own Charles “Chippy” Greenough Chase. Among the carvers who paint their subjects, some create “smoothies” in which all the detail is painted on, others carve, burn and/or stone in texture to their pieces before painting. Some go for a more “folk art” look, others strive to make the birds look as if they will take off any minute.

Are certain styles more desirable to collectors than others?

NG: If price is a measurement of “desirable,” classic antique decoys still rule the market, some fetching prices in excess of $800,000, but there are collectors for every style – and price range of carvings.

$800,000! What kind of decoy was that? What place to duck decoys have in the history of bird carving?

NG: A black-bellied plover by A. Elmer Crowell went for $830,000; there may have been higher prices since that 2006 sale. Decoys makers turned to decorative carving when conservation laws banned market gunning in 1918 and cut down on the need for working birds.

Because of the decoy connection, are ducks and shorebirds still the most commonly carved birds? Do collectors prefer some species to others?

NG: Ducks and shorebirds, i.e. the birds decoy makers and hunters were most familiar with started out as the most commonly-carved birds and still appear to have an edge, but others, including exotic species are catching up as carvers diversify and the collecting world fills with birders as well as hunters. Collectors tend to favor game birds and good-looking birds. A carver can be sure to sell more loons than vultures.

Not a huge market for vulture sculptures, eh? Makes sense. Are some of these uglier birds gaining any more respect as the ranks of birders, as opposed to hunters, rise? Are there other ramifications from the recent growth of birding?

NG: Perhaps birds that are both rare and “ugly” are gaining respect with the increased interest in birding. I have seen the combination of birders who like to travel, who see something “special,” a quetzal, for example, then look for a carving or commission one to savor the memory.

Back to Wendell Gilley, did he focus on carving the birds he hunted or did he experiment with other species? Did he have a favorite subject?

NG: Wendell’s favorites were the birds he had the most first-hand experience with—those he hunted, and Maine’s ever-present State bird, the black-capped chickadee. If you pick up a Gilley green-winged teal or a ruffed grouse, you almost feel it’s alive; it’s obvious that Wendell handled those, whereas his Adele penguin leaves something to be desired.

What do you see for the future of the Wendell Gilley Museum, and for bird-carving in general?

NG: Wendell Gilley believed that all people have some form of “creative power” that they simply need to find the outlet for. Here at the Museum and elsewhere, more and more people of all ages are finding that bird carving is a great outlet for that power and also a great way to connect with nature. We will do our best here to keep fostering the connection between humans, art and nature.

After you have carved and painted a Blackburnian Warbler you will never fail to recognize a real one in the field. I believe that bird carving and collecting is going to continue to grow and diversify. Whether you carve ornaments for your family or commissions for celebrities, whether you buy $12.00 carved chickadees or $830,000 decoys, there is a place for everyone in the bird carving continuum.

Cool Guy

2008-03-21T11:20:00.002-04:00

Leroy L. Jensen is mentioned in Mark Obmascik's The Big Year as the guy who birded through his TV. It's a pretty awesome story, and I'm going to interview him if I can find him. Until then, read about it here.

Jerk Golfer in the News

2008-03-06T23:23:00.002-05:00

John Henry "Tripp" Isenhour, a PGA tour golfer, killed a Red-Tailed Hawk by drilling it with a golfball.

Whatever, dude. I'm not gonna flip out. This isn't one of those animal blogs that is gonna vilify this gent for killing a bird. I swat flies and trap mice. Killing a Red-Tail is a terrible thing to do, but I'm sure "Tripp" is genuine in his remorse...plus it's on the ESPN ticker so everyone who isn't directly related to this guy will forever only know Tripp Isenhour as "that guy who killed that bird."

Whatever, buddy, don't mess with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Also, a word of advice from a legal standpoint: Whether you intended to kill it or not doesn't matter. You intended to hit the balls, which any reasonable person could foresee killing the bird if hit. The only way you can argue that the killing was unintentional is if you didn't see the bird or if you somehow accidentally hit the ball without knowing it. You monster.

Discussion with John of A DC Birding Blog

2008-03-01T16:31:00.006-05:00

The White-Crested Elaenia that recently turned up in Texas was the first of its kind to ever be found in the U.S. and inspired a whole lot of excitement among birders who could afford a plane ticket. The situation got me thinking about extralimital birds. How many extralimital birds are actually found by birders? How many birds are missed?

I engaged John of the excellent A DC Birding Blog in a discussion of this topic, for your reading pleasure:

Say 100 White-crested Elaenias are released onto the east coast of the US. After a month, how many of them do you think have been found by birders?

ADCBB: I think it depends on where on the east coast you release them. If you release them near New York City, I would guess 80-90 would be found. In the less developed areas, I could see only 10-20 being found.

I agree that if the birds were released in a heavily birded area they are more likely to be seen than if they were released somewhere more remote, but that still leaves a chicken-and-egg question: Are certain areas heavily birded because they're productive or are those areas productive because they're heavily birded?

ADCBB: For the most part, I think it's the former. Places like Cape May were popular with market gunners who needed to find as many birds as possible long before there was a birding culture around them. I think that urban hotspots develop reputations because there are so many birders to track down every rarity that passes through.

I think I agree. Certain areas are popular because they are places were birds tend to congregate in large numbers, and therefore extralimital birds are more likely. On the other hand, I think a lot more extralimital birds would be found it birders spread out and searched less common areas (gull-filled landfills in the winter, for example). Do you think the Elaenia would have been found if it had landed in a private yard next to the conserved area it was found at?

ADCBB: Probably not, unless the yard belonged to a really sharp birder. Then again, nothing would stop it from wandering into the conserved area where it might be more likely to be seen by a birder.

Sure. Length of stay and movement definitely increases the likelihood of an unusual bird being discovered. Of all the extralimital birds that show up in the U.S., how many do you think are discovered?

ADCBB: I think that most extralimital species are discovered eventually; I'm not sure that most individual birds are since it is easy for individuals to land in an underbirded area.

But aren't most extralimital birds single individuals? Are you saying that species makes a difference?

ADCBB: If you have one extralimital bird that sticks to a particular location for an extended period, then I think you can say with some confidence that it is a single bird. But you don't really know for sure unless you band it or have some other identifying characteristic to separate individuals from each other.

As an example, a few winters ago a Rufous Hummingbird was visiting one of the Smithsonian gardens in D.C. There were actually two birds, but that did not become clear until the one that had been banded was recovered outside a window in Pennsylvania. Without that recovery, it would have appeared that a single individual stayed all winter. Now Rufous Hummingbird is not an extralimital, but I think its example can be applied to some of the single-record extralimital birds. There is speculation that the various Western Reef Heron sightings along the East Coast in the last few summers are a single individual, but I am not sure whether that has been confirmed.

That's an interesting point that refutes my position that most extralimital birds are not seen. If the same individual Western Reef-Heron was seen in several different locations it would indicate a higher level of birder coverage than I expected. However, I would temper this my saying that coastal birds - especially herons - are more easily seen than most birds (ie rails, warblers, sparrows) that stay out of sight. Therefore, extralimital birds of this type are less commonly discovered than more visible species like waders and raptors. Do you agree?

ADCBB: I think that is correct. The smaller and more cryptic birds are going to be harder to find, especially outside of breeding season, so some individual birds are going to go unnoticed. At the same time, most extralimital species seem to follow some sort of misguided route - a spring migration that takes them too far or a winter migration that somehow ends up on the wrong continent. Except for birds that only touch the edges of the ABA area, their route is likely to pass through some areas with few birders and others with lots of birders. So the (hypothetical) Northern Lapwing that is missed in Nunavut could be spotted around Cape Cod, Cape May, or the Eastern Shore.

Passing through the same areas that local migrants favor (and, with them, birders) would certainly improve the chances that they are discovered. So a bird will continue it's general north-south or south-north migration even though it's on a different continent?

ADCBB: I think that the north-south instinct is still pretty strong, even if the east-west coordinates are off. If you look at distribution maps for rare species, the sightings tend to cluster around certain areas of the country. There are large clusters along the southern border, mainly in the Southwest, and there are other clusters along the Pacific or Atlantic seaboards, which suggests birds that entered through the Arctic followed North American flyways. I think that both of these represent a misguided migratory instinct. It would be interesting to know if studies of vagrancy patterns would confirm that.

What about species that don't migrate as far? What do you think about patterns of species like Arctic gulls (Ivory, Ross' etc) or Great Gray Owls, that aren't necessarily following flyways?

ADCBB: The flyways are really just broad fronts along which birds move, whether because of geography, weather patterns, or some other factor. Each species, of course, has more specific routes. I think the shorter distance migrants still follow flyways, but just not as far. When Ivory Gulls come south, their destinations seem fairly predictable (see map).

Awesome map. OK, let's wrap this up with a prediction. I think that of all the extralimital birds that arrive in the US, only about 1/3 are found by birders. How many do you think are found and why?

ADCBB: I think it's a little over half. Extralimital birds that enter the country seem likely to end up in a spot frequented by many birders, so they ought to be found eventually, even if it takes some time. A lot of the more cryptic species will go unnoticed, either from being missed or being misidentified as common birds, but a higher percentage of the rest will be found.

This is awesome

2008-02-22T13:08:00.002-05:00

New gigantic RBA map available from Birdingonthe.net