An Apology To Oregon

Dear Oregon,

About a year ago, in the second-most successful post in this blog's short history, I outlined a Birder's Map of America. I thought it was pretty good, personally - except there was one glaringly obvious problem with it. I completely swindled you, my dear Beaver State. A question mark, an ignorant statement about a lack of visiting birders, and an all-too-easy cable television reference was all you got from me. I received several complaints about this oversight, which started to nag at me. Could I really have screwed up that map? Well, it's time for me to admit that I did.

By a stroke of complete luck coupled with a slight dose of irony, I found myself at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in your southeastern corner, where I interned for the summer. I have to say, I've never seen so many birders in my life. Not to mention that two months of relatively nonchalant birding and working (a blurred line in some respects) has yielded me 191 species of birds.  This all in one county, under "birders don't go here either" on the map. Yeah, yeah, I messed up. It was so far from the truth it could probably just be interpreted as shitty sarcasm.

Malheur NWR

What makes this place so special? Hell, just about everything. It's a giant waterfowl-laden wetland in the middle of a desert, surrounded by beautiful lava cliffs and sagebrush country. I've peered into Golden Eagle nests, been mobbed by Long-billed Curlews, gotten face-to-face with Common Nighthawks, and had both Long-eared and Short-eared Owls in one binocular view at the same time.

Just 5 feet from a nighthawk.

Is that a LONG-EARED OWL fledgling? Out in the open in the evening light? Yes, yes it is.

Then there are the vagrant traps, a somewhat alien concept to an easterner like me, where off-course migrants get concentrated in unusually high numbers. I have to admit, finding a Least Flycatcher in my backyard out here was quite a surprise, as was watching a Rose-breasted Grosbeak feeding amongst a flock of Black-headeds. The locally-rare male American Redstart that showed up at Fields Oasis made me stop and appreciate this rather dapper bird, a common migrant in my neck of the woods.  And the Cattle Egret I stumbled on out near Benson Pond ended up being a state bird for many Memorial Day visitors.

The only trees for miles around can be a haven for lost passerines. This doesn't happen in the East, because literally everything is forested.

From the Harney Basin it's just a short drive up into the mountains, where Townsend's Solitaires, Black-backed Woodpeckers, and flocks of Red Crossbills can be found. Red Crossbill has been a bit of a nemesis for me, so it was pretty sweet to see a mega-flock of about fifty up in Malheur National Forest (along with around 300 more over the course of my trip).

What a bad-ass finch.

Oh- and all of this was all just in once county. A few forays into outlying areas, including the beautiful coast, brought my Oregon trip list up to around 230, a pretty satisfying number in my opinion.

I could go on and on - but in essence, Oregon, you've been good to me. And I'm really sorry, despite your excessively low speed limits and bizarre rule about not pumping your own gas. I hope you will look past my blundering oversight and accept my apology. It would mean a lot to me.

Sincerely,

Lucas

Pie Chart: How Birders Spend Their Time

How do birders spend their time? It's pretty much different for everyone. But if we are generalizing, this pie chart should be a good breakdown of a birder's free time. Birding makes up a decent chunk of this time, but not all of it, as you will see below. We even manage a decent amount of normal human interaction - that's good news!

(Click to enlarge)

We also took the liberty to further dissect the "birding" slice, below:

(Click to enlarge)

After some thinking, we realized just how little time is spent actually looking at birds - we spend much more time looking for them than at them. Of course, everyone is different. Coffee drinkers, for instance, will sacrifice birding time in order to satisfy their debilitating caffeine addiction. People that drive the speed limit or avoid sketchy game lands in the wee hours of the morning will probably not be pulled over by the police for "excessive speeding" or "looking suspicious" (speaking from experience here).  People who generally bird alone probably won't laugh much, unless they are crazy. This is meant to be a generalization, after all.

Is there anything we left off? What makes up the bulk of your Free Time Pie Chart?

Ferry Freeloaders

We hear a lot about ship-assisted vagrancy these days. "So-and-so bird is crazy, so it must have been carried over on a ship" some birders proclaim with each rarity that visits our continent. This is a big deal - a bird that rode over on a ship would be non-countable, according to the prevailing view. Well, the truth is, there are some birds that hitch rides on ships within our sacred ABA area borders that people are completely ignoring. The effect these birds have on our lists is absolutely detrimental. Hell, I've seen birders count these ferry freeloaders. They count them! It's madness.

We became aware of this sick and twisted phenomenon last weekend, while birding in New Hanover County, North Carolina. Aside from being home to the most populous Wilmington in the United States, it is also home to the mouth of the Cape Fear River, the largest river entirely within North Carolina. There is a ferry that connects one side of the river to the other, running from Fort Fisher across to Southport. But there's one problem. Southport isn't in New Hanover County. It's in Brunswick.  Birds (especially gulls and grackles), have a habit of riding the ferry, due in part to the easy supply of bread given to them by children. These freeloaders spend the day riding back and forth across the Cape Fear and across the county line.

Go ahead, look into the eyes of this heartless ship-assisted bastard - but don't you dare count it for your Brunswick or your New Hanover lists.

These birds have probably been border-hopping on this boat for months (especially those grackles). It has reached the point where we can't even tell which side of the river these birds are originally from. Can you count any of these birds? Do they count when you first get on the ferry, but not when you cross the border halfway through the ride? Hell, all the grackles and gulls around both ferry terminals have probably ridden the ferry at some point in their lives. So those don't count either? And how can we be sure that any of the birds within several miles of the terminals didn't ride on that ship? Did the birds even originate in one of the two counties? They may have ferry hopped all the way from - God forbid - South Carolina. I know those Mottled Ducks at the Fort Fisher Aquarium looked awfully guilty.

Where did you come from?!?

This first-cycle Herring Gull never made it onto the ship while we were watching - but there's no telling it hasn't landed on the boat in the past.

I can only see one solution to this problem: shut down the Southport ferry, and wait for all the birds that rode it to slowly die off. I'm tired of paying the $5 fee anyway. Or I guess we could just stop worrying about ship-assisted birds and ignore the arbitrary non-countability rule that someone made up long ago... but that's crazy.

What Non-birders Need To Know About Birders - A Holiday Special

Winter is here, bringing extremely cooperative Ring-billed Gulls. Chatham County, NC.

As the holidays roll around, we birders will be momentarily forced into sitting around the house conversing with our families. This unfortunately coincides with Novembird and the ensuing end-of-year rarity extravaganza that tends to occupy most of our minds. While we are sitting around staring at the dead turkey at the center of the table, we can't help but lust for that Fork-tailed Flycatcher reported the night before. So here are some tips, to share with your non-birding family, to help prevent any misunderstandings and allow the holidays to run smoothly.

1. Family is Always There, Rarities are Not.
Many birders will at least make an effort to spend some time with family and friends over the holidays, and this is nice. But as soon as that rare bird is reported from the coast, just know that it pains us to be with you. Not because we don't like you, it's just that there is a bird out there that may never be seen in the state again. And we'd rather drive down to see it - you can join us if you'd like! (Side Note to Birders - Please do not abandon your fam too much. They can barely tolerate this).

2. There Will Always Be CBCs.
This is pretty straightforward. Christmas Bird Counts are a birding tradition - even more longstanding than most family traditions celebrated during the holidays. So just acknowledge that we will be out in the freezing cold for a few days this December. It's a part of who we are.

3. Bird Books Always Make Good Gifts
I remember last year I was gifted Seawatching and spent hours of Christmas Day just reading it again and again. Birders are a strange people that genuinely like to learn, so books are always an excellent present. Field guides to obscure countries are an especially good choice. Any day we get a new field guide is like Christmas...it's wonderful.

4. New Year's Day is Magical
You will NOT see us on New Year's Day. Do not worry. The new year resets our year lists and we feel obligated to get as many new year birds as possible, as soon as possible. For some bizarre reason, we just can't stand waiting until the Second. Some people may see this as futile because the list will just reset on the next New Year's Day, but whatever, we like it. Last year I picked up a Blue Jay at 12:10 AM after it called from being awakened by our fireworks. And I immediately eBirded it.

5. We Are Strategic in our Travel Plans
If a birder has family who lives in a state they haven't birded much, there's a good chance they'll want to scope out new territory. Or if said birder is a huge state lister, they may want to stick around to chase any CBC-rarities. But with any travel plans, the birder will have ulterior motives.

Hopefully these will help ease any tensions birders have with their non-birding families. Do you have any tips for the holidays?

Why Can't The Weather Be Worse? and Other Meteorological Musings

North Carolina has pretty much had a perfect year in terms of weather. Sure, we had a few days that didn't get above freezing back in January, but overall it's been comfortable. The summer wasn't hot, we got more than enough rain, and the sunshine was almost always out. No droughts, no severe weather. Just about perfect. Unless you're a birder.

As a Piedmont-bound avian enthusiast, I always hope for two things: hurricanes and droughts. This is backwards. This is wrong. This might make me a terrible person. But it's the truth. I have yet to experience real hurricane birding. Instead, I find myself salivating over the post-Fran and Ernesto lists from several years ago. I thought I would finally get my chance this year, as Arthur barreled toward the coast. But the bastard curved away, sparing the coast from damage but also sparing my list from a bird or two. I scoped the ocean for hours, and all I got was a shearwater sp.

I thought this storm, Hurricane Arthur, would be my chance. It wasn't.

I'll be honest - I'm an obsessive county lister. It's a fact. And nothing would improve my Wake County list (my home county, also where Raleigh is for any out-of-staters) more than a few big mudflats and a strong tropical cyclone. This list's rate of expansion has ground to a near halt, save for the occasional fall warbler. Bring on the storm-petrels, the Pterodromas, the sooty terns; the American Golden-Plovers, the Ruffs, the phalaropes. I need them.

Wilson's Storm-Petrel is a bird I'd love to add to my Wake County list some day. But I can't in this perfect weather.

This brings me to my second gripe with this weather - the rain. Every rain shower keeps some shorebirdy mudflat underwater. In my pre-birding days, back in elementary school, it seemed like every year was a drought. The mudflats, I hear, were nothing short of epic. Even last year saw a dry enough spell to produce two Baird's Sandpipers at Lake Crabtree's ephemeral mud island. But this year, it's rained too damn much. The reservoirs are more than full, making city officials happier than Pine Siskins at a thistle feeder, but leaving me shorebirdless. Is it too much to ask for a dry spell each Fall Migration for my plovers and sandpipers to show up? I don't think so.

Why has the weather been simultaneously great and terrible this year? I blame El Niño, the famed climatic event centered around the Eastern Pacific. This giant pool of hot water off the Peruvian coastline gives the Pacific jet stream a straight trajectory across the North American continent. This shears and pushes away any hurricanes trying to form in the Atlantic, and brings above-average rainfall to the southern half of the country. How annoying.  It might make West Coast birding a little more exciting, but it certainly does nothing to help out North Carolina birders like me.

Pacific Jet Stream under El Niño conditions.

Now let's just hope for a brutal winter, which the four-lobed Polar jet stream should give us. I could go for some nice waterfowl right about now.