Birds at Large: Apartments.com Super Bowl Commercial and a Huge Revelation

Everyone, even birders, watches the Super Bowl. And everyone who watches the Super Bowl watches the commercials.

So, lots of birders saw the Apartments.com commercial starring Jeff Goldblum. If you missed it, here it is again.  Pay particular attention to Jeff Goldblum's piano as it's being pulled up the side of the building.

Yep, a gull. Here are some screenshots, in case you missed it.

When happening in real time, it was hard to get a good look at the bird and figure out what it was. It was small, but not immediately familiar. Of course, the Bird Internet being as it is, we were on the case immediately.

I sent out a quick tweet:

Responses started flying. The red bill was something that stood out in people's minds, so...black-headed gull? Laughing? But there was no black on the head, even smudges or spots. My buddy Doug Hitchcox was on the case, too, as birders started to look internationally for an answer:

Within four minutes of the ad being shown, we came to a conclusion: a Silver Gull, the most common gull in Australia. A text from my friend Jason assured me that the North American Gulls Facebook Group - I would link but it's a closed group - had reached the same conclusion even more quickly.

So, how'd the get an Australian gull? Not sure. The ad was created by the RPA agency, based in Santa Monica. No help there.

But some easy Googling helped me to an answer. I did a quick search for companies in LA that lend animals for entertainment productions. A couple click's took me to the website for Benay's Bird and Animal Rentals.  I clicked over to the Wild/Backyard Type Birds page and scrolled down to gulls and, there you have it: a silver gull.  Mystery solved. 

But wait, there's more. 

Complaining about the miscasting of birds in television and the movies is a foundation of what I do here. I'm constantly annoyed that non-native birds are being passed off as the real deal. So, I wasn't really prepared to read this disclaimer at the top of Benay's Wild/Backyard-Type Birds page:

Due to the Migratory Bird [Treaty] Act, it is ILLEGAL to use our native birds in the United States. So, in order to abide by this FEDERAL law, and also provide man types and varieties of birds that could be used for shots that require birds that look native, we have the LARGEST collection of working, non native species [of] birds to fill that void. To the average person, the birds we have ... would not be odd to see in their backyards. Some of these look similar to our native species!

Holy. Shit.

So, despite my giving grief to what I just figured were careless directors, native birds couldn't be used as actors no matter what!  The apologetic wording of that disclaimer also tells me that directors clearly are looking for native birds, and these guys have to just steer them elsewhere.

I ... I am reeling here. My life has been a lie, a mean lie.  I need to apologize.

Apologies to you, Big Bang Theory.  Sorry, Dos Equis. Mea culpa, Mountain Dew.  Apologies to anyone I've insulted in my long history of insulting for using a non-native bird in something set in the U.S.

Of course, it's not illegal to use the sounds of a native bird. There's still no excuse for that (it's even easier to get right than using animal actors), so y'all still on watch.

Birds at Large: 2013 World Series

How did I miss this?

My favorite team, playing in a World Series game that I 100% watched, and I miss a bird clearly flying behind an outfielder on national TV? I missed it! I am slipping in my old age. I am slipping.

After splitting the first two games of the 2013 World Series, the Red Sox and Cardinals left Boston to play game 3 in St. Louis.  They played a tense game, eventually won 2-1 by the Cardinals after an unprecedented game-ending obstruction call on Red Sox 3B Will Middlebrooks. The Cardinals took at 2-1 series lead but eventually lost to my mighty Red Sox, 4-2.

But something interesting happened back in the third inning of Game 3, something that until now had eluded my knowledge. With one out in the inning, Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday popped a fly-ball to shallow centerfield off of pitcher Jake Peavy. Red Sox centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury - soon to depart to the hated Yankees - charged in towards the ball but misplayed it - lost in the lights, most likely - and the ball dropped onto the field. The dutiful Holliday had run out the fly to first, and made a few steps towards second when he saw the ball drop. However, Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia fielded the carom and alertly threw the ball to first, picking Holliday off and rendering moot the error.

Thank you for indulging me in baseball talk.

Anyway, something extremely interesting appeared behind Jacoby Ellsbery in the FOX reply of his blunder: a dang ol' bird.  A bird - a passerine! - clearly flops to the ground right behind Jacoby. Weird, wild stuff.

What species is it, though?

Take a closer look at the GIF above, or go to the 1:30:21 mark on the YouTube video to see the bird flap awkwardly towards the ground and thump down, facing right.

A noted Cardinals fan, the ABA's Nate Swick noticed the bird during the live broadcast and quickly posted to Facebook that the bird looked like a yellow-rumped warbler. Nate was of course limited to the single replay on the live broadcast and didn't have the luxury of an endless looping GIF and YouTube. I don't think it's a yellow-rump.

I wanted to get some experts to weigh in, so I posed the question on Twitter.

Responses were all over the bird. Mockingbird? Redstart? Something?

It's tough to say. Let's think about what we know. First, it's October 27 in Missouri. That's late in the year, after the majority of migration is over. It's also fall, that time of year when migratory birds are drab and there are lots of youngsters around in whatever plumages they might have.

As for the bird itself, it's brownish above and, thanks for some clear image-grabbing from Nate, pretty solidly white below.

Just after this image, the bird banks back and its topside and tail are visible, as shown in the image at the top. The bird appears to have pale greater (and primary?) coverts - though I actually think it's just  a trick of the eye.  In some frames the bird appears to have a pale rump / upper tail coverts, in other frames there appears to be a dark center line to the tail with maybe pale sides, but in both cases the bird shows a very dark tail, even black in the early frames.

So, uh, what the heck is it?

My guess is (drumroll, please) Eastern Phoebe. It generally fits the patterning of the bird in the video: brown/gray above, white below, light throat (best visible in the video when the bird is sitting in the grass), and long, dark tail. It's common in the St. Louis area in October. Also, though I've never heard of this behavior, it's conceivable that, being a flycatcher, it could be attracted to the insects that congregate around bright stadium lights. Maybe?

I'd love to be proven wrong. Go for it. And, go Red Sox!