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!

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

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.