North Coast Diaries

Yellow-throated Warbler

Steve Warner saw a Yellow-throated Warbler in Seaside today (29 Jan). He just happened to stop on the way home from work when he saw a flock of House Finches fly into a patch of blackberries. The warbler popped up while he was working the flock.

I put in two hours this afternoon trying to relocated it without success.

January Lowdown

The weather trend for the month was warmer and drier than average, though a mid-month storm dumped enough rain to mask the general trend.

The usual early spring indicators are all on schedule: Hooker Willow bud break, blooming Evergreen Huckleberry, crocuses emerging.  Common Murres were staging at the breeding rock around Ecola State Park last weekend, about 80% of them in nuptial plumage.  Bald Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks are pairing up.  White-tailed Kites are making themselves scarce which is also a prelude to the beginning of breeding activities.

More subtle indicators include a decrease in Fox Sparrow detections. I'm not at all certain what causes this annual and usually sudden drop in Fox Sparrow numbers.  They may be dispersing.  They may actually be heading back north, but at the end of January.... poof.

The number of Horned Puffins on the north coast is now up to at least 3.  Two dead ones on Clatsop Beach and a live one on Manzanita Beach (which later died at the re-hab center).  Better than average Black Scoter counts at the Seaside Cove.

Birds of note this month:

    Cinnamon Teal in inexplicable numbers (60+) at SvensenIsland
    Glaucous Gulls in higher than average numbers including an adult at Cannon Beach 
    Red-legged Kittiwake at North Head Lighthouse on 10 Jan by Troy Guy
    Rufous Hummingbird wintering at Bucky Barnett's (went missing about 5 days ago)
    Mountain Chickadee in residential Seaside
    White-throated Sparrow... only one this year, so far.

N. G. Smith and the nay Thayer's

As I suggested a couple missives ago, the controversy around the work done back in 1960 on Thayer's Gull deserved further investigation. So, sparing no expense, I've managed to obtain a copy of N.G.Smith's original monograph on his work with gulls in the great white north. I've also secured the paper's written by Snell calling his work into question, Smith's response, Snell's response to Smith response, etc. One doesn't get the impression that these two men like each other.

After a careful reading I've come to a conclusion. Both were right if one factors in context. Most of the issues surrounding Smith's work can (in my opinion) be explained without invoking fraud or even sloppy science. I think much of what happened can be chalked up to youthful exuberance, pre-conceived expectations, confused navigation and time. The charge Smith's work has failed to be replicated is not nearly as damning as it would be if it had been carried out in a lab. Field based ecological experiments are far more sensitive to time, and external conditions that cannot be controlled. One gets the impression that those who tried to replicate Smith's work may have been hampered by their own pre-conceived expectations that what Smith did was impossible. I haven't read every paper on every attempt, but that seems to be an underlying theme in replication efforts. Maybe the era of scientists being able to acquire adequate time and funding for field work like this is gone. Maybe scientists are human and see what they want to see.

Smith makes it very clear in his original paper and in his response to Snell's that he went to Home Bay expecting to find a mechanism for positive assortment between similar looking gulls of different species and that it would probably be something subtle like orbital ring color and/or mantle and primary tip colors. He was also operating from an initial assumption that the gulls he was studying were different species and that the differences between them were diagnosable.

By my math, Smith would have been about 23 years old in 1960 carrying out a complicated experiment in a complicated environment pretty much by himself. He had really bad maps of the area. His documentation of where he was and what he was doing from day to day were, at least in hindsight, inadequate. It's also not clear how much of a role his assistants played in data collection.

It could also be argued that presenting any conclusions other than those he came to would have been greeted with the same kind of venomous skepticism from the ornithological establishment of 1960 that his work gets today from people who question his conclusions. It's not easy being a grad student.

So, here's what I think happened. I think Smith went where he said he went. I think he and his assistants did what he said he did. I think there may have been more work done by assistants than has been acknowledged. I think the assumptions he made about the diagnosability of Thayer's, Kumlien's and Iceland Gulls were probably faulty, but not particularly surprising given the leaning of the ornithological establishment at that time. I think he saw what he saw and arrived at the conclusions he came to using a filter of expectations not at all uncommon in science. It's easy to label this bad science in hindsight, that doesn't necessarily mean it was bad science in situ.

I also suspect that if someone were to attempt a replication of Smith's work without any filters of expectation that claim the work is impossible, they will find that it holds some truth. Not nearly as much as Smith saw, but more than what Snell is willing to accept.

And it doesn't change the substantial volume of work since 1960 that demonstrates that the Thayer's/Kumlien's/Iceland complex represents a cline of a single species (or perhaps two good species with a big undiagnosable zone of hybridization called "Kumlien's" Gull in between).

Horned Puffins, the jet stream and el Niño

NOAA is calling this winter a "weak" el Niño year. It is being blamed for the unusual southerly track of the jet stream over the last several weeks (rain in southern California, etc.). The jet stream began a slow slide northward about 5 days ago. Dead or dying Horned Puffins began showing up on the Northern California/ Southern Oregon coast about 2 weeks ago. A storm series that began here on the north coast of Oregon Saturday has washed in at least two.

Horned Puffins are considered rare south of central British Columbia.

Thayer's ain't so, Joe

You can always tell when there's a lull in the birding opportunities. Topics shift from what's happening now to venting about old news. Why should I be any exception?

Actually, I'm not so much venting as I am commenting on venting by others. And today's topic is the Iceland/Kumlien's/Thayer's complex and surrounding controversies. This may take some time.

When I first started birding, Thayer's was considered a subspecies of Herring Gull. Kumlien's was (and still is according to the AOU) considered a subspecies of Iceland Gull. Thayer's was elevated to a full species by the AOU in 1973 based on a couple of studies, one by Macpherson which showed reproductive isolation from Herring Gull and one by Smith that demonstrated reproductive isolation from Iceland Gull. Smith's work garnered considerable attention (including a popular treatment in Scientific American. It included experiments involving the painting of orbital rings on gulls and the dying of primaries. These experiments not only showed that Thayer's and Kumlien's practiced positive assortment, but also provided a mechanism for isolation.

Other researchers seriously began calling Smith's work into question in the 1980's. The challenges range from flawed methodologies and interpretations to outright fraud. Several researchers have attempted to repeat his experiments without success. Other studies have concluded that at the very least Kumlien's is a hybrid between Thayer's and Iceland Gulls rather than a discrete subspecies and many in the ornithological community have lumped Thayer's and Iceland into a single, highly variable species showing a stong clinal tendency east to west.

Ron Pittaway has posted a complete history of Thayer's Gull's checkered taxonomic history at Taxonomic History of Thayer's Gull that includes plenty of additional references.

Most of this information has been bouncing around in the literature for nearly 15 years.
What, if anything, is wrong with Smith's research?
Could he have really faked all the data for his Phd thesis?
Why hasn't the AOU gone lumping?
Could there be something less rational lurking in between the scientific arguements?

These are questions worth exploring.

Canadians (part deux)

The small lady with the European accent has responded.

She claims that she came up to the three Canadians to ask them to move back from the Redwing, because she was concerned that they might frighten the bird before others could see it. She further claims they responded with a common American euphemism associated with reproduction and this set her off. She does not remember singling out Canadians in particular. She has posted a written apology for any misunderstandings.

Could the Canadians have omitted an essential part of the story?

Could the other stories regarding the small European lady that have emerged since this story broke be exaggerated re-evaluations of unnoteworthy events?

Stay tuned

This Just in-The Canadian response to the response is (approximately): We disagree with her version of the events, but want to let this all go.

End of story?

Crazed European lady attacks Canadians

News from the Olympia Redwing stakeout yesterday includes an account by three gentlemen of Canadian persuasion on being accosted by a small woman with a heavy "European" accent. The way they tell it, they had barely been there more than 5 minutes when the Redwing flew into a nearby holly. At almost the same moment this self-appointed "Redwing policeman" came up to them and began insisting in an overly aggressive manner that they needed to move. They were on a public sidewalk. The bird flew up to them. By their account, which seems perfectly credible, they were not behaving in any way that could be considered unethical or impolite.

Again, by their account, upon seeing the license plate on their car she began yelling about Canadians and insisting they go back where they came from. Which they more or less did. Rather than create a scene, they left after only the briefest of looks at the Redwing.

We have not heard from the other side on this issue, though the small woman with the accent is well known by many of us in the Pacific Northwest. She's a notorious "rarities groupie" and also well known for her fits of aberrant behavior.

Every hobby has its loons and eccentrics. Birding is no exception. If you've been around awhile, you've no doubt heard of individuals who "see too much", who seem to crave attention, believe they're being persecuted by the elists who question their sightings. Well this lady is one of them and everyone (including me) is just a little bit afraid of her.

Anyway, those going to see the Olympia Redwing please remember to stay behind the velvet rope and if you're from Canada, think about a rental car.

An account from the source and comments are available at the Vancouver Island Birders Listserve

Place

I've been thinking a lot about place in the last couple days and I've decided to work out some of my thoughts here over the next couple missives.

Several Christmas count compilers wrote asking whether the recent AOU split of Canada Goose forms should be included in species totals. To me Christmas counts are a census and the really important measure is individuals... how many birds there are in a given place. How many kinds of birds there are in a place is interesting, but I'd rather see an accurate count of all the Canada Geese than a big species list. I think the total number of large form and small form geese is more useful than knowing that it counts for two species now rather than one.

Species counting is part of the game of birding. Population counting is something else and I've been chewed out by some for suggesting that birding should be about more than keeping a list. "Leave me out of your science.", I'm told.
"I do this to relax and get away from the expectations of the rest of the week."
"Why does my hobby have to be more useful than, say, whacking a plastic ball into hole with a stick?"

All excellent points.

But here's the thing... A group of very good birders breezed through the lower Columbia yesterday. Their itinerary included Tokeland, the Palix River, Chinook Valley and Ft Stevens, that's 80 or 90 miles of really good habitat and doesn't count the drive home. That much territory can only be covered superficially at best. And it's a lot of time in the car to boot. It's hard to make any connection with the spaces birds occupy when you're in a car and on a schedule. It's easy to fall into a pattern of only checking the places that everybody checks and miss the special nooks and crannies. The group of very good birders complained about missing White-tailed Kite at Chinook Valley. I saw three there today.

I credit this to my knowing the place. I'm guessing they stopped at "THE kite spot", dipped, and moved on to "THE wrentit spot" across the river at Ft Stevens. I stopped at all the places where raptors hang out, took time to sort through the juncos and sparrows, scoped the Canada Geese (both big and small) looking for collars, marveled at how high the tide was today and how it scattered the gulls out over the estuary and (because I didn't have a 2+ hour drive home), I managed to get in a nap as well.

What would Lewis and Clark do?

I wish I had the money to buy a $500,000 home, built in the viewshed of the Lewis and Clark National Park. Why I'd go visit there a couple times a year, money in real-estate, that's where it's at.

I spent an hour on the phone last night talking with a concerned citizen about a plan to build several very expensive "summer" homes in a wetland and shorebird migration stopover site on the Long Beach Pennisula in Washington. The proposed development is immediately north of the newly designated Lewis and Clark National Park. It sits smack-dab in the middle of a tsunami zone, probable salmon habitat and forested wetlands. The forests would be cut down, the wetlands filled... and the tsunami? well. that's what we have FEMA for.

Apparently, Washington State Parks and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife want to buy the property, but developers (not to be confused with actual property owners) don't make much from deals with the state and by all accounts this developer is particularly shady.

Oh well, I'll write my letter to Pacific County and get used to the idea that when I go to North Head now, I'll be seeing large, empty summer homes when I look north...

First of the year

Nature abhors a vacuum. I abhor an empty list....
I did my annual, first of the year listing day. First bird of the day a very non-traditional Downy Woodpecker (it's usually starling or Glaucous-winged Gull). I managed to find 80 species (81 if you split the Canada Geese) with surprising ease.
Last years total, 269 for the year, 230 in Clatsop County, about average.