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.

NFCs- An Expert's Perspective, from a Very Special Guest

Nocturnal Flight Calls: the most accurate and conclusive method of identifying species of thrush, warbler, sparrow, rail, etc. during migration, or any time of year, for that matter. Through many years of intensive research, Dr. N. Seeper has formulated a multitude of theories associated with Nocturnal Flight Calls. Read his in-depth account here, a Birder's Conundrum special guest! Note: We here at TBC do not condone the information presented here, nor do we agree with it.

Dear birders: I am here to clear something up. I have been slighted, intimidated, and belittled by some members of the birding community, and some of these members are professional people. I will have you know that I can be considered a true expert due to my prestigious education as a former student athlete at UNC-Chapel Hill. I know very little of NFC. But in my 18 years of living with NFC, I have learned their ways. Let me teach you all about NFC - so here, eat this!

Theory One: The Thrushold means you got a thrush!

Formerly known as the Thrushhold, the AOU Committee on Words recently voted to take out the second "h" saying that it was "unnecessary" and that it "made the word look made-up." Anyway, The Thrushold is the most important theory that I have developed. After poring over hours and hours of spectrograms, I have deduced that there is a threshold of sorts delineating thrushes from other migrants. The dark band of white noise located between 4 and 5 kHz acts as the dividing line between all thrush NFCs and all non-thrush NFCs. To put this into one definitive statement: If a call lies beneath the 4-5 kHz thrushold, then it is a thrush, if it lies above the thrushold, then it is not a thrush and is probably a warbler, sparrow, heron, trogon, owl, etc. 

Note the dark thrushold.

Theory Two: Light Rain means a good night for calls!
View the map below. Those clusters of green are a smattering of light showers picked up by the Doppler radar. This amount of light rain directly corresponds with heavy migration and, therefore, good flight calls. However, this is not only true during migration. Any time there is light rain, there will be beautiful migration and abundant flight calls, even if the rain occurs in February. It seems that much of this rain (rather mysteriously, I might add) does not make it to the ground, and the stars are even visible! It is a strange effect that I have a hard time explaining.

See all this rain? This shows that there was a good flight on 10/5/14.

Theory Three: Mourning Flight - the "Experts" have it all wrong!
If you are an "educated" birder, you may read about the so-called Mourning Flight from bird-rich places such as Cape May. These experts are mistaken, however.  The only species I have seen perform true Mourning Flight is Zenaida macroura, the Mourning Dove. After all, this is the very reason it is called Mourning Flight!  I was walking through a field mid-February at dawn, when a hundred or so Mourning Doves flushed from the ground. It was spectacular to actually witness Mourning Flight first hand, and is a memory that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Exemplary Mourning Flight as seen in Southern Indiana.
(photo credit: almostdaily news)

P.S. I definitely recommend purchasing The Guide to the Common Towhees of the Carolinas and Virginia - I love that book! I use it for all of my towhsss identification problems when I visit NC!

Graph - Birdiness vs. Social Acceptability

Birders aren't known for being cool.  This is partially due to the inherently obsessive nature of our hobby, but also because of the, um, obscure places we tend to visit.  When was the last time your neighbor dropped by the local waste treatment plant just for the hell of it?  Never.  Because they are normal.

(Click to enlarge)

Our high-tech graphics department produced this precise visual representing several popular destinations, comparing social acceptability among non-birders to the locale's birdiness per acre.  It is generally frowned upon to stare into someone else's backyard with binoculars, but this awkward endeavor can yield some great birds.  In the unlikely event a birder is concerned about their "coolness", this graph can help them weigh the worth of each location before committing social suicide.

United States of Birds - All-time High Counts

Have you ever witnessed a mega-flock of birds?  Perhaps it was thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds undulating above a field, or Snow Geese congregating before a long migration.  eBird has a feature where users can observe the all-time high counts of all species within a given state.  We used this feature to find what species had been seen in the highest numbers in that state at one point in time.  For example, the report of 500,000 Sooty Shearwaters from Oregon was the largest flock of any species ever seen there (according to eBird data, which ranges from 1823-2014).  We did this for each state and plotted the species on a map using our revolutionary Birder's Conundrum mapmaking software:

Clearly, a few states have had vast flocks of some awesome birds.  Crested Auklets in Alaska, Sooty Shearwaters in the Northwest, and Red-necked Phalaropes in Maine.  Other, more unfortunate states have shitty birds like Starlings (sorry Massachusetts and Kentucky, but really?) or the Brown-headed Cowbirds in Lousiana.  In fact, the all-time high count of any species in the entire country belongs to those that Cajun flock of cowbirds.  It's probably no surprise that many of the more southerly states are represented by the rather ubiquitous Red-winged Blackbird, as many birders in the Southeast probably come across a sizable flock of these icterids at some point each year.  Snow Geese, with their habit to conglomerate en masse, also made quite a showing, filling 6 of the states.

Note: We are not saying that these counts are necessarily accurate, we are just reporting what is out there.

The full run-down:

Red-winged Blackbird (12 states)
Arkansas- 1,000,000
California- 1,001,000
Colorado- 75,000
Delaware- 900,000
Georgia- 2,000,000
Illinois- 1,080,000
Kansas- 1,600,000
Mississippi- 1,000,000
Missouri- 7,200,000
North Carolina- 1,000,000
Pennsylvania- 1,000,000
Texas- 1,000,000

Snow Goose (6 states)
Montana- 300,000
Nebraska- 900,000
New Mexico- 50,000
New York- 1,000,000
South Dakota- 400,000
Vermont- 44,000

Common Grackle (4 states)
Indiana- 750,000
Maryland- 502,000
New Hampshire- 343,000
Virginia- 1,500,000

Purple Martin (3 states)
South Carolina- 800,000
Tennessee- 1,000,000
West Virginia- 40,000

American Coot (3 states)
Alabama- 111,750
Nevada- 75,000
Wyoming- 8,000

American Robin (3 states)
Florida- 5,000,075
New Jersey- 250,000
Oklahoma- 460,000

European Starling (2 states)
Kentucky- 2,500,000
Massachusetts- 2,000,000

Tree Swallow (2 states)
Arizona- 1,200,000
Connecticut- 1,000,000

Sooty Shearwater (2 states)
Oregon- 500,000
Washington- 500,000

Canvasback (2 states)
Iowa- 330,055
Minnesota- 93,505

Franklin's Gull (1 state)
North Dakota- 340,000

Eared Grebe (1 state)
Utah- 500,000

Mallard (1 state)
Idaho- 100,000

Crested Auklet (1 state)
Alaska- 2,000,000

Wedge-tailed Shearwater (1 state)
Hawaii- 50,000

Red-necked Phalarope (1 state)
Maine- 200,000

Brown-headed Cowbird (1 state)
Louisiana- 76,000,000 (<--What?!)

Canada Goose (1 state)
Rhode Island- 12,000

Double-crested Cormorant (1 state)
Wisconsin- 300,000

Broad-winged Hawk (1 state)
Michigan- 255,641

American Crow (1 state)
Ohio- 500,000

The Bird Color Conundrum - 17 Shades of Gray

We already covered the colors that span the gap between red and brown - so now we can move on to the equally perplexing realm of the grayscale.  Many birds have some sort of coloration between white and black - and from the Slaty-tailed Trogon to the Snowy Egret, these colors can be baffling to the average observer.  This post, organized from lightest to darkest, should help quell your worries about this color conundrum:

White - The presence of all color - everything is being reflected back into your eyes.
Example: White-throated Sparrow, White Ibis, White-eared Ground-Sparrow

Snowy - This color is so ridiculously close to white it shouldn't even exist.  But "Snowy Owl" sounds a hell of a lot cooler than "White Owl", so we'll keep it.

Example: Snowy Owl, Snowy Cotinga, Snowy Egret, Snowy Plover

Snowy Owl - Dare County, NC

Ivory - The color of ivory, a yellowish off-white - it's the stuff they killed elephants for, and why there are all those Europeans hanging out in Africa in Heart of Darkness.
Example: Ivory Gull

Ash - The color of ash - like the bottom of the fire pit at the campground.  A light, washed-out gray.

Example: Ash-throated Flycatcher

Ash-throated Flycatcher - Dare County, NC (same day as the Snowy Owl above, I might add!)

Ashy - Almost the color of ash.  Almost.

Example: Ashy-headed Greenlet

Glaucous - In Latin, glaucus means blue-gray.  In English, it's basically a light gray with a slightly bluish tone.

Example: Glaucous Gull, Glaucous-winged Gull

Cinereous - Quite similar to ash, but slightly darker and tinged with brown.  Cinis means "ashes" in Latin.

Example: Cinereous Tinamou, Cinereous Finch

Grayish - Another one of those "-ish" suffixes.  It's pretty much gray...

Example: Grayish Saltator

Gray - Just saying "gray" can be a bit vague - but specifically, it is the exact halfway point between black and white.
Example: Gray Catbird, Gray Gull, Gray Flycatcher, Gray Hawk

Silver - Ag. The color of the element. A shining, sparkling, gray...but on birds it's really just gray.
Example: Silver-breasted Broadbill, Silver Oriole, Silver-beaked Tanager

Dusky - The color of the sky as the last wisps of sunlight recede o'er the horizon. Dark gray.
Example: Dusky Flycatcher

Sooty - The stuff that collects on the inside of chimneys and covers the living room carpet every Christmas morning. The color of burned carbon.
Example: Sooty Tern, Sooty Shearwater

Slate - One of my favorite colors - a dark gray, with a bluish tinge (like the metamorphic rock).  Basically a much darker version of glaucous.
Example: Slate-throated Redstart

Slate-throated Redstart - Santa Elena, Costa Rica

Slaty - Almost the color of slate.  Almost.  It seems like this is the form of "slate" used to describe birds more frequently, but I may be wrong.
Example: Slaty-backed Gull, Slaty Antwren, Slaty-tailed Trogon

Plumbeous -  Lead-colored. Like Ferruginous, this color comes from the latin name of the element.
Example: Plumbeous Vireo

Coal - The color of the fossil fuel West Virginians and Tea Party-ers love so much.  Almost black, like how snowy is almost white.

Example: Coal-crested Finch

Black - The absence of color.  No light is reflected back.  Everyone knows this.
Example: Great Black-backed Gull, Black-cheeked Woodpecker, Common Black-Hawk, Melodious Blackbird

Black-cheeked Woodpecker - La Selva, Costa Rica

What Audubon Called the Birds, Part II

In the last edition of What Audubon Called the Birds, I focused on some old bird names that we should go back to using.  Well, I'm back with more bird names - straight from the 1800s.

Carolina Turtle-Dove - now known as Mourning Dove
As a Carolina-born birder, I get a little sense of pride every time I hear a bird with "Carolina" in its name.  Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Porzana carolina - why not have Carolina Turtle-Dove join the ranks?  Have you ever seen a Mourning Dove actually look sad?  Hell no.  They sit on tree branches and power lines, chase each other around, and eat seeds.  Sure, their call is "mournful", but so is literally every other dove's song.  Carolina Turtle-Dove only makes sense here (though I would accept a shortened "Carolina Dove" as well).

Much better.

Ferruginous Mocking-bird - now known as Brown Thrasher
I love the word "ferruginous", so I may be a little biased.  But Brown Thrashers aren't exactly brown, as I found out.  They are, indeed, the rusty iron color of ferruginous.  I do like the word "Thrasher" though, so I think a compromise may be needed.  Let's go with "Ferruginous Thrasher" and call it a day.  It's a more accurate name, plain and simple.

Bergomaster - now known as Glaucous Gull
Burgomaster is German for "Mayor" or "Master of the Town", a fantastic moniker for this large and somewhat intimidating Larus.  I don't have any idea who started calling them Bergomasters, but I like it.  Glaucous makes me think of Glaucoma anyway, which is definitely NOT a disease a birder wants to get.

The most badass name for the most badass gull.

Great Cinerous Owl - now known as Great Gray Owl
C'mon.  Great Gray Owls aren't just gray.  They are cinerous, which is an ashy gray tinged with brown.  "Cinerous" is also tinged with just enough 19th-century romanticism to make this already-majestic bird even better.  Slam dunk.  Now if only I could see one...

Hudsonian Curlew - now known as Whimbrel
Ignoring the fact that we may return to this name anyway (or to the similar "Hudsonian Whimbrel"), I think "Hudsonian Curlew" bears a more authentic North American flair than "Whimbrel" does.  Why do we use the European name here anyway? Do we call Black-bellied Plovers "Grey Plovers"?  Or Brants "Brent Geese"?  No, we're not British.  And I want to start calling them HUCUs (pronounced HooKoos).  "Hey, did you see the big flock of HUCUs at the inlet?"  Yes, yes I did.

HUCU in North Carolina, at the aforementioned "inlet".

Acadian Owl - now known as Northern Saw-whet Owl
Some may object to changing the name of what is arguably the cutest of America's birds, but hear me out.  We need more "Acadian" birds to join the ranks of my local "pizza!" spewing Empidonax flycatcher.  Acadia was an area in the Northeast settled by the French (Acadie was the French name for Nova Scotia), a fitting location name for this little owl.  And no one knows what the sound of a "saw whetting" even is these days, so the new name is obsolete.

This owl is angry someone changed his name to Saw-whet.

I challenge the birding councils to consider my requests.  Our pastime would be much richer if we could return to these antique names.

Audubon's images from Audubon.org's page on Birds of America.  I feel like I should owe them something at this point.

Map - How Birders See America

When the average person sees a map of the Lower 48, they may have a few ideas about what's where.  Pizza in New York, surfing in Southern California, jazz in New Orleans, Old Faithful in Yellowstone... you get the idea.  But birding changes your perception of the map.  No longer is South Florida "only" the land of retirees - it's also the place to pick up nearly every introduced exotic species known to man.  We originally wanted to do a map of the entire ABA area, but I have no clue what birding is like in about 80% of Canada (though I could have smacked a giant "Tim Horton's" across the country).  It still proved to be a challenge to fill some of the more under-birded and unknown regions of the United States - but we finished up with (what we think is) a good representation of a Birder's Map of America. Some of the stereotypes are based on recent rarities, while others are based on what we deemed to be the species most representative of the region.

Click to enlarge.

This map is intended to show what birders actually see when they behold the beautiful map of 'Murica.  If you think we nailed it, or if you completely disagree and are disgusted that we even created this, comment below - we'd love to hear from you.

Vagrants, Before Birding

Everyone knows Audubon's paintings of extinct birds - the Carolina Parakeet, Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon, Eskimo Curlew, and Ivory-billed Woodpecker.  However, while working on my What Audubon Called the Birds post, I realized that the great American ornithologist also found some pretty incredible rarities.  He saw a male Smew in Louisiana.*  A pair of Snowy Owls in Kentucky.  Not one, not two, but THREE Curlew Sandpipers along the coast.   This left me wondering - what kind of birds were showing up in North America before birding even got started?  This was an age where, instead of reporting a rarity to eBird or the listserv, you shot it into oblivion.  It seems likely that birds such as the Smew and Curlew Sandpiper had much larger populations in the Old World than they do today - so did they visit America in proportionately higher numbers?  Were birds showing up back then that have yet to be added to the ABA Checklist?  Let's take a closer look at some of the more intriguing species recorded during the 19th century.  (Note - Reading Rare Birds of North America a couple times by no means makes me an expert on vagrancy, but it's fun to speculate sometimes. Enjoy.)

The "Mango Humming-bird"

The "Mango Hummingbird" was not actually seen by Audubon, but he received specimens from a friend.  They (at least two) were supposedly shot in the Florida Keys.  The Audubon website lists this species as the Black-throated Mango - which seems unlikely, considering it is a strictly South American bird.  My mind jumped to Green-breasted Mango, the Mango that strays into the ABA area with some frequency.  But the illustration just isn't right.  The juvenile male has a black throat, and the adults look a little "off" too.  The female specimen, Audubon admits, was likely not collected in the US - but the other birds probably were.  All three birds in his illustration closely resemble the Antillean Mango, seen below.  It is entirely within the realm of possibility that a Caribbean hummingbird would stray north into the United States - e.g. the Bahama Woodstar in Pennsylvania.  Additionally, Green-breasted Mango vagrants tend to go North and East from Mexico, bypassing Southern Florida altogether.  It seems plausible (though not probable) that the bird encountered in Key West by Audubon's friend was an Antillean Mango (or another Anthracothorax sp.), a bird not currently on the ABA checklist.

Antillean Mango - a possible 19th Century stray to Florida?
(From Princeton University Press, Birds of the Dominican Republic and Haiti)

The "Black-headed Goldfinch"

What Audubon depicts here is a perfect match for the Black-headed Siskin, a Mesoamerican species. Audubon claims to have seen five of these birds on "one cold morning in December" near his home in Henderson, Kentucky.  He goes on to say that "their notes resembled those of the Pine [Siskin]..."and that he managed to shoot and procure two birds. His description is quite detailed, and lacks the vagueness that some of his other species accounts are known to have. Finches do wander, sometimes in flocks - it seems highly unlikely, but not impossible (nothing with birds is impossible), that this Mexican species of finch would wander north into the Ohio Valley. The world was experiencing a substantially different climate than that of today - the Northern Hemisphere was still within the grips of the "Little Ice Age."

However, I don't think this report would pass muster with a state bird records committee, had one existed at the time.  It seems more likely that Audubon encountered these birds elsewhere, or obtained them from a friend. He may have wanted to include this striking siskin in Birds of America (which was basically his life list), and simply changed the report to the central US.  After all, birders have been known to see a species in one location and purposefully report it from another.  Maybe Audubon was America's first stringer as well...  At any rate, it is intriguing, especially since Black-headed Siskin has been predicted to be one of the next vagrants to the ABA area.

The Scarlet Ibis

The Scarlet Ibis is on the ABA checklist, but US records have been questioned on the grounds of provenance.  Audubon claims: 

"... I have found the Scarlet Ibis less numerous than even the Glossy Ibis; indeed I have not met with more than three individuals in a state of liberty, in the whole range of the United States. These birds occurred at Bayou Sara, in Louisiana, on the 3d of July, 1821." 

Scarlet Ibises occuring as vagrants in Louisiana make complete sense.  It is safe to say that these birds were natural vagrants (how many zoos had Scarlet Ibises in 1821?), and that Audubon did, indeed, see these birds.  Audubon was certainly lucky in finding this species for is ABA list!  I also like how he considers "even rarer than Glossy Ibis" to be a strong statement of this bird's scarcity.

The Gigantic Fulmar

We don't usually associate pelagic birds with antiquity, but many species were seen with more frequency than today.  Everyone travelled by ship - and although they weren't seeking out rarities, these sailors definitely took notice of tubenoses.  

I saw this and couldn't resist.
Giant Petrel, or "Gigantic Fulmar", from Eve of the Emperor Penguin: A Merlin Mission (Magic Treehouse #40).

Perhaps the most fascinating pelagic report from the 19th century involves a specimen of a "Gigantic Fulmar, shot at some distance from the mouth of the Columbia river" which was sent to Audubon by his good friend Townsend (of Solitaire, Shearwater, and Warbler fame).   It is said to be "frequent in the southern seas", scavenging on the remains of dead animals.  This, coupled with his description of an albatross-sized bird that resembles the fulmar "in form and proportions" matches that of the Giant-Petrels.   Both the Northern and Southern Giant-Petrels, like the Black-headed Siskin, were listed as one of the next vagrants to the ABA area back in 2000 (Pranty et al.).  Could it be that one of these two species strayed north toward the Oregon coast during the early 19th Century?

-----------------

In writing this post, I think I have proven my obsession with historical records of rare birds.  Hell, these are so old they're not even considered records - more like "unconfirmed sightings".  Hopefully this has been a small glimpse into rarities from before birding was a "thing" - and I'm sure there are more old reports somewhere out there worth exploring, too.  

Thanks to audubon.org's page on Birds of America for the illustrations and much of the information. 

*Correction 3/12/15: It was a female, not a male, Smew shot (or so he claims) by Audubon in Louisiana.

The Bird Color Conundrum - Red, Brown, and Everything In Between

It seems like everywhere we turn, a reddish-brownish bird is there looking back at us. Birds with this relatively drab coloration are in no short supply, and scientists have concocted a somewhat ridiculous list of colors to describe these earth-tones.  While birding you may have wondered, what color is rufescent, anyway?  How is the coloration of a Rufescent Tiger-Heron different from that of a Rufous Hummingbird?  We are here to help answer these questions that have plagued the birding world for decades.

So, without further ado, we'll unveil a handy run-down of these colors.

Let’s start with the easy ones:

Red- Everyone knows this color. No description necessary.

Example: Red-capped Manakin, Red-rumped Cacique, Red-tailed Hawk, the list goes on…

Red-capped Manakins, Costa Rica.  Their heads are just red - no flamboyant adjectives required.

Brown- Yeah. The color you get from mixing all the colors.

Example: Brown Jay, Brown Thrasher, etc.

Now things get a little more tricky...

Crimson- It’s basically just red. Sometimes described as a “deep” red.

Example: Crimson-collared Grosbeak, Crimson Rosella

Vermilion- Red. It’s red.  Bright red.

Example: Vermilion Flycatcher

Ruddy- Often described as a "healthy red," more brownish.

Example: Ruddy Shelduck, Ruddy Turnstone

Ruddy Turnstone- Sunset Beach, NC.

Cinnamon- Reddish brown, more brown than red - like the spice.  

Example: Cinnamon Teal, Cinnamon Hummingbird

Reddish- Sort of red, hence the addition of the "-ish".

Example: Reddish Egret

Ferruginous- This one is an iron red; a rusty brown-red.

Example: Ferruginous Hawk, Ferruginous Pygmy-owl

Rusty- The color of oxidized Iron; ferruginous.

Example: Rusty Blackbird

Buff - A very light brown, often a "wash".

Example: Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Buff-bellied Hummingbird

Buff-breasted Sandpiper - Washington Co. NC

Chestnut- A deep, deep brown. Rich, smooth, chestnut...

Example: Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Chestnut-sided Warbler

Bay- The color used to describe a brown horse; so it's brown.  But a reddish brown, closely allied with chestnut.

Example: Bay-breasted Warbler, Bay-headed Tanager

Tawny- An odd mixture of brown, tan, and orange.  Sounds like a good name for a cat.

Example: Tawny-throated Leaftosser, Tawny Owl

Fulvous- Reddish-yellowish-brownish.  The full spectrum of reds and browns, mashed into one über-color.

Example: Fulvous Whistling-Duck

Rufous- Yet another reddish-brown.  There are over 160 bird species with Rufous in their name.

Example: Rufous Hummingbird, Rufous Antpitta.

Rufous Hummingbird- Raleigh, NC

Rufescent- Those bird-naming fiends decided there were too many Rufous birds, so they made up a new word, one that sounds like it's glowing.

Example: Rufescent Tiger-Heron

Bronzed/Bronzy- Resembling the metal Bronze, golden-brown.

Example:  Bronzed Cowbird, Bronzy Hermit

Brassy- Resembling the metal Brass.  They like these metals.

Example: Brassy-breasted Tanager

Russet- Potato brown, but more of a purplish-brown, maybe like those purple potatoes... I like those... Example: Russet-throated Puffbird, Russet Sparrow

Hepatic- Literally means "pertaining to the liver", so it's liver-colored - a deep, slightly brownish, red.  This may be the only useful thing I learned in Anatomy this year.

Example: Hepatic Tanager

Ochraceous- Ochre-colored. Nobody knows what the hell ochre is, so this probably isn't helpful.

Example: Ochraceous Wren

Coppery- Like the metal Copper, brownish-reddish-gold.  But not quite the color of Copper, so they added that -y on the end.

Example: Coppery-headed Emerald

Hopefully this was helpful for y'all to figure out your colors. Too bad we weren't taught "ochraceous" in kindergarten - that would have been useful.
We here at The Birder's Conundrum know that it is very important to know the colors of birds, so we will being doing more posts about bird colors. Coming soon we will have all of the azures, plumbeouses, violaceouses, and more.

All photos by Lucas Bobay

What Audubon Called The Birds

No character in history, with the possible exception of Roger Tory Peterson, has had such a profound impact on America's perception of birds as John James Audubon.  However, when looking through his works, a few things stand out as being, well, a little "different" from what the modern birder is accustomed to.  For the life of me, I cannot figure out what the hell the Carbonated Swamp-Warbler or the Washington's Eagle even are.  Some birds' names have been changed completely - leaving behind their colorful colloquial roots to occupy a more utilitarian space in our 21st century language.  This is a shame - Audubon probably had a lot more fun identifying birds by these "antiquated" names than we ever will by our modern, AOU-certified ones.  Let's explore some of my personal favorites from Audubon's extensive repertoire:

Aquatic Wood-Wagtail - Now known as Louisiana Waterthrush

I can't think of a more fascinating name for one of my favorite birds.  A Wood-Wagtail?  It sounds so exotic.  Let's face it - Louisiana Waterthrushes have hardly anything to do with Louisiana.  They do, however, wag their tails emphatically, live along wooded streams, and enjoy water.  Sure, it makes you think of those pipit-like Eurasian birds, but technically it's not a "thrush" either.  So I propose we return to our ancestral American roots and change the common name back to AWWA.

Red Palarope - Now known as Red Phalarope

I know this is just a misspelling, but it made me laugh.  If any bird would be your pal, it would be the Red Palarope.

They just look friendly, don't they?  Like lil' buddies.

Hyperborean Phalarope - Now known as Red-necked Phalarope

"Hyperborean" comes from the Greek word for a mythical people that lived beyond the North Wind, a fitting (and mysterious) name for a bird that breeds in the Arctic and migrates offshore.  Come on y'all - this is so cool.  "Red-necked" just makes me think of muddin' and Jeff Foxworthy.  We could make this name even better by calling it the Hyperborean Palarope instead.  

Some Hyperborean Palaropes the Birder's Conundrum team saw off Cape Hatteras.

Foolish Guillemot - Now known as Common Murre

Back before I was a birder, I went on a puffin-watching trip in Newfoundland.  On the way to the breeding colony, the captain of our boat pointed out a few chunky seabirds desperately trying to take off.  He told us that they were Murres who had eaten too much, and thus couldn't fly.  That's pretty foolish.  I think "Foolish Guillemot" is an excellent name that should be reinstated.

Scolopaceous Courlan - Now known as Limpkin

This has to be my favorite of these names, if only because of the sheer ridiculousness of the first word.  "Scolopaceous" means "woodcock-like" (remember Scolopax is the genus that Woodcocks fall under).  Why an adjective would be created to mean something so specific as "woodcock-like", I have no idea.  "Limpkin" sounds like something I don't really want to look up on Urban Dictionary.  So Scolopaceous Courlan is definitely preferred here.

Scolopaceous Courlan - Barra del Colorado, Costa Rica

Tell-tale Godwit  - Now known as Greater Yellowlegs

"Tell-tale" makes me think of Edgar Allen Poe, so this name automatically gets bonus points.  The name "tell-tale" actually refers to their noisy call, which would often give away a hunter's position before he could approach a flock of shorebirds (I'm sure this has happened to birders too).  Greater Yellowlegs is a fitting name, but Tell-tale Godwit is more poetic, don't you think?

Illustrations from audubon.org

Guide to the Common Towhees of North Carolina and Virginia (Review)

In his groundbreaking new book, Field Guide to the Common Towhees of North Carolina and Virginia, Lucas R Bobay explores the diverse group of emberizid sparrows called Towhees. He uses this book as a way to focus in on the species of Towhee native to the Carolinas (specifically North Carolina) and Virginia and really go in depth into the patterns of vagrancy and migration.

This is Lucas R Bobay's sixth book on Towhees - his past ones studied Towhees in different parts of the world. It is safe to say that he is the world's foremost expert on this group of species.  This is quite obvious as the information in the book is of the utmost quality.  Having grown up in North Carolina, it is obvious that this is the group of Towhees that Bobay has studied the most.

The beautiful cover art adds to the allure of this fascinating work.

The book is quite hefty, about 350 pages, but no page is wasted. It starts off with the "Topography of a Towhee" which outlines every part of the Towhee in great detail, so when Bobay mentions the "slightly rufescent supercilium" or something else along those lines, the reader knows exactly what he is talking about. He then goes on to mention the patterns of vagrancy in Towhees in North Carolina and Virginia. Now, you may be thinking: Isn't this a book of common Towhees of North Carolina and Virginia? The answer is: Yes. But this does not mean the book cannot study the vagrancy patterns of the species mentioned. This section includes detailed maps depicting common patterns and lines the Towhee may follow along with which times of year certain Towhees are to be expected.

Next up in the book are the plates. Included in the book are both drawings and photos, 134 altogether. The drawings show all of the color morphs and differences in Juvenile, Immature, Adult, Male, and Female Towhees of North Carolina and Virginia. I prefer the photos over the drawings due to their very high quality, as is seen on the cover. Most people say "don't judge a book by its cover" but the quality of the photo on the cover of this guide is truly representative of the quality of the information contained within it.

Sample Page showing the extensive historical accounts.

Much of the book explores the historical records of these birds (sample page above). It explains and explicates the reasons for movement within the populations as well as changes in the number of birds seen in different types of years.  I would recommend it to any birder who struggles with Towhee identification in the Carolinas or Virginia.

There are only a few apparent errors in the book. A few times the word Towhee is spelled "Towhss," but other than that the book is flawless. This book is exceptional and honestly the most groundbreaking book of 2014. I look forward to what Lucas R Bobay comes up with next.

This book is available in no bookstores, anywhere.

Review by Samuel Jolly

Graph - A Year in the Life of a Birder

Birders follow the calendar differently than the average person.  Our moods and personal cycles entirely depend on what the birds are doing.  This creates a roller coaster of emotion, sending people like me into an oscillating phase bouncing between fits of unbridled rage and complete elation.  I realized last year that these phases follow a relatively clear-cut pattern, generally peaking at the two migrations.

Enter this incredibly detailed and beautiful graph depicting the major phases of the birder's emotions.  We here at The Birder's Conundrum used complex and mind-blowing mathematical expressions to create this.  Keep in mind that regional variations apply, but this works for the Carolinas and Virginia pretty well.  Especially notable is the Red-eyed Vireo Valley - the lowest point of the year, summarized by the incessant singing of REVIs, invisible Cuckoos, and Cicadas.  This is the time of year where birding nearly ceases, and birders briefly lose sight of their ridiculous obsession and begin doing "normal" things.  The mind wanders to other pursuits, like posting beautiful photos of Cardinals and Bluebirds to Facebook pages, until at last a sandpiper shows up on a mudflat somewhere.  We are currently stuck in this treacherous valley.  Come on Baird's, White-rumped, or Pectoral - we need you. Please.

Faced With The Birder's Conundrum

Birding is a conundrum, in both senses of the word.  Here at The Birder's Conundrum, an up-and-coming birding blog, we strive to explain this dual meaning to the best of our abilities.  The simple act of birding is riddled with "confusing and difficult problems or questions" - perplexing identifications, new science, and why we do what we do as birders.  We also will ask difficult (and sometimes embarrassing) questions for your reading pleasure, by exploring the pastime's quirks and obsessive characters that can make birding funny as hell.  Nothing is off-limits.  So welcome, and get excited.  This is going to be Great(er).