Under the promising title “Of Fishes, Birds, and Reptiles,” it promised masterpieces of natural history illustration from the imperial collections–just up my alley, and how nice to get to spend some time in that familiar library someplace other than the dingy old manuscripts room.

And in fact there were some nice paintings hanging and some fancy early prints in the cases. Giorgio Liberale’s works for Ferdinand II were splendid, and the leaves from the Musaeum belonging to Rudolf II let us look into the private library of one of the early Baroque’s most interesting natural history collectors.

So why did we leave feeling like our 12 euros could have been better spent on coffee and cake? (As an apostate academic, I don’t get in free anywhere anymore.)

There are shows whose individual objects are so spectacular that they carry the entire experience. And there are shows whose ingenious narrative structures can get you through even the otherwise dreariest of exhibits. “Von Fischen, Vögeln und Reptilien” was of neither sort. The images on display were all show and no tell, and the simple chronological structure of the whole thing let even the specialized interest flag after a while. It shouldn’t be up to the visitor, for example, to somehow just know that one of the paintings was among the earliest ever to show actual feet on a bird-of-paradise; that’s the job of the curators, who should be responsible for pointing out odd facts like that and telling the stories that will make a trip to the exhibit memorable. The catalogue didn’t do it for me, either, and I buy exhibit catalogues almost like an addict buys, well, coffee and cake.

A couple of days later we found ourselves in Vienna’s grand old Natural History Museum.

I’ve loved this place for years, decades, now, in spite of–no, precisely because of–its resolutely old-fashioned, exhaustively systematic take on the natural world.

There aren’t many museums left that dare present, say, half a dozen rooms of neatly hand-labeled rocks in mineralogical sequence, and the sheer nineteenth-century confidence of it all is overwhelming and ultimately seductive. Here’s nature, have a look!

Since my last visit, though, there have been many innovations, some small and clever, some big and imposing. There are far more “mockups” now than there used to be, from dinosaur models dressed in chicken and turkey feathers

to an animatronic beast roaring and weaving its frightening head above the delighted crowds of mock-terrified toddlers. (Click for video.)

My favorite this time was a temporary exhibition called “Katzengold und Silberfisch,” full of whimsical reminders that some minerals are named for animals and some animals for minerals. Words, things: right up my alley.

And this time it was. There wasn’t much to it: no ooh-aah rarities, no clever texts, just Ruby Topazes and rubies and topazes. And a Lazuli Bunting lying innocently beneath a slab of lapis lazuli.

Three cheers.

The canard is repeated in some recent guides for casual and beginning birders, too. I’m surprised: we all know that many groups traditionally considered “difficult” become less challenging if you start not at the head but at the tail.

Think about it. In the northern hemisphere, at least, the defining behavior of the class Aves is flight, an activity accomplished with two groups of feathers: the remiges and the rectrices. The shapes and relative lengths of the flight feathers of wing and tail are anything from suggestive to species-specific in many birds, and they are most easily and most quickly gauged by checking the rear end of a perched bird. And best of all, those shapes and relative lengths are often consistent across age and sex classes.

Every birder has her own favorite examples, from shorebirds to swallows, but here in southeast Arizona in June, we’re all looking at hummingbirds–and at their tails, not at the glittering, dazzling distractions of the males’ gorgets.

Try this one:

I’d like to claim that the photo looks like this on purpose, but I’ll confess that it reflects my incompetence as a photographer rather than any devilish skill as a setter of quizzes. In any event, I’m fairly confident that anyone trying to identify this bird by starting at the bill will be stymied; there’s just not enough of the bird’s front end visible in this fortuitously (and for our purposes felicitously) poor image.

Stumped? Not at all. Start at the tail, that big, broad, long, dark, forked tail, and I don’t think you can wind up anywhere but at Broad-billed Hummingbird (knowing that we’re in southeast Arizona, of course). Indeed, the tail shape and pattern can be one of the best ways for those not familiar with the two species to distinguish the abundant Broad-billed from the much scarcer White-eared, whose shorter, blunter, narrower tail is green in the center.

What about your local hummingbird or hummingbirds? Next time you get to hang out at a busy feeder, tear your eyes away from the scintillations of the adult males’ heads and focus on the tails. Whether it’s distinguishing Anna’s and Costa’s or Broad-tailed and Calliope or just getting to know your neighborhood Ruby-throateds better, you’ll find a whole new way to identify birds. A better one, too.

Some such hybrids are pretty obvious, like this apparent Mallard x Northern Pintail.

In many cases, though, the putative parent species are so similar to begin with, and their offspring so variable, that distinguishing between a “pure” individual and a hybrid can be a real challenge.

This gull at Clover Point this past weekend, for example, showed the mix of Western and Glaucous-winged Gull characters typical of our local “Puget Sound Gull”: a darkish mantle, blackish wingtips above, faintly marked wingtips below, and an orbital ring mixed yellow and red.

And this goose, hanging out in a Tucson park this winter, could easily have been mistaken for a Ross’s Goose without a closer look at the long bill with a slight “grin patch.”

These are old stories and familiar, but lately I’ve been thinking about when birders look for (and find) hybrids. What it comes down to is markedness, or which potential parent taxon is deemed the default. This varies geographically, of course: in the east, a reddish Northern Flicker will be scrutinized, while over much of the west it’s the apparently yellow-shafted birds that draw special attention.

But I don’t think that markedness is always just about rarity and vagrancy. Even in those areas–and there are more and more of them as time goes on–where, say, Snow and Ross’s Geese are equally expected, it’s only the apparent Ross’s that are inspected for signs of hybridization: how often have you heard anyone cautiously report “an apparently pure Snow Goose,” even in places like southeast Arizona where both white geese are uncommonish? Nobody ever objects that a tentative Snow Goose’s bill is a bit short or the head a bit round or the plumage a bit white.

Even more strikingly, here in Vancouver I notice that birders (by which I mean mostly myself) readily pass over the slightly uncommon Myrtle Warblers, while subjecting the more abundant Audubon’s Warblers to a much more thorough examination. Adult male Audubon’s types with white in the throat or lightly marked wing coverts? Probable hybrids! But I simply tick the Myrtles; even when I linger over a particularly snazzy one (they are really very beautiful), I more often than not wind up moving on without checking it over at all as carefully as I do the yellow-throated birds. But surely there are hybrids that more closely resemble Myrtles than Audubon’s, aren’t there?

The lesson that I’ve drawn from these musings? Start to treat all the birds I see as “marked,” as potentially something different and weird–as worth looking at more closely than I already do. Who knows what I’ll find now?

I’d gone in hopes of passerine migrants, and there were plenty of Audubon’s (and a couple of Myrtle) Warblers and Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets around. But the best bird of the morning was a falcon, a tiny male American Kestrel that floated south through the bunny theater, sending the Golden-crowned and White-crowned Sparrows scampering off into the brush.

Bigger raptors were easy to find, of course: just listen to the Northwestern Crows.

I was standing underneath this adult Bald Eagle, trying unsuccessfully to read the band on its right tarsus, when a tiny woman on a bicycle paused to tell me that if I wanted to see an eagle, I should try Spanish Banks.

I might have stammered a little as I thanked her, but by now, after a year and a bit in Vancouver, I’m pretty much used to it. People here know that there are eagles around, they know it’s a big deal, but not one in a hundred has ever seen one–even when they’re looking straight at them.

I have no idea how many occupied nests are within easy walking distance of our apartment, but just offhand I can think of three; birds from those aeries and unattached non-breeders are in the sky pretty much constantly, visible and often audible from even the busiest Vancouver street.

It’s no great surprise that most Vancouverites don’t notice them, big and noisy as they (the eagles!) are. But the fact that they still talk about them, that they assume that anyone with binoculars must be out looking for eagles, speaks volumes about the cultural weight of these birds. Just knowing they’re out there really matters to the locals, whether they know what they look like or not.

Like most of us, I like my sparrows just a little on the trashy side. Here in urban Vancouver, most of the brushy tangles frequented by birds like Oregon Spotted Towhees and Golden-crowned Sparrows are made up of some pretty nasty non-natives, especially Himalayan blackberry.

Until this winter, the tangles came right up to this path in Jericho Park, making the bench from which this photo was taken a magical place to watch secretive thicket birds at close range.

Early this year, the friends of the park got in there and whacked it so that they could  have room for a new sign–touting their “enhancement” of the habitat.

I’m torn. On the one hand, the fewer invasive brambles, the better. On the other, the more cover–whatever its origin, whatever its nature–the better. It doesn’t improve things, either, that bare spots prove so attractive to the scofflaw dog crowd, many of whom seem unable to walk the remaining 30 yards to throw their poop sacks in the garbage can.

The birding at my magic bench was all right this morning, but I couldn’t help wondering how much better it would have been with the habitat–trashy, non-native, invasive habitat–intact.

Surely I’m not the only one to have grown up with the notion that shrikes impale their prey because their toes are too weak to hold it. This old chestnut persists, repeated even in BNA:

“[I]mpaling behavior represents a unique adaptation to the problem of eating large prey without benefit of the stronger feet and talons of raptors.”

I’ve been a skeptic ever since I saw my very first Northern Shrike, thirty or so years ago, carrying a hapless American Tree Sparrow in its feet. And today I saw another Northern, a first-winter bird, effortlessly hauling a Song Sparrow through the air–again, holding its prey clenched in its little talons as it flew 100 yards or so against the wind into a thicket.

Clearly, shrikes’ feet are plenty strong to hold even large and potentially squirmy edibles. So why do they impale their lunch?

It’s probably obvious to everybody but me. The shrike I watched this morning wedged his emberizid snack into the crotch of two branchlets, then hopped off to take a position beside the sparrow before plucking it. Aha. The masked bandit’s feet aren’t too weak: they’re too short, and probably set too far back on the body, for the bill to reach an object they hold.

No time to make a model laniid and experiment with the insertion point of the legs, delightful as that sounds, but I’m betting that I’m right. What do you think?

Can't remember ever seeing a Loggerhead Shrike carry prey in its feet, though.

I haven’t seen one of the little guys yet this autumn, at least not a living one. This individual had probably hit a wire in Ladner, British Columbia, Thursday night, and was lying on the roadside Friday morning.

I don’t have a salvage permit any more, so the staff at Reifel Refuge went out and picked it up for their collection. A better fate perhaps than being passed around like a live plush toy, the way so many banded birds are this time of year.

The rushing streams of Peru’s Andes are about as different as can be from the sluggish rivers of Amazonia. And naturally enough, the birds are different, too. In the lowlands at Cachuela, we were excited to see a pair of very rare Brazilian Teal, while the mountain rivers produced the aptly named Torrent Duck. And where we’d enjoyed watching Capped Herons and Rufescent Tiger-Herons on quiet jungle ponds, this noisy Andean freshet gave me my first look ever at Fasciated Tiger-Heron, a bird I’d long wanted to see if for nothing more than its strange name.

Stocky, secretive, and weird, tiger-herons are among my favorite ardeids. The genus Tigrisoma is named for the heavily barred plumage of juveniles; the species name fasciatum refers to the same character.

“Fasciated” is a word nearly as strange as the animal itself. When used in description of animals, it usually means “banded” or “barred.”  The word occurs in the English or scientific names of everything from Pale-browed Tinamou to Black-bellied Wren; but in a number of avian cases, it’s not at all clear just what fasciation is being referred to. I certainly don’t think of Wrentit as heavily barred, or Band-tailed Pigeon. In some instances, the word appears to be used instead in the rather diluted sense of “striped,”  which explains such names as trifasciatus for the Three-banded Warbler, a modest Basileuterus with three crown stripes. I suppose that it refers to the big pigeon’s tailband, but I’m at a complete loss as to what is fasciated about Wrentits, if anything–and without access to Gambel’s original description, I may never know. Help, anyone?

One thing I do know is how to pronounce the word. This isn’t a plover/plover or pileated/pileated matter; there is actually a correct pronunciation of “fasciated,” and the vowel of the first syllable is the same as that in “fasces,” “fascia,” “fascicle.” It’s not hard.

I’ve given some thought over the past few days, too, to what I’m hoping for in the next occupant of that musical chair, that is to say, what type of person with what types of qualities I’d like to see representing the ABA to the birding community. I haven’t seen the formal job description prepared by the ABA board, and it’s possible (it’s almost certain) that their preferences are not identical to mine, but that said, as a simple ABA member with no influence over the decisions reached by this latest hiring committee, I can think of several qualifications that I, as a simple ABA member with no influence over the decisions reached by this latest hiring committee, would think of as sine quibus non:

Our new president must be a birder, and a birder of a certain kind. It’s absurd to hire someone who knows nothing about the sport that is the focus of the organization, but it’s important to hire someone with a great deal of sympathy for new and beginning birders; the ideal president would be an elite birder without the least tendency to elitism, someone who while entirely at home in American birding culture also has a thorough understanding of the “outsiders” not yet part of that culture. It’s important to remember that what attracts potential birders is not necessarily a mentor’s expertise but the kindness, generosity, and pedagogic sensitivity with which s/he communicates that expertise. I would love to see a president who can lead a group of beginners, talk to a class of children, and write clearly and precisely about, say, molt or geographic variation or any of the other “cutting edge” topics that interest intermediate and advanced birders. To my mind, we need a person who can bring something to everyone, not just to the experts and not just to the wealthy traveling set. Only in that way would the ABA overcome its undeserved reputation as an organization for the hotshots, and only in that way will the membership grow and diversify.

I believe, too, that our new president should have a history with the organization and a familiarity with its workings. A healthy and well functioning organization might not need that sort of a priori knowledge, but the ABA has reached the point that whoever comes on board needs to hit the ground running (to mix a metaphor or two). There is no time to bring someone entirely innocent up to speed. Ideally, the successful candidate would not only be a long-time member, but would also have experience over the years as a volunteer or even as a member of the ABA staff.

I also think it important that the new president know–and enjoy the confidence of–the current staff and those members of the board of directors who stay on after the hiring. Very little has been said of this in public, but it is the professional ABA staff, hard-working and underpaid, who have suffered most day to day from the poor hiring decisions of the board, and I would want to know that the new president would understand and have the intellectual capacity to support the staff’s efforts when he or she finds them meritorious.

Nearly as important is the relationship between the president and the board. I would hope for a president whose confidence and sense of right would be strong enough to resist poor ideas and unsound advice; that confidence is likely found only in someone who already has experience in working with the board of a non-profit organization. I suspect that anyone with that sort of experience will also have dealt with fundraising, an important part of any president’s portfolio given the state of the ABA’s finances.

All of these skills and qualities, of course, are no good if they’re hidden under the institutional bushel. An occasional half page in Winging It just doesn’t cut it when it comes to inspiring enthusiasm among the membership. The new president must be someone with experience, expertise, and a sense of excitement about “new media.” It is no overstatement to say, as others have time and again, that most of the newest crop of birders finds a greater and more satisfying sense of community on the internet than in a club or organization. One of the ways the ABA can regain the position of leadership in that community is to establish a strong and consistent online voice that is distinctly and distinctively ABA; the organization, through its president, should seem like something everyone would want to be part of.

Whoever takes this job on is going to be walking uphill for a long time–but if she or he can save an organization so dear to my heart, it’ll be more than worth it. Here’s wishing the hiring committee a healthy dose of wisdom!

The proposals can be read here. If you think it helpful, please pass the link on to your friends and colleagues so that any proposals ultimately laid before the membership have benefited from the scrutiny and the contributions of as many of us as possible.

Meanwhile, be sure to keep up with the discussion proceeding at Kenn and Kim Kaufman’s blog, where excellent ideas and explanations continue to appear in the “comments” section.

One striking thing among many other striking things to have come to light is just how many really fine candidates for office in the organization have been rejected by the board–it’s almost as if the board didn’t want anything to change, didn’t want to work with someone competent and honest.