The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: Birding by Flavor Profile

Sibley uses words like "neat, clean, striking" to describe Buller's Shearwater. Dunn uses "gleaming, graceful" and..."striking". All of these descriptions are true, and in the case of "striking", double true, but what if I told you that this bird could be described in an entirely different way? The depth of this bird's nuanced but definitively unsubtle visual flavor profile is nothing short of bottomless. The mellowing effects of the strong vanilla notes fades before the abrupt finish, as the bird disappears into a trough forever, never to be seen again...and you are left needing more. The aftertaste? A hint of calamari and a whole lot of desire.

The foodie. The wine connoisseur. The beer sommelier. The cicerone. The coffee cupper. I don't have a whole lot in common with these people. I still eat Top Ramen with rigor, even though I am 13 years removed from college. I hardly drink wine at all, and I will drink Tecate or Pabst or Hamm's just as happily as most (not all) other beers. I do love good coffee, but there is no way I would ever pay to go cupping. However, there is something that all these food and drink snobs have in common with one another, and with myself...in order to be so in enthusiastic abound indulging themselves in food and drink and trying to convey that to people, they also need to have a love of the language that comes with the territory.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here are excerpts from a breakingbourbon.com (which has some great content if you like your bourbon...and you know how BB&B feels about bourbon) review about Sazerac's 2013 George T. Stagg Straight Bourbon. To wit:

"Sitting with this bourbon for the first time you're instantly hit with a sense that this is a sophisticated bourbon. A smell of aged wood, raisin, caramel and a hint of corn dance across your nose, transporting you right to the middle of an aging warehouse on a warm spring day in Kentucky. While the alcohol wants to overpower the senses, overall the balance of the wood smell evens this bourbon out nicely. Let this one sit for a few minutes, and the smell just keeps getting more and more delicious...Initially a sweet taste of caramel hits your tongue that instantly is replaced with a taste of all-spice and leather... As it mellows, you get hints of candy corn and rubber, finishing on a note of wet wood and tobacco."

Fascinating. Now I'm not familiar with this particular bourbon, but this is a very interesting description, fanciful as it may seem. Candy corn? Rubber? I've consumed a lot of bourbon and those tastes have never entered my mind. It's ridiculous and whimsical but people really get off on this sort of thing. As easy as it is to just call "bullshit" on this sort of thing, I think it's fantastic that folks are being so creative and enthusiastic in describing something that a lot of consumers put no mental effort into characterizing whatsoever...i.e. a lot of people relegate coffee to being either good or bad, hot or cold. Nothing more. But there is so much more!

And now to finally bring this post around to birds...here at the Human Birdwatcher Project, we firmly believe that "birders are people too!", and in the last decade a whole lot of people have bought in to the foodie treatment thing. I think it is time that birds get the same sort of attention to detail that so much of the nonbirding world has been delving into. All too often a bird is described the same way over and over again...beautiful, bright, cute...striking...or on the other end of the spectrum, dull, plain, or even than repulsive cliche that never seems to die, "little brown job". These abundantly used descriptors are ok for field guides, which have little space available and require utilitarian phrasing regardless, but what about all the other bird books? The magazine and web articles? The blogs and the trip reports? We can do better, bird writers! What would it be like to apply these foodcore descriptions to a bird's appearance...a visual flavor profile, so to speak? Well, there is only one way to find out...

Yellow-billed Magpie. This endemic demands your attention. To look away when a magpie is near is to do your eyes, heart, and visual palate injustice. Most of what this bird has to offer, strictly in terms of looks, is a sudden blast to the retinas; it is superbly balanced, with strong notes of oak and dried grass. You see what you get very quickly, though this is a bird that needs to enjoyed both while it is perched and in flight. When seen close up and in good light, you will notice a salty but wet taste - these are the tears flowing down your face, which the magpie's incredible iridescence has triggered reflexively.

Before we go on, all of these food and drink items that get critiqued are typically assigned some sort of score, mostly because people really like to rank things. With that in mind, and because birders still mercilessly use the word "jizz" seriously (birders are still clueless, apparently), I will now introduce the Bourbon, Bastards & Birds Visual Jizz Tasting Scale™! The magpie gets an 8/10 on the scale, with the only significant mark against it being that much of it appears identical to Black-billed Magpie.

Lewis's Woodpecker. Few birds taste as utterly unique...visually...as a Lewis's Woodpecker. This bird is sherbet for your eyes, but also so much more. A big woodpecker almost the size of a crow that is black, green, gray, red and pink...what? How can that be? But just like Jagermeister and soy eggnog sound absolutely incomprehensible together, we know it somehow works. And unlike Jagnog, encountering a Lewis's Woodpecker will never fill you with pain or regret the next day. Your soul will be full, though you may have an undeniable urge to track down some rasberry sorbet.

A criminally underrated species, Lewis's Woodpecker gets the high marks on the BB&B Visual Jizz Tasting Scale™: 9/10

House Finch (juvenile). Not only do species vary in their visual flavor profiles from one another, a single species can vary significantly in plumage as well. Take the House Finch. Despite seeing thousands of House Finches every year, every once in a while I will still be struck by a particularly bright male beaming his cranberried colors into my eyes. They are visually a mess, like they fell into some strawberry compote, but you can't deny that berry-colored birds are well received no matter how sloppy their attire. This juvenile House Finch, on the other hand...well, this just doesn't inspire the visual taste buds. It is overall bland but slightly tart, with textures of dead leaves and clay-laden soils. The more of these you see, the quicker the bitterness accumulates. Looking at this bird reminds me of eating a stale saltine...a stale saltine with no salt. Some of the fresh browns are warm and mellowing, sure, but there is no other shortage of brown birds that are far more inspiring. It doesn't help that the species is also ubiquitous (much like corn syrup and palm oil) and nonnative to much of the country. This particular bird gets points for fresh plumage and not much else; if most birds looked like this, there would not be birdwatchers.

The juvenile House Finch gets a 2/10 on the BB&B Visual Jizz Tasting Scale™.

A harsh review? Perhaps. I have no animosity toward House Finches, but we need to be true to our tastes, true to ourselves, and true to the birds (not to mention the jizz). Like food and drink, birds cannot be savored equally.

How about a couple more? I will now hand over the blog reins to my co-blogger Cass for some additional species, to get his take on birding flavor profiles.

Blue headed vireo. Maybe it’s just the eye ring but this bird inspires a deep lust for rolls. Sushi rolls to be exact. An understated blend of subtle flavors and textures, wingbars and flankwash, covert edging and vent glitz, this vireo was built with the same ethos that went into the architecture an 8 piece Kappa maki….HARMONY. As with most things Japanese, an element of  asymmetry is found in the final analysis. Chaos, i.e. nature, must have the final edit. With this bird it is that hooked crab-cracker glued to the front of its face. The bill is the bite, the wasabi punch that carries the vireo through is flirtation with mundanity and buries its memory deep in your stomach. A point blank viewing will make your eyes water and your grip on reality will be touch and go. As with sushi, the viewer is satiated with surprisingly little, as the visual nutrition is so dense. A gastronomical bonus; the blue headed vireo’s casual foraging speed, somewhere between the boorish/jolting sit-then-sally Empid and the frenetic wood warbler, also promotes proper digestion. Itadakimass!

Wood Duck (female). Belonging to the forgotten 3rd tribe of anatidids, the lurkers (the other two being, of course, the dabblers and divers), this backwater beauty is the chic, ice-veined femme fatale to her overblown, coked-out counterpart in the 80’s power couple known as Aix sponsa. Even the scientific moniker smacks of a New Wave band name.

Now to assess this birds flavor profile. For starters, resist the temptation to pick up this F%#*ING PERFECT duck and stuff it in your pocket. If resistance proves futile then bury your face in her neck and inhale the heady top notes of fermenting algae. Next, place her feet in your mouth in the hopes of ingesting a rogue toad egg she has caught between her toes. The numbing effect of the bufotoxin should kick in shortly, just in time for you to offer her a mouthful of mosquito larva that she will most likely attack with fervor and violence. The feeding will leave you with hideous face scars you'll carry with you for the rest of your days. Though you won’t feel a thing due to the bufotoxin, your heart will soar as you add another tick to your animals-that-have-eaten-out-of-my-mouth list.

Whoa. Well, this just goes to show you how many ways the visual flavor profile can go...who knew things would veer toward Nyotaimori? Birding by flavor profile isn't going to revolutionize the arcane genre of bird writing, but I think there are avenues of perceiving and describing birds that birders should be open to exploring.

Smith Oaks, Hooks Woods, Eubanks Woods Sanctuaries

Smith Oaks was extremely productive for us on multiple days and hella fun to bird, generally better than Boy Scout overall. Smith was consistently somewhere between "moderately birdy" and "guhhhhhh birds everywhere" throughout the week...eBird checklists were best characterized as "corpulent". Here are a few of the hundreds of migrants we met there, starting with this Chestnut-sided Warbler.

As expected, the always becoming CSWA was a fairly common migrant throughout the week at all the migrant traps we visited.

A female Blackburnian Warbler with a trophy-sized worm of inches.

This is the same male Blackburnian that was hanging out next to the egret rookery in the last post. I'm still suffering from heart palpitations from seeing so many of these crippling heart-stoppers that week, which were one of the most common warbler species. So many glowing Blackburnians everywhere were difficult to cope with, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Another crippling gasper, Golden-winged Warbler was certainly not a common migrant, but we did connect with more than I thought we would. We didn't come across any particularly confiding birds unfortunately, but who is complaining? Not me. A couple of them were singing, which is the first time I've ever heard them.

Though not a lifer, Cerulean Warbler was one of the main target birds of the trip for Yours Truly, #7. We had great success, and pleasantly saw a modest number of them.

Also like Golden-wingeds, they were hard as fuck to photograph/see well. Fitting, I suppose, for such a sought-after gem of a bird.

Female Cerulean, showing off her distinct long undertail coverts and almost stub-like tail.

Hella Wood Thrushes that week; we saw hundreds of them. This is not something I expected or have experienced before. Stoked.

When one encounters This Machine Nate on a trail, only one thing can be said for sure: you are in for a treat.

Nate's treat was met by a mix of intrigue and revulsion.

We also spent a lot of time at Hooks Woods. It's a lot smaller than Boy Scout and Smith, but it's the closest patch of trees to the coast, the habitat is good, and the concentrations of Geri there seem to vary between "low" and "bearable". This was the first Blue-headed Vireo of the trip; we would go on to see a handful spread out over the week.

I should mention that birding the road in front of the sanctuary can also be productive; this is where This Machine lifered Black-billed Cuckoo.

Here it is, your friend and mine, SWAINSON'S WARBLER, THE BROWN WONDER. This one was Dipper Dan's lifer. This was a good spring for these skulkers on the UTC apparently.

A surprise to one, Eastern Wood-Pewees adorned the migrant traps in large numbers. Lord knows how many of them were misidentified by Geri and friends.

Veeries were uncommon but dependable throughout our trip. Hooks Woods, and the lawn directly across the street from the entrance, was spilling over with Catharus the entire week. Thrushes were just littering the ground. We even saw some poor completely black thrush that had clearly just taken a bath in an oil pan someone had left out.

What a fucking bummer.

Where there are mulberries, there are Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. Mulberry trees are magic.

On our last day of birding the coast (April 27), Officer Shaw picked out this Olive-sided Flycatcher up in the canopy at Smith Oaks. Though not a late migrant on the west coast, it is in the eastern half of the country. It would be the only classic "late" migrant we would end up seeing; we did not connect with Alder, Willow or Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, or Mourning Warbler. We somehow dipped on Least Flycatcher as well, which seemed bizarre to me. I don't know if they are just not abundant on the UTC, or if they simply weren't moving through the area that week for whatever reason. We had several days with tons of Acadians...migration is weird.

Wrapping up High Island...Dipper Dan and I birded the High Island Historical Park (walking back to Guirdy Road) during the one very brief "slow" period we encountered....it was predictably slow, but I could see it being good when there are migrants around. We checked out Eubanks Sanctuary (mostly because we kept driving by it) on a birdy day and found it to be rewarding, although the habitat is overgrown and pretty much the same throughout the patch. Here is our eBird checklist; of note were Cerulean, Golden-winged and Canada Warblers (a new bird for the trip at the time). There is a pond in the back of the sanctuary that attracts a lot of birds, it is worth loitering around there for a bit. And amazingly, there were no other birders there! So if there are birds around and you want to take shelter from Geri, it is worth taking a look. We never did make it to the Crawford or Gast sanctuaries.

That wraps up our High Island coverage; in summary, it was as advertised. Absolutely ace birding, hordes of Geri, rampant misidentifications, and worthy of revisiting repeatedly.

Anahuac is up next!

Bravery Applauded: July Quiz Answers

Birding is hard. Quizzes are hard. I know. I applaud the bravery of the disturbingly few birders who submitted answers to last month's quiz, whether publicly or in private. Birders, being nerds, often don't have much going for them outside the birding world, and so it is understandable that many tremble at the thought of publicly misidentifying a bird. If they wrap up their entire identity in their birding skills, and those skills are shown to be lacking...then what is the desperate birder left with? Nothing.

However, my wonderful readers, you have a precious resource available to you. You may have heard of it. It's called, "#7". Since I am, in fact, #7, let me offer you some advice...it's ok to be wrong. Believe it or not, I have been wrong...many times. It's fine. Let go of that horrible, putrid, nerdy arrogance, and allow yourself to be vulnerable. It's amazing what people can learn, with minds and hearts open wide. That's how you get to the next level. If a birder deludes himself/herself into thinking that they are the absolute shit (and most birds are definitively not that), then their capacity for soaking up and being able to use new information is severely diminished. I hope the next BB&B quiz gets more participation.

On to the quiz results. A few people guessed White-eyed Vireo for Quiz bird #1, but White-eyed  typcially have more strongly-colored backs and yellower/greener secondaries. The vireo above was photographed on South Padre Island, TX, in the spring of this year. I am comfortable with identifying it as a Blue-headed Vireo, the expected "Solitary" Vireo there, from the drabbest end of the spectrum. The contrast with the throat and head is quite strong, as is the color in the flanks...otherwise, it looks very much like a Cassin's Vireo. The back is somewhere inbetween gray and yellow, and the head is certainly not any shade of blue. If this bird was found in California and submitted to the bird police as a Blue-headed Vireo, would it be accepted? I would wager it would not. That said, I feel a lot of west coast birders do not have a strong grasp of the variability Blue-headed can show...they tend to have their hands full with Cassin's vs. Plumbeous.

I would like to mention at this point how dissatisfied I am with how National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America (6th edish) treats the Solitary Vireo complex. For starters, the illustrations suck, and each species only gets one paltry, sucky illustration. On top of that, the web of ID problems these birds can present is not really addressed in the text. Blue-headed Vireos are alleged to have "yellow-tinged wing bars and tertials", when obviously that is not always the case (take a look at this bird...or this bird or this bird). "Greenish yellow edges to dark secondaries", also listed as a Blue-headed field mark, is frequently found on Cassin's. I generally like the Natty Geo guide (it is the only book I've been recommending to other birders since the 90's), but the Solitary Vireo section needs some serious work.

Now, in the interest of embracing being Wrong, let me know if you have a convincing argument for this being a vagrant CAVI instead of BHVI. We can talk this out. The bird does sport "distinct white on outer tail", visible in other photos, but I'm not sure how unique that feature actually is to BHVI. Where is my Pyle guide???

Quiz bird #2 was, admittedly, fucked up. You could see a strongly colored Empid, gray-headed and yellow-bellied, with a solid eye ring and dark throat. These are helpful field marks, but you could not see the bill or primaries. One could deduce that the bill wasn't particularly long, but even that was a bit of a stretch.

Several people did guess correctly, despite that it was almost not possible in that photo to distinguish between Hammond's and Dusky Flycatcher. The dark gray throat, however, is characteristic of fall Hammond's Flycatchers, not Dusky. This Hammond's Flycatcher, photographed in the fall (when Empids are often the most colorful) was at Coyote Hills Regional Park, Fremont, CA.

For the record, I consider HAFL vs. DUFL to be the most difficult ID problem of "common" passerines that we have to face in California. Both species are significantly more difficult to find during fall migration than in spring, so I thought it would be nice to put up a plumage we don't get to see very often.

This jaeger suddenly becomes easily identifiable with the wings at a slightly different position. The dark secondaries scream Long-tailed Jaeger, as does the small bill. Bodega Bay CA.

Quiz 4? It's a Brown-crested Flycatcher. Texas birds have relatively petite bills compared to BCFLs further west, similar in size and shape to Great Crested but thicker than Dusky-capped. Ash-throated, of course, lacks the strong yellow coloration on the belly. Hidalgo County, TX.

This is a pretty typical Herring X Glaucous-winged Gull. It has the bulkiness of a GWGU, but the bill pattern of a HERG. The primaries are perfectly intermediate in color between what we expect in HERG and GWGU. This hybrid can be quite common in northern California in winter. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

So there we have it. Thanks everyone for checking these birds, and we'll see you again soon.

A Warbler of Unrivaled Facemelt...Imvireoation...An Unabominable Oriole

Blackburnian Warbler resides in a league of it's own. It's particular brand of facemelt is unrivaled by any other bird on the continent, and that includes all the fancy tropical stuff. It borrows the colors of the classic oriole palate (orange, black, white) and mixes them with brilliance. It is a bird of Great Success.

Hi birders. Welcome to summer. Migration in the hemisphere has ground to a standstill, and birds have gotten down to the business of grinding something else...cloacas. How does that grab you?

I haven't seen any migrants oscar mike for quite some time now, and that's ok. South Texas was very rewarding this year. I don't even require a fallout experience to say that. Hell, I didn't even realize how consistently good South Padre Island could be until I got out there for the first time. Anyways, I am grateful for getting the chance to flog the migrant-laden shrubbery so much, and so I offer you another glut of migrants. 

Sadly, I only saw a handful of Blackburnian Warblers this spring, which may not be enough to hold me over for very long. It's an addicting bird.

In contrast, Blue-winged Warblers were much easier to come by. They are fidgety little bastards though...the ratio of Blue-winged Warblers seen to Blue-winged Warblers crushed is heavily skewed toward photographic failure. This bird was a bottlebrush junkie though, and it's nectar-lust quickly overrode any misgivings about having to lurk too closely to a human being. 

I was left rather chuffed in the aftermath of this observation.

Chestnut-sided Warbler anyone? This bird has furnished many cherished memories for me over the years, from Humboldt County's Patrick's Point to the talons of a Pearl Kite on a Costa Rican coast; from the bucolic Berkshires to the migrant traps of South Padre Island. It is the Warbler of Nostalgia.






Only the most anesthetized birder, bloated with hubris, can ignore such a bird...even one in sub-crippling plumage such as this one. 

The very first time I came out to South Padre Island, a blooming bottlebrush was completely surrounded by a phalanx of photogs, who were standing guard around the tree and generally being in everyone's way. The mood of a major twitch was in the air. I thought that there absolutely had to be something facemelty in that tree, or something rare. As you can see, I was wrong. They were in heat over Ruby-throated Hummingbirds...not that there is anything wrong with that, but when I am in heat over Ruby-throated Hummingbirds I prefer to ride it out in privacy.

Ah, the Solitary Vireo. It is a variable bird. Plumbeous and Cassin's get mistaken for each other. So do Cassin's and Blue-headed. This is a dull Blue-headed, which is doing a convincing impersonation (imvireoation?) of a bright Cassin's. How many Cassin's Vireos get passed off as uninspiring Blue-headeds? How many dismal Blue-headeds get passed off as bright Cassin's? It is an ongoing tragedy to be sure.

Here is what a Blue-headed is supposed to look like...allegedly.

Bullock's Oriole is a western species, no doubt. In south Texas, their distribution in the Lower Rio Grande Valley is solidly clinal...the further east you go, the more uncommon they become. In the Falcon Reservoir area they are fairly common, but it's a rare bird on the coast. This female is one of two Bullock's I saw at South Padre Island.

In California, vagrant-hunting birders aren't overly concerned about telling apart female Bullock's from female Baltimore (female/imm. Hooded vs. Orchard is a more frequent dilemma). However, I get the impression that birders in the eastern U.S. seem to struggle with this ID...they get more intermediate-looking Baltimores than we do, I reckon. At any rate, this a typical female Bullock's...a dull, almost lifeless yellow is confined to the upper breast, head and tail, dark "tooth marks" extend into the top of the white wing bars, and relatively pale wings do not contrast sharply with the white wing bar and edgings of flight feathers. For the record, I did see my lifer Bullock's X Baltimore Oriole there this May (an adult male), which was an abomination and not actually very spiffy.

A male Bullock's Oriole, on the other hand, is an unabominable oriole. It's one of those spring arrivals that makes you think, "Shit. I forgot that birds look like this. It's amazing". Shortly afterward, your knees buckle and you collapse to the ground in an awesome agony. Then two weeks later they are practically invisible because you are a jaded birder and cannot appreciate beauty.

Oranges upon brilliant oranges with this bird.

This is the one and only Prothonotary Warbler that I met this spring. She hung around the convention center for quite a while, feasting on oranges with reckless abandon.

Look at the heavy bill of this bird. Compared to the bill of something like a Wilson's Warbler, this thing is like a fucking toucan. Also, the fact that this bird has managed to appear pear-shaped is yet another amazing accomplishment.

Did someone say Wilson's Warbler? Behold one here, in all it's mellow glory. All photos in today's post were taken on South Padre Island, TX.

Vireo Discomfort...Gull Fails...The Drought...This Is No Time To Panic

A birder once famously said, "I've been very uncomfortable with my vireos", but I've only experienced itching and mild irrittion. Blue-headed Vireo was a sight for sore eyes last month. This bird was my 11th (and probably final) vireo species I've seen in California. Rejoice!!! Harbor Park, San Pedro, CA.

January is moving at snail's pace here in the bay area...maybe I'm experiencing some kind of post-Baja hangover. Maybe its the fact that December was plagued with vagrants, multiple state birds, and other goodness, from LA County to Modoc. Motivation is hard to come by.

On the birding front, not much is happening other than gulls. Slaty-backed, Glaucous, Vega, Kumlien's and Lesser Black-backed have all put in appearances already this winter here and there but I have not been able to muster what it takes to see any of these species. Glaucous (the commonest of the lot) bugs me in particular, because I actually missed them entirely last year. So despite my own failures, the gulls are not disappointing everybody.

This Thayer's Gull is often found near the nature center at Lake Merritt. Look at that sexy orbital ring.

I stared at this bird for quite a while. Eventually, I realized it was yet another Glaucous-winged X Herring hybrid, or a backcross....or something similar. You east coast birders have it lucky...seeing hundreds of hybrids in a day (or more) is a trying experience. San Leandro Marina, CA.

If you are not from the west coast, you may not be aware that California is undergoing a drought. A bad drought. I am tempted to say it's "catastrophic" but since California is prone to drought once in while, its just extra shitty. But they say that this is the worst since precipitation records had begun being kept. A massive high pressure system has been sitting over the eastern Pacific for months now, and refuses to budge. Until it does, that means no rain for most of the parched state. Many local Christmas Bird Counts recorded both extremely low numbers of passerines and waterfowl this year (for the latter, even in areas with plentiful habitat), which is not surprising. It's nice to go outside to sun and warmth everyday, but it's also depressing at the same time.

A Townsend's Warbler surrenders, accepting the inevitable Crush. A cold snap at the onset of winter sent many insectivores in the state down to the ground, in desperate search for food. Carpinteria, CA.

Clapper Rails are not agoraphobes, unlike their cowardly brethren. Like the Red Sea parted for Moses, the Clapper Rail plies the canal waters effortlessly. Arnold Road, Oxnard Plain, CA.

The snail's pace of things is probably also being brought on by the annual cycle of the Perpetual Weekend...I'm beginning to get restless, and I do not have work lined up yet, although not for a lack of effort. The relatively slow birding (aside from gulls) isn't helping, although I find that beer and whisky do help revive me. That all said, who am I to complain??? This is no time to panic. In much of the country, the birding is poor poor poor poor compared to the species diversity and local abundance of what the bay area has to offer...so I guess I will keep on pounding gull flocks (a humbling and occasionally miserable experience, even for this #7 birder) and visiting the Tufted Duck that lives a few minutes away. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, so the duck and I will really be putting our relationship to the test. Selah.

Another familiar vagrant, here is everyone's favorite Gray Hawk. I would love to know where this bird spends its summer months. Also seen in Santa Barbara County on this day were Lucy's and Prairie Warblers, Tropical Kingbird, Vermilion Flycatcher...SoCal can be brimming with good birds in winter. Carpinteria, CA.