Archive for June, 2006
A Couple of Tough Ones
Posted by: | CommentsI love showing people birds, and I really like it when my clients come with a “wish list.” But there are a couple of species that make me cringe: rare birds, reclusive birds, tough ones. Luddy has had great luck with his targets the last three days. But there were still two to clean up on today: Gray Vireo and Flammulated Owl.
I was confident that we would hear the vireo, and sure enough, when we got out of the car at the first site, a Gray Vireo was singing way down in the bottom of the inaccessible canyon. We diverted ourselves with Black-chinned Sparrows and Scott’s Orioles, but no amount of fervent wishing could bring the vireo up to the road. So relucantly we moved on to the next site, which has always been less reliable for me. Not so today! We waited for just a few minutes as the song got louder and louder, and soon we had a fine Gray Vireo feeding and singing in the brush just a few feet away from us. Whew. And early enough in the day that we could take a few hours’ break in the afternoon.
We needed it, too, since the remaining species on Luddy’s list was Flammulated Owl. I dislike ‘taping’ birds, but there’s really no other way, especially this time of year, when most of our owls have gone silent. So we stood in the dusk, enjoying the sounds of Acorn Woodpeckers and Yellow-eyed Juncos mixing with the buzzy chant of the Mexican Whip-poor-wills, and then I played the tape. Within 15 minutes, a Flammulated Owl had answered, and it sang, a bit half-heartedly, for several minutes, never coming very close, but identifiable. At point, we saw (a word rarely used when talking about flammy) a tiny owl flash across the sky, but of course we couldn’t find it in the trees, and there is no way to know whether it was really the author of the hoots that came down the slope at us a bit later. Still, better than nothing, and Luddy could go home after a truly enjoyable few days with the magic 700 in sight!
Southeast Arizona
Posted by: | CommentsWe were pretty tired after yesterday’s exertions, so decided to take it easy and drive around southeast Arizona today. I met Luddy at the luxurious hour of 6:30, and we set off south for Kino Springs. It’s still on the early side for the ponds to be at their peak, but we were not disappointed: Tropical Kingbirds called and fed at the clubhouse pond, and the edges were full of Varied Buntings and Blue Grosbeaks, a foretaste, I hope, of the Passerina show to come later in the summer. The “first” pond, the one closer to the highway, hosted a few Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons, with Gray Hawks in the sky above.
Patagonia Lake did not produce the hoped-for Marsh Wren, but a Western Grebe floating in the center was consolation indeed.
It turned out that IÂ was cavalier in telling Luddy that the becard at the roadside rest would be no problem; we waited for an hour with nothing more than a tantalizing vocalization or two in the distance (a distance, by the way, full of Lesser Goldfinches making their becard-like whines). A family of Gray Hawks was noisy, if for the most part invisible, in the giant sycamores, and a Black Vulture rose up from the cliffs where it had been roosting with the abundant Turkey Vultures.
Mrs. Paton’s yard was slow by the exalted standards of Patagonia, but that just meant that we had time to appreciate even more the Violet-crowned Hummingbirds and abundant Blue Grosbeaks at the feeders. A Lark Sparrow came so close to us while we rested in the shade that we held our breath, wondering if it might walk across our shoes!
Onward, onward, pausing at Ramsey Canyon to talk to Priscilla, then to Ash Canyon for the hummingbird show. Mary Jo’s B&BÂ has the most comfortable chairs in Arizona, and we took turns rousing each other from post-prandial revery whenever a Lucifer Hummingbird dropped in. Subtle individual variations in plumage seem to be more easily detected in this species than in others, and we ended up with what I counted as 4 birds, 2 males and 2 females.
Tonight’s owling will be postponed until tomorrow, thanks to the RAIN that fell this evening!
Little Birds in the Pajaritos
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s raining this evening, and Luddy and I have decided to take the night off, postponing our owling until tomorrow. We’ve had a busy, and very productive, couple of days!
Yesterday morning, June 28, we made the long drive to the aptly named Pajaritos, the mountains of the little birds. Sycamore Canyon was as beautiful as ever, and we enjoyed the walk as much as we enjoyed the birds–which included our major target for the morning, a singing, feeding, almost-on-your-shoulder Rufous-capped Warbler. Just as exciting for me were the raptors, which included a Zone-tailed Hawk and, more surprisingly, a pair of vocal Common Black-Hawks just overhead late in the morning; where they came from, and where they were headed, is a mystery. Gray Hawks have fledged, and the screams of the juveniles were with us all morning.
One of these days I’m going to walk cross-country from Sycamore to California Gulch, but we decided, prudently, to drive the 7 or 8 miles. It was noon when we arrived, but we decided that we would walk down to the sparrow areas and simply wait for cooler temperatures and singing birds. No need: a Five-striped Sparrow was perched high on the slope, singing his heart out, and while we stood in admiration, he decided to fly down to another, much closer perch, where we had great views of one of the most beautiful members of the most beautiful genus of North American sparrows.
It was a long wait ’til dusk, then, but we distracted ourselves by wandering around the old Oro Blanco minesite, enjoying common birds such as Vermilion Flycatcher and Blue Grosbeak. A few Gambel’s Quail gave us a start at one point, but it was not until 6:00 that two pairs of Montezuma Quail emerged from the grass to perform their evening ablutions, dusting in front of us for an hour. I’d been confident that we would find this species, but had begun to worry a little when we’d been in the habitat for 13 hours without turning it up!
At dusk, an Elf Owl yelped a few times against the aural tapestry of Common Poorwills. Finally, about 8:30, one or maybe two Buff-collared Nightjars began to sing, and with that we made our way back home. Long day, but a good one!
Why and the Bird
Posted by: | CommentsI sometimes feel sorry for the young reporters assigned the “bird beat”: their editor hears about a field trip or a birding festival, and before you know it the new kid finds herself getting up in the dark and stumbling onto a bus with a bunch of chattering birdwatchers (“birders,” as they politely insist). And then the questions start–only it isn’t the reporter asking them. How long have you been birding? (Uh, 15 minutes.) What’s your life list? (Hey, look at that black bird over there on the ground with the long tail.) What kind of binoculars do you use? (Kind of figured the photographer would let me use his telephoto.)
The bus pulls up at the birding spot, a scrubby patch of woods just like every other scrubby patch of woods passed in the last 100 miles, only probably fuller of mosquitoes and snakes and poison ivy and rabid wolverines. The birdwatchers, birders, whatever, pile out and start hissing names into the sky as if they had a bad case of mass Tourette’s. But at least they’re distracted, and the reporter can dig out her notebook and start posing some questions of her own. She works her way in with subtle variations on the same queries put to her on the bus, dutifully noting that the shabbily clad old man with the British accent has been birding for 672 years, that his life list is up to 8 by 42, and that his preferred binoculars are manufactured at Porro Prison. This isn’t so hard!
And then, in a birdless moment, our young journalist opens her notebook and sends forth the question she so cleverly worked out the evening before: Why do you do this? The very veeries and vireos fall silent in the woods, and the birders only stare. Why do we do it? How can you answer a question like that? How can you ask a question like that? Isn’t it obvious? Where have you been for the last hour and a half?
Some of us in the group have heard the question before, of course, and we trot out the answers we’ve used in the past in the same situation. It gets us outdoors, it introduces us to like-minded people, it can be a contribution to science (oops: Science), it sublimates the hunting urge, it’s another way to collect things, and on and on. We reel these answers off by rote as our young scribe scribbles, then turn our attention to the hawk overhead or the warbler in the woodland edge. These are the answers that appear in the local paper the next morning, illustrated (inevitably) with a mug shot of the dorkiest looking member of the whole dorky group and (inevitably) a blurry portrait of a house finch labeled “mourning warbler.” And maybe they’re the right answers for some birders. But they don’t do it for me.
Ask me the question in a serious mood, and I’ll probably change it silently before answering it. You want to know why, but I’m more willing to tell you how: that my father was a science teacher, that we moved when I was 12 across town to a new habitat with new and unfamiliar birds, that my best friend in junior high had been introduced to birding by his mother. I reveal the mundane details of my early adolescence, you nod sagely, and we leave history behind and get on with our birding.
But why is a different and a much harder question. Could I as easily have become a herper, an iris breeder, a fisherman, a chess master, a Studebaker buff? Are our hobbies interchangeable and their objects fungible? Is there a difference between the checkmarks on my negligently curated life list and the dusty salt-shakers on an old lady’s curio shelf? No, no, and I most certainly hope so!
The great appeal of birding, I think, an appeal not duplicated by any other hobby, is the way that it lets us move between the inside world and the outside, subject and object, ourselves and the targets of our avian obsession. Birds are insistently and demonstratively “other,” inaccessible in all but the rarest situations; yet they are everywhere, around us in every setting, from the Spruce Grouse on a mountaintop in Maine to the Rufous-collared Sparrow on a Quito sidewalk. At any day, in any place, we can see, identify, and put a name to a bird, taking possession of it in a way; but unless we are inveterate inspectors of roadkill, we are unlikely to hold it. We name the bird out loud and the bird flies off; we have and are had at the same time, enjoying the pleasures of acquisition almost simultaneously with the return to self. If this reminds you somewhat pruriently of something else, just listen to a birder gasp at the unexpected appearance of a rarity.
No other hobby can keep difference and identity, the objective and the subjective, so well suspended. For hunters, recreational banders, and porcelain collectors, the point is ownership, the assertion of the subject by acquisition of an object. For painters, bridge players, and bloggers, it’s all about losing the self in the elegance of creation. Birders, though, have it all: we own our objects even as we see them slip away, and we verbally create our enjoyment of them even as we admit their independence and inaccessibility. We are, for the moment, intensely aware of ourselves and our experiences, and of the world outside us that makes experience possible.
Maine Highlights
Posted by: | CommentsSo the 2006 ABA Convention is history! It was a great time, not just for the birds but for the birders I met or saw again, some of them for the first time in years. The convention trips as a whole turned up something like 185 species, and I saw (or heard: blasted vegetation!) around 135 myself, including
King Eider: the drake at Seawall Picnic Area in Acadia National Park.
Spruce Grouse: a life bird for me, a single male perched low in a tree atop Moosehead Mountain (I nearly missed it, snoozing in the sun).
Northern Fulmar: at least 2 light-morph birds on the pelagic trip (duh), swimming and flying at close range; a strong contender for most beautiful bird of the entire convention!
Manx Shearwater: I’d expected to see this species, but not in the numbers we had on the Thursday pelagic; there were at least 5.
Leach’s Storm-Petrel: though some 10,000 pairs breed in the area, they are usually out to sea during the day, returning only in the dark, so the 2 we had good looks at were a special treat.
American Bittern: one flying across the road in front of the van on Saturday was a major excitement for me; apologies to my sleeping passengers for waking them up!
Upland Sandpiper: moving to Arizona has meant that this bird, a familiar fixture everywhere else I’ve lived, has taken on the aura of the exotic.
Roseate Tern: decent views of a few at Petit Manan.
Arctic Tern: much more common than Roseate, this was still the “better bird” for me, as I’ve seen very few of them and those not for some time. I feel like I’m ready for the next ones that set down in southeast AZ! (May be a while, I suppose.)
Common Murre: I’d never seen this bird on the east coast before, so the small flocks at Petit Manan were a treat.
Atlantic Puffin: biggest numbers I’d ever seen, and the first time I’d ever found myself sorting through the puffins to look for something else!
Black Guillemot: always one of my favorites.
Razorbill: what can I say? The most elegant member of a family of snazzy dressers.
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher: numbers were lower than on my last visit to Maine, but it was still great to watch these little lemony guys singing away in the boreal forest.
Alder Flycatcher: I still react to this bird as if to a rarity, even in areas (like Maine) where it is common, conspicuous, and confiding. First time I’d ever stayed in a hotel where this bird was audible from the parking lot!
Boreal Chickadee: hands down the winner of the cutest-bird-ever award.
Tufted Titmouse: a bird singing at Newman Hill pond was apparently a good record for that far north in Maine.
Veery: the most romantic voice of the eastern forests, hypnotic in the dim light of dawn.
Swainson’s Thrush: the most beautiful of all the Catharus songs, and one I hadn’t heard for a couple of years.
Bicknell’s Thrush: stood us up, more or less, on Moosehead, but still a great bird to tick off.
Canada Warbler: great looks at this wonderful Wilsonia, one of 17 species of parulid for the week.
Nelson’s Sharp-tailed Sparrow: singing birds at Reid State Park were nice, though I have to admit that they really can’t hold a candle to the orange birds of the prairies.
Dark-eyed Junco: singing Slate-coloreds! Sometimes, just sometimes, I do miss the east.
Bobolink: spank-spink, Bobolink, in hayfields and on roadside wires; I was left wondering whether the bird is common enough and familiar enough today for anyone to bother writing a poem about it anymore.
Purple Finch: that song, in bogs and forests and wooded suburbs. My favorite sighting of this common bird was at a feeder on Kittridge Road–with House Finches singing from the wires across the street! Old Maine and new, the past and the future.
And I would be remiss not to note the mammals: Humpback Whale, Moose, Woodchuck, and the most wonderful Red Squirrels and Eastern Chipmunks ever. But none of them can beat Snowshoe Hares loping away from us on bog boardwalks and in oceanside forests.
