North Coast Diaries

Anise Swallowtail

Today, while operating the Neawanna Bird Banding Station, we found an early ANISE SWALLOWTAIL (Papilio zelicaon) nectaring on Black Twinberry (Lonicera involucrata). The twinberry is probably one of the two most important early blooming nectaring species for West Coast Rufous Hummingbirds [the other being Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis)].

Anise Swallowtail does not start showing up in numbers before mid-May, well after the peak for twinberry, which is perhaps the reason why we've not noted this before. The swallowtail showed considerable wear at the points of the forewings indicating that it's probably been active for at least a week.... very early.

Twitching the duck

A FALCATED DUCK has been hanging out in a pond by an RV Park near Coburg, Lane Co. for a couple months now. The powers that be have declared it to be real (as opposed to a domesticated fake). I almost never go out of my way to chase down rare or unusual species for reason I have expounded on before (see Rumble in Olympia), but this bird was on the way to my parents house so, I took the extra 5 minutes to bag it for my list.

As you can see from the photo-documentation, there's little doubt that it is a genuine Falcated Duck.

A change in the weather...

...is known to be extreme.

The long stretch of dry warm weather ended last night with a winter storm which lasted right up to within about an hour of the official vernal equinox. South winds at about 35mph with gusts to 60 and just short of an inch of rain in about 10 hours. The drought may be postponed, but I doubt this will translate into enough stored water to get us through the summer....

As much as I'd like to spend the day hanging out at a headland somewhere scanning for gadflies, duty calls and I must go visit the parents with the wife and kids (and maybe tick the Falcated Duck at Coburg).

more on the great leper controversy

I was surfing the lepidoptera listserves to see which way the wind might be blowing relative to the article Dr Jeffry Glassberg wrote for the most recent issue of Birding [see On Birders and Lepers this blog space]. The discussion centers on the veiled cheap shots by Dr Glassberg at Robert Michael Pyle and the not so veiled shot he took at the late Alexander Klot. They've also taken umbrage at Dr. Glassberg's revisionist views of Roger Tory Peterson and, of all people, J.J.Audubon as champions of the no nets world view.

Of course it doesn't help that Dr Glassberg essentially tarred the entire western part of the United States with a rather nasty brush, claiming that westerners were somehow backward because they've failed to accept his world view. One is tempted to compare Dr Glassberg with certain fundamentalist religious leaders when it comes to identifying sinners and certain promenent U.S. leaders in envolking the names of famous dead people to champion causes they probably wouldn't have had anything to do with.

It looks like there will be letters aplenty on this subject in the next issue or to of Birding. The editors of Birding may want to think twice next time before they stray outside the bounds of their charter...

If the topic intrigues you, try lurking on the Lepidopterist List for the full flavor of the discourse.

RUHU arrives in Alaska

I received two reports of Rufous Hummingbirds in Alaska today, one from Ketchikan and one from Sitka. According to Steve Heinl, prior earliest arrival dates for Ketchikan were 21 March 2003, 23 March 1995, and 28 March 1996 which puts these two records 5 day ahead of the previous records.

On Birders and Lepers

It has been unusually warm and dry here on the North Coast of Oregon. If not the warmest and driest February/March on record, certainly something close. As a consequence, the butterfly season has started early and most of my attention has been on leps.

So, it was oddly coincidental that Birding [2005 37(2):198-201] magazine included an article on butterfly watching by Dr. Jeffrey Glassberg, author of the Butterflies through binoculars series. One would think that an article in a high-end birding magazine celebrating butterflies would please the lepidopterists community. Apparently, not.

Dr. Glassberg is strongly opposed to the taking of specimens, collecting. He also seems to be opposed to capture using a net even if the butterflies are released after examination. These are hot-button issues among lepidopterists.

I've been a birder for 35 years now and a bird bander for 25. I began watching butterflies in college, in part because I lived next door to Dan Thackaberry who was majoring in entomology and it was convenient to combine field trips. It has only been in the last 10 years that I've really taken butterfly data collection seriously. In 25 years, doing bird work, I have only collected birds that were hit by cars, hit windows or washed up on the beach. I understand the rationale for specimen collecting, but it's regulated for birds (and should be). Butterfly collecting is largely unregulated and there are still folks who collect and mount butterflies for purely recreational purposes (as a hobby). I make a distinction between scientific collecting and hobbiest collecting. I do not collect butterflies. The last thing I need in my house is another collection. I do, occasionally net butterflies so I can get a good look at them and have kept a very few as vouchers to be sent off to university collections. My personal preference is to try to identify without capture, photograph without capture, but realistically my job is documentation. This means I will have to do some netting, some vouchering.

Dr. Glassberg's focus is on the similaries between birding and "butterflying", and most of the main points are sound. It is possible for regular folks to go out, watch butterflies, enjoy them through binoculars, tick species off on a checklist, chase unusual species, travel to exotic locations to see new species just as they would birds. But butterflies are not birds and the comparisons become tenuous if pushed too far. Butterflies are small, many of their field marks are obscure and difficult to make out, they move differently than birds and most of them have life-spans measured in weeks not years. The rationale for regulating the capture of relatively long-lived birds doesn't ring quite as soundly for a butterfly. There is value in evaluating the extractive elements of hobbiest collecting of anything, including butterflies, but any kind of rigid, one-size-fits-all attitude is more likely to be devisive and counter productive.

There are, I think, some flaws in Dr. Glassberg's views that come from the differences between butterflies and birds. The most important of these is connection. As a bird bander, I have a permit to catch birds. Handling them affords me an intimacy that one doesn't get through binoculars. I have invited teachers and students to my banding station to experience this connections and they all tell me they come away with a different perspective. With birds this kind of connectivity can only be had under very special circumstance. The beauty of a butterfly net is that anyone can create that connection between people and butterflies very easily without the red-tape of a permitting process. I'm a bit apprehensive about loaning my $350 pair of close-focus binoculars out to kids and any affordable pair of binoculars isn't going work with butterflies. I can get 20-30 nets for $350. And if done with sensitivity and care, I think one can get considerable educational milage out of the effort.

Certainly, the demographic for most Birding subscribers is upscale and I think one should keep that in mind when interpreting Dr. Glassberg's message, but there is an undertone of self-congratulatory snobbery and elitism to his article that is off-putting to anyone who knows other individuals within the lepidopterist community. Dr. Glassberg did not invent the butterfly field guide. His efforts to devalue the work of others is disingenuous. He is not the only butterfly guy out there trying to raise public awareness and appreciation for butterflies, their habitats and their ecological needs and his sniping at those who aren't absolutely on board with him is reckless. He runs the risk of alienating the folks who can help him the most in getting out the butterfly awareness message. And there are some who would say that he's already burned most of his bridges....

February Lowdown

Of course, the big news for February was the YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER that turned up in Seaside. This would be the 5th state record and the first documented for the state of Oregon west of the Cascades. It was still being seen as of yesterday (March 2).

LONG-TAILED DUCKS remained unusually conspicuous off the South Jetty of the Columbia River. A YELLOW-BILLED LOON and a GYRFALCON were both reported from the Fort Stevens area, as well.

A MOUNTAIN PLOVER was found in late-February on the beach south of Leadbetter State Park on the Washington side of the estuary.

HORNED PUFFINS and SHORT-TAILED SHEARWATERS were found washed-up dead or dying along Clatsop Beach throughout the month in significant numbers. The cause is always hard to figure, but it was probably related to the weird, warm and dry weather. A flock of SNOW BUNTINGS has been routinely seen working Clatsop Beach between Seaside and Del Rey.

RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRDS arrived ahead of average arrival dates; genuine migrant hummingbirds were reported as early as the first week in February. TREE SWALLOWS showed up just about on time.

Barrington's table of comparative merit

A bit more on bird song, this from Daines Barrington, 1773, originally published in Phil. Trans. Royal Society of London, though I have scanned a reprint found in S.P.Cheney's Wood Notes Wild (1891).

Never heard a Nightingale? click here. Perfection is relative....