The Flying Polish Hare of Google Street View

The Google Street View Birding Facebook Group is still going strong, nearly two years after its creation. It's pretty amazing. My goofy little procrastination side-project now has more than 4,300 members (most all of them much better at finding birds than I ever was), and has tracked down a simply incredible 1226 different bird species. It's a supportive and kind group of folks and I couldn't be prouder.

A line of discussion began in the group after Linda L. posted a screenshot of some caribou crossing the road in Finland - In all these miles of driving and recording by the Street View car, had it ever hit anything? Street View Roadkill? In theory you'd be able to see the entire story: a poor creature running into the road in front of the car and then left on the road out the other side. I had never seen anything, had others?

Well, yes, in fact. Group superstar Aaron Polichar recalled at least one likely incident which made the tabloid rounds in July 2019 and was brought to our attention by Oswaldo Zuniga: the sad saga of the Polish Flying Hare.

It's a sad saga because, although we can't be absolutely certain, it seems unlikely that this beautiful European Hare survived being struck by the Google Street View car and launched way, way into the air. At least it went with style. RIP.

Just as I figured, the constant recording of the Street View car allows us to reconstruct a sort of flip-book of the last incredible moments of this creature.

We're on a road called the Biala Droga, south of Krakow, Poland. The Street View car is cruising down the road -- and I do mean cruising - I wish I could mathematize the actual speed but it appears to be going much faster than I expected Street View cars to be able to travel -- and in the distance a hare appears running down another road.

First shot here.

The next click forward for the car and the hare is still coming down the road, into harm's way.

The hare has only moved a couple feet forward while the car has traveled, what, 40 feet? It's hauling, and the rabbit is right in the path. The next few panels are a little rough, because though you can't see the car itself, you can see the hare being struck.

Okay now so reversing to the back of the car, the poor animal continues to apparently bounce along near the top of the car and its camera tower. It's definitely moving upward, but it's unclear whether it's hitting anything else. That's its head facing outward in this image.

Next comes the incredible image. The hare has continued upward and is captured in what appears to be mid-leap, composed and graceful looking for all the world like its bounding to the moon.

The creature can be seen again as the Street View car continues on its path. Here, the hare is further off the road, still very high, and flailing.

The car continues and the hare keep falling. It's visible here, from further down the road, in a righted position still, what, ten feet in the air? Below the treeline and above the tree in the foreground.

Finally, it lands in the field, on its back. The grace is gone, and the sad reality of human destruction is all that's left.

It's sad, but an incredible sequence. There's no way of knowing what happened to the hare but it seems doubtful that the poor thing could have survived an impact like that, despite the hare looking fairly composed in some of the shots. Still, you never know. The Flying Polish Hare of Street View may have gotten back up, dusted itself off, and had one hell of a story to tell.

Google Street View Birding Hits the Big Time

I've been looking for birds on Google Street View for more than five years. It's been a minor passion of mine, mostly picked at in the few minutes of down time between meetings. A fun diversion, and a personal one.

I had the idea two weeks ago to make it a bit less personal, and open Street View Birding up to office-bound birders everywhere. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. A Facebook Group seemed like the right venue, and so I set one up and invited folks via the Birding Memes group to help search for birds with me and post their findings. I figured a few would join, but a whole bunch did.

There are currently more than 700 birders in the Google Street View Birding Facebook Group, and we've collectively found more than ... wait for it ... more than ... this is a big number so sit down for this ... 500 different species by creeping along the roads and trails of this great world and zooming in on tiny pixelated specks in the distance. It's incredible.

I found a few good species in my pokings, but as a groups we've made some real discoveries. Two owls -- Burrowing in Florida and Buffy Fish-Owl in Singapore. We have about FORTY gull species, just about all that can be reasonable expected given GSV's scant coverage in China and the Middle East. Huge birds from Condors to tiny birds like Vermillion Flycatcher. And the beat goes on.

If you read this and would like to join the group, please do. We need all the weirdos we can get.

Javan Pond-Heron, Little Egret, and Asian Openbill, spotted in Thailand by Krit Adirek. Here's the link to Google Maps.

Google Street View Birding VI: Canada

O Canada!
Birds' Home and Native Land!
Loons, Crossbills, and Doves in all thy bins command!

That doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense, sorry, but it's a great anthem anyway.  Canada is a marvelous place, and millions upon millions of birds make their way up to breed each summer.  Also making their way up in the summer, apparently, is the Google Street View crew, who unwittingly managed to capture a number of those birdies in their jaunts.  And I, during slow moments of my days, have been able to track a few down.

For those interested in previous installments of Google Street View Birding, check here:

• Street View Birding I
• Street View Birding II: Midway Atoll 
• Street View Birding III: Mexico
• Street View Birding IV: Florida
• Street View Birding Antarctica Part I: The Falkland Islands
• Street View Birding Antarctica Part II: South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands
• Street View Birding Antarctica Part III: Antarctica

OK, back to Canada.  Let's go birding, and start out West.

The West Coast of Canada has a bunch of gulls that I don't usually see out here on the East Coast.  Gulls are great for Street View Birding because they're big, often sit in conspicuous places, and let people and cars get relatively close. Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest have a couple of fairly easy-to-identify gulls that I thought I could find in Street View.

The trouble with gulls is that they hang out by the ocean, i.e. not where Google Street View cars are driving. Thankfully, cars aren't the only way Street View gets images.

I found this gull resting on a dock from which the Street View guy was leaving on a boat trip at the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, south of Vancouver. Not a great view of the head, but a big gull with very light wingtips? Looks like a Glaucous-winged Gull to me. 

Here's another one I found, somewhere in the same park. This one's tougher, because of the light, but it looks darker and with dark wingtips. Maybe? It's possible that it's a Western Gull, but ... I dunno. Hard to say, so I won't call it for sure.

Nearby, the Street View guy straps on a backpack and walks down a big tidal spit. Very cool.  Along the way he or she passes this group of dark shorebirds. Black Oystercatchers! What, ten? We should eBird that!

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Google Street View Birding: Antarctica Part III: Antarctica

Antarctica. The Great White Desert. The Tundra Down Under. The Big Ice Cube. The Cold-tinent. Ol' Snowyface.  We've finally made it.

Like the polar explorers of old, we've slowly made our way across the stormy seas to our destination. We've seen a lot of amazing things along the way, including endangered wrens in the Falkland Islands and nesting albatross (260 times larger than the wren) on South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands. We've seen adorable seals. And terns. And shags. And weird ducks and caracaras and oystercatchers and geese and vultures and a whole lot of penguins.

We start - led by our intrepid Google Street View friends - at the Antarctic Peninsula, that long point of land sticking out towards South America. We start on a small outcropping called Half Moon Island, just off the mainland of Antarctica. According to the informational overlords at Wikipedia, the 2010 images taken here were the first to put Google Street View on all seven continents. There to welcome them, of course, were penguins.

These are chinstrap penguins, named for the stripe running along their throat that looks like that bad haircut worn by the burnout kid in your 1995 high school class.

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Google Street View Birding: Antarctica Part II: South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands

The adventure continues!

We are a third of the way though our epic, vicarious journey to Antarctica, stowing away with the crew of Google Street View.  We've just left the Falkland Islands, which dazzled us with winged splendor, introducing us to hordes of penguins, weird geese, and even a tiny, endangered wren. A great first stop, indeed.

But we must move on. Our next stop across that cold southern ocean is the wild South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

There isn't much human history on the South Sandwich Islands, save for a handful of whale-butchering operations operated on the largest island, South Georgia, in the early 20th century. This was messy business, according to my intensive research (cough cough Wikipedia cough wait why am I typing all this out), and occasionally involved some downright frigging disgusting things: "A rotting whale could fill with gas to bursting, ejecting a fetus the size of a motor vehicle with sufficient force to kill a man." Great!

Well, lucky for us, the whale carcasses are gone but the birds remain. Let's check it out.

The first stop in the South Sandwiches is a small island off the coast of South Georgia, and it's a doozy. It's called Prion Island (good start), and it's heavily protected by the small South Georgia government because of all the cool creatures that live there, like South Georgia pipits and burrowing petrels. And like these penguins:

Gentoos are the ones with the white dots on their heads (most of them) and up in the top right are some Kings.  

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Google Street View Birding: Antarctica Part I: The Falkland Islands

Hello, and welcome back to the worst blog on the internet.

Today brings another installment of Google Street View Birding, where I sit at my desk in the dark, my pasty face squinting at the screen, and surf around Google Street View looking for birds.  This installment is my favorite yet, and takes us to a place with very few species of birds, but many excellent Google Street View looks: Antarctica.

Gentoo Penguins on Petermann Island, Antarctica

Though there is very little coverage of Antarctica and the surrounding islands in Street View (I mean, there are no streets...) there are a crap-ton of great views of birds. So many, in fact, that I need to break this thing into multiple posts. Luck you! Let's start the same way many oceanic trips to Antartica start: with a visit to the Falkland Islands.

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Google Street View Birding IV: Florida

It's easy to look down upon Google Street View Birding. "It's for lazy people," they say. "It's not real birding if you're just using a computer," they whine. "Get a goddamn life," they snort.

I don't care what anyone says, Street View Birding is not only hard work, but a worthwhile pursuit. It requires stamina (eye strain), commitment (boredom), and patience (boredom). It's birding on the frontiers of the information superhighway, and baby I've got my pedal to the metal.

This installment brings me to Florida.  I was in the Sunshine State over the holidays and was reminded what a fantastic place it is to bird.  There are birds in every pond.  There are birds at every feeder.  There are birds covering the beaches. I'd venture to guess that there are more birds per square inch in Florida than anywhere else in the states.

So it stands to reason that there would be birds in Google Street View.  I found some downtime and took a look.

Beaches

For most of Street View's history, the images were all captured from cars.  This made Street View Birding quite the challenge because, like, how often to birds fly right next to cars, right? Telephone wires and bridges were really the only places to look.  Recently, more mapping is being done by folks on foot.  This was clearly a boon for SV Birding on Midway Atoll, still the best vicarious internet birding experience available.

And it's also come to Florida. Some folks have taken it upon themselves to strap on the ol' backpack and walk nearly the entire walkable coast of the state.  It was clearly a Herculean task, but it resulted in some better images of birds that I had found anywhere else.

Yup. Great Blue Heron. Can't remember what I got this screenshot.

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Google Street Maps Birding

I've created a monster.  A nerd monster.  (Instead of terrorizing cities he sits in his mother's cave and plays Basements & Humans).

Occasionally I pass the time slowly scrolling along random streets captured in Google Street View looking for birds.  I'm not proud of it, but as far as Things To Do go it's better than a heroin addition.  I've been able to find a bunch of birds and it's allowed me to travel All Over The WORLD!

There are other images of our world out there on the internet, and one reader, Greg of the Greg and Birds site, has started to find birds in them.  In Google Maps.  Overhead, satellite, far-away images of teeny-tiny birds.  I don't know how he did it, but Greg zoomed way into a lake on the southwest side of Indianapolis (here are the coordinates: 39.851657,-86.302702) and found a ... bird.  I'm not exactly sure what it is.  I captured a screenshot:

Greg suggested Great Egret but the structure doesn't look right.  Maybe its head is tucked up.  The wing shape looks to me more like a gull, but I don't know.  Guesses welcome.

Thank you Greg for this opening up incredible, pathetic new frontier.  God help me when I lose my job for spending the day scanning the backgrounds of real estate photos trying to identify passerines on feeders in the neighbor's yard.  It's an odd world, my friends.

[UPDATE]

Reader Urs Geider sent in a comment with a link to this screenshot showing 38.872515, -90.172794 (the Riverlands area in Missouri, across the Mississippi from Alton, IL). Looks like American White Pelicans to me!  Awesome!  Thanks, Urs.

Google Street View Birding III: Mexico

Street View Birding is perhaps the nerdiest thing I have ever done.  But I love it.  I love it guiltily, in the dark and when no one is looking, like a candy bar smuggled into Fat Camp.

For those unfamiliar (or unwilling), sometimes when I get bored I just cruise random spots in Google Street View and try to identify birds.  Street View Birding works like this: (1) zoom down into streetview on a place that looks good (2) look around to see if you see any birds (3) move around until you find a bird or you get too bored or your reconsider the path your life has taken.  That's it.  It's very challenging, because the resolution is never good enough and the birds are always too far away.  But, hey, that's the challenge.

I've been to Florida and Texas.  I cruised around what is likely the Street View Birding Mecca of Midway Atoll.  This time I'm south of the border.

I've never birded Mexico except for two weeks ago, when I heard and saw birds on the other side of the trickling Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park, but I've heard a lot about its birding.  Tropical forests in the south.  Deserts and grasslands elsewhere.  The Gulf of California.  I don't know much else about the country of Mexico, and I don't know its birds.  Sorry.  These IDs are all guesses so feel free to pitch in.

Let's go.

Baja California

I've heard that Baja is dangerous and whatever, but it looks pretty nice in streetview.  Some quaint little harbors.  Lots of cacti.  The first bird I found was on a cactus, and is probably a Gila Woodpecker.  See it circled in red there?  Click to enlarge.

I hit a good one next.  Real Life birders know that telephone poles and wires are a good place to look for sitting raptors, and Street View is no different.  On one pole along the Transpeninsular Highway outside the town of Santa Rosalia I found what I think is a Crested Caracara.  Pretty cool.

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Google Street View Birding II: Midway Atoll

I don't care what crabby commenters say, I think Google Street View Birding is fun as hell.  Whenever I am bored for a few minutes at a computer, I can whisk myself away to far-off birding locations with the click of a mouse.  Screw you, I'll get my jollies where I can.

Street View birding is hard, though.  The resolution is never very good, and birds are rarely as close to the road as you want.  I think I did a pretty good job my first time around, but I've stumbled onto something that makes all my previous attempts seem like watching an empty feeder in March.  I've found what just might be the Shangri-La of Google Street View Birding: Midway Atoll.

As you (hopefully) remember, Midway Atoll was the site of a major battle in WWII and is still under the control of the U.S. government, which manages the island as Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.  And holy moses is there wildlife.  Situated as they are in the middle of the Pacific, thousands and thousands of pelagic birds visit them to breed.  I mean, thousands.  Albatross, noddies, frigatebirds, terns, tropicbirds.  And some lovely person from Google strapped on a camera backpack and walked around.  Check it out:

HOLY LORD LOOK AT ALL THOSE BIRDS.  The ENTIRE island is like this (Google maps only Street Views the western of the two breeding islands).  It's insanity.

Using this very helpful website, I cruised around the island and tried to find as many species as I could.  Midway is extra helpful from a Street View birding perspective because seabirds like this generally let folks come right up close, so you can see a lot of these birds in detail.

The majority of birds on the island are Laysan Albatross.  In fact, 71% of the world's population - more than 452,000 pairs (over 1 million individuals) - breeds on Midway.  Street Viewing your way around the island these birds are absolutely everywhere - on the runway, near the shore, in the bushes.  So incredible.  Wisdom, a 62-year old Laysan Albatross, also lives on the island.  I tried to find her in Street View but could not (where's the green building shown here?). 

Also numerous are Black-footed Albatross, including some with their faces blurred for some reason.  There are more than 25,000 breeding pairs of these guys on Midway.  There are also one or two Short-tailed Albatross on Midway, but I couldn't find them in Street View.

 

The island is also covered with the beautiful White Tern. In Street View they can be seen flying around almost everywhere, but above are some I caught in a tree.  Gray-backed and Sooty Tern also breed at Midway, but on the other island.

It's difficult to tell, but perched in that tree is a Great Frigatebird. Check for the long split tail. I'm sure there are other shots of these birds in the air in Street View, but I couldn't find them.

Finally, this is a noddy, I think a Brown Noddy.

Great times Street View birding on Midway. I encourage others to check it out, for the spectacle alone. If you find any additional species, let me know.

This Google project is especially nice because these shots were taken in June 2012, just a year after a tsunami did major damage to the island's bird population. If you wonder whether the scientists of the island are proud to have their work catalogued in this way, check out this Street View shot from the middle of the island. Good work to all involved.

Google Street View Birding

Ah, March.  I'm tired of all the winter birds, and spring birds haven't come yet.  Plus, I'm stuck in the office most of the time and it's cold and it's raining probably.  What's a bored birder to do but dream of birding in faraway lands and in warmer temps? 

I was perusing Google Street View the other day when it dawned on my that it just might be the cure for my March birding blues.  A car travelling all of America's roads taking 360 degree video must have seen a few birds along the way, right?  How many could I find?  My task instantly overwhelming my brain, I cancelled all my other appointments (none), asked my secretary to hold my calls (I don't have a secretary and no one was calling), and set to work.

Turns out, birding on Street View is a lot harder than I thought.  Some of the images were taken more than 5 years ago, and the resolution isn't any good.  Sometimes, the weather was bad.  Mostly, though, there's just so many places to search!  There's a new set of images every 10 feet or so, and scanning the images looking for winged needles in the haystack is quite the endeavor.  I searched for gulls in Maine with no luck; Bald Eagles in Homer, AK but came up empty; couldn't even begin to think of where to look for roadside Red-tails. 

I started to focus by looking for gulls on causeways, figuring gulls were big and easy to ID and often flew right next to bridges.  Along Route 1 in the Florida Keys, I found my first hit: Laughing Gulls (click to enlarge).

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