Five birds that are not a Tropical Kingbird --- Monday, November 2, 2009
Steve Warner found a TROPICAL KINGBIRD at the confluence of the Necanicum and Neawanna Rivers in Seaside this morning. I dropped by to look for it and found several species that were not a Tropical Kingbird. I did not get to see the kingbird, however...
The Chinook are running at Youngs River Falls. I waded out to mid-stream and got some record quality photographs of the event. Fish are really difficult subjects...
Getting the Falls to pose was a little more straight forward, standing, as I was, in the middle of the river...
UPDATE: My fish guy (Lee Cain) tells me (now that he's got a good look at the photos and made visit to the falls himself) that some of the fish are Chinook (Rogue River hatchery stock) and some are Coho (also probably hatchery stock). None are genetic natives to the falls, but instead managed to get past the nets in Young Bay.
Salamander high season --- Sunday, October 18, 2009
It's been raining with some regularity over the past couple weeks and this dampens up the forest enough to bring out the amphibians. Michelle and I along with David Bailey and his daughter, Eva, ran the annual salamander census at Circle Creek this morning with the following results:
10 Northwestern Salamanders
27 Rough-skinned Newts
1 Columbia Torrent Salamander
1 Oregon Ensatina
18 Western Red-backed Salamanders
4 Dunn's Salamanders
7 Northern Red-legged Frogs
1 Pacific Tree Frog
Here are three buteos photographed within the last couple days. It's the middle of the "movin' around" season for raptors and funny looking buteos can be pretty regular. Can you identify any of these guys?
Out of context: High Tide --- Monday, October 5, 2009
Sometimes the local conditions will force a bird to behave outside the bounds of our expectations for what they do. High tide conditions are a good example. Many times shorebird species will either take advantage of a temporary situation or, more often, just put up with it until things go back to normal.
Semipalmated Plovers at Stanley Lake in Seaside can usually depend on large expanses of open mudflat most of the time, but the extra high tides that typically come with the full and new moons often have then behaving like phalaropes.
Add to this the out of context postures and structural details that we don't always notice when they're running around in a proper setting and we have a recipe for mis-identification.
Here are a couple of gulls seen from the South Jetty of the Columbia River this morning. They should be a good warm up for the season everyone loves to hate...
Today at the South Jetty of the Columbia, I was lucky enough to happen upon a group of three golden plovers. I had heard a distinctive "qweedle" call and saw a single bird land. The "qweedle" is said to be diagnostic for one of the species of golden plover that occur in the fall, but as it turns out, both species were in front of me.
Here on the Oregon Coast, the more common species is PACIFIC GOLDEN PLOVER which tends to be more brightly yellow colored. It also shows a less pronounce supercillium, a more obvious dark auricular patch and a shorter extention of the primaries past the tertials, usually with only three primary tips showing.
AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER, on the other hand, tends to be grayer, with a bold white supercillium, a paler looking head and weak auricular patch. It shows a longer primary projection with four primary tips showing past the tertials. It's also the species that's supposed to say "qweedle".
There was also a flock of 17 BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS in the area. Black-bellies are far more common than either of the golden plover species. They're larger, bulkier looking and very pale gray. They have the shortest primary projection, a white rump and pale tail and when they fly, they show black axillaries.
A couple of HUDSONIAN GODWITS have been hanging out in Yaquina Bay behind the Marine Science Center in Newport. I was lucky enough to get to see one of them on my way through to count butterflies at Rock Creek Conservation Area.
The single bird I saw was associating with MARBLED GODWITS and all of the birds were remarkably tame, letting us get quite close without any trouble.
This Morning on Coxcomb Hill --- Tuesday, September 8, 2009
There was a nice little fallout of passerines in the fog this morning on Coxcomb Hill. Good numbers of Yellow Warblers, Wilson's Warblers and Black-throated Grays, all working the shrubbery. Also seen were a couple Warbling Vireos and an interesting looking Orange-Crowned Warbler.
Today, Steve Warner and I found a plover on the river beach at the South Jetty of the Columbia River. We got very good looks at it, including getting to see it fly. We heard it clearly. Given all that, we still got it wrong on the first try.
So, here are three photos of the bird (taken through my spotting scope). Make sure you've got the proper age class, note the tail to primary tips relationship, look closely at where the black goes on the sides and check those under-tail coverts.
When you're done, have a look at two other South Jetty shorebirds seen today.
I'd have to say that my favorite gull species is the Heermann's Gull. It's not only one of the more straight forward ID'd among the larids, it's also a pretty thing.
Every summer, thousands of Heermann's Gulls follow the Brown Pelicans north and congregate on the beaches of the North Coast. The best place to get close to them is on the rocky cobble beach of the Seaside Cove.
Like all gulls, they come in several plumage types that correspond to their age classes.
Today at the Necanicum Estuary, something spooked the flock loafing on the sandy island in the middle of the river. Those with sharp eyes will note that the flock is not made up of only Heermann's Gulls. There are also Caspian Terns and California Gulls in the mix, but the about 80% of what you can see in the air is Heermann's Gulls.
It's the time of year when young birds have left the nest, sometimes accompanied by their parents, sometimes not. A time when they're sporting a plumage that they'll wear for only a short time. And because this plumage is often quite different than what they'll be wearing later, it's also a plumage many of us have very limited experience with.
This first set of real, non-downy feathering is called the juvenal plumage. The young bird is a juvenile, but its plumage is juvenal. Nothing delights "birders in the know" quite like correcting novitiates when the two terms are used improperly. Most of the juvenal contour feathers, particularly those on the head and breast, will be replaced some time in autumn during the first basic molt. The flight feathers of the wings and tail will be retained (along with some of the wing coverts, etc.). These retained feather will often look more like "normal" adult feathers than those that will not.
For some species, like the Song Sparrow, the differences between juvenal and basic are slight enough one might not even notice them. The feathers may look a little "fuzzier" and the pattern "not quite right", but otherwise, they look pretty much like Song Sparrows.
Other sparrows may be a bit trickier and require a closer look. It may even be necessary to see if there are any adults near by to provide clues.
Of course, sometimes the juvenile hanging out with adults doesn't quite match up with the adult that appears to be attending it for reasons that have nothing to do with plumage...
Some nestlings don't even wait until they've fully grown into their juvenal plumage before they venture out into the world. These chicks will not only have a different looking plumage, they'll be smaller and shorter beaked. So, along with a plumage that doesn't match the adult, structurally they'll look very much like a different species, too.
And for some species, the addition of a juvenal plumage will make an already complicated identification problem even more problematic. Juvenal stages are often the most poorly illustrated plumages in a field guide, if they're included at all. And a single, out of place juvenile can send one's imagination running off in unproductive directions.
So, this fall, while you're sifting through the migrant passerines, crowds of shorebirds and the common species that we often take for granted, watch out for the youngster.
Red-striped Northwestern Garter Snake --- Friday, August 21, 2009
Yesterday I caught and photographed a red-stripe color morph of the Northwestern Garter Snake (Thamnophis ordinoides) at Rock Creek in Coastal Lane County. My copy of Reptiles of Washington and Oregon has a picture of one with a blackish ground color and the text also talks about red-striped individual that could have any of several ground colors. I don't recall ever seeing a Northwestern with a red-stripe. I'm used to seeing yellow striped individuals.
And for all you skeptical labial scale counters...
Update: Here are few extra photos showing some of the range in variation of Northwestern Garter Snake, also taken at Rock Creek.
The seawatcher's conundrum --- Saturday, August 15, 2009
"I never drive any faster than I can see" - Jack Burton
There has been some discussion about how confidently one can identify a bird that is way off at sea while standing on land. I have been watching seabirds from the South Jetty of the Columbia River for more than twenty years and have some sense of what is and is not possible. I own a 60mm Bushnell Spacemaster with a telephoto eyepiece. For general searching I set the eye piece at somewhere between 20 and 25.
I fully admit that I depend a great deal on general shape and impression when identifying birds at a distance. I take what I've learned from seeing a species at fairly close range and apply it to what I see at a distance. In other words, bird ID at a distance depends much more on experience, expectation and a best guess than birding up close and personal.
But what is reasonable when we report what we've seen or evaluated what others claim to see? To give folks a general idea of what's reasonable at a given distance I went out on the South Jetty with my 300mm telephoto and took some pictures at known distances. My camera does not have the resolution of a human eye (I can't afford that many megapixels) and a moving bird seen through a telescope contains more information than a static one frozen in time on a computer screen, but there are some things we can learn from the following experiment.
All of the photos presented below are from the same camera, set at the telephoto maximum for my camera. They have been cropped vertically, but all show the width of field maximum for the lens. They have been adjusted for contrast and sharpened.
A Common Murre at 50m
Surf Scoters at about 150m
The South Jetty viewing platform at 1.3km (0.8mi)
The end of the South Jetty at 3.5km (2.2mi)
The end of the North Jetty at 5.7km (3.6mi)
Tillamook Head and the Tillamook Head Lighthouse at 32km (20mi)
Obviously, this experiment would be even more meaningful if the photos had been taken through a spotting scope. The magnification and clarity of what I could see through both spotting scope and 8x42 binoculars was much better than what I could see through my camera view finder. But even in these poorly resolved photos, I can make out the pelicans at 2 miles...
Update: Here's a handy mariner's calculator for determining how far away the apparent horizon is from your selected "crow's nest". And for all the true math wonks, a discussion (with diagrams) detailing how these formulas are derived.
The Cardinal Meadowhawks were laying eggs at Crabapple Lake southeast of Coffenbury Lake today. I took lots of pictures and a few actually came out okay.
Sometimes the egg laying is done while the male supervises attached in tandem.
My day amid the post-breeding feeding flocks --- Monday, August 3, 2009
Many species have finished up breeding for the the season and have started to come together in mixed feeding flocks. It's always fun to work these groups, because they often contain surprises. I ran into several mixed groups today at Sunset Beach Trail while on a dragonfly photo mission... This female Lazuli Bunting was a pleasant surprise. They're rare in the county and they didn't show at the only known breeding spot this year.
I came across several warbler species, including Black-throated Gray and Yellow Warblers.
Both chickadee species, Red-breasted Nuthatch and Brown Creeper were also seen.
And there were at least three Hairy Woodpeckers working the pine snags.
First a mystery shorebird comes to us from our good friends Dave Lauten and Kathy Castelein down Coos Bay way. It was taken through a spotting scope. Note the long bill and long legs...
The second is was taken by me at Mt Hebo. It was with a mixed flock of feeding passerines that included warblers and chickadees.
New County Record - Black Petaltail --- Sunday, July 26, 2009
I was with a group up on the road to Onion Peak today and we came upon a seep that had several (at least 10) BLACK PETALTAILS. I had never seen them in the county before, and it turns out no one else has either. The only other recorded spot in the Coast Range for this species was Mary's Peak and they haven't been seen there in a number of years.
We had them landing on us...
Also seen today, while not new to the county, new to most of us on the trip: the rare Queen of the Forest (Filipendula occidentalis).
I tend to read in jags.I'll go for months without reading anything, then will suddenly get an urge and read 3 or 4 books in the space of weeks.I've been going through one of those reading jags this summer and have several books to recommend.
My preferences run toward non-fiction, so if you’re a John Grisham sort of reader you may not find my list all that interesting…
Your Inner Fish (Shubin 2008) – Dr. Shubin is a paleontologist who found himself teaching comparative anatomy at the University of Chicago.One of his many claims to fame is the discovery of a 375 million year old fossil fish dubbed the Tiktaalik [http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/meetTik.html].This critter has a head like an amphibian, but the rest of its body plan is far more fish-like.It is a transitional fossil.
Starting with the Tiktaalik, Shubin takes the reader on a journey of comparative anatomy, physiology and genetics that ties all life on Earth into an easy to grasp evolutionary package, and he manages to do it without talking down to his readers or losing them in a pile technical jargon.
The Drunkard's Walk (Mlodinow 2008) – If there were one book that folks in these troubled times should be required to read, it's this one.There is no more mistreated field in science than statistics and it's largely because we humans want to believe that everything has meaning and accidents don't happen- that we really do have a statistically significant chance at the lottery, if we just keep playing the same number…
Dr. Mlodinow is a physicist who teaches at CalTech, was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and has co-authored a book with Stephen Hawking, but his credits also include writing for MacGyver and StarTrek:TNG.It's probably this eclectic resume that gives Mlodinow the skill set to tackle the fundamental disconnect between the way things happen in our world and the way we often interpret them.He looks at everything from roulette wheels and baseball statistics, to the stock market and demonstrates quite convincingly how each is less about skill, than it is about randomness, normal distributions and standard deviations.And he does it with far more elegance and accessibility than I can do justice to in any review I might try to write.
Living With Bugs (DeAngelis 2009) – This is less a sit down and read cover to cover book than it is a primer on not panicking.There are a lot of bugs out there and a lot of folks selling stuff to spray on them.The pest management industry puts a lot of time and energy into trying to make us feel icky about insects and the net consequence is an environment full of chemicals that are just as icky, if not more so.
Dr. DeAngelis is an entomologist and professor emeritus at OregonStateUniversity.He knows a bit about pest management.Living With Bugs takes a look at the most common "bugs" likely to turn up in one's home and provides a critique of the choices that are out there, focusing on, as DeAngelis puts it, "the least-toxic solutions."
The Dangerous World of Butterflies (Laufer 2009) –Dr. Laufer is a journalist who's spent most of his career reporting on political conflicts in Iraq, and Eastern Europe.Laufer's previous book, an examination issues related to American Soldier's in Iraq, had left him worn out.During a book signing event, he was asked what his next book would be about.He jokingly answered, "flowers and butterflies".The remark did not go unnoticed and soon Laufer is invited to a butterfly sanctuary in Nicaragua where he discovers that even the world of butterflies is full of politics, intrigue, criminality and violence.
Because Laufer is a journalist, rather than a scientist, he avoids the pitfalls that come with being too close to the subject.If anything, he's too objective.I come to many of these issues with my own set of opinions and I found myself wanting him to take a side.He has a frustrating knack for empathy, even for poachers, thieves and Bill O'Reilly.But never in a way that made me want to put the book down and not pick it up again.
Next in the pile River of Doubts (Millard 2005) which, according to the back cover, is an account of Teddy Roosevelt's grand adventure to an unmapped part of the Amazon Wilderness after his final electoral defeat in 1912.
I also read Forty Years Afield (Contreras 2009), but given that I am one of many in his cast of characters for the memoir, I feel my bias would show in any review…
Natural History along the Oregon North Coast, with side trips to other parts of the Pacific Northwest and the occasional digression into the philosophical esoterica of things sciencey...
Spotted Sandpiper at Necanicum Estuary.
Dunlin at Sunset Beach.
Sanderlings at Sunset Beach
I did not get to see the kingbird, however...
Northwestern Salamander
An unusual dark-morph Northwestern Salamander.
Western Red-backed Salamander
Dunn's Salamander
Columbia Torrent Salamander
Oregon Ensatina
It's the time of year when young birds have left the nest, sometimes accompanied by their parents, sometimes not. A time when they're sporting a plumage that they'll wear for only a short time. And because this plumage is often quite different than what they'll be wearing later, it's also a plumage many of us have very limited experience with.
This female Lazuli Bunting was a pleasant surprise. They're rare in the county and they didn't show at the only known breeding spot this year.
