North Coast Diaries

Western Bluebirds at Circle Creek

I went to Circle Creek this morning to put up some new bird boxes and was greeted by a flock of Western Bluebirds. With luck, one or two of them will choose to nest in the newly installed accommodations.

Mountain Bluebird at Fort Stevens

I got a phone call from Bob Stakenburg (name probably misspelled) reporting MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRDS at Ft Stevens. I got out to the river beach a couple hours after his call and sure enough, 3 Mountain Bluebirds were hawking insects from around some beached dead trees.

I also found a LAPLAND LONGSPUR at the shorebird flat. Somewhat unusual for spring

An unusual day in March

It's snowing, in March, on the Oregon Coast.

Not really an expected occurrence.

Message in a bottle

On Monday I was counting dead stuff on Sunset beach and came across a stoppered green bottle with a note in it. I've been walking beaches for 20 some years now and this is my first message in a bottle. The folks who'd put the note in the bottle said they'd got married in Garibaldi on March 24. The problem was that I found it on March 24. It seemed unlikely that it could have got from Garibaldi to Sunset Beach in such a short amount of time.

I received an email today from the couple who set the bottle adrift. They released the bottle from a chartered fishing boat 14 miles west of Garibaldi on March 22. They got married two days later on the 24th.

Michelle and I released the bottle in the Columbia River at 6th Street on an outgoing tide. When last we saw it, it was being drawn out into the channel. Hopefully, it made it past the bar with the river plume and is once again ocean bound. We've added our name on a separate piece of paper. Perhaps we'll hear from another beach comber soon.

and while we're talking ambiguous

I was looking to get some photos of Virginia Rails in the wetland on the east side of Gearhart when this thing flew by, barely in camera range.

It is an accipiter and we can eliminate Sharp-shinned Hawk with some confidence.

When bad photos happen to good birds

One of the things that we birders obsess and compulse about is finding rare stuff. Rare stuff wouldn’t be rare if it was easy to find, so the possibility of mistaking something common as something rare is actually more likely than finding something genuinely rare. That being said, rare stuff happens.

There is a difference between seeing a bird and convincing others that you saw it. The traditional, old-school way to convince others you saw something was to get out your shotgun and collect it. Bringing the corpse of your claimed sighting to would-be skeptics is pretty much fool proof. It’s also now illegal in most states. And of course, shooting the rarities you find pretty much ruins the chances for others of listing what you’ve seen.

The camera has replaced the shotgun as the mechanism of choice for documenting rare birds, the assumption being that a photograph is just as good as a body. There are LOTS of reasons why this is faulty reasoning not the least of which is that photos can be faked. But let’s focus on the sincere efforts to document rare finds by impeccably honest people who quite probably saw something rare. Sometimes the photo can do more harm to one’s case than a well written description with drawings and arrows. Sometimes the lack of convincing detail in a photo can even trump a well written description and get the record thrown out….

My first experience with this was a bird I saw way back in 1988. I thought then and still believe now that this was a LITTLE STINT. I wrote a three page description describing the bird and my rationale for calling it a Little Stint. The records committee felt the photos were ambiguous and chose not to accept the record. I agree that the photos are ambiguous, but should ambiguous photos trump my description?

As birders become increasingly dependent on photo-documentation, they become increasingly unlikely to write any kind of written description or worse yet, write a description based on their photographs when they get home. A photograph is a wonderful thing and digital cameras have given us a kind of instant access to photos that has led some people to think that closely observing a bird and writing a description is no longer necessary. Rumor has it that some records committees won't accept reports unless there's a specimen or photograph now. Writing down what we're seeing has become passé. And this is too bad.

But here's the thing. Sometimes it is simply not possible to get a photo and sometimes, no matter how hard we try the photos we do get are ambiguous. An excellent case in point was a recently reported SLATY-BACKED GULL in Washington. The bird was seen by several very experienced observers and nobody really doubted the ID, but the first photos to be posted were, to put it politely, ambiguous. The bird stuck around and many much more diagnostic photos were obtained. But what if the bird hadn't stayed around? What if that blurry image taken from way too far away was the only photo available?

Once the bird leaves, the record becomes the bird and there is a difference between what I believe, having seen the bird, and what others believe based on the documentation I present. The written and photo-documentary evidence we provide is the modern equivalent to the dead stuff ornithologists used to show off. Sometimes it's hard to make the distinction between what we believe we saw and what we've provided as proofs to others. We post our pictures and others pick them apart. It seems personal, but it really isn't most of the time.

It's nearly impossible for a photograph to contain as much information as the actual bird. The more subtle the ID, the more information required. Little Stints and Slaty-backed Gulls are subtle ID's. We shouldn't be surprised when a photo comes up wanting, that the photo fails to represent the bird the way we believe we saw it. It also shouldn't be surprising when others express their doubts based on the what we give them to look at. That is, after all, all they have to go on. That's why all those old school shotgun biologists also filled notebooks full of notes. And it's why we should all be diligent note-takers, too. A picture can be worth a thousand words, but only if it's in focus, properly exposed and the bird is posed exactly the way it needs to be.

I counted that Little Stint I saw in 1988, because I know what I saw. Looking at the photos now, almost 20 years later, I still see a Little Stint, but I can also see how others might not and I hold no grudges.

Canadian Snow Thrush

Photographed this morning among the throngs of migrating AMERICAN ROBINS.

You say damage, I say habitat....

I've been counting trees in the storm altered pines of coastal Clatsop County over the last couple weeks. While most of the forests show surprisingly little change, there are patches that show 90% of trees broken or uprooted. What became clear by the end of the first day was how quickly many species are taking advantage of the changes in the landscape.

Male Hairy Woodpecker

Brown Creeper

Winter Wren

Bewick's Wren

Black-capped Chickadee

Red-breasted Nuthatches

Female Hairy Woodpecker

Dr Strange-gull

or How I learned to stop worrying and love being wrong

I have run a webpage (off and on) called the Ugly Gull Page for six or eight years now. The title is intended to be metaphorical--- gull ID can be ugly even for the best looking of gulls. The other day I posted photographs of this on the Ugly Gull Page:

When I photographed it, I was thinking "funny, pale-eyed, Western (complex) Gull". But when I got home and started looking at it on the monitor, I found myself wondering, "How do I know that's what it is?" Someone who hadn't spent a great deal of time sifting through the Western complex could easily see the pale eye, turn to the page in their Sibley's and start ticking off other characters more closely in line with a Slaty-backed Gull, which would be a much more interesting bird to find. Those of us who have experience often forget what it was like back when we didn't know everything.

This is not a Slaty-backed Gull. Comparing it, side by side, with a fairly straight forward 3rd-cycle Western Gull, one would be hard pressed to come up with a compelling argument for Slaty-backed that would pass muster with a records committee. I've built up a pattern recognition set over the years that spans the range of variation for Western-complex Gulls. I know that it's a Western-ish gull on the right side of my brain, but it can be difficult to communicate this to folks who have not spent as much time with gulls.

My not being able to communicate why I know this is not a Slaty-backed with others is MY PROBLEM, not theirs. Simply saying "this looks like a funky Western Gull, I see these all the time." doesn't help anyone, nor does prattling on about relative bill thickness or "chestiness" or blocky-headedness. These all pretty much assume that a pattern recognition set is already in place and folks know what I'm talking about, that they have the pictures in their heads to compare.

Running the Ugly Gull Page often puts me in the position of straight-man. I say my lines and pretend like I don't know what's coming. I regularly post photos I take, but many of the gull photos I post were taken by somebody else. I may have an opinion, but I try to stay neutral, at least during the first couple rounds. The opinion of a single participant, stated with righteous authority, can shut down the whole discussion, especially if stated in the "I see these all the time, bill's too thick, barrel chested" format that those of us with the big pattern recognition libraries in our heads often write in. I don't run the Ugly Gull Page to demonstrate my superior skills at pattern recognition. I run it so I can build up my skills and hopefully do the same for others. Nevertheless, I also regularly get the "why did you post this? Don't you know a Western Gull when you see it" notes as well.

Gull identification is, however, the great equalizer. My making a claim with righteous authority does not make me right and the righteous tone doesn't help my reputation any when I turn out to be wrong. I've seen a lot of Western Gulls. I haven't seen very many unequivocal Slaty-backs. My pattern recognitions skills are very biased. There are plenty of folks out there who would probably jump at the chance to relate stories about my initial responses to Black-tailed and Greater Black-backed Gull reports. And the whole Thayer's-Kumlein-Iceland thing, well don't get me started.

The main point here is that I don't know everything and I'm still struggling with how I can communicate what I do know without sounding like I have the last word. Part of the trick is learning how stand back and remember how things were for me 20 years ago and part of the trick is knowing when to shut up and let folks make at least a few of the mistakes I got to make.

If nothing else, I'm not afraid to be wrong and perhaps that's the only useful lesson I can share about Ugly Gulls.