Proof at last?

I am not sure, but could it be someone finally managed a decent video of an IBWO?

Why it never worked out...

Ever wondered why our birding somehow never seemed to work out the way we had planned? Like the numerous days I went out to get Snow Goose on my life list and found these instead?
Here's the answer to why our hobby was oh so frustrating for all these years: we all just didn't know how to do it properly!
Have you decided to quit on crappy bird watching today? Are you daring enough to take a huge leap forward, break through that final door and become a real birding wizard?
Well, then check out this video and watch your life list soar!

Cheers, Bob!

A day along the River

Oh, I know what you are thinking: what good can a day's birding be nowadays along a North American river if its name is not Bajou de View or Co... you know which one I mean, some Florida river anyway, but I disagree: I also had fun today along a river named Huron. As a matter of fact, this post is even interwoven with the previous one, by pure coincidence of course unless the birding gods are reading Bell Tower Birding which I still doubt.

With the weather suddenly turning nice and sunny this afternoon, I decided to forget about work and go birding instead. Now let me repeat this: I decided that I had been so incredibly creative and effective and had worked so tremendously much that I needed a few hours outside to get new inspiration and ideas on work projects and regain my focus on current issues. I therefore jumped onto Bus No. 3 which dropped me off close to the Huron River at Gallup Park. I then walked along the Huron, passed South Pond and finally crossed the Arb on my way back home. Here are some of the birding highlights:
Great Blue Heron
Mute Swan
Canada Goose
Common Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
Hooded Merganser
Pied-billed Grebe
Mallard
Gadwall
Shoveler
Belted Kingfisher

Doesn't that list ring a bell? Of course: yesterday's post on what species to see on the Baltic Sea coast. Man, this could have easily been a day back home or not?
I have to admit that a few species would stand out within an average Baltic day list, like a Hooded Merganser (although there really has been one male wintering on the island of Rugia for the last couple of years and I saw it there nicely, no kidding), a Pied-billed Grebe or a Belted Kingfisher. And if I am to blog in total honesty: the day I get to see 4 Great Blue Herons at some Baltic wetland is the day I'll tell no one about it and quit drinking beer instantly, which is why I hope this will not happen any time soon.
Here are some pictures to show just what a decent Heron on the Baltic coast is supposed to look like:


The Belted Kingfisher was quite a sight of course and a worthy distraction from the two male Eastern Bluebirds I was watching at close range. I normally don't go for showy unless it is a Cardinal in a bush with snow, but these Eastern Bluebirds are slowly starting to pick up speed on their climb up on my list of favourite North American birds.

It was already getting dark when I crossed the Arb and there were almost no birds around. I took this opportunity to carefully inspect some of those dog walkers. Most dogs are pretty big, I must say. I am now convinced I should focus my educational conversations about bird disturbance at the Arb on joggers.

No heat, no time, no post...

It's been quite a weekend: on Friday night, all of a sudden the heating system in our flat broke down. This is bad news in a season when a birder doesn't only feel every White-throated Sparrow could be a McKay's Bunting but actually fears turning into one himself the moment he gets out of his cosy bed. And with this thing happening on Friday night, there was no way it could be fixed immediately, oh no, not over the weekend, only on Monday. So on Saturday we went to get some small portable heating systems and the security guy down at the entrance of our high rise building mentioned that we may want to consider pasting some special plastic foil to our windows to avoid losing heat through these 1960ies windows with metal frames and only one single window pane.
To be honest, putting plastic up on the window was something I thought only existed in the slums of Sao Paulo but with ice forming over night on the inside of our window over the weekend, Monday saw us getting a special "extra large window insulation kit" and I spent half of today putting the plastic up. OK, the windows are turned into "double pane" windows now and the heating got fixed.
All is fine again, yepp, and the bloggin's back.
Needless to say, I didn't get to go birding at all recently and since Monday night it is relatively mild again (aaargh!) and raining cats and dogs. I'd opt for a rain shower of Snow Geese and Gray Jays instead, but unfortunately I am not the one who's being asked here.

Anyway, I still think I owe my one or two faithful readers a few nice bird pics and have therefore asked a friend of mine from Germany if he'd mind me putting up some of his. I think they're great and he's great too because he didn't mind.
So here's the story to accompany the following pictures:

The German Baltic Sea coast comprises a whole chain of so called "Bodden" which are very shallow and often huge bays. These harbour a tremendous variety and number of waterbirds mostly during the migration periods or in winter and at the right time of year it is more difficult to go birding along the coast and not see at least 100.000 waterbirds than to go out and see that many or even more. The largest concentrations are of geese in autumn (I'll get to that in a later post) and of diving ducks and mergansers from autumn all the way to spring. In severe winters these Bodden freeze over forcing many waterbirds to move on south. However, there are always a few spots of open water that remain and are a refuge for all the waterbirds that somehow failed to catch the last breeze south. It is not unusual then to see 10.000 Common Mergansers with a few thousand Smew and Red-breasted Mergansers in one tight flock, sometimes so concentrated that you can't see the water anymore. And when there's a tight flock of waterfowl, there will be White-tailed Eagles near by, no doubt. Very often, the eagles (up to 60) can be seen perched on the surrounding ice and as soon as one of them decides it is time to eat, the whole waterbird assembly just explodes into a huge cloud of whizzing bird bodies, an incredible experience!

The following pictures of a White-tailed Eagle hunt (on Mallards with a few Mute Swans watching) were taken by Rainer Bendt and the copyright remains with him. If you have any other plans with these pictures but to look at them on this site, ask or else get in trouble!



Here's a cropped version of the first image. The Eagle is an adult (white tail) bird and probably a female (more rounded wings, relatively large bill etc.). And have you noticed the Curlews on the first picture?


Incredible birds... No matter how many you have seen, each and every observation is a memory.
Thanks, Rainer!

Common, Mew or Ring-billed?

TWO bird identification problems connected to European species here in south east Michigan on the same day: A possible Mew Gull and a potential Greater White-fronted Goose! I didn't get to see these birds, but still there's plenty to write about...

OK, first things first and this post will contain a few remarks on the Common - Mew Gull problem and also a little bit of Common - Ring-billed Gull talk will be included. It is not intended as an identification article, I'd just like to point out a few things and difficulties that I stumbled across in the past few years birding along the Baltic coast of Germany, trying to find a Mew or Ring-billed Gull amongst the many Commons.
The following remarks about the Common - Ring-billed problem therefore are sort of the wrong way around for Michigan: I am NOT investigating to what extend an ordinary Ring-billed can show characters of Common but - maybe a bit less useful in a North American context - how often Ring-billed Gull characters can be shown by Common. I really hope this post will not be used to "string" a Common Gull here ("sure, it's not really typical, but Jochen said..."), but it might be of some help nevertheless to demonstrate that by far not all the Commons look the way they are depicted in Sibley...
The last remarks on Common / Mew are hoped however to be not completely useless here as I suspect the probability of a Common is not significantly lower than of a Mew.


The first step in identifying a Common (and Mew as well) here in Michigan is to exclude Ring-billed. The most important identification criteria are on the wing and the head (OK, that was dumb: where else on pretty much any gull?) and can be summarized as follows:

Head
a) The eye is pale on Ring-billed and dark on Common and also Mew.
b) The bill is bright yellow with a broad black ring close to the tip in Ring-billed, whereas it is paler yellow on Common and Mew and shows a weaker, often incomplete black ring.
c) The bill is much stronger in Ring-billed with parallel edges at the base whereas the bill of Common and Mew Gulls seems to narrow rather evenly towards the tip.

As a matter of fact, all but one or two of the Common Gulls I studies in Germany in the last few years showed a rather bright yellow bill and a complete black ring. Even though this ring might not be as pronounced as on Ring-billed Gulls, it is still rather obvious and in my opinion close enough to Ring-billed in some cases to render this feature pretty much useless for separating the two. Here is an example of a Common Gull from Germany with a very pronounced black ring on the bill, this kind of yellow is very much the norm though.


Here is a very heavily cropped section of the head, showing the broad and complete black ring on a bright yellow bill.

The dark eye however and details of the wing clearly identified this bird as a Common Gull.
The following image (again followed by a cropped section of the bill and eye) shows the typical bill structure of Common Gulls nicely, with the upper mandible narrowing very evenly in a nice and smooth curve from the base to the tip. This bird also shows a dark eye typical of Common.




The bill structure might really be the single most definite feature of a Common. In other words: if your potential Common Gull has parallel upper and lower edges of the bill (reminiscent of Herring Gull), it very, very likely definitely will NOT be a Common (or Mew) Gull! Do not be discouraged if your potential Common shows a complete black ring on the bill because a whole lot of them regularly do.
The pale eye is also a good identification mark as the vast majority of Common Gulls show dark eyes. If you are very close to them (e.g. hand feeding them in winter) in bright sunlight that's shining directly into their eyes, they might appear to have somewhat paler (olive green) irides. But these are far from the bright yellow staring eye of the Ring-billed. There are however examples of Common Gulls with more bright paler eyes but these can be considered exceptional. If therefore your Gull shows a pale eye, chances are it is NOT a Common...

Wing
a) Ring-billed has a small white mirror on P10 (the outermost primary) and occasionally an even smaller one on P9, Mew and Common have much larger white mirrors, Common sometimes even one on P8.
b) Ring-billed has no white between the black tips and the gray bases of the outermost primaries, Common and Mew do to a varying extend.
c) The mantle in Common is darker than in Ring-billed.
d) The white trailing edge on the secondaries is broader on Common and Mew than on Ring-billed.

If a bird shows all of the characters mentioned for Common it is very likely a Common, but it should be stressed that I have found ALL of the Ring-billed characters mentioned above occasionally on Common Gulls along the Baltic coast, so each character in itself is far from diagnostic.
The following image is of a typical western Common Gull (Larus canus canus). It shows three white spots on the outermost primary tips, white between the black and gray on the central primaries and a rather broad white tip/trailing edge to the innermost primaries. If your Gull shows these features, I suppose you're doing well on your way to identify a Common Gull and all you have to do then is eliminate Mew (see below). If one of these features is missing, it might still be a Common, but of course it makes it much more difficult to get to a certain (and credible) identifiaction.


Many Common Gulls, presumably of a more eastern origin or even of the Asian subspecies heinii, show white spots on only the two outermost primaries and these white spots are also smaller. The white trailing edge on the primaries (not the secondaries) is more narrow and the white between the black wingtip and the gray base is more restricted (sometimes even missing!) and shaped like a narrow half moon. These are more likely to be mistaken for Ring-billed, but this is also a form with a very dark mantle, so that should be rather obvious amongst a flock of Ring-billed (but hard to assess on single birds in bright sunlight). The following image shows such a potentially eastern Common Gull. Note that the black area on P8 is far more extensive on this form than on classical western Larus canus canus.



One of these presumable eastern Commons once almost lured me into identifying it as a Ring-billed (see image below): There was only one white mirror on the outermost primary, no white between the black wingtips and the gray base and a very narrow white edge to the inner primaries. The white edge to the secondaries however was very broad and checking the gull carefully e.g. for characters on the head, it was apparent that this was an ordinary Common Gull whose outermost primary was missing (probably broken off) hence creating this misleading Ring-billed like pattern.
So, even if this is very unlikely, if your gull looks very good for a Common but shows only one white spot on the primaries, make sure it really has all its 10 primaries!





The Mew Gull problem
All of the above was jut a little bit of random thinking, but the following might be interesting regarding the Mew Gull from Port Huron:
Occasionally western Common Gulls can show a pattern superficially similar to Mew Gull.
First of all, here is a link to an identification article on Surfbirds.co.uk, where all the important features to look for are mentioned. The problem with these features is that they require a very careful analysis of plumage details that are very likely impossible to check on a flying bird in the distance. One of the most useful characters to generally (not definitely) separate Mew from Common therefore appears to be the impression that the white trailing edge of the inner primaries crosses the black area of the central primaries to connect with the white spots on the outer primaries, producing a "string of pearls" effect. In Common Gull, the white "tongues" on the central primaries are usually less pronounced and do not connect with the white spots on the outermost primaries, so the latter will always appear isolated and completely surrounded by the black wingtip.
This general approach to separate a Mew from a Common might be true for the very vast majority of Common Gulls but once really got my pulse going for a few days on the Baltic coast. It was not until I got a few digital shots of the birds (allowing for a detailed analysis of its primary pattern) that I was able to definitely identify it as a Common with an unusually large amount of white on its wing. The more useful images of this strange bird are shown below.




Now, what was so unusual and lured me into believing it might be a Mew?
The white mirrors on P10 and P9 were very extensive and even P8 showed an unusually large white spot. The white "tongue" between the black tip and gray base of P7 was unusually extensive and connected to the white spot on P8, hence creating that very same "string of pearls" effect assumed indicative of Mew Gull.
The key to identifying it as an unusual Common was the pattern of P8 alone: Mew Gull should not show such an extensive black tip with a white spot but show a large white tongue at the base that goes all the way up to where the white spot on P9 is. The black on P8 should only be around the tip on Mew Gull.
Below are two heavily cropped images of the normal presumed western Common Gull (top image) already shown above and the strange Common Gull. Unfortunately I do not have a picture of a Mew Gull to complete this comparison. As a matter of fact, I have yet to see a Mew Gull (can you believe it?). But nevertheless, here's the comparison:


What can be seen with copious amounts of good will on these horrible images is that the basic pattern is essentially the same (hence very unlike Mew) but that the bird shown below simply has quite a lot of white where the bird above shows only some white.

To conclude this very long post:
According to my limited experiences along the Baltic coast, very few Common Gulls can show a wing tip pattern reminiscent of Mew if not seen clearly (e.g. on a distant bird in flight), and to secure any identification of a bird (be it as a Common or a Mew) one should focus strongly on the pattern of P8.
Isn't it amazing what a difference an inch of black on a single feather can make? What I would have done if this bird had a broken-off outermost primary I do not know... Stayed calm, counted the primaries and noticed the mistake? Yeah, I suppose so.

What I like about Snow and don't like about Joggers

I am aware that you guessed where I just got back from, but I'll still tell you: from the Arb.
Today was a bit different from yesterday however in that the snow was largely gone. And with the return of friction on the roads came the return of the joggers and dog walkers.
It is always a big issue about nature conservation and human recreation but this is actually not one of these issues: it is about my hobby and theirs! Well, you see, I am a calm and peaceful person and I don't really mind others enjoying themselves outside as long as they don't get between me and a bird! But what if they do without me noticing it? This interference is easily investigated when it comes to waterbirds and, say, surfing: either the ducks fly or they don't. So my attitude towards surfers is well defined and founded firmly. But joggers? What do I, as a birder, think about joggers? Nothing much really, I was birding at the Arb for weeks now minding my own business with them minding theirs and all was peace and harmony. But was it really or had I been a victim of some fierce betrayal?
Today I decided to find out and settle my relationship towards joggers and dog walkers once and for all. I counted my birds today with all those joggers around. Just as I counted yesterday with all those joggers not around.
And the results, to be honest, are rather disturbing:

	Yesterday (quiet)	Today (crowded)
Canada Goose	20	1
Mallard	5	7
Red-tailed Hawk	1	0
Cooper's Hawk	1	0
Sharp-shinned Hawk	0	1
Ring-billed Gull	1	1
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	1	1
Red-bellied Woodpecker	2	3
Downy Woodpecker	3	7
Hairy Woodpecker	1	0
Blue Jay	3	0
American Crow	5	11
Black-capped Chickadee	8	15
Tufted Titmouse	2	1
Brown Creeper	0	6
White-breasted Nuthatch	5	4
Carolina Wren	2	1
Golden-crowned Kinglet	2	1
Hermit Thrush	1	0
American Robin	80	140
Cedar Waxwing	25	0
European Starling	30	2
Northern Cardinal	8	7
American Tree Sparrow	3	4
White-throated Sparrow	12	10
Dark-eyed Junco	5	4
House Sparrow	2	0
American Goldfinch	3	3
Bird total	231	230
Species total	26	21

Now there's clear proof: joggers and dog walkers make birding less classy by chasing away some bird species and lurking in more of the ones that are already there to keep the number of birds at a constant level, hence fooling birders and making them believe all is fine when really the birding is only second class! How sickeningly unfair and dishonest is that?
That's what I mean: I don't mind anyone practising recreation where I do my birding as long as they are open about what they do and play by the rules. But this cheating is just ridiculous and childish and next time I am at the Arb, I'll confront a few of those dog walkers and tell them to just speak out loud if they have anything to say or else get out of my birding terrain!

On a more serious note, this most recent post of Charlie Moores is really quite disturbing. Maybe birders should stand up and make themselves heard much more that the conservation of species is not only an ethical duty but that it is also a necessity for a society to preserve what a not so small percentage enjoy for recreation as much as this same society allows the construction of golf courses, yacht harbours and ski resorts!

The felt Species

I just got back from another enjoyable afternoon's sparrow hunt at the Arb. It was pretty cold, very much so thank you. On the German weather forecast, they always have "felt temperature" which is derived from combining the actual temperature with humidity and the wind chill factor. Or the "felt time" on the radio shortly after the alarm clock went off: "It is now 6:30 a.m., felt time 4:45 a.m."

I think birders should introduce a "felt bird ID", especially in this kind of weather.
"This is a White-throated Sparrow, felt species: McKay's Bunting."
I had quite a few felt McKay's today.

This whole "felt ID" could then be extended to, say, habitat:
Some of the American Tree Sparrows at the Arb for example have a rather annoying feel to them. A few of them always hang around a patch of high grass amongst a few pines. Grass amongst pines? Hello! Another felt Bachman's Sparrow anyone?

Despite the very cold wind it was good birding. I saw 4 species of Woodpecker, Hairy (which is quite nice), Downy, Red-bellied and a sparkling Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, very neat. Two remarkable things about the woodpeckers:
a) I am now only seeing male Red-bellieds, no females,
b) I think the Sapsucker really seems to link the Jynx-Wrynecks to the woodpeckers.

Other nice birds were Cardinals in bushes with snow, a lone Hermit Thrush, a Red-tailed and a Cooper's Hawk.

In Germany, we also have a few "felt species".
Like the Yellowhammer in winter. When the bird is facing you or you can see its head all is fine and it is easily identified as a Yellowhammer, shown on the picture below (from Germany in April 2005 and sadly not from today's trip to the Arb).


However, the moment it turns it back on you, it feels suspiciously like a Pine Bunting from Siberia, a first degree national rarity in Germany.
The following image is of a female Yellowhammer from behind (again from Germany, April 2005):



And this here is a nice Pine Bunting observed in Finland (where also very rare).

You see? There's just no escaping the felt ID, and I can't wait to go for those felt wintering Prothonotary Warblers next weekend...