If a Birder Blogs by themselves on the Internet...

 ...Does Anybody Hear Them?

At this point in time at least, ChatGPT and other AI models will be pulling from my data, and thusly be mining an ever-so-smarmily-skewed read on human existence and reflection. And maybe will also learn the wrong banding codes (from me). I will never be totally alone, impacting no one and no thing. About as effectual as this Green treefrog, albeit not even half as cute. 

But my how things change. First, I must acknowledge that is has been more than 7 Years since my last post. This makes me sad, but not ashamed. My binoculars have not collected 7 years of dust by any means, but time has a way of slipping from us, especially when you sign the Faustian contract of parenthood, and your time ceases to be your own. Every once and again I would come back here and reread an old trip report or two, usually after some random, serendipitous reminder. Like the family photo album.

But good birds will always come to those who like good birds. Alas, never when you have the good camera, or in the 6 times you try again after...

Photos courtesy of a cracked iPhone 11 that only zooms to 1.9x without blurring

                

I return now, 7 years later, to a desolate piece of bird blogging landscape. Many of the heroes and legends and champions that I watched and cheered, sought to emulate (or at least borrow some aura from) have moved on and elsewhere. 

In truth though, it was I who left first. I felt, and feel, pain and loss in the nostalgia, but not necessarily in the moment. Best of all, birding, unlike my now-thoroughly-middle-aged dadbod, does not require careful diet and exercise each week to maintain some semblance of presentability. 

It is more like riding a bike. It's best to do it while drunk. 

Sorry, I mean, it's a bad idea to do it on busy streets. 

No wait, I mean the sights and the sounds and the thrills of it live in your bones and your guts. Maybe it's not necessarily like riding a bike, but just that existentially elevating experience of tapping into, or at least catching a peak, of the Universal. And both can be adversely affected by flat tires.

At any rate, I am birding again. I am doing it with some frequency, sometimes with all the gear, sometimes with none. And the delight has not diminished. Old friends and new friends alike, welcoming me back into the wide winged world. Sometimes a new friends turns out to be an old friend. 

LOWA from 6 years ago? Never blogged, Yes. I thought it was lifer NOWA at the time. Maybe it was. Who knows anymore...

Ah, to be birding again, wrestling with classic taxonomic assessments hobbled by bad photos and shaky memory. And if that's not enough of a reunion with the act, how about a weird-ass escapee? 

This was a one-day wonder in my yard (meaning, I wondered about it for 1 day). I did not send it out to the NC listervs.

 

So what are the odds that this 9" non-migratory Diamond Dove flew 10,500 miles from Australia to La Grange, North Carolina? Do we get to log a ship assist!? Probably it just escaped from my neighbor's menagerie down the street. They have emu too, after all. The odds are almost a poor as they are of me stumbling across that accommodating Barred Owl again while I actually have a camera aNd OH WAIT THAT FINALLY HAPPENED!!

Why is this a big deal to me? Because Owls are always cool, and furthermore:

It's probably an error of patronization to anthropomorphize birds. But you can't help but wonder what she is thinking about. Or if she is just trying to enjoy a Saturday morning waiting until next meal time or nap time, like the rest of us.

The Diamond Dove was not the only ABA (non)Record of the backyard deButler these ensuing years. 2023 brought a 3-day wonder that probably escaped from the same house as the Diamond Dove.

This is actually a second ABA record, because believe it or not I also logged the ABA first record of these guys cohabitating a date palm with some lovebirds in Phoenix back in 2018. Weird that when I go to the local Food Lion people aren't clambering for my autograph. They're probably too intimidated.

So to the pressing questions, what will renewed goals be? To submit 1 checklist a week? to See 100 species in Wayne Co. this year? To see 5 new species in North America this year? None of that really matters, but having some sort of metric can help to stay motivated and active. Retirement can be a real degenerate force for folks, so what can my sinecure birding habit be? Maybe these are all just bad questions. Maybe the real question I should be asking is:

If all the kingbird species of North American got into a battle royale, where would Kalshi put the smart money? Eastern Kingbird has the earned reputation of most territorial and aggressive, but Thick-billed have the hardware. Wonder if there's any record of EAKI straying that far west? 

To anyone still out there, anyone who dusts this blog off up in their attic next to grandma's old china, I say thank you for your perseverance, and thank you for the $19.99-a-month subscriptions you have continued to pay without realizing it. I hope to continue with content with some amount of regularity. It seems only fair. 

A Chase to Louisiana, with Grasslands in between

This past Saturday Muriel Neddermeyer, Tommy DeBardeleben, and I went chasing down south for a Louisiana Waterthrush and some local specialties in the nice October weather. Our first stop was a dawn visit to the San Rafael Grasslands, where we hoped to see some early Baird's Sparrows or even a Short-eared Owl. Both of these species were a long shot only halfway into October, but we were in the area and it would've saved a much chillier trip in December--be looking out for that adventure in a couple of months. Although we dipped on our targets here, we still enjoyed the open golden expanses of the grasslands, and the many fence-line sentinels that monitored our approach through their valley.

Meadowlarks are conspicuously seen and heard just about anywhere with open fields and fences. The San Rafael Grasslands host one of the westernmost populations of Eastern Meadowlarks, and we had about a dozen perched intermittently throughout our time there. They're usually a skittish bird, but every once in a while one might stand its ground. Of course, when it does so, it won't be facing you...

The most numerous birds, by far, were Savannah Sparrows. Although they appear longer-tailed and more round-headed than our target Baird's Sparrow, from more than ten or fifteen feet each one of these birds usually merits a binocular examination, and since we saw literally hundreds of them...well...I've never been so sick of these Sparrows in all my life. It's a shame when looking for one uncommon bird kinda ruins another, even if it's only for a little while. Savannah Sparrow representatives and I have since met and reconciled our acrimony, but it will take time for the wounds to heal.

Grasshopper Sparrows were a less common but equally frustrating tease in our search for Baird's Sparrows. Since they're also of the flat-headed, short-tailed ammodramus genus, they look even more similar to the Baird's. A couple of months ago when the Grasslands were much prettier, the Grasshopper Sparrows were a target bird. Now it too was a red herring. On the other hand, seeing Savannah's or Grasshopper's doesn't mean I would've seen Baird's instead, so it's better to have these handsome birds than nothing.

A few Horned Larks joined the Meadowlarks in adding to color to the predominantly brown scene, but even their pizazz was not enough to keep us lingering in the grasslands. We walked around for a couple of hours and got many spiky grass seeds well-wedged into our socks, but it soon became apparent we'd missed the Baird's, and we moved on to our next destination.

There is a funny little birding strip off the I-19 near Tubac and Tumacacori. Turning off the interstate and driving only a couple hundred yards east, one runs into the De Anza Trail along the Santa Cruz River. The River has pretty low water levels but its close proximity to the Mexican border and temperate climates make it a great migrant and vagrant trap. In the last several weeks there have been multiple Waterthrushes, both Louisiana and Northern. The Louisiana had been in place for several weeks, indicating it quite liked the little stream and might even stay through the winter. We quite like getting an eastern Warbler in Arizona, so it was mutually agreed upon that we and the bird all meet up near the Tubac bridge.

Tommy was the first onto the bird, and we briefly saw it foraging around in tangles near the water's edge, as Waterthrushes are supposed to do. We lost sight for a little while and when we relocated the bird it was staying much higher in the cottonwoods, somewhat uncharacteristically. The darker, bolder streaking and clean throat help distinguish this bird from the Northern Waterthrush, as did its call note and the incessant, memorizing tail bobbing.

Pulling a lifer out of the tangled woody margins in Arizona is always an occasion for up thumbs.



The Tubac area provided excellent birding in general, with Western Tanagers, Nuthatches, Goldfinches, Buntings, Gray Hawks, and several species of Woodpecker, such as this Ladder-backed, all registering for our visit.

On the way back to Phoenix we swung by the Santa Cruz Flats in Eloi, about halfway between Tucson and Phoenix, to look for Caracara and Mountain Plover in the agricultural fields. We dipped again on these targets, but had some fun sightings along the corrals.

We also found a locally more rare Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at the famous Baumgartner corral, which must be carefully navigated to avoid trespassing, but has yielded other goodies such as Rufous-backed Robin in the past.

There were a lot of misses on this trip but also a lot of great sightings, and none of the misses were on vagrant birds, so at least we had the Waterthrush and can try again for everything else in a few weeks. A Saturday full of birding and beautiful skies? No complaints.