The Shit and The Sand-Plover

What's that sound? Can you hear it? Maybe not, but I can smell it...the shitwinds are blowing, and you can bet that this is just the calm before the shitphoon that is about blow ashore...

We at BB&B are not the type of people to be optimistic about the next four (or eight) shitty years, not in the slightest. We are not the type of people to ask our brothers and sisters to reach out across the aisles of shit, to attempt handshakes that will just cover your hands in shit. We are far too realistic. For birds, the environment, and yes people too, the waves of shit are now towering above our heads, and when they break there will be nowhere to run. Drowning in shit is a frightening and very real possibility. The last Republican administration was a hellish thing to experience (on environmental and a great many other fronts), but remember this...even George W. Bush admitted that climate change was real, and who knows how things would have played out if his wife wasn't a birdwatcher! It's no coincidence that Papahānaumokuākea National Monument was created after Laura Bush visited Midway Atoll.

That said, I'm already sick of the blame game, the soapboxes, the half truths, the clickbait...especially the clickbait. We may be hanging our heads, but we are not the type of people to beat a dead shithorse. We will not drag this out any more today, just as we seem to be shaking off the great national hangover. But make no mistake...the shitreaper is coming, and we should all be very, very afraid. - Felonious Jive

Fall is winding down now...many of the summer's birds are already making themselves cozy on their wintering grounds, and we await for the winter's crop of waterfowl/raptors/gulls/rarities (???) to pile in. But the bay area's October bore one last juicy piece of fruit for me...LESSER SAND-PLOVER. After Matt Lau (birding hero) found and babysat the bird for several days, a small nerdsquadron was dispatched to make contact with the wayward Russian. Though a great many struggling birders had complained about the long, sandy walk out to the bird, we made a effortless beeline straight from the RCA Patch, complete with the blessing of the National Park Service as we were caught jumping the gate. Navigating our way through the dunes, we quickly found Matt Lau and a contingent of nerds, who were already on the bird.

I hadn't seen a Lesser Sand-Plover in a long time...a long time. Over 20 years in fact (thanks Don!). Now that I think about it, there is no other bird species I've seen before that I'd gone so long without seeing again. The plover did very plovery things, actively feeding almost the whole time we were there, which we appreciated considering that it does register pretty high on the drab scale.

Other birders really crushed the shit out of the bird on previous days, but we were in a foggy soup the whole time and wanted to avoid pushing around the Snowy Plovers it was with, so I'm happy with the mediocre images I got. Typically, one clueless birder coming towards us walked straight through the Snowy Plover flock without pause while we were waving our hands and shouting "no!" at him...ugh. Unbelievable. Not that a disturbance like that is the end of the world, but it's poor form to say the least.

Not that you can tell from these photos, but the thing that really struck me about this bird was how big it was...it was much, much bigger than its Snowy Plover buddies, and really stood out. It was also not particularly cute, which is unusual for smaller plover species. The bird I saw previously seemed very small at the time (but it was completely alone) and was also as cute as goddamn button, but it was an obvious juvenile. I'm not sure what the consensus is on the age of this bird. At any rate, I'd been hoping to reconnect with this species for a great many years, and was stoked to do it in a county I love birding in. Thanks again Matt!

There was also a pair of Red Phalaropes feeding on the open beach, which is super weird. There have been hordes of them inshore this year though, so it wasn't totally shocking.

While this has been a great fall for birding, it has not been so for photography, for some reason. Here are some American White Pelicans that helped buck the trend at Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge.

White pelicans rank very high on the majestic scale, and I'm happy to have them around.

Not all monarchs migrate to Mexico; California has many important wintering sites as well. As with many birds, both the western and eastern monarch populations have experienced precipitous declines in the last 20 years. That's some shit. Photographed at Point Reyes, CA.

My last trip out to Point Reyes with Don Francisco was solid (hello golden-plovers, 112 species on the day) but did not produce anything interesting in the vague runt traps. The resident Great Horned Owls at Mendoza that roost above the cattle guard could give a fuck, but then again they don't seem to give a fuck about anything except sleeping.

I went out to Marin again last weekend to check out the new tidal marsh at Hamilton Field for the first time...damn, that place is good! Much vague runt potential there, and an impressive example of what restoration can do around these parts (it used to be an airfield). I stopped at the Las Gallinas Ponds on the way back, and had nothing unusual save for a brown blackbird with a yellow eye that I could not will into being a Rusty. This immature Red-tailed Hawk let me walk right under it though, so I gave it a quick crush.

Gadwalls...what would we do without Gadwalls? It is a necessary duck. Mark my words...the day Gadwalls go extinct will be the day human beings go extinct.

The bay area offers a great many opportunities to observe and photograph waterfowl at close range, but Cinnamon Teal are not particularly confiding, especially now that the Radio Road ponds are going to be out of commission. This hen didn't seem to know that though. She had a very drab, almost featureless facial pattern typical of the species.

That's all the time we have today. The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive would like to thank the phenomenal Trailer Park Boys for his inspiration today. Until the next post, I highly recommend you hang up your keyboard commando boots and go birding...

Or drinking. That helps too.

September Sickness

September and October in the bay area means GET YOUR ASS TO THE COAST. I feel bad for birders who don't live near the coast in this crucial time...the window is wide open for rarities. Most of the year, it's just cracked, and sometimes it's even closed. Light south winds on September 11 meant it was a day to be out on Point Reyes, and we were rewarded with some juicy birds...American Redstart, Canada Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, and a flock of 3 Clay-colored Sparrows. Clay-colored is rare but regular here, but three together was a bit on the bizarro side of things.

The next Saturday it was nice and overcast, so it was out to San Francisco this time. Across from Lake Merced, the continuing Magnolia Warbler made for a fine county bird (thanks Aaron) and a Black-and-white Warbler was very satisfying as well. This female Bicolored Blackbird did a good impression of a female Tricolored, but was too warmly colored. Approach with caution.

It's always good to be checking listservs constantly in September, you never know when the news of the next MEGA will come. Checking the listserv as I was about to leave Lake Merced proved to be timely, and I quickly abandoned the rest of my plans and went straight to Golden Gate Park for another vague runt that had just been found. While waiting for the tasty eastern warbler, I kicked it with this Brown Creeper, a bird that apparently has never made it onto BB&B before...weird. Welcome Brown Creeper!

This is another common denizen of forests and parks (like tweakers, but creepers and tweakers are unrelated, despite what you might think), and accompany many a mixed flock. They're ain't confiding or abiding though, which I guess explains why I have so few photos of them.

Brown Creeper fact of the day: You probably know the northernmost reaches of their range are in Alaska, but you can also find them as far south as Nicaragua. I'd like to see some of the mixed flocks they travel with down there, Jesus.

Ugh, I just looked at an eBird checklist with Brown Creeper in it from Nicaragua...there's some gnarly stuff in there.

Eventually I refound the Canada Warbler, which much like the Point Reyes bird was relatively easy to keep track of but exceedingly difficult to photograph (I failed entirely with the other bird). I have some kind of nostalgia with blurry rarity photos for some reason, so I am forcing you to see this awful image. It stayed in the same tree for a whole hour, and I couldn't do any better, but I never claimed I was a photographer. Ahhh...getting Black-and-white, Canada and Magnolia in the same morning in California is what September is all about.

September actually isn't all warblers and rarities though, it's also cuddling Bushtits.

I love eastern wood warblers. I absolutely adore them, no matter the time of year. I spend a lot of time looking for them, whether it is in Florida or California or Mexico (not Midway though). However, California gives you the opportunity to see more than wood warblers...we get warblers as well.

Sibes...I fucking love Sibes. This Dusky Warbler was the undisputed highlight of September, not just for me but for pretty much everyone else who saw it. It sounds like the bird was much more cooperative the first day it was found (when I saw it) than subsequent days; the Dusky Warbler found recently in Orange County disappointed pretty much everyone who chased it (sorry Justine). Speaking of Sibes, the Bird of October might just be the Lesser Sand-Plover Matt Lau found yesterday south of Abbott's Lagoon, but we'll see if sticks around or not.

The day after the great Dusky Warbler Victory of 2016, Billy and I went up to Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands to check on some other kinds of migrants. This resident Red-tailed Hawk had no intentions of migrating anywhere, but chose a nice lichenized outcrop to perch on.

It's always so much easier to find Sharp-shinned Hawks at Hawk Hill than anywhere else locally. Not that they are rare here by any means, but if you spend a morning birding and you don't see one, that seems perfectly normal. Spending a few hours at Hawk Hill and missing them would be, well, bizarre.

Here's another one, with a deceptively-shaped tail. Note the barred flanks and "pigeony" expression. Or don't, you're welcome not to.

September 30 is generally a day you must be out birding in California. If the vague runt window is open in September, then by September 30 the window is completely shattered and rare just comes blowing through at will. With this in mind Abe Borker and I went back out to Point Reyes...except it wasn't rare birds we found blowing through, it was the goddamn wind. With strong northwest winds, our chances of landing a huge migrant harvest were quite low. Even this coyote seemed perplexed at the lack of rare birds around.

Our efforts were not in vain, however. This Magnolia Warbler (county bird!) was at the lighthouse, and stayed still just long enough to get brutally crushed. Nice to see one in San Francisco and Marin in the same month.

We got brief looks of the bird below the park housing in the lupine patch, then the bird came around the parking lot and foraged right beneath us. The wind taketh away, but in this case the wind giveth a very sharp, mid-level rarity.

See? Fucking windy. American Redstart was the only other eastern-flavored bird of the day, but who knows maybe it had just cruised down from northeast Washington, where they are not an uncommon breeder. That said, Magnolias aren't a strictly eastern bird either; they breed in eastern British Columbia.

Almost every patch on the Outer Point has Great Horned Owls, where they probably are out terrorizing the Barn Owls every night. This one was down in New Willows, were I had not seen one before. If it is indeed a resident bird, it has probably seen more rarities than you could possibly imagine. It may have even eaten some of them.

An Ancient Harlan's Hawk, Newt Problems, Shades of Merlin

As any California birder knows, Humboldt offers a lot more than just the (very) occasional Great Gray Owl. There is no shortage of good birding spots to scour during the winter, so of course I had to check some other shit out while I was up there. I birded Arcata Marsh, since it is conveniently located right in town and just about anything can show up there...the dependable Swamp Sparrows I was looking for were not very dependable on this day, but the much more range-restricted Golden-crowned Sparrows were there in predictable abundance.

Unlike most birding spots, the marsh continues to grow in size and simply gets better and better when it comes to shorebirds and waterfowl, possibly to the detriment of the local Short-eared Owl population. This Greater Yellowlegs was feeding right in the face of this Green-winged Teal, foraging on little inverts the teal was stirring up with its bill. When you have a height of only a few inches it must be strange to have a yellowlegs looming over you, but the teal did not seem to mind.

This was apparently a successful foraging technique, as the yellowlegs did grab something while I was watching.

Over on the V Street Loop, this Great Blue Heron had gotten a hold of a much more interesting prey item...a large newt.

The heron did not appear to have a good idea of how to go about eating the newt, repeatedly dipping it in water, bashing it against the grass and not giving attempting to swallow it at all while I was there. This is an awkward thing to prey on at best, extremely toxic and deadly at worst. Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest used newt juice as a poison...

On the far side of the loop a cooperative Merlin was posted up on...a post. This bird struck me as being fairly pale, with no mustachial stripe...in the field I thought it was a female, but looking at the photos now I don't feel so sure about that. Interesting bird, I'm not quite sure what to make of it as far as age/gender/subpecies.

Elsewhere in the bottoms, I came across another, especially confiding Merlin. This bird was noticeably darker with heavier markings on the breast and belly than the first Merlin of the morning, but I'm not enthusiast about pulling the trigger and calling it a "Pacific" Merlin (I would expect a darker face and even more streaking/barring on the breast and belly). The vast majority of Merlins I've seen over the years usually zip by, giving shitty looks...I'd like to have more time to watch these birds and get to know each subspecies more.

For all you robin-strokers out there, here is an American Robin. There are thousands in the Arcata Bottoms in the winter. It is known.

Much, much more interesting than the area robins was this Harlan's Hawk. This bird has been wintering along the Highway 101 corridor between Eureka and Arcata for over a decade (!), usually near the Jacoby Creek Cutoff. In the past, I had only seen it while on the freeway, getting a quick naked-eye glimpse of it perched on a billboard or something and thinking "Oh, that was probably the Harlan's", but I finally managed to get great looks at the bird on this trip.

The bird is extremely dark, lacking any "warm" tones whatsoever. Fitting for an Alaskan bird. The uppertail (not visible in any of my photos) appeared dark gray without a hint of red, with a prominent dark subterminal band.

Although I never saw it fly, this bird definitely provided the best looks I've had of any Harlan's. Hopefully it will make it back to Humboldt this fall once again.

It was a relatively quiet winter in Humboldt as far as rarities go, but with a Snowy Owl (that I gleefully did not chase) showing up shortly after I was up there, the winter Vague Runt season ended for local birders on an extremely high note. What will show up next winter? Steller's Eider? Gray Wagtail? Black-tailed Gull? Siberian Accentor? The possibilities boggle the mind.

A Pygmy Horned-Owl, Blossoming Blossoms, the Halloween Thrush.

Seeing a Northern Pygmy-Owl usually tops any day of birding; seeing one that you can walk right up to puts your day in a whole other birding league.  Mines Road, Alameda County, CA.

Well now that I have gotten the obligatory winter is ending/spring is coming post out of the way, I don't have to talk about that shit anymore.  So other than migrants, what is the good word?

The birding world has been bereft of much new controversy lately, for good or ill, though there has been some intrigue...your life list may get a bit shorter soon, and there is still a Brown(ish) Shrike lurking 3 hours north of me...maybe I should try to see it or something.  I say Brownish because it does not really look like the Brown Shrike I saw in Humboldt County a few years ago, and Red-backed Shrike could potentially reach North America.  Equally plausible, it is a different subspecies of Brown Shrike, it is an intergrade of different Brown Shrike subspecies, or most horribly of all, it could be a hybrid. Who knows how the Bird Police will rule?  I know how....WITH AN IRON FIST!!!!!  Naw not really, they are nerds, sorry guys (and Kristie). Anyways, I may be #7, but this is out of my birding wheelhouse.  Old World birders, you are our only hope!

This bird was sitting directly above a moderately used road, completely ignoring traffic and only briefly acknowledging Cass Grattan and myself with a few seconds of eye contact.  It was silent the entire time, and was completely zoned in on a handful of shrubs on the other side of the road.  No playback required for this one.

While it is not too difficult to figure out where Northern Pygmy-Owls might be found, I rarely get to see them...in fact, I don't even remember the last time I saw one.  What an epic bird to hang out with. The tail almost looks like an afterthought of sorts.  It never flushed, and when we came back an hour later, it still had not moved.  Patience rewards the hungry pygmy-owl.

This bird actually had horns out for a while. Did you even know that pygmy-owls had horns?  I think it's worth showing such a shitty picture just so you can see what I'm talking about.  Life plumage feature for #7.

Other things besides birds are appearing now.  This is a Castilleja, some kind of owl's clover. Maybe dense flower owl's clover?  Castilleja is the same genus that Indian paintbrush belong to, but I don't get to see owl's clover nearly as often. Mines Road, Alameda County.

Dodecatheon, shooting star, is another beloved wildflower around these parts. Del Valle Regional Park, Alameda County, CA.

Sometimes it's hard to think of a caption for certain birds...Northern Rough-winged Swallow is one species that presents such a challenge.  They are adherent to the Economy of Style.  They don't make remarkable noises.  Unless you are someplace where Southern Rough-winged Swallow also occurs, they are easy to identify, and there is probably not a soul in the world whose favorite bird is this bird. It's nice to see them perched on something other than a power line though. Lake Elizabeth, Fremont, CA.

Stll, no one can deny that NRWS is a pleasant bird...it's just so mellow.  And hardy...they are one of the very first spring migrants to arrive in the spring, though the last few years a bird doesn't exactly have to be hardy to spend a winter around here.

Phainopepla, the bird in the shining robe.  Many birders associate Phainopeplas with desolate, arid landscapes, but they can are equally at home in oak woodlands.  You show me mistletoe and I will show you Phainopepla. Del Valle Regional Park, CA.

I wonder how male Phainopeplas became black. They sit in conspicuous places within often bleak landscapes, and frequently live in areas with triple digit temperatures...yet somehow manage to avoid predators and don't overheat. They got dressed by the same force that dressed Bronzed Cowbirds, ostensibly...they both even have red eyes.

Last fall and this winter was an INVASION YEAR for Varied Thrushes in much of California, with more than one bird making it all the way to Imperial County, where there is absolutely no Varied Thrush habitat to speak of...the one I saw was foraging in palm trees. This bird was in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

One of the big birding perks of living in northern California is being able to see Varied Thrushes regularly, and getting to listen to their wondrous and soothing songs. No other bird commands your attention as much in a redwood dawn chorus.

They are fabulously constructed birds, even their undertail coverts are interesting to look at.

A Red-tailed Hawk sits above Highway 101 gridlock and ponders the idiots below. San Francisco, CA.