Pish

What do we have here?

2010-03-21T10:25:00.007-04:00

Poking around in the backyard, I came upon a large pile of ... something. It looked vaguely woody, with cool colors outlining its shape. Underneath it was an almost completely deteriorated log. It looked so much like wood, in fact, that at first I thought it was some kind of diseased wood. A closer look yielded the truth: this was a type of bracket fungus, helpfully decomposing some long-fallen tree limb and returning some nutrients to the yard.

Searching for similar images online, I came upon the always helpful Mushroom Expert, who helpfully informed me that what I had found was a "Turkey's Tail". Or that it wasn't. I really wanted to just call it a Turkey's Tail and have it at that. After all, it's been awhile since I posted, I just wanted to have an answer and be done with it. My natural inquisitiveness (that is, my inquisitiveness about nature) sat me down and convinced me to take a closer look at this fungus fruiting body.

Following the Mushroom Expert's schematic, I started having doubts when I came to the texture of the mushroom's cap. When I ran my thumb over the cap it didn't feel fuzzy exactly. I could kind of convince myself that maybe, perhaps, the sensation I was feeling could possibly be construed as fuzziness. But it wasn't really. It felt like rubbing your thumb on a piece of wood cut across the grain, not fuzzy but you can feel all of those little fibers. I snapped a piece off to take a look at the pore structure on the bottom. It seemed liked the pores were small, but I didn't measure. I was forlorn, at a loss--was this a Turkey's Tail or not?

The true Turkey's Tail--Trametes versicolor--belongs to the genus Trametes, which seems to be made up of saprobic bracket fungi, often exhibiting concentric rings of varying colors. The colors on the cap evoke the colors on a spread turkey tail, thus the name. How the common name became associated with T. versicolor and not one of the other Trametes spp., or, indeed, for the genus as a whole, I could not determine. But as the Mushroom Expert notes, people looking for other mushrooms, or other things entirely, might not stop to discern whether or not a pile of decomposing wood with a multicolored woody growth sprouting from it is in fact a T. versicolor. And while some clues weren't adding up, I was still fairly certain that that's what it was, because, I mean, it just looks like a Turkey's Tail!

A glance through some more image searching for various Trametes spp. turned up a photo on the Encyclopedia of Life that looked very similar to "my" mushroom and other photos of T. versicolor. The caption, however, called this Trametes ochracea. T. ochracea, T. ochracea, where had I heard that before? Oh yeah, at the very bottom of Mr. Mushroom Expert's schematic as the final option (which I take to mean "the most similar") of Turkey's Tail lookalikes. And the test between the two species: Is the fresh mushroom rigid and hard, or thin and flexible? Please, Dear Reader, recall that to look at the underside of the cap I had to "snap" a piece off. Rigid and hard! (That might yield some interesting hits.) T. ochracea! QED!

As this was going to press, I thought I would do one last internet search to find out anything unique about these fungi. I was well-rewarded. Not only is this genus one of the few groups of organisms that can successfully break down the lignin in woody plants (the actual substance that makes a plant woody), but, because of this ability to decompose an incredibly complex organic compound, this genus has been noted for its ability to break down a huge list of toxic organic chemicals. On that list? Cyanide. TNT. DDT. Sarin. PCBs. These fungi are silent workers that are responsible not only for breaking down the huge amount of material left in our forests, they also unbegrudgingly mop up our worst messes that might find their way into our soil, plantlife, or water table.

And now, having determined the answer, I left the mushroom to its important work, amazed at the slow, inexorable, and steady engine of the natural world, which would continue whether I had observed it or not. Amazing.

Sources:
Kuo, M. (2005, March). Trametes versicolor: The turkey tail. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/trametes_versicolor.html

What do we have here?

2009-08-03T19:17:00.006-04:00

Ah, they're back. One day, you're out in the yard and you see something peeking out from beneath the leaves:

To the right, ghostly forms pop up from the ground. You catch them uncurling:

Like a scene from a horror movie, you look around, and spy groups of these creatures rising up from the ground on all sides of you:

The wind through the dead trees seems to whisper, "Indian Pipes..." And that is what they are. I feel like there must be a comparatively large flurry of fingers typing out inquiries on Google each spring and summer as these flowers pop up out of the ground. That is precisely what I did last year when I first noticed them around the edge of our property. I'm sure a number of people initially think they must be a fungus of some sort. They sprout their fruiting bodies seemingly out of nowhere in soil growing little of anything. And most noticeably, they are stark white with flecks of black. No calming green. No bright flowers. Yet plants they are.

A quick aside about the name. I'm not sure how offensive it may or may not be to some people. Other names for Indian Pipes (Monotropa uniflora) are Ghost Plant or Corpse Plant. I like the spookiness of "ghost" and "corpse", but I also like the physical descriptor "Pipes". Maybe Ghost Pipes. It's too bad that Dead Man's Fingers is taken (by a few things apparently), that would be sweet. "Yeah, just pulled some Dead Man's Fingers out of my yard today. They keep coming back every year. Why am I cursed so!"

So anyway. Indian Pipes. Not fungus, plants. But intimate with fungus. Parasitizes fungus. Eats fungus (in a way). The fungus it grows on is itself tied intricately with the roots of trees, but not in a parasitic way. The fungus helps the tree get the phosphorus it needs and the tree provides the fungus with sugars from photosynthesis. The Indian Pipes take as much of everything the fungus has and so are considered epiparasites of the tree, since they cause it to work harder to support the fungus. Since they get their nutrients from the fungus, they have no need to produce chlorophyll, hence stark white with black flecks. I might try to mark where they're growing and dig a couple up to see what happens in the winter, when the flowery stalks in the pictures are long gone and I can see them in their ... true form. So there you go: non-invasive, parasitic, stark white ghoul flower that I'm excited to see every year now. You are STUCK with this knowledge.

Please also visit Tom Volk's excellent fungus website, where Indian Pipes made "Fungus" of the Month.

Plantae (Plants)
Angiospermae (Flowering Plants)
Ericales (Smaller group of Flowering Plants)
Ericaceae (Heathers)
Monotropa uniflora - Indian Pipes

What do we have here?

2009-07-26T21:58:00.004-04:00

It's a tick! Specifically it's an American Dog Tick, aka Wood Tick, Dermacentor variabilis. The one in the picture is the only tick I've found on myself all this year so far. There's one path in a conservation area I like to go to that must double as a deer path or something. The grasses have gotten to knee-height this spring, and as you're walking through you see every other stalk has three or four black spots hanging around at the top. They hang on with their bottom two pairs of legs and wave the other pairs around to latch on to you. I was always told that ticks are slow stupid creatures. I can't vouch for their intelligence, but they aren't that slow, and they have certainly found a niche to exploit. Sometimes I couldn't get the ticks to crawl onto my shoe when I touched them on their grass stalk. But when I could, they grabbed right on.

In researching how ticks operate, I realized that for as much as I've heard about them as vectors of diseases (Lyme disease by Deer Ticks, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and tularemia by American Dog Ticks), I didn't know much about their operation. First off, ticks are arachnids. Eight-legged, related to spiders and mites. Secondly, ADTs are 3-host ticks, meaning that in the course of their life they will feed on three different hosts. As larvae and nymphs they feed on smaller mammals (mice, maybe birds if they can?), before tackling the larger ones (dogs, me) as an adult.

Another myth I somehow had as a lad was that ticks had one chance to make it onto an animal. I also thought they dropped from tree limbs. They would spend days crawling up a tree, out onto a branch to do their best bombardiering onto a deer, dog or person. They do not, in fact, do that. Ticks are amazingly long-lived (IMO) for something so small, as I learned at this University of Florida website. They will try many times to land on an animal if they don't make it from their grass stalk. Adults can survive two years (!) without eating. And nymphs and larvae aren't slouches either! All told, ticks are patient, deliberate parasites.

Finally, my grandfather was wrong with his advice about how to remove a tick that's bitten you. He recommended either placing a match head that had just been ignited and put out on the tick's body to make it say "I gotta get outta here!" He also said, if you're out of matches, just slap some petroleum jelly on there and it won't be able to breathe. The reason you want to do either of these, he said, is that if you pull it out the tick's "head" (really just it's mouth) may remain underneath your skin where it will continue to infect you with disease, or at least make healing a pain. Actually, you do want to pull it out, just make sure you use tweezers and not your fingernails or something. Hold on to it tight, get as close to the bite as you can, and tug it out. It won't hurt and you won't bleed. Get it out as soon as you find it, because even though it can take many hours for any possible diseases to get transmitted into your bloodstream, if you leave it hanging there out of laziness then you've reached a new low.

Headed for the counter's edge, will the tick make it to freedom?

Almost there! A cliffhanger ending! (They're really kind of quick, I had to keep putting the camera down and corralling it just to get these lame photos.)

Animalia (Animals)
Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Arachnida (Arachnids - spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites)
Ixodida (Ticks)
Ixodidae (Hard-bodied ticks)
Dermacentor variabilis - American Dog Tick

What do we have here?

2009-07-19T15:45:00.005-04:00

I believe this is an Oriental Beetle (Anomala orientalis) sniffing my sock. And guess what? It's introduced! This species is often compared to the Japanese Beetle, another introduced defoliating pest. The Oriental Beetle seems to be overlooked both by its lack of flashy color as an adult, and the lack of damage done as an adult. One .pdf even says the adult doesn't eat! While I'm not going to come out and directly accuse it of the crime, there were two on our tomato plants this afternoon, on freshly chomped tomato leaves. Other references mention that the adult might eat rose blossoms.

Apparently the real damage is done while in larval form as a grub. The larva eats grass roots, causing brown patches in lawns. We don't have much of a lawn, but I'll have to note whether there are any brown patches. I'm starting to get the feeling that whatever I decide to investigate ends up being invasive, so maybe our grass is too! Wouldn't be surprised! I often hear of people who want to use "native grasses" in their landscaping, leading me to believe that lawns aren't native to the Northeast. Where would they be native? Well-kept lawns seem too homogenous and high-maintenance. Questions for another time I suppose.

Of course, the onus on any introduced/"invasive" species is on the introducer. Erk. I guess that would be us, the humans. I'm not one to go off the deep end and say everyone needs to live off the grid, or deny themselves modern necessities or anything, but does anyone really need a lawn? Honestly, I don't really go on my lawn except to mow it. So if a beetle crossed an ocean and a continent because someone wanted an ornamental lily and then it started taking advantage of the great swaths of maintained bluegrass that feuding neighbors were keeping up for the sake of appearance, I have to reserve judgment as to whether it truly qualifies as a pest. It sometimes seems as if people only deal with the consequences of what they need to do, not what they simply want to do. Apologies for the unfocused post.

Animalia (Animals)
Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Insecta (Insects)
Coleoptera (Beetles)
Scarabaeidae (Scarabs)
Anomala orientalis - Oriental Beetle

What do we have here?

2009-07-12T21:59:00.006-04:00

Is this an introduced Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus)? or the native, vulnerable New England Cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis)?

What began with a simple photo of a rabbit in our yard as it worked its way over to our garden beds has turned into a question I didn't even know I should be asking. I find myself having to ask these questions more and more as I become interested in the natural history of where I live. For my entire life I've seen cottontails in yards, on school fields, and I've always considered them the same way that I do squirrels: ubiquitous, herbivorous background animals that occasionally rise to the level of pest. Now that I've begun documenting the life that brushes up against us (hat tip: Urban Pantheist) I thought a bunny would be a fairly innocuous way to begin. I wanted to begin with a mammal because they are not exotic, and there are not so many of them to narrow down. My expectations have, however, been confounded.

When I began my rabbit research, I learned that in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, there are two types of cottontail rabbit, the Eastern and the New England. In differentiating between the two, I frequently read how similar the two species are, and how field marks alone wouldn't definitively tell me which rabbit was in my yard. Percentages figure prominently on the Mass. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife's webpage. Based on the numbers, I decided to focus on the New England Cottontail. As I read more, my reactions to what I learned migrated from elation (this might be a rare rabbit!) to confusion (wait, why would someone introduce a rabbit somewhere?) to incredulity (another native species marginalized by an introduced species!) to guilt (why didn't I know any of this before?).

The New England Cottontail prefers dense thickets in early succession forests. It usually has a dark spot between its ears, a dark line on the front of its ears, and always lacks a white spot on its forehead (indicative of the Eastern). My rabbit had these features, and around my house are some dense thickets of briars, blueberry and small stands of white pine, and some surrounding lots are abandoned and grown over or woodlots. The Eastern Cottontail often has a rusty patch on its upper back, is more numerous than the NE, and is more comfortable in suburban areas feeding in the open. Based on behavior more than field marks, I believe the rabbit in my driveway is an Eastern Cottontail, although I won't rule out a New England.

From what I've read, conservation for the New England Cottontail is not concerted, but it is underway. New Hampshire bans cottontail hunting in areas where NEs have been sighted, but other states seem only to recognize that NEs need help. Federal aid for Maine and New Hampshire has been announced. To think that this conservation effort has been going on for a few years now by people dedicated to seeing it through, and that I only stumbled upon it because I wanted to know more about the bunny in my yard is proof that Pandora's box came in plain packaging.

Animalia (Animals)
Chordata (Vertebrates)
Mammalia (Mammals)
Lagomorpha (Hares, Rabbits, and Pikas)
Leporidae (Hares and Rabbits)
Sylvilagus floridanus - Eastern Cottontail

Robert Hayden

2009-05-22T07:33:00.003-04:00

A Plague of Starlings

(Fisk Campus)

Evenings I hear
the workmen fire
into the stiff
magnolia leaves,
routing the starlings
gathered noisy and
befouling there.

Their scissoring
terror like glass
coins spilling breaking
the birds explode
into mica sky
raggedly fall
to ground rigid
in clench of cold.

The spared return,
when the guns are through,
to the spoiled trees
like choiceless poor
to a dangerous
dwelling place,
chitter and quarrel
in the piercing dark
about the killed.

Morning, I pick
my was past death's
black droppings:
on campus lawns
and streets
the troublesome
starlings
frost-salted lie,
troublesome still.

And if not careful
I shall tread
upon carcasses
carcasses when I
go mornings now
to lecture on
what Socrates,
the hemlock hour nigh,
told sorrowing
Phaedo and the rest
about the migratory
habits of the soul.

photo taken from The Guardian
photo by Christian Hartmann/EPA

Another Month

2008-06-24T22:01:00.004-04:00

I noticed a while ago that since I began birding in December of 2006, I've been lucky enough to see a life bird each month following. Some have been stellar (obviously right at the beginning was pretty good), some have been by the skin of their teeth (...). I don't believe I'm going to keep it up forever, and honestly, considering how little I've been able to get out birding the past few months, what with promotions and a new house, I figured I was about due for a no-lifer month. In fact, last weekend my only goal was to meet my Bird RDA (20 birds). It was a weekend filled with barbecues, a sudden shift in my work schedule brought me in for a half-day on Saturday, and trying to fit in everything else that belongs in a weekend around them. But I was determined. A slightly hungover Sunday morning was cloudy with a slight chance of showers. I got up nice and early, eschewed food and drink, and decided to go for it. I went to one of my favorite haunts since last year, South Cape Beach State Park in Mashpee. It's pretty much my go-to place for shorebirds. The one mile walk through shrubby dunes to a stone jetty and the mouth of Waquoit Bay is pretty reliable for season-appropriate birds: Osprey, Willet, Mute Swans (arrgh...), Red-winged Blackbirds, goldfinches, Song Sparrows--you'd have to be tying your shoes the whole time not to notice them. I've been lucky enough to see Least Terns and Sandpipers, an off-season Brant, and any number of other things there. I've never seen a Piping Plover, however, even though they nest there. Of course, since they're protected, I don't get to get too close to the nests anyway, but it would be nice for me to see one there sometime. Where was I? Bird RDA! In the first half-mile I had eighteen species handily; it was high tide, so I missed some smaller sandpipers that I would have liked to see. I knew around the three-quarter mile mark was a great patch for seeing Horned Larks and as I approached I stopped when I heard a strange song. There was a lark, as close as I'd ever been to one, not caring about me at all, just preening and singing. Nineteen. Just needed one more. Out at the mouth of the Bay, I usually hope to see my sea ducks and waterbirds. Another local birder who frequents South Cape Beach often sees American Oystercatchers, but I've only seen one here as a flyover. I was really hoping for a Common Loon. However, a huge group of summer fishermen, -women, and -children were piled onto the stones of the jetty, and I didn't really feel like going all the way to the jetty. I scanned the waters--nothing, just the Common Terns waiting for a handout from the fishermen, and I had already counted them. I turned around and started trudging back to my car, knowing that I had to be gone in a half hour before they started checking for parking stickers. At the half-mile point, two surprises: a Carolina Wren, which I had never seen or heard here before, and a House Finch, likewise a new bird for my South Cape Beach list. My Bird RDA and personal goal met I picked up the pace and a sunny disposition returned to my face. As I approached the more traveled beach path a low-flying bird wheeled around me. The white wing bar that flashed instantly registered as yet another Willet, this time blissfully silent. I dutifully raised my binoculars to follow it only to catch a glimpse of a short orange bill and a dark eye staring back at me. Eep! Could it be? I noted the area where it landed about 25 yards behind me and pulled out my Petersen to brush up on field marks. I had been burned before with an incorrect ID of a late-season plover, I didn't want it to happen again. I waited patiently, and waited, looking for a sand-colored bird against a backdrop of sand, the possibility that it was hiding behind a patch of grass or beach rose gnawing at my mind, the sound of the tow truck's winch ringing in my ears. I followed what I thought was a quick movement, and stared and stared, like it was a puzzle that I could solve simply by concentrating. And then the questions and doubts starting playing in my mind: Did I miss it? Should I put down my binoculars? It's probably somewhere else, I should put down my binoculars. But what if it's in my binoculars already and I just can't see it? Did it fly away already? I decided to put down my binoculars and in that instant noticed a shape just to the left of where I had been looking. I focused in on it, and there was the head of the Piping Plover I had been tracking, fixing an eye on me, probably wondering why, of the two of us, it was the one that was endangered. It was a good morning indeed.

Robert Frost

2008-05-10T22:39:00.002-04:00

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

A Promise Is a Promise

2008-05-10T15:59:00.000-04:00

Someone kindly reminded me that I hadn't yet posted pictures from our trip to Florida. Actually, it was just an anonymous comment someone left saying "You're a loser," but let's turn that frown upside-down: I had completely forgotten about my promise of actual photos (i.e. not lifted from an open website)! The following photos are instead courtesy of my bro-in-law Joe. Enjoy.

A White Ibis, just chillin'.

Joe's firm built this building, luckily it's near a park and beach filled with birds.

Really, I swear.

A cool photo of my beautiful wife walking the trail at Brooker Creek Preserve.

A crocodilian we noticed as we were taking photos of the WHIB.

A Common Moorhen that seems a little too used to people.

Joe Jr., the newest birder and nature-lover in the family. Note to Mr./Ms. Anonymous: Call me what you will, but don't mess with Baby Joe.

Awww....

2008-04-25T17:16:00.003-04:00

My wife is a wonderful woman. She's known for some time that I've always wanted to see an owl. I mean, come on, they're such cool birds. Her friend Andy Beet visited her at the library last week brandishing a photo of an owl in a tree just behind the building. When I got home from work, we took off to go see it. It wasn't a rare bird, there weren't scads of birders lined up looking at it through their scopes. Just the two of us at sunset staring up at an owl roosting in a hole in a tree. And now that I've seen one, I can't wait to see more. Thanks sweetie!

Photos courtesy of Andy Beet

The bird I saw was a red-phase Eastern Screech-owl. So there must be two staying there this summer!

Old MacDonald Had a Farm...

2008-04-09T21:38:00.002-04:00

...and on that farm he had a Günther's Wrasse, E-O, E-O-L

The Encyclopedia of Life is up and ready for your perusal. And for the scads of qualified bird experts who read this here blog, please, please consider entering data for some birds. Since the EOL effectively calls the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole its home, it seems as though every fish species is taken care of, while everything else is sorely lacking. Nothing that can't be fixed with a monumental effort to centralize research and data and to present it in varying degrees of scientific detail. Spread the word!

6-word Meme-oir

2008-03-22T13:53:00.005-04:00

I was tagged by Ivars of Ivars' Birds to participate in the six-word memoir meme. I thought and thought about how to whittle myself down to six words. As Mark Twain said "I can give you 3o pages in two days. I need 30 days to write two pages." So, as I tend to do a lot in my life, I will paraphrase The Simpsons:

"Nature embiggens even the smallest man."

So now I get to choose five more on this meme's way to conquering the universe. In fact, I think it's high time blogospheres collided, so I'll tag my wife Kellie at Cottage Knitting and send this meme into the knitting blogworld. And how can the other birders have missed Amila at Gallicissa? Are we so afraid of his Scrabble skills that we can't ask him to describe himself in 6 words? Oh, I see. He's out of town; I'm sure he'll have thirty of these waiting for him when he gets back from his tour. Fellow newbie birder and blogger BirdingGirl of BirdingGirl needs to show everyone what it's like to bird Mass and Cape Cod-style. Dan of Nervous Birds has been making sure Ram's Head in Annapolis hasn't gone out of business since I graduated, let's see if he can string six words together after a gig! Over at Hakodate Birding, S.C.E. supplies endless pictures of everyday (to him) exotic (to me) birds. Three words for birds, three for footy, which is what I assume he talks about at the end of his posts.

Okay guys, here's the rules:

>1. Write your own six word memoir
>2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
>3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
>4 .Tag five more blogs with links
>5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

William Butler Yeats

2008-03-07T09:22:00.007-05:00

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Mute swans, since he's Irish. Photo from Wikimedia. Is it wrong that I don't really care for Yeats?

Flo-ree-da!

2008-03-04T20:23:00.004-05:00

Well, we just got back from a long weekend in Florida visiting the wife's family, including our new nephew Baby Joe. My brother-in-law and his wife were very kind in taking us out to a few local parks to let me do some birding and to get Baby Joe into nature. I've mentioned before how great Florida can be for the beginning birder. It's pretty dang good for the slightly more experienced birder as well. Here's the breakdown:

Life Birds: 14

Wild Turkey
Eared Grebe
Red-shouldered Hawk
Short-tailed Hawk
Common Moorhen
Caspian Tern
Royal Tern
Common Ground-dove
Pileated Woodpecker
Loggerhead Shrike
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Hermit Thrush
Prairie Warbler
Palm Warbler

Florida Life Birds (excluding above): 22

Ring-necked Duck
Lesser Scaup
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
American Coot
American Oystercatcher
Ring-billed Gull
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Blue Jay
American Crow
Tree Swallow
Carolina Chickadee
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
Gray Catbird
European Starling
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Pine Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Goldfinch

And, hey, how about year birds (excluding above): 11

Double-crested Cormorant
Anhinga
Great Egret
Cattle Egret
White Ibis
Black Vulture
Osprey
Sandhill Crane
Laughing Gull
Fish Crow
Northern Parula

Pics to follow! None of them mine!

Not an Excuse, but a Reason

2008-02-21T07:13:00.002-05:00

No posts in a while because we've been looking for a house, and our offer was just accepted on the one above. Still in Falmouth, which is great. The previous owner had at least four bird feeders, so I'm hoping it's a birdy yard! I've only gotten out birding a few times since the last post, hopefully I can post a recap, but on most of my days off I was either house-hunting or it was raining raining raining.

P.S. I honestly wasn't looking for a house with feeders, that was just a happy accident! I really had to turn off the birder in me whenever we were looking at houses. It was easy enough since our buyer agent's office was surprisingly birdy, so in the walk from the car to the office I'd rattle off four or five birds real quick and that would last me a few hours. Birding isn't a hobby it's an addiction!

Camera Test Drive

2008-02-08T21:46:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I borrowed my parents' Canon Digital Rebel w/ 300mm lens with image stabilization on my usual trip to Siders Pond. Here's what popped up:

The resident American Coot

Preenin' Red-breasted Merganser

I was really excited to use a lens with image stabilization since New England winters prohibit my old method of bare-handed point-and-shooting, what with the shivering. But I wasn't so impressed. All of these shots were maxed out at 300mm, and still required a lot of cropping and touch-up for birds that seemed much closer and clearer. I'm not sure if a digiscoping setup would improve on the distance (I imagine it would) or if the image quality would suffer by using a P&S with a scope (I'm not sure it would). So I think I'd like to try that at some point as a contrast. While the Rebel certainly beats out digibinning, which for me seems to have about a 1% keeper output, and seemed to work great on close-up birds in the brush, if I were to spend an hour or so at a stationary birding spot, I think I would opt with a scope setup. For walks along narrow paths, the Rebel's lighter weight and maneuverability coupled with its fantastic close-up images would make it the preferred camera setup. Jeez, for someone who has neither, I sure have a lot of opinions about both options.

I'll pose a question now: If you carry a lot of stuff in the field with you, how do you carry it? My previous binoculars were truly "pocket" bins; my new Swarovski's--not so much (but they will always be soooo much better). Walking around with a digital SLR with a 300mm lens got to be a little awkward. I suppose most people would carry around a tripod for their camera, or if they planned to be on the move the whole time, simply to use the camera as their binoculars maybe. Advice? Commiserations?

Common Goldeneye giving me the evil eye. The crap in the way is a bush of some sort.

Book Review

2008-02-01T10:20:00.000-05:00

Birds of Massachusetts
by Stan Tekiela

On this, my first bird-book review, I thought I might point out how tough it must be to write a field guide. Think back to your first field guide (mine was Peterson's Birds of Eastern and Central North America Fifth Edition) and all of the different variables it offered. What did you like and dislike? How large of a geographical area did it cover? Did it contain plate illustrations or photos? How much information did it contain for each species? How big was the book? And, perhaps one of the biggest editorial decisions the author and his editor had to make, how was it arranged? All of these might affect the way you approach birding as you sort out what information you need to ID birds in the field.

I picked out Birds of Massachusetts because, well, I'm from Massachusetts and while my BoEaCNA had provided everything I knew and used up to that point, I was getting a little frustrated with its physical size, its geographical size, and its illustrations (to all Petersonites out there, don't stop reading just yet!). It was too large of a book to flip through quickly, though admittedly any book will have some degree of this; I would sometimes get hung up on studying a bird's field marks in the book only to find out the bird was found nowhere near Mass.; and those wonderful illustrations, well, sometimes the bird I was looking at just didn't look like the one in the book. All of these are limitations of being a field guide, not necessarily just the Peterson, and I took my frustration to be a sign of needing to try something new.

BoM was nearly the opposite of the Peterson in the above respects: small, much more regional, and filled with photos of birds not simply an artist's rendering. After reading it I must now say "You don't know what you've got til it's gone." Mr. Tekiela, about whom I've heard and read nothing but impressive things regarding his knowledge of nature and his talent as a naturalist, has written an excellent field guide for the just-starting-out birder. I work with a few people who love watching birds at the feeder and occasional duck-feeding park trips, but who aren't interested in pursuing birding any more than that--this is the perfect book for them. It's small enough to keep in a car or on a little table near the window. Each species is treated with a two-page spread, photo on the left, text on the right. Species are arranged by dominant color, with tabs at the top of the page to aid in rapidly flipping to the color you need to find. Sexually dimorphic species are treated to two separate entries. A map of the state shows where and when each species might be found. All of these add up to the beginning birder's first field guide: an intuitively arranged small book with large photos and individual entries for each species in a localized area. Phew!

As I keep mentioning, many qualities of field guides are double-edged swords. The color-based arrangement, as intuitive and helpful it may be to the beginning birder, is inherently problematic. Species from one family are usually mixed in with those from another that happen to have the same color, so rather than being able to compare, say, ducks over a few pages, they are spread out over the entire book. The photos, while usually helpful and always beautiful (Check out the modern-day Audubonesque Eastern Kingbird on page 202! I wish I had that kind of luck!) sometimes don't even have the relevant field marks on display (the White-crowned Sparrow, in the brown section, with a photo taken from a perspective that shows no brown--few experienced birders would get confused, but the beginning birder might). The text has standard facts for each species, but do we need to know the egg color, clutch size and fledging information. There are other books that cover this information that is often supplemental to the field observation. The most glaring error in this book, which should have been caught at some point, is this discrepancy in two species' notes:

"The male Lesser Scaup is nearly identical to the slightly larger, but less common, male Greater Scaup." (page 39) [emphasis mine]

"[The Greater Scaup] is by far more common than the Lesser Scaup..." (page 43) [emphasis mine]

Lesser Scaup (left) and Greater Scaup (right)
Which of you did I see at Siders Pond last week, based on likelihood of being in Massachusetts?

As a middling birder who is struggling with his scaup identification, these were some of the first birds I looked up and, to tell you the truth, I still don't know which bird is more common.

In the end, this little book showed me the large amount of work that goes into planning a field guide. Differences in style have a great impact on how one identifies a bird in the field, and while reader preference will largely determine which guide is used, Mr. Tekiela's Birds of Massachusetts seems to provide most of the information the novice birder would need. For the birder who already has a shelf of bird books, this one won't take the place of any of them, but it might make a good spark book for someone else!

(photos courtesy of wikimedia)

An Aid to Birdstackers

2008-01-29T15:35:00.000-05:00

I apologize in advance for what may be a very technical post. A brand-spanking new FREE listing website is now available to birders: Birdstack. Like I said, it's new, so there may be some adjusting for new users, but I'm game. It was the first time I was able to register on a site under my own name not myownname47 or something. What I like about Birdstack is its RSS feed to your lifelist (check out my sidebar--I haven't uploaded all my sightings yet, so what's on there now is not my completed lifelist), and the fact that unlike eBird it's a worldwide listing website (not that I've ever birded out of the US, but you never know...). Things I don't like about it are the fact that you can't enter multiple birds at once and its painstaking upload process. I mean, one species at a time? really? Anyways, I don't know if anyone wants or needs this information, but here are the steps that I've found to be the least complicated to transfer sightings from eBird to Birdstack. Disclaimer: I'm not sure how this will work for everyone, I use a Mac running OS 10.2.8, I think most calculators are more advanced than my computer now. I'm lucky enough to have a copy of Microsoft Excel for Mac, otherwise I'm not sure if I could do this through AppleWorks. Update: I just checked, my AppleWorks 6.2.4 won't open the spreadsheet file from eBird. Maybe newer versions do. My apologies if I seem to spell out each little step, but in the chance that someone doesn't know "Copy" and "Paste" yet, I put that in here. Everyone's gotta learn sometime, right? Okay, here we go:

1) Sign on to eBird, and click on "My eBird". On the right-hand side, click on "Manage My Observations". All your observations should come up. If you want to show all, by all means click on "Show All". A minor point, Birdstack's RSS lifelist only goes by the observation most recently entered, apparently, NOT by the date you enter on the submission. So if you want to be anal about how your lifelist appears on an RSS feed (guilty) click on "Date" in eBird until your very first observation is on the top line, and transfer all the data chronologically.

2) Most eBird observations don't take up a lot of space, but transferring each one individually takes a lot of time, so I've been transferring one-month chunks. You can use your discretion as to how many you want to transfer. Note, there is a limit on file size once we get to the Birdstack side of things, so don't go too crazy. eBird's files tend to be ~ 4kb, or at least mine are, if you want to use that as a guide. Still on "Manage My Observations"? Go to the first one and click "View or edit". Once there, click "Download report". Repeat the downloading process for as many observations as you like. You're done with the eBird end!

3) Open up one of the downloaded reports. You'll get a spreadsheet with a bunch of columns and your recognizable data. Now we have to move the data from the other downloaded observations to this one. Open up the next report and highlight the first box under "Species" should be box A2. Drag the highlight down to the last species in column A and then to the right to either column E "Observation date" or column F "Start time" if there's anything in column F. You should have a rectangle highlighted now. Hit control-C or Apple-C or go up to the Edit menu and click on "Copy". Close this report. Go to the first report (you can keep it open in the back this whole time) and click on the first empty box in column A. Hit Control-V or Apple-V or go up to the Edit menu and click on "Paste". Repeat the copy and paste steps for each other report. At the end, you should have your first report with a lot of columns, and every other report with only the first five or six columns all on one spreadsheet.

4) Now we have to manipulate the spreadsheet into something that Birdstack will recognize. Column A "Species" needs to be renamed "English name", without the quotes, though. "Number reported" becomes "Number observed". (Thanks to drewweber on the Birdstack forums, any field with an X in it is all set to be uploaded to Birdstack now.) Skip over "Location" to "Observation type" and click on the D above it. This should highlight the whole column. Go up to Edit and click on Delete. That should move the other columns over one (E becomes D, F becomes E, etc.). New column D, "Observation date", needs to be renamed "MDY date", which stands for Month-Day-Year. Again, click on the D at the top of the column, and go up to the Format menu and click Cells (this step might be different for Windows users). A little window should pop up with a menu of items to choose from, you want "Date". A new menu, will pop up, scroll to the entry that looks like 02/28/2008, or MM/DD/YYYY, and click on it. All of the dates in that column should automatically change to that format. The next column, "Start time" needs to be changed to "12-hour time". Any entries with a "N/A" in it will have to be changed so that it's blank. Click on the word "Duration" at the top of the next column and drag down to the bottommost entry, then right to last column that has anything in it, so that you get another big rectangle. Go up to Edit and then Clear the contents. The last step to prepare the spreadsheet: go to File, then Save As, and then Format "CSV" (maybe with the phrase "comma delimited"). Hit Save, quick!

?) Phew! I forgot what number I was on. Now go to Birdstack and register, if you haven't, or sign on, if you aren't. Click "Record an observation", then "import observations in bulk". Click "upload a file" and then Browse the folder for your spreadsheet from the last step, which should end in ".csv". If everything went well, after you hit Continue your screen will say "Validate file and continue". If something's still wrong, it will give you an error in red, perhaps something like "column not recognized: start time". In that case you need to open your .csv file and change whatever the problem is. Once everything's fixed (believe me, I went through this a lot: that's why I thought I might post instructions) and validated, you'll get a list of each species on the spreadsheet. Click "Save and continue". Every recognized species is now added to your Birdstack account. If you have any species it questions (European Starling, e.g., or any eBird spuhs) it will be in green and you'll have to click on it to correct it. In the case of the starling, Birdstack recognizes a different common name, the Common Starling. In the case of any spuhs ("Lesser/Greater Scaup" or "buteo sp."), Birdstack doesn't recognize them and you'll just have to delete them. And guess what? You're done!

Again, I apologize for the length of the directions. I just tried a dry run of another month's worth of data, and it only took about five minutes. Once all the observations are in you can edit the location in Birdstack or whatever else you'd like. Of course, Birdstack is changing a lot since it's the beginning, these directions will probably be obsolete in another few hours, but I hope it helps someone.

Robert Bridges

2008-01-29T13:15:00.000-05:00

Okay, not Bird Lit, but considering that the reason I'm not birding on my day off today is because of the snow on the ground and the fact that I don't have any suitable boots (my own damn fault) this poem kind of fits. It also supports my working theory that for the first twelve hours or so a fresh snowfall is a beautiful, enjoyable thing, and then it just gets to be a pain in the ass. This poem's about the first twelve hours.

London Snow

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled--marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
'O look at the trees!' they cried, 'O look at the trees!'
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

2008-01-25T14:48:00.000-05:00

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning's minion, King-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee ten, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

(photo from wikipedia)

One Down, Forty-four to Go

2008-01-17T10:04:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I was able to visit my first Mass Audubon Sanctuary on my quest to visit all 45. I went to the Skunknett River Wildlife Sanctuary for a couple of hours. Visiting new places by myself, as I've noted and will note again, is kind of worrisome.

Allens Pond
Arcadia
Ashumet Holly
Blue Hills
Boston Nature Center
Broad Meadow Brook
Broadmoor
Canoe Meadows
Cook's Canyon
Daniel Webster
Drumlin Farm
Eagle Lake
Eastern Point
Endicott
Felix Neck
Flat Rock
Graves Farm
Habitat
High Ledges
Ipswich River
Joppa Flats
Lake Wampanoag
Laughing Brook
Lime Kiln Farm
Lincoln Woods
Long Pasture
Marblehead Neck
Moose Hill
Nahant Thicket
Nashoba Brook
North Hill Marsh
North River
Oak Knoll
Pierpoint Meadow
Pleasant Valley
Road's End
Rutland Brook
Sampsons Island
Sesachacha Heathlands
~~Skunknett River~~
Stony Brook
Visual Arts Center and Mildred Morse Allen Wildlife Sanctuary
Wachusett Meadow
Waseeka
Wellfleet Bay

One Part Bleach, Nine Parts Water

2008-01-15T14:20:00.000-05:00

I have to take my feeders down and clean them: Illness has struck. I saw a female House Sparrow with what looked like an eye infection in one of her eyes. I even have to take my suet feeder down because it has seeds mixed in and some of the HOSPs will hop over and eat some occasionally. Now as far as I know, HOSPs don't get House Finch Eye Disease (Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis), but it doesn't mean they don't get other diseases. Even if it was an injury and not an illness, it's probably better to disinfect the feeders as a precaution. I wasn't able to snap off a picture of the affected bird, unfortunately, to see if anyone could say what it was she had. Oh well.

A New Goal

2008-01-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

Around this time of year, apparently, many members of the birding community try to decide what kind of Year they're going to have. Many of those decide on the Big Year, with the magic number placed at 300. As much as this past year has made me appreciate how much effort would go into attempting a Big Year (much less succeeding), and as supportive I am of the Bigby subset of Big Years, I have decided to eschew that lofty goal--at least for this year. For one, I don't think I'm qualified to safely identify 300 different bird species yet. I've had to leave a few behind this past year simply because I am inexperienced. For two, I can't seem to wash out the taste of perhaps being called by some merely a lister. My love for lists notwithstanding, a Big Year seems extraneous to me, at least while I'm still cutting my teeth: it would be pretty ballsy of me to say I'm going to see 300 species when I've only cracked 125. To add another 175 notches to my belt isn't the same as setting out to explore new places and finding another, say, 50 lifers. So my new goal, not to be accomplished in a year, is to visit all of the Mass Audubon Society Sanctuaries open to the public (there are currently 45). I ostensibly started birding to get out of the house more, and what better way than to explore different parts of my home state that have been set aside and preserved precisely for that goal? Ultimately I think I will find this a rewarding adventure, perhaps more rewarding than chasing after rarities that occasionally show up--though I'm certainly not against the occasional birdchase. I have already tried to keep a tally of the trips I've made to my hometown's conservation land, which is controlled by The 300 Committee, I might even try to make visiting those open parcels another goal of mine. While each species I've seen has given me a rush, the surprising benefit of this past year has been my growing familiarity with my community. Wish me luck!

Last Year and This Year

2008-01-06T20:07:00.000-05:00

Is there a grace period on how far into the new year you can post your previous year-end review?

Guess what I got for Christmas? Around the end of November I decided I didn't want new binoculars as a gift because the little Nikon Travelite I had worked fine. I'm glad my parents didn't listen (or hear, who knows?) because my new Swarovski set works great. I was amazed at the difference and how I had to refamiliarize myself with old birding spots simply because I could see more of them. The difference in overall clarity--especially color--is amazing, it makes quite an impact on the frequent cold gray winter New England days. My grand-uncle, who is on the board of the Mass. Audubon Society, was able to steer my folks toward the SLC 8 x 30. Thanks Uncle John!

I also received another gift Christmas morning, regretfully before I received my binoculars: a lifer! A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker right outside my parents' window! That brought my Life Total to 124, my Year Total to 120, and my Mass Life and Year Totals to 105. You can bet after I opened my binocs I just looked out the window the rest of the day trying to see the YBSA. If I had been able to see a Hairy Woodpecker, I would have had a great Picid bingo, since I got a Downy, a Northern Flicker, and a Red-bellied throughout the rest of the day. The Hairy would've been the fourth of the common ones, and the YBSA would make a more uncommon five-picid bingo. Oh well, I still had a great Christmas.

The New Year also got off to a great start. The first bird of the year was a Song Sparrow, which was good because I just assumed it would be one of the billions of House Sparrows that come to our feeder. Rather than sleep in, I thought I would quickly go to a couple of nearby spots to start off my 2008 list. I ended up with 24 species on the day and was able to expand the species lists of a few of my favorite spots. All in all a wonderful holiday season.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

2008-01-04T21:40:00.000-05:00

‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme’

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

This might be my favorite poem, despite my agnosticism and despite my reluctance to describe something as absolutely as my favorite. And even though it isn't about birds, it all starts with a kingfisher.

photo courtesy of Wikipedia
poem courtesy of Bartleby

Thomas Hardy

2007-12-26T08:05:00.001-05:00

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

This is about as upbeat as Hardy gets. This poem was written around and is about the turn of last century. I learned that and also the justification for my use of the Nightingale picture for a poem about a thrush at this wonderful page.

(photo courtesy of wikipedia)

Poor Dead Cedar Waxwing

2007-12-12T21:05:00.000-05:00

In the first episode of the fantastic sketch comedy show "Mr. Show", Bob Odenkirk's Terry the Cameraman character mentions offhandedly how he received a baked carrot from the Society for Unpleasant Gifts. I thought of this briefly when Kellie's co-worker Jennifer gave me this window-collisioned Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum).

Nice and fluffy after a near-thaw

A few weeks later, just pulled from the freezer

It's quite a thoughtful gift, though, from an interesting and interested woman. The poor thing (the bird, not the gift-giver) had been one of a flock to be flushed from her parents' yard in Rhode Island on Thanksgiving. Besides the wife's pet Budgerigar, I've never been closer to a bird than through my binoculars. So now I guess I've got a specimen. In the freezer door.

For the past, jeez, two months or so now (Kellie the librarian I'm sure could tell me exactly how long) I've been reading David Sibley's excellent The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior. And coincidentally enough, soon after receiving the dead bird, I came upon the Waxwings chapter. And I quote (extensively):

Waxwings are named for the red waxy "droplets" on the ends of the secondary flight feathers of adults.... The color of the droplets comes from carotenoid pigments that are found in the birds' diet of fruit and that cannot be synthesized by the birds directly.... In the bombycillids [i.e. waxwings], deposits of a bright red carotenoid (astaxanthin) are concentrated in flat, expanded extensions of the rachis that project beyond the feather vanes. Immature waxwings have few or no droplets, but the number and size of droplets gradually increases with each basic molt, at least over the first few years.

In the tail, the yellow carotenoids are normally incorporated into the vanes at the tips of the feathers, producing a yellow band across the tip of the tail that is not waxy like the wingtips.

Wow! I had no idea about any of that! Let's take a look at that, exclamation point!

Again, again!

Now that I've discovered that tidbit, however, I'm unsure of what to do with the carcass. I feel like I should donate it to a collection to be taxidermied, or have it necropsied, or something else; even though it's a familiar bird that died a quotidian death, it must still be of some scientific worth. I know nothing of the subspecies, or what to measure to determine which subspecies it might be. Any suggestions?

Emily Dickinson

2007-12-06T13:50:00.000-05:00

328

A Bird came down the Walk--
He did not know I saw--
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass--
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass--

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around--
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought--
He stirred his Velvet Head

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home--

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam--
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

(photo courtesy of wikipedia)

Getting Going, Part I - In the Beginning There Were No Binoculars

2007-11-27T10:06:00.000-05:00

In a previous post I mentioned how ideally, in my opinion, someone just starting out birding should go looking for herons and male ducks because they usually have easy-to-distinguish field marks and tend to stay in one open area for a good amount of time. As a disclaimer let me just say that any advice I give is simply what I found worked for me (or not in some cases). I'm sure of two things: 1) that there's no perfect way to start for every birder, and 2) there are, in fact, many ways to start out birding that will provide great experiences. It can't hurt to read about another birder's story, however.

My situation was that I started birding the day after Christmas when I received my first field guide. I didn't have any binoculars so I used my girlfriend's digital camera to take pics of any bird I came across. Later I uploaded them on to the computer and IDed the birds after the fact. As I pointed out in that post, this had the benefit of keeping a record of the field marks of the large slow-moving birds I was able to cut my teeth on in Florida in December. But there are a number of downsides and caveats to those first few days. I was soon back in Massachusetts with winter birds in the northeast to deal with. And IDing a bird after seeing it is risky, especially since so much useful information is provided in the act of watching a bird: its sounds, its habitat (admittedly seen in the pictures), and its behavior. And though I didn't quite have enough experience yet (who does?), it is easier to determine the limiting factor when actively observing a bird. Do similar birds move the same way? If so, do they occur in this environment? Figuring out what bird it's not allows the birder to attack the problem from two directions.

So finding a pair of binoculars is pretty important. Obviously, they combine the ability to capture small visual details like the digital camera (even more so, in fact) with the placement of those details in a broader context in the moment. Being a cheapskate, my advice would be to research any new pair you're thinking of buying, and try to borrow a pair in the meantime. I remember getting used to my binoculars took some time. It was worth it, though. All About Birds has a great gear guide and how to get started guide that really helped me. Go ahead and let them help you, too.

And while I recommended looking for those easy-to-spot birds in the winter to get ready for the brightly-colored singing spring migrants, not everyone has that luxury. It's much more important to just get out and watch some birds. There are all sorts of reasons not to get started. Lack of the "right" birds isn't one of them. Next up, choosing where to go.

Frustrated

2007-11-25T11:14:00.000-05:00

I've never been a chaser. I've gone to specific places hoping to see certain species of birds, but often as not I'm more interested in becoming familiar with a new birding spot. After all, I'm new, I'm still crossing off most common species from my lifelist, I don't need to see a Ruddy Duck right away because I'm sure I'll see it at one of the many ponds on the Cape someday.

All of that changed recently when a Western Kingbird was reported to be seen at the Crane Wildlife Management Area. Again, this isn't an uncommon bird where it occurs. But unlike the other birds I still have to cross off my list that occur on Cape Cod, the Western Kingbird shouldn't be here. And unlike the Gray Jay that occurred earlier this fall, or any other rare bird in Massachusetts or even around the Cape, this one was in town. Across town maybe, but in town nonetheless.

So word trickled down about the kingbird, and I decided to go check it out, never having been to Crane WMA I thought I could still locate it. The morning after the initial report I went down there (it's hunting season so I was restricted to the road), a couple more people stopped by, but didn't see anything. One person had seen it the day before, pointed out a tree it had perched in, let us know it wasn't shy, and had been associated with a flock of Eastern Bluebirds. I went back at lunchtime, still nothing.

Still reports were coming in of people seeing this lost bird. "Great look at it." "Right where previously reported." Every time I gave up on seeing it, someone else would and I'd fall for it again. And still I saw nothing.

I read up on kingbirds in every bird book I had. I thought back to my experiences of seeing Eastern Kingbirds around town. This morning I was determined to go and see it. I stepped out into the hunting area, since quail/partridge season ended yesterday and since hunting is prohibited in Massachusetts on Sundays. I carefully watched the trees where the Western Kingbird was reported to have perched. I walked all around the area well to the north and as far south as I could, and still nothing. I secretly hoped someone else would show up and that their luck would influence the situation. Nothing.

So what can you do? If more reports keep coming in, I'm not sure whether I'll keep looking for the kingbird or not. I was hoping to have seen it this morning, since I had tried to prepare myself on how to find this elusive (for me but apparently not for anyone else) bird, and since today was the day I could go and explore the area it was seen in. But I didn't see it. I saw other things (I do believe the Northern Harrier has been the most fascinating bird I've been able to watch for any length of time). But I didn't accomplish my goal. In relatively fresh hindsight, however, my goal was just a simple wish, and in every other aspect this chase was exactly what I've been doing for the past year now: exploring new places to go birding, becoming more familiar with areas around my town where I had never been before, enjoying being in nature and getting to watch birds (whether or not they were lifers). I must say, then, that my first experience chasing was a failure, but what it made me accomplish was still a success.

Go Birding Again for the Very First Time

2007-11-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

My wife had uploaded some of my photos from last weekend's visit to the pond near my parent's house onto her computer, and as I was looking at them I found some photos from my first two days being a birder. Hard to believe what it was like when I first began, even though it was only last Christmas! Some people have their spark birds that get them started--I had a book. A few weeks before Christmas my father bought a Peterson field guide (who buys themselves things a few weeks before Christmas? Answer: my father). I started leafing through it and realized how much I would enjoy birding. Considering my lineage, it's shocking that I hadn't picked it up before. My paternal grandmother, whose house I spent a good portion of my childhood days in (right next door to the house I grew up in), kept diaries filled with the lists of birds that came to her window feeder. My maternal grandfather had me fill each one of his birdfeeders whenever I visited (I didn't really mind): one with corn, one with sunflower seeds, and one with a songbird blend. His brother is also a long-standing member of the Mass. Audubon Society. It's a shame neither of my grandparents lived to see me take up birding, it would've been nice to hear their stories.

So a few weeks before last Xmas I started thinking a) I'm sedentary, b) I always wanted to be the guy in the group that when someone asked "What was that that just flew overhead?" I'd know the answer, and c) whenever I went for a walk on a trail or around a reserve, I never felt like I was doing anything. So that was it. To the top of my list went the Peterson field guide, which I (expectedly) got when we went down to Florida to Kellie's folks' for the holidays.

Cattle Egret and a horse, just chillin'

As an aside, let me tell you that Florida is a wonderful place to start birding. The day after Christmas I was off. I borrowed Kellie's digital camera (no binoculars yet) and trotted off down the road to sees what I could sees. In some ways I miss that day, walking to the next yard, saying "Wow cool." taking a photo, and going onward, not really stopping to determine any behavior or looking for specific field marks. Mostly I'm kicking myself for not spending longer looking at the Glossy Ibis and Sandhill Cranes. But it was still great. Ahh, to have each bird be the first again!

Things wouldn't really kick off for me until I permanently borrowed some binoculars from my parents, but those first days were fun. The camera was useful because it kept a record of the field marks I didn't know I was supposed to look for, like the legs of the Great Egrets at Wall Springs Park.

Here's a good look at the feet, so you get all three important field marks at once: bill, legs, and feet. Herons and egrets are great birds to start out on because they forage slowly, are large enough to see with the naked eye if need be, and are wonderful introductions to identification by field mark. If I were confronted with a sparrow, I would have been flipping through Peterson and by the time I looked up to look for the streaking pattern it would most likely be gone. No, if you can, look for wading birds and male ducks, in my opinion. They'll start you off right.

Outer Cape 10/29-10/30

2007-11-04T09:52:00.000-05:00

I don't think there should be any inaugural post shenanigans, so on to the birds!

I spent a few days with my wife on the Outer Cape, visiting a few places along the National Seashore and Monomoy Island NWR. I hadn't been out there in years, and she had never been. The beaches on the Atlantic side of the Cape are much different than the ones in Falmouth and Mashpee, which I'm used to. Less rocky, wider, and of course the towering dunes on many of them.

This little guy was the cause of a little embarrassment for me, but I'm a big believer in learning from your mistakes and helping others learn from your mistakes. So here goes: There were a number of these little guys running over the beach. Clearly a plover. I'm still a novice at this; I've only been birding for less than a year. And birding is about nothing if it isn't about trying to solve the puzzle of seeing a new bird. I saw this plover

wandering around. There were also others that had very dark backs and bills with a little bit of orange at the base of the bill. I came to the conclusion that this plover was a banded form of Piping Plover and the others were Semipalmated Plovers. When I posted my day's list to eBird, I got a warning that the Piping Plover was not a normal bird to see on the Cape in late October. An eBird reviewer soon wrote me to ask, very nicely, if I had any evidence that this was, in fact a Piping Plover. After looking at my photo he corrected me: this was also a Semipalmated Plover and the banded form of Piping Plover doesn't occur on the Cape. So new birders take note and old birders think back on your early mistakes that made you better!

When Kellie and I went to Monomoy we spent some time trying to figure out what this raptor was:

As we were debating, three young people all decked out for a very professional bird count (possibly rangers?) loudly walked by and flushed our bird down the beach. Not wanting to interrupt or be interrupted, we continued on a little while before we heard one of them shout "Evening F***ing Grosbeak!" Unfortunately I missed the bird, but I figured I would use his elation to ask him what we had been looking at before. He confirmed that it was a young Peregrine Falcon. I still think his nickname for the grosbeak should be accepted by the American Ornithologists' Union, or at least a special consideration be made for the Evening Grosbeak Alpha Code, EVFUGR perhaps?

A picture of a basic plumage Black-bellied Plover to leave you with.