Sausage Dogs

I love Richard Crossley's off-beat descriptions of birds in his fascinating new guide.  Pithy, colorful, and often a hilarious break from the clinical precision of Sibley and Nat Geo. Here's what he calls the Ruddy Turnstone:

"A bird with real character:  the 'sausage dog" of shorebirds.  Walks quickly, seeming to sniff around like a terrier, head close to the ground, looking for anything edible. ... Pocket battleship ..."

Sausage Dogs, Halibut Point State Park, Cape Ann, MA (Aug. 26, 2011)

Looking for anything edible

Good birding!

How Well do you Remember Bird Colors?

As it turns out, I have lousy visual memory for colors.  That is, when I compared my color recall to that of others in the Bird Color Challenge at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  As part of the development of its Merlin Project, an impression-based bird ID tool in the works, the CLO is asking birders to take a simple quiz on what colors they recall after seeing a picture of a bird for 5 seconds.  The quiz is addicting, and it builds a database of color associations for Merlin.

Have fun!

R.I.P. AOU?

After the recent AOU shakeup in nomenclature, including the end of dendroica, comes the news that the AOU itself might be no more. Actually, any change that involves the inclusion of South American ornithological societies is a good one.  A new society with hemispheric oversight is being tentatively called the Society for Ornithology, or SFO. 

Meantime, we are on vacation in Maine at a pond with at least six loons (including one juvenile) but few other birds.  Perhaps because it has been raining for two days?  Once the rain stopped, though, a family group of Blackburnians began showing up regularly in the morning and early evening; very hard to see, but I did get one good look at an adult female feeding a juvenile.

Cedar Waxwings seem to love this area. Here's one shot from a nearby marsh.

Cedar Waxwings, Raymond Pond marsh, Cumberland County, Maine (full frame, click to enlarge)

There is no such thing as boring August birding!

Pelagic Birding

I'm new to pelagic birding, having been on a total of two, count them, two whale watching trips to date. Last Friday on what is now a summer tradition my family took the Seven Seas Whale Watch out of Gloucester. Like last summer, the whales were nearly 30 miles southwest, off Provincetown, which meant a long cruise and, hopefully, lots of birds. Well, we did have the long cruise, but it was overcast, windy, and choppy, with virtually no surface feeding going on, if the whales were any indication.  But they played by the boats and offered easy pictures.  Truly charismatic megafauna. My daughter just hung at the rail in silent awe. 

Have I mentioned that taking decent shots of whales by the boat is not hard?

All shots of a 30-year-old Humpback (click for full size)

What few birds we had (scarcely a dozen Great Shearwater, two Gannets, three Laughing Gulls, a Common Tern, a couple Cory's Shearwater, the usual gulls, and about a hundred Wilson's Storm Petrel) were maddeningly hard to photograph, as no one was feeding.  I got off with a couple half-way decent exceptions out of nearly 400 shots (half of them attempts to catch a WISP in flight).  It was my first pelagic with a longer lens, so a learning experience. Click all for full size.

Probably a first-summer Greater Black Backed, with missing P10

Great Shearwater

Herring Gull

Good birding!

The 52nd Supplement to the AOU Checklist

The 52nd Supplement is out.  Here is the article in The Auk.

Camp Birding

What was it like to be outside before I began birding?  I often forget, but one measure is how much the simple pleasures of car camping have changed.

Last weekend my family met friends at Lake Dennison Recreation Area in Winchendon. Lovely lake, nice campsites, pretty quiet.  That is, until a thunderous Ovenbird woke me at 5am.  I wonder how many times I've heard Ovenbirds while camping but not really "heard" them? Here are some of my notes:

Setting up camp: hmm, two pine warblers, red-eyed across the street. Ah, ovenbird very nearby.

Fetching fire wood: red-eyed while driving out, another across the road from where we always buy wood.

Dinner: three pine warblers, actually. Fly-by hairy, distant redbelly.

Next morning, early: teacher-Teacher-TEACHER! Cardinals, a downy rattle, chickadee.

Later, making coffee: the red-eyed is trying to get me to think its a yellow-throated; might have to investigate.  White breasted (with all the pines, there might be red breasted about).

Late morning, we hiked up Mt. Watatic. Lovely hike, pretty quiet, until midway: Black Throated Green. Higher: Wood ... no, listen to the ending and cadence ... Hermit!

And then, what you're waiting for, something you don't know. My notes read "tee-tee-[long warble]-trill, a bit buzzy-[shorter warble]-trill-warble.  Hmm ... file that away in memory to research later (yes, it was a Purple Finch; mature mixed pine and hardwoods at about 1200ft)

Then, something else I didn't exactly recognize, although it was certainly a warbler: rising zee-zee-tee-tee-zee. That didn't take too much work—it's the alternate song of the BT Green, and there were at least three singing this version (one seen).

Then, before the trees opened onto the summit, another Hermit, close by.

On the summit, kids madly scramble for blueberries, and not a raptor in sight.

Yes, birding changes things.

And as we were packing up, a tiny, nasal toy horn tooted just twice in farewell.

Birds of Summer

My family and I were visiting friends in Southampton, Mass, and they live in a lovely, birdy hollow.  On a warm, humid afternoon we could hear, but never see Wood Thrush, Veery, Red Eyed Vireos, several Scarlet Tanagers, and of course, the classic bird of summer, the Ovenbird.  There were two holding their territories on either side of the stream. One stepped out to see what we were up to.

click to enlarge

Happy Fourth!