North Coast Diaries
Why a duck? --- Tuesday, November 17, 2009
It rained a bit yesterday...
Today there was some rain left over that hadn't quite made it out to the river. It was a good day for ducks. It was a good day for geese. And, as I sorted though anseriforms around Brownsmead and Svensen Island, I got to thinking: how many field marks does it take to make a duck?
 For some species, only one field mark is necessary.
 And for others, a field mark that is supposed to "define" the species may be absent or (nearly so).
Sometimes the field marks are too subtle for the mere mortal to discern. We may think we know what we're looking at and there may be better men than me who actually do, but only the birds know for sure (and they may care less about the differences we claim for them than we do).
  
Then there are the vagaries of space and time and photos taken through a spotting scope...
The National Weather Service warns that we should expect more rain. I suspect this means we can expect more duck-day afternoons and more opportunities to ponder the way of the goose. |
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What's with all the red-shoulders? --- Thursday, November 12, 2009
Once upon a time, not too very long ago, seeing a Red-shouldered Hawk in Oregon was a big deal. They have been slowly expanding their range, working up the coast and interior valleys over the last 20 years. I didn't see my first Red-shouldered Hawk here in Clatsop County until 1998 after over 10 years of looking.
Today I saw two and in the past couple years, there have been days when I see 3 or 4.
The expansion of Red-shouldered Hawk as well as White-tailed Kite and Black Phoebe are all probably due to climate change and when I say climate change, I mean the broader definition, not the narrower global warming due to carbon definition. Yes, global average temperatures are going up and yes, carbon emissions are a cause. But we human do other things to the landscape which change the climate. We build city creating heat islands. We cut down conifer forests and replace them with croplands, or shopping malls which changes how radiant energy is absorbed or reflected. We import non-native species. We extirpate native ones.
New species migrate into these micro-climatic oases that we create. Their numbers increase. Red-shouldered Hawks are responding to the changes we have made as a consequence of doing what we do.
When people ask me if I've noticed any changes in the local avifauna due to climate change, they're looking for stories of loss, and there are plenty of species that have gone missing because of human impacts. The demonstrable changes, however, the ones we can measure easily and show to others are stories of the additions.
I don't complain about the increase in the number of Red-shouldered Hawks. They are a beautiful creature and are probably not displacing other native species. But for every benign species that expands its range northward, there are also cowbirds and starlings, scotch-brooms and knotweeds.
The Red-shouldered Hawk expansion is a sign of our times.
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Tropical Kingbirds --- Monday, November 9, 2009
Last week, Steve Warner found a Tropical Kingbird at the Pizza Castle in Seaside. The area between the Wahanna River mouth (where the Pizza Castle is) and 12th Street seems to be a good spot for Tropical Kingbirds. 8-10 have been seen in that general area over the last few years, sometimes multiple birds hanging out together.
Another kingbird hotspot is the area along the back edge of Youngs Bay in Astoria. Kingbirds have been found from Astoria High School to Wireless Rd, at least 6 altogether, including one today along Wireless Rd.
 Tropical Kingbirds are well known for their "reverse" migration, heading north in the fall before turning south again to spend the winter in proper tropical climes. Birds that stick around for more than one day are usually associated with holly trees and may eat the holly berries. They make good use of the termite flights that occur after fall rains and have an amazing knack for find wasp nests.
Other spots in Clatsop County where Tropical Kingbirds have appeared include the Warrenton Sewage Ponds and Svensen Island.
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Red-shouldered Hawk --- Friday, November 6, 2009
Name that prey item --- Wednesday, November 4, 2009
It's time once again to play, name that prey item!
This week, three kinds of shorebirds. Three kinds of prey. Can you identify them?
 Spotted Sandpiper at Necanicum Estuary.
 Dunlin at Sunset Beach.
 Sanderlings at Sunset Beach
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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...
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Chinook --- Thursday, October 29, 2009
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.
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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's a photo-sample of what we saw...
 Northwestern Salamander
 An unusual dark-morph Northwestern Salamander.
 Western Red-backed Salamander
 Dunn's Salamander
 Columbia Torrent Salamander
 Oregon Ensatina
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Three Buteos --- Monday, October 12, 2009
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?
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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.
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Gull Season --- Thursday, October 1, 2009
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...
What do you think they are?
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Pluvialis trifecta --- Sunday, September 27, 2009
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.
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Hudsonian Godwit --- Friday, September 11, 2009
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.
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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.
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Name that plover --- Monday, September 7, 2009
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.
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Heermann's Gull --- Monday, August 31, 2009
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.
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Juvenal Juvenile --- Friday, August 28, 2009
 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.
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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.
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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.
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Cardinal Meadowhawks --- Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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.
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