Hoary time

On December 6, 2007, several years before I became interested in Kent County listing, I received a call from a friend who had a frosty adult male Hoary Redpoll in with 200 Commons about 10 minutes away. I rushed over to the scene just to see a rare bird, only to find that only 75 redpolls remained, not including the one I was looking for. I searched for several days and never saw more than 75 birds nor the Hoary.

A similar scene played out at the DeBruine residence in eastern Kent Co. yesterday, and was even more painful now that I am interested in the species for my county list. Minutes before I arrived, the flock of 120 Commons with 2+ candidates for Hoary departed, and only 50-60 Commons remained. Oh, the agony. I assumed the flock of over 100 would never return, but was pleasantly surprised by the appearance today of about 200 Commons (many thanks to the DeBruine family for their amazing hospitality and birding ardor- there are a LOT of birders in that household!). Upon arrival today at about 11:15AM I was treated to two very good Hoary Redpoll candidates. Let's get right to the field marks:

Individual 1. This bird, like the other, was extremely frosty white, and stood out amongst the Commons very clearly, at distance, by naked eye. Neither bird had red on the breast/underparts, making them both NOT adult males, I believe. The flank streaking on bird 1 was very sparse and fine, quite delicate (and beautiful!). Its undertail coverts had but one streak on the longest coverts, and its upperparts and crown were very frosty white. The uppertail coverts and rump were not seen. Like the second bird, its bill was small, nasal tuft large, and the bird had a small red cap and bull-headed appearance. This changed with angle somewhat:
Frosty upperparts and single undertail covert streak:
Bird 2 was similarly frosty to the first bird, and stood out naked eye just as much as bird 1. This bird was more streaky on the flanks (immature female?), but was very frosty overall, especially on the scapulars, mantle, and crown. Its rump was completely white and unstreaked (pics below), the undertail coverts again had 1 streak on the longest feathers, and it had an even more pronounced bull-headed appearance. This is shown well in my photographs:
Rump looked like a white sugarcube:
This photo shows how well the bird stood out from the many Common Redpolls.
The nasal tufts were prounced, giving it the bull-headed appearance:
Frosty upperparts and single undertail covert streak:

In terms of grading these 2 birds using Sibley's index I scored these birds like this:

Bird 1
Undertail: 5
Flanks: 5
Rump: not seen
Score: Tough with rump not being seen, but rump was presumably not 1-3, making the total score at least 14. Sibley mentions that for female/immatures, 11 would be enough to qualify as Hoary, so even if it had a 1 (the lowest value), it would still be so.

Bird 2
Undertail: 5
Flanks: 4
Uppertail: 5
Score: 14
Sibley says no female/immatures scored higher than 13, so presumably I have incorrectly assigned these values, but since 11 is enough to make it a Hoary, I believe this ID is fairly conservative.

What a fun and strange winter it is! Over 50 degrees, in shorts, and have seen a Hoary Redpoll all in the same day.

Learning DSLR photography

So, I recently acquired a Canon 60D, a 300mm f/4 IS Canon lens, and 1.4 converter. However, I had basically no idea how to use it when I got it. Goal was to learn as quickly as possible, and to get to a point where I have a really nice backlog of copyright free materials at my disposal, and perhaps to start scoring some nice flight shots of birds unlike anything I could do with digiscoping gear.

I am still quite terrible, but I have made enough mistakes that I am beginning to get it, I think. When I was shooting the Purple Sandpiper in a previous post, I was forced to use f5.6 (the largest aperture possible with the 1.4 converter) because of the low light conditions. Little dd I realize that a bird at the close extreme of my focal distance, that the face and wing would not ever be in focus together. Will try not to make that mistake again next time! Perhaps I should have removed the converter and attempted a smaller aperture to allow a greater depth of field and still accomodate a good shutter speed at such low light?

Here are a few shots I have taken recently which are getting slightly better, though I still find myself unhappy with essentially every shot that comes off my memory card. This is going to be a long process!

White-breasted Nuthatch, one of my favorites I've taken yet:

Rare wintering White-throated Sparrow at Richmond Park in Grand Rapids
Black-capped Chickadee (VERY tough to photograph!)
Red-tailed Hawk

I find photography extremely difficult. Perhaps I am not alone?

Finches

It has been quite amazing to see that White-winged Crossbills seem to invade the south every winter now, at least in small numbers. They have done so each winter since 2008/2009 when we had the largest invasion in recent decades. While searching for Red Crossbill at local cemeteries this weekend I had what I am almost sure was a Type 1 or Type 2 Red Crossbill fly over, giving the 'toop' call rather than the standard 'tik-tik'. It gave the note 3 times spaced out by 2 seconds+ each time, then was never heard again. It did not land, apparently. Here is the checklist for that day:

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S9539984

So today I returned to check if the putative Red Crossbill might put in another appearance. It didn't, though Randy Vandermolen and I were able to score some awesome closeup experience with a flock of 6 White-winged Crossbills. They clearly preferred the smaller spruce cones (not sure of species, but the cones were 1/3 the length of Norway Spruce cones). Enjoy:



And finally, here is the checklist from today:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S9544943

and a hugely valuable resource for those of us wanting to learn the differing vocalizations, bill sizes, and tree preferences of the various types of Red Crossbills:

http://research.amnh.org/vz/ornithology/crossbills/diagnosis.html

It's NOT a misnomer after all

There aren't too many occasions where a relatively common species that I know well produces a revelation. But not only did this happen to me today, it also happened to a compadre of mine with me at the time. Someone sporting a roughly equal resume of bird experience and study.

Let's back up for a second. Ever wonder why Red-bellied Woodpeckers are named as such? Why aren't they called Red-crowned Woodpecker? You not only never see red underneath, and the first thing you notice when you see the bird is the red on the top of the head. So what gives? The answer has to do with the fact that the folks who named them didn't observe them in the field so much as in the museum drawer. And in the museum drawer, birds are laid out on their backs, so that the belly of the bird is what you see when you open the tray. Sure enough, Red-bellied Woodpeckers do have a red belly patch, but it is not something you'll ever see in the field unless you go way out of your way to look for it. There are plenty of other species for which I've always considered the common name to be a misnomer or at least a strange choice, including: Ring-necked Duck (how about Ring-billed Duck?), Blue-winged Warbler (c'mon, there is no blue there), Orange-crowned Warbler (who ever really sees the orange?), Purple Finch (Rose Finch?), etc.

So another bird I'd always considered a member of this list was Purple Sandpiper. Despite the cool name, all of my efforts to establish that "surely this name must have some merit: there must be SOME purple somewhere on this bird" were unsuccessful. Furthermore, I've never even heard anybody say to me that it actually does have it. So it was with a fairly great shock that I looked at my fresh closeup photos of 7 Purple Sandpipers at Pere Marquette Park in Muskegon MI only to see a fairly bright purple iridescence!! Exhibit:


And that ain't no pseudo-purple. That is the real deal. Yes, it is clearly an iridescence as opposed to a pigmentation, but wow! Skye and I were totally blown away by this. The coloration is visible on at least the tertials, scapulars, mantle, proximal wing coverts, and even on the crown (!). Here are the other best views of this:







It is really neat to finally know, after all these years, that the Purple Sandpiper really is purple... Who knows what I'll learn next.

(and oh yeah, here is the eBird complete checklist for the site: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S9527037)

A little out-of-county jaunt

But this was no ordinary chase. This was a bird (Slaty-backed Gull) we've been thinking about for many years now, but haven't even had a candidate to chase after anywhere in Michigan. The only existing Michigan record is from 1981, a one day wonder at the Sault Ste. Marie dump which was not chasable. This bird has provided little solace. Especially in light of the rash of recent records in the Great Lakes region, notably multiple records from Minnesota and Wisconsin, and at least one from the Illinois/Indiana area of Lake Michigan. Anyway, not a few of us state listers have dreamt of finding our own adult Slaty-backed Gull at our local dump. It just seems SO identifiable, and just a matter of time. But in this case, Dan Duso of the Saginaw Bay area found himself in this enviable position while birding the Republic Landfill near Standish, Bay County, 2 days ago. His initial reports and photos of a possible Slaty-backed Gull started to trickle out on the 13th, and the first chasers arrived on scene yesterday, posting these tantalizing photos which appeared to clinch the ID issue (with a mantle this dark one really only had to assess the extent and position of white in the outer primaries to make a confident ID).

So, the chase was on. I arrived mid-morning and was able to get some pretty amazing views as this bird hurtled over the dump with 1000+ Herrings, ~10 Glaucous, 1 Great Black-backed, at least 2 Iceland Gulls, and a handful of Ring-billeds:This was a long-awaited life bird for me, and will represent a 2nd state record if accepted by MBRC. I won't go to the mat on ID other than to say that every assessable field mark I checked appeared to be pretty classic for Slaty-backed Gull. In terms of age, it may not be quite fully adult, as evidenced by the dusky bill and obvious brownish cast to the primary coverts and primary bases. The tail of this bird conclusively shows no black (we had thought from Dan Duso's initial photos that it did have some black). So it could plausibly be either only a 4Y bird which has not quite reached full definitive plumage (like some Great Black-backeds often do), or a full adult (=after third year [ATY]). Pyle Guide II mentions that 4Y (of which less than 5% are assignable confidently to this category) is best identified by "outer primary coverts with more extensive blackish markings" (vs. slate gray or with "limited blackish on outer webs" in A4Y), and small p10 mirrow with no p9 mirror (vs. either just p10 or both p9 and p10 with "distinct white mirrors".) I don't think we have enough to confidently call this a 4Y, but would like to hear others' opinions. Here is today's eBird checklist:

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S9341848

Kudos to Dan Duso for finding this amazing record, Myles Willard and others for checking up on it, and getting the word out, and to Karl Overman for being sure we all knew about it.

The joy of long-distance Thayer's Gull identfication

One of my easiest remaining Kent Co. ticks is Thayer's Gull. Problem is, the only location in our lovely county which has a gull concentration is the Kent Co. landfill. And the viewing at this location is about as inopportune as it gets for gull watchers. The closest vantage is about .35 miles from the dump site, or 567 m (~5.67 football fields):Thayer's Gull identification is a quagmire in and of itself, so trying to do it at this distance is doubly troublesome. Some basic background: Thayer's and Iceland Gulls clearly constitute a clade, but instead of fitting nicely into 2 bimodal categories which we can easily separate (as suggested by the names), they form a cline of variation from black-primaried birds (=Thayer's) in their western arctic breeding areas to white-primaried birds in the European arctic (=nominate Iceland [glaucoides]). The 'in between' birds in the eastern N. American arctic, are grayish-primaried and are called "Kumlien's" Iceland Gull. The challenge with this group is deciding which phenotypes to classify as pure Thayer's, which as pure Kumlien's Iceland, and which to classify as unknown. Some of the birds between Thayer's and Kumlien's Iceland are even referred to as hybrids/intergrades, though on what basis (and what such a moniker actually connotes: if the bird looked exactly like both its parents how is that a hybrid/intergrade?!?) I don't claim to know. So to get to my bird from today let's start here: a plate comparing the wingtip pattern of large adult gulls, from "Gulls of North America, Europe, and Asia" by Olsen and Larsson (2003). Birds 13-16 are given to show the range of variation of acceptable Thayer's from darkest above to palest below, while bird 17 defies identification (would genetics show this bird to classify easily as one or the other when there's a cline of variation? I personally doubt it, but am not a geneticist so someone please relieve me of my ignorance), and plate 18 shows the extreme dark example of Kumlien's Iceland:
Long story short: I observed 2 adult kumlieni/thayeri today that were close to bird 17, but never could get an extended study of either bird, nor photos. But I did attempt to get video. I thought I had failed to capture my target, but in going through the video clip , I was shocked to see that the bird actually did unwittingly enter my screen, totally unbeknownst to me at the time (watch the upper left corner between 1:32 and 1:46). This bird, seen well, was darker gray above than Herrings, with dark eye and bright pink legs, as well as diffuse neck and head streaking. But n order to study the wingtip pattern of this bird I have created the following screencaps from the original clip, which are higher resolution that what you'll get on the youtube video (analysis to follow):





First off, the bird clearly applies to either bird 16 or bird 17 in Olsen and Larsson. How to decipher which? Well, the book doesn't really say in concrete terms. The caption to bird 16 reads: "Outer wing appears streaked blackish. Note black extension on outer webs of p9-p10, emphasizing white mirrors. Shows blackish markings as far as p5. Upperwing darker gray than in kumlieni." The caption for bird 17 says: "This example could represent minimal dark streaking in thayeri, with no dark markings on p5, or maximal dark streaking in kumlieni." How's that for hedging! Let's analyze this bird's outer primaries in more detail. I went into Photoshop and labelled each primary tip from the 2 best screencaps: It does appear that my bird lacks any markings on p5 (assuming I've labelled the feathers correctly), and that it lacks the black terminal markings on p10 shown on bird 16. The outer web of p9 pretty clearly lacks black in the area of the mirror, but so do both birds 16 and 17. The only other field mark I can garner from the plate would be the color of the pigmentation on these feathers: blacker on bird16 and slate gray on bird 17. I am not sure the answer to this one (nor the value it has as a definitive field mark!).

So, in the end, as so often happens, I think this is a bird we need to let go, as much as I would like to have a Thayer's Gull for Kent County. I left this and the other adult like it as Thayer's/Iceland Gulls on my eBird checklist. Birds like this may or may not "qualify," even with genetic data, as either species. But even if it did, we'd be hard-pressed to do so when its phenotype is so close to bird 17. Or perhaps we humans would do better to classify all birds in this clade as Thayland Gulls or Iceyeri Gulls? Alternative opinions here are welcome, of course (comment box below).

Fortunately for me, with upwards of 1,200 gulls present of late, as well as the influx of Thayer's in the western Great Lakes: I think the chances for finding a bird more like birds 13-15 (or heck, even a 1st or 2nd cycle bird) will be pretty good in the coming weeks. Let's hope that any such bird poses as well as this one did!

Black Scoters!

Left the house around 10:30AM to begin checking local lakes for Black Scoter (one of my most wanted Kent Co. ticks in the waterfowl category). But since I live in Montcalm, I've made a habit of checking my local Montcalm large lake: Whitefish Lake daily, and this morning was no exception. First duck I saw was a White-winged Scoter (after an absence of 2 days since seeing 1 and possibly 2 of these 3 days ago (see http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S9227889). I quickly realized there weren't a lot of ducks present due to the duck hunters chasing them around. But a scan to the south revealed a single, white-cheeked duck, in with 3 Common Goldeneyes, which was larger than them. Body size ruled out the last contender: Ruddy Duck, and sure enough, I had found my target bird within 10 minutes of leaving the house. Here is the checklist, with photos of both scoters: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S9260032 . For those looking to chase here is the map with access points and approximate locations of the scoters as of 11AM.All of this made me believe I had a good shot of finding Black Scoter in Kent as well: there must have been an influx last night as these birds were not present the past 2 days and the dreary, rainy weather is good at 'knocking down' migrants. But I planned on having to reach Kent Co.'s larger lakes, such as Lincoln Lake and Wabasis Lake in order to maximize my chances for this rare sea duck. But astonishingly, only 1.5 miles away I found ANOTHER Black Scoter on a much smaller lake: Sand Lake. Sand Lake is bisected by the Kent/Montcalm Co. line, and almost all of the time the Aythya flock (primarily Ring-necked Ducks) are on the north shore of the lake, well within Montcalm. At first this is indeed where the scoter was, but it quickly flew south, and swum to within 50-60 feet of the Kent shore! Even the Ring-necked Ducks rarely if ever do this, so my luck was out of control today. (side note: had this not happened I was prepared to grab my kayak and attempt to push the bird into Kent, fortunately I didn't have to do this). This map shows the location of the county line, as well as where I saw the Black Scoter. I took this video clip to show conclusively that the bird was in Kent Co., from the locations labelled on the map (note the peninsula which will be visible in the background of the video clip):Here is the Kent Co. checklist with photo: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S9260054
and a better video clip for ID purposes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn3bMD4cyxI

What a day! Heading back out to check Lincoln Lake as we speak, who knows what I'll find on a day like this.