As you 1.4 regular readers have noticed over the past month or so, Butler's Birds has hardly been active. This is always a fallow time of year for B's Bs. The birds tend to look crappy, there's not a lot of interesting chases, work gets heavy, and most detrimental of all, it's soccer season again. The weekend warring for birds takes a big hit September through November, and I wish I could say that this will change soon but in all likelihood things will be pretty sparse until December, sparse like the new primaries on this 1st year Townsend's Solitaire.
I was able to get out and hiking with other folks recently, visiting a torrentially deluged Grand Canyon, the bowels of an extinct volcano, and some of Sedona's geological attractions.
It might be impolite to stare at such exposure, but it's not too often one can gaze at a volcanic sphincter with such a nice balance of preservation and availability.
Although I'm sure that my lack of activity has seen my rankings plummet on the GBRS--and rightly so--from the general rank of "enthusiast" all the way down to mere "hobbyist," I am of course keeping an eye out for birds on these geological trips. Alas, birds in juniper scrub in October are few and far between, and tend to be of about 5 common species. Even so, I like Townsend's Solitaire's. I like them a lot, but couldn't tell you why. Flycatchers are super cool.
So this is a check-in to say that Butler's Birds is not extinct, like the earlier pictured volcano, but rather is in a mostly dormant state. I hope to be posting again with quality and regularity (the two are so hard to come by simultaneously). But if it seems like B's Bs has fallen off the face of the earth, this terse post a bit of an explanation and apology as to why.
