North Coast Diaries

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.