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

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.

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!