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

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

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.