What Is It? (Round 2)

     Congratulations to Gloria on her correct identification of last week's Cape May Warber (Steophaga tigrina)!
     Here's this week's ID challenge:

photo by the author

     Hint: Click on the photo, then right-click and select "view image". This will let you zoom in and let you view it full size so you can get a good view of the birds. This odd trio was at Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin in late July. Try to ID both species, since they will be scored separately (see below).

     Some people have been wondering about prizes. Isn't knowing that you correctly identified the bird enough of a prize? Oh, fine. There will be prizes. Small ones. Maybe. And there is now a scoreboard for all-time top identifiers.

Here's how scoring works:
     You automatically get 1 point just for posting an answer (right or wrong)!
     The first correct answer gets 4 extra points.
     The second correct answer gets 2 extra points.
     Any later correct answers get 1 extra point.

     Since this week's challenge has two species, you can get a maximum of 10 points if you are the first to correctly identify both species.

     Have fun!

The Joy of Blurry Photos

Scarlet Tanager (female or juvenile male)

Scarlet Tanager (female or juvenile male)

     Just to put it out there, I'm not a big photographer. I prefer the birds I see to be unadulterated by a digital eye. The truth is it's so much better that way. A still photo doesn't get you the detail, action, and depth of actually seeing the bird. However, it can be useful to have photos every once in a while for a number of reasons.
     The first of these is that you can go back and study a photo to determine what bird you saw if you weren't able to figure that out when viewing the live one.
     The other reason its good to have pictures is that it offers proof that you actually saw something.
     Case in Point: on Saturday I received an email from a fellow birder asking whether tanagers might still be around or if they had already all migrated through.
     Rather conveniently, while trying to get a picture of a Magnolia Warbler in my backyard, I tracked some movement in a different tree which contained, along with a few Cedar Waxwings and Red-eyed Vireos, exactly what the other birder had been asking about: a Scarlet Tanager. Not only was this the first time I had ever seen a tanager near my house, but I was also able to get photos of it.
     (Quick biology note: Yes, that is a Scarlet Tanager. The common name comes from the appearance of the adult male, which is bright red with black wings. Females and juvenile males are more of a greenish-yellow color. Interestingly, the scientific name for the species, Piranga olivacea (Olive Tanager) is derived from the appearance of the female (because Piranga Rubra (Red Tanager) was already taken for another species, the Summer Tanager). This kind of difference between the males and females is called sexual dimorphism.)
     My camera really isn't that great, and the photos are of the expected quality. But hey, taking pictures of birds is HARD! Especially songbirds like tanagers. They tend to be rather far away in trees full of leaves that obstruct the view and prevent auto-focus from working, and they don't stand still for very long. For many of these species, I consider any photograph where the bird is in the frame to be a good photograph. My low standards are well suited for my picture-taking ability. The good news is that I tend to be very happy with my photos even if they are terrible from an art viewpoint. My attitude is often along the lines of "Sure, it's blurry and distant and badly lit, but a serious birder can see enough in the photo to identify what species it is!" The background image to this blog is probably my best photo of a wild American Kestrel, who was perched and nicely lit by the setting sun. He was still over 30 feet away, but that's about as close as you can get.
     So why share this with you all? Does it matter that I take pictures that aren't nearly as good as ones you can find elsewhere on the internet?
     Of course it does, because it means that you can also take blurry pictures of birds!
     If you see something you don't recognize, snap a picture and send it to an experienced birder (that would be me, for those of you who have my email address), and no matter what kind of blurriness and bad lighting there is, they'll be able to tell you what you saw (Up to a point, of course. Not every picture is identifiable). Who knows--maybe you'll find something really awesome out there.
     Happy birding!

What Is It? (Round 1)

     I decided that people who are not yet birders could use some practice identifying birds that sit still... which means birds in photographs. So here it is: What Is It, Round 1!
     Grab a field guide (if you don't own one, they're available at the library) and try to figure out what species this is a photo of. Post your answer as a comment. Please do not just copy other peoples' answers--that's cheating! Also, no random guessing! Spend some time considering its appearance, habitat, and behavior rather than jumping to conclusions. Remember, I want the name of the species, not just "it's a bird!" or "it's a yellow bird!"

photo by the author

     Hint: this cute little guy was flitting around in the conifers in my backyard (a.k.a. somewhere in central Illinois) during spring migration.
     The correct answer will be posted along with the next What Is It (expect 1-2 weeks between those... depends on how many good pictures I take).
     Have fun!

Sometimes It's the Little Things That Count

This afternoon, while slaving away at my calculus homework, I spotted some movement in the trees behind my house. My binoculars were conveniently close at hand, so I quickly put all my polar functions aside and went to see who was there. The distraction proved worthy of my time, since the two little visitors turned out to be Philadelphia vireos. True, I've seen this species multiple times before. This time, however, was the first time I'd ever found the species in my own backyard, and one moment of viewing them really stood out: at one point, both of the birds flew in and landed on the same branch not too far away from the window I was standing at. Thus I was able to see both in my binoculars at the same time, and they were really cute interacting with each other. Best of all, they were close enough that I could get a good view of their beaks!

I know, big deal, right?

The thing is, most of the time when you see vireos, they are really high up in trees and you can't see all of the little details. In particular, you can't notice the nasty little hooks at the end of their beaks.

So what's so important about that?

I often lump vireos and warblers into one group of "hard-to-see arboreal birds" because that's exactly what they are--small, fast, and high up in trees. However, the two groups are actually not closely genetically related. The hooks on the beaks of vireos are a nice little reminder that their most likely nearest cousins are crows and predatory shrikes.

The little guys quickly left before I could get my camera, and I had to return to my homework. Still, I was incredibly happy to have seen that several-millimeter-long bit of morphology. If you take up birding, you can be just as crazy as you're probably now thinking I am!

Sometimes it's the little things that count.

Evolution of a Birding Evangelist

     For those of you who know me well, it should be incredibly obvious why the subject of this blog is birding. For those of you who don't know me or have been living under a rock, I suppose a bit of explanation is in order.
     When I was young, I had a habit of cycling through different "favorite animals" at a fairly quick pace. For a while, I had a major infatuation with prairie dogs, and my preschool and kindergarten teachers still remember me as "the prairie dog kid". As I entered grade school, however, my interests shifted away from small fuzzy rodents. Being a rather zoologically inclined child (a docent at the Monterey Bay Aquarium called me a "budding marine biologist"), I tended to have preferences a bit more obscure than the standard menagerie of cats, dogs, ponies, and parrots. Instead, I was the self-proclaimed biggest fan of pteranodons, giant squid, pikas, skunks, colugos, or hyraxes. It may sound odd now, but there was a point where I really didn't like birds. Great horned owls in particular were considered malicious and unlikable simply because they ate skunks.
     The first bird I remember taking the honors of my favorite animal was the secretarybird, a large, long-legged, predatory ground-dweller from Africa. I was in third grade then. Other bird species quickly grabbed my attention, everything from bearded vultures to the world's largest pigeon. I would do oral presentations to the class accompanied by a full-sized drawing of the bird I was describing. Mammals and invertebrates never made a comeback on my Top 10 list.
     I started watching wild birds in 2006, during a trip to Seattle. With weak binoculars and not much experience, my finds were pretty much limited to ducks and herons.  However, there was one event in particular that made me consider myself a true birder. We were out at Juanita Bay Park when I spotted a pair of ducks that had just landed in the water. They were both hooded mergansers, a species that is completely unmistakable. I had never seen any members of that species before, so I stood around on a pier for several minutes with the binoculars glued to my face. It started raining, but I stayed out there watching them until it got wet to the point that I actually couldn't see them through the rain.
     In 2007, my mother took me to an event hosted by the Champaign County Audubon Society for kids interested in birding. It was one of the first times I had really gone birding specifically to find smaller, tree-dwelling species like cedar waxwings and wood-peewees. The Audubon members told me I could come to their regular events, so I did.
     Now, five years later, I'm the youngest regular attendee of local birdwalks. I've seen more than 350 species of birds in the wild, over 100 of those right here in my hometown. There are species I see quite often now that I would never have dreamed of finding when I was just starting out. Identification of most birds is much easier now, and my vision is oddly tuned to pick out certain fluttering movements characteristic of warblers. But maybe I'm a bit lonely as practically the only birder in my area who hasn't gone to undergraduate college yet.
     If this blog has a mission statement, it's quite simple: to get other people interested in birding. I've sort of taken it upon myself to spread the hobby since the local Audubon Society hasn't had any more events specifically for beginners since the one I attended in 2007. Trust me, it's difficult (getting people interested, that is). Still, I try my best.
     The title of this blog refers to the fact that the area where I live contains some oases of forest and lakes in the middle of the largely bird-unfriendly soy and cornfield desert. During migration, birds have to stop and eat somewhere, and Champaign County has some pretty good sites. Forests and artificial lakes provide food and shelter for birds on their long flights between breeding and wintering grounds, and provide convenient locations where lots of interesting species are readily visible to birders.
     One more thing, for those of you who don't know the terminology:
     Birdwatching and birding are essentially the same thing, but birding tends to have a connotation of being a more active and regular activity. Since birding has one less syllable, I'll use it more often.