In the News: Well-known Blogger botches up and misses his chance to rake in US $ 50,000

Okay, these things can easily happen. It's happened to me a few times, and if you are a birder, it has more than likely happened to you as well:
We miss out on a grand once-in-a-lifetime birding chance, or rather: we mess up bird-wise despite being at the right place at the right time.
Most of the time, we won't notice, e.g. we simply don't see our ultimate nemesis bird sitting right behind us out in the open while we are fully concentrated on scanning the landscape in front of us for said nemesis bird. So the frustration is limited to having just had another fruitless attempt at getting a nemesis as we will never know just how incredibly close we actually were.
Sometimes however, and more and more frequently in an age of endless photographic possibilities, we learn afterwards what we had missed out in the field and the disappointment is heart-breaking.
Yes, I see you need an example to understand what I mean.
Surely many of us will recognize this situation:
You show some slides (wait, make that a power point presentation) from your last birding holiday to a few birding pals of yours and all they do is constantly point out birds in the background of your pictures, birds you hadn't noticed out in the field when photographing the bird in front. This in itself is nice, but it will downright kill you if these background birds are the lifers you wanted to get so desperately on that holiday but had missed - so you thought.
The knowledge of having missed those birds through sheer ... well ... not-being-focussedness, through a birding mistake instead of just never having actually been close to one, is one of the most frustrating emotions I have ever experienced in birding.
Luckily though, I was the guy who pointed out the birds, so I have experienced it passively, so to speak.
[This has really happened to me: I showed my friend two "missed lifers" on his holiday slides, Citrine Wagtail while he took pics of a Reef Heron and Spanish Sparrow in his picture of a White Stork's nest. I can't say I enjoyed it, but it was a noteworthy evening].
Aaaanyway. So this can be extremely frustrating. But what would you say and feel if you not only messed up a chance to get a lifer but if this lifer was worth US $ 50,000?

I don't know.
You surely also won't know.

But hey, I know someone we can ask:

Hello Nate, my friend!
Are you with us tonight?

Good.

So, there you were in the Carolinas (crowd holds breath),
in March (part of the crowd starts murmuring),
in a swamp forest (murmuring gets considerably louder)
and you took this photograph [reproduced here with your kind permission] ...


... without noticing that you had just flushed a large black-and-white woodpecker off the far site of a trunk?
(crowd explodes!)



Look closely, my friend:

See that black body?

The largely white underwing pattern?

The black wing tip?


Haven't you seen something like this before, somewhere on the internet?

And isn't there a US $ 50,000 reward for a conclusive picture?

So tell our valued readers, Nate, how does it feel?

The Post that didn't make it

This collection of random thoughts was meant to not appear here but on Sharon Stiteler's birdchick page, as the winning entry of her Swarovski contest that would earn me the pair of binoculars needed so urgently to turn my non-birding wife into what everyone ought to be:
a bird enthusiast.

Apparently, the post got lost on the internet somehow when I sent it to her and therefore didn't even make the top 10. Yes, these things happen all the time.
The post is all about the role names play in birding, a subject I touched before and might even look at again:


Democracy is the little brother of Evolution. Really, it is. A lot of democracy’s greatness comes from the fact that it is surprisingly darwinistic, and their affectionate relationship is being much appreciated this year, the year we celebrated Darwin’s 200th birthday and witnessed the peaceful shift of power from one hand on to the next. Democracy – like evolution - is all about the survival of the fittest and in this case strength or fitness lies in numbers, or majority of votes. The majority principle also applies to the social aspects of life and the values and criteria we apply to judge our fellow citizens. This is where democracy really hits the homes of birders: the majority of the people around us see us – the birders - as geeks, and as they are many, they must be right. There can be no denying it: the firm association of birding with geekness is rooted so deeply in society it almost got manifested in the United States Declaration of Independence, the product of one of democracy’s finer hours. An early draft version, which read as follows

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all birders are created geeky”

was only changed to what it is today after the influential naturalist and early birder William Bartram convinced Thomas Jefferson over a tea or two that he was only in it for fame and fortunes. Good man, that Bartram, so never mind that King Vulture incident. This close shave with eternal embarrassment clearly demonstrates that we, as birders, may disagree all we want yet the fact remains: in the eyes of the world, birders are not placed right in the centre of the curve that depicts the Gaussian distribution of normality in a given population.
We may indeed hold a position closer to the curve’s periphery.
Heck, we might not even make the curve at all.

It’s not all bad and lost though as some birders have optimistically set out to set the record straight and give birds and birding the place they deserve, at the heart of today’s society. The first step of foremost importance for those intrepid birders thriving to change the geek image is surely to identify the cause for this awkward misconception. And in deep sympathy and support of their quest I offer my fair share of thoughts in the following paragraphs.
This is how I see it:

Some of the reasons why birders cause fellow citizens to raise an eyebrow or two in suspicion may pertain to their maintaining an interest in small brown birds despite being consistently informed by the concerned passer-by that there are Bald Eagles around.
Other factors may vaguely be connected to the preference for Tilley hats, the wearing of multifunctional poly-pocket birder’s vests, and wrapping one’s shoes in neon duct tape during excursions.
However, while all this may be part of the problem the real culprit has nothing to do with the things a birder looks at or uses to dress up with. It’s the birder’s vocabulary or rather their vocalisations that frequently causes distress to those non-birders caught unexpectedly in a conversation on birds.
Seriously, nothing will increase your geek score like throwing in a few decent bird names during a casual conversation on past time activities. Admittedly some bird names aren’t all that bad and reach a certain level of social acceptance. Casually mentioning Ivory Gull, Lucifer Hummingbird or Gyrfalcon during a conversation may even leave a lasting impression on those around you.
Sadly we don’t get to use those names all that often.
Most bird names however are just pathetic. Northern Beardless Tyrannulet springs to mind immediately – the poor creature. Others – like Phainopepla - will likely get you an appointment with your personal rehabber if you try to say them three times in a row real fast, so you had better not come across a small flock of these. Other bird names are even downright dangerous and may get you in serious trouble. Yes, they do! Have you ever tried to have a conversation on the Bridled Titmouse amongst a group of minors when some of their parents were around? This is something I really do not recommend.
Apparently, the frustration amongst birders about frequently having to use lingual lapses of reason as names to describe what they feel passionate about has led to another communication breakdown that may be seen by those outside the birdwatching community as … shall we say peculiar? Birders just try to avoid names to such extend that they never use their own or other birder’s names in direct conversation. They just don’t. It doesn’t happen.
“Hi! Seen anything?” is the phrase commonly used at birding hotspots as an introducing ceremony amongst birders while “Is the [insert name of rare bird] still being seen?” or less politely “Where is the [insert name of rare bird]!?” is all you get at sites where a rarity has been sighted previously and is being “chased”.
Obviously, birders are so much focussed on their target that a simple addendum in the form of “Hi, my name is…” is simply too much distraction and a plain waste of birding time.
Of course there are instances when we as birders have to get conversationally more specific about certain persons birding with us or around us. In this case, the clever approach is to combine the person in question with the birds they have seen. This worked quite fine for me during one memorable day at Ontario’s Point Pelee. I had reported a Clay-coloured Sparrow, not a shabby bird at all for the park and a bird others were trying to relocate. So for the rest of the day and wherever I went, I was “The guy who found the Clay-coloured”.
In order to fully appreciate this effect however, one needs to choose their rarity carefully. “Oh look, there’s the guy who found the Bachman’s Warbler” may be something we’d enjoy hearing for a day or two.
On the other hand, it may not raise our spirits quite as much to overhear others saying “Oh look, there’s the guy who discovered the Phaino… Philo… Philha…, you know that black Arizona bird? White in the wings, with reddish eye? That Philanthro, Piano, Picassothingy, you know? Oh forget it, never mind. It probably wasn’t him anyway. - Hey, what’s that bird over there?“

Actually, birders were shown quite clearly how things are done properly in the world of personal introductions not that long ago by a decent man and friend of the birds who also happened to be an acquainted author. Who knows, maybe it was not only the name that he borrowed from a birder for his most famous fictional character. Maybe it was this particular birder’s manners as well.
This is who I am talking about and how I feel things should be handled amongst birders in the future. So next time we meet out in the field:

The name is Clay-coloured. The-guy-who-found-the Clay-coloured.

A new way Gulls mess up my mind

The grandeur of Northern Gulls is mostly secluded from even the alert and willing observer by geographical constrains, in particular a lack of distributional overlap. Quite apart from their grace by plumage and motion which in themselves render these creatures an aura of magnificense, the intense scarcity of observation possibilities in a birder's life alone places Ross's and Ivory Gull firmly within the top ten of any birder's most desired species.

Those birds are indeed more than hard to come by.
The intrepit North American birder can either visit Alaska in late summer for Ross's and Newfoundland in winter for Ivory, or hope for an odd chance of seeing both birds as vagrants in the lower 48 at some stage in their life, however unlikely that may be.
European birders striving to catch a glimpse of either of these species face even tougher challenges: Ivory Gulls can be found breeding on the remote islands of Svalbard far to the North of northern Norway and may thus be seen during a visit to this (almost) remotest of Europe's corners, but there is no area where one may chance upon a Ross's with any rate of reliability. A few winters spent sea-watching on the Norwegian coast, on Iceland or the Shetland Island or along the harsh winter west coasts of the British Isles may lead to a certain probability for a vagrant record, but this is just about as good as it gets.

Then came this winter, and things changed.

First of all, this winter has seen a small influx of Ivory Gulls to northern Europe. Well, a handful (or slightly less) birds have been found scattered widely across the coasts of the continent, so an influx is a rather strong word, but due to the scarcity of records in other winters we'll just call this year's birds an influx and leave it at that.

Before you start wondering why I started this story in the first place, rest asured that I - of course - did not see any of those Ivory Gulls. In fact, I have not seen any Ivory Gulls at all, which is a shame. But this winter was so peculiar that I just have to point it out to North American readers who may not be aware of the implications it has on searching for the species.

So here we go ...

Despite the occurence of a few birds in the North of the continent, European birders were quite surprised when news came out from France of a bird found on the country's south-west coast, close to the border with Spain. Now, an Ivory Gull is an extremely unusual and rare bird even along the northern coast of France, but this far to the South, it is absolutely astounding. Here are some pictures of the bird.

But ... it even got better. A few days ago, a handful of Dutch birders sought shelter from the winter's miseries in their country and went to the arid landscapes of central Spain. And while scanning through the Mediterranean avian goodies of a lagoon complex south of Madrid, they chanced upon an adult ... now sit down, please ... Ross's Gull!

While the fact that this is only the third ever for Spain alone goes to show how unusual this record is, the additional facts that it is an adult bird and that it was found as far inland as a gull can go in Spain makes it just completely incredible.

Here is a video of the bird, which already is quite smething to see. But if you scroll down this gallery on surfbirds, you'll find a picture from February 21st 2009 of it swimming amongst a small group of Flamingoes, right below a picture of the Fench Ivory.

Have you ever seen a Ross's Gull together with Flamingos? I sure haven't. In fact, this is likely the most bizzare assembly of species I have ever seen on a single photograph.

Maybe I should sort of translate the whole incident to birding in North America, as most of my readers do the majority of their birding there and even though they are surely aware of Europe's geography, they might be less familiar with bird distributions on the East side of the Atlantic:

The magnitude of this incident is comparable to an Ivory Gull being found on the coasts of Georgia while an Alabama inland lake hosts a Ross's at the same time.

So there you have it. Kind of makes defining your target species for future birding trips a pretty difficult thing to do. But hey, we always knew gulls were full of surprises.

A little bit on Birds and Glass Windows

Just a little chunk of information as the wider frame of things has already been discussed quite extensively, for example here .
For background reading, just follow the links provided on the Greatest Auk's site, especially this one, which provides even more links to follow and so it goes on and on until the power company disconnects your electricity as you have forgotten to pay your bills over following all the links and then you die of hypothermia.
I know this was awefully off-topic, but on the other hand I found it so outrageous I just had to mention it sometime somewhere.

Aaanyway, back to birds and windows.
The Swiss Ornithological Research Institute Sempach (sort of the Cape May of Switzerland, only that in technical terms Switzerland doesn't have a sea next to it) in conjunction with Birdlife Switzerland has published a guideline for builders, architects and the interested public (whoever might be interested) on how to avoid window strikes by birds.

You can find the site here and the pdf version here. If you feel adventurous, you can also read the German, Italian or French version (click on the flags in the upper right corner).

They do not mention the Sibley approach though, and Sibley also apparently hasn't done any further research into the matter.
Does anyone out there have additional information they'd like to share with me?

The whole topic really is a pressing issue and sadly for this Coop, New Jersey isn't (future) Switzerland. Let us just hope initiatives like the one in Switzerland will be received favourably by the general (building, planning etc.) public there and elsewhere so that window strikes stop to seriously mess up our joy of spotting good birds at unexpected places.

For Your Valued Information

Before I indulge in excessive blogging on my recent birding adventures, it would seem helpful to bring you up to date on my current situation and location. And as I always enjoy to hand a helping post, that is something I'll gladly and quickly do.

Last June, the big change I hinted towards before had actually come:

My family - which happily includes myself - has moved away from the Baltic to Southwestern Germany.

Away from the Baltic? Oh no!!!

Yes, terrifying, I know.
From the significant perspective (which is and always will be birding) this is sheer horror. I have moved from a place where I was able to see 270 or 280 species a year within an hour's driving distance from home to where that number will likely be closer to 120, possibly 150 if I am lucky and fuel prices will drop to a level we last had in the 1980s.

So, why did I do it?
Well, the reason is a new job down here and the reason for choosing that job, apart from personal things outside the scope of this blog, actually was ...

...

... better birding!

Not around home, wich is the small town (well, more of a village really in a heavily populated area) of Leimen just to the South of Heidelberg.
But my new job includes heaps and piles of traveling, basically and on average 2-3 days a week during the summer, throughout Germany, central Europe and possibly even all the way to central Asia, including for example Georgia and even Kazakhstan. Within the next years, maybe even this year, Africa might be included while Southeast Asia and Australia might also be future possibilities.

Very neat job.

So here I am now, in the south-west of Germany again, and the following days will provide you with small insights into the sometimes lousy but mostly boring birding that can be done around here.
It won't be too bad though, I hope, so take courage and visit again.

We interrupt the Silence

... for a bit of blogging!

Yes, yours truly is back, for a little while at least.

Due to a twisted chain of incidences mostly revolving around my wife and son visiting the in-laws for two weeks while I have to remain where I am and work, I have a lot of time - two weeks to be more precise - to sit on the sofa quietly and miss them.

And while I am there, on the sofa, I might as well log onto my blogger account and do what I haven't done in quite a while: release some of the pressure I put on the comments section of other blogs and actually produce a few posts myself again, which - incredibly - I will post on my own blog, and not said comments sections.

I do have to get used to writing again - more on that possibly later - yet I am rather fond of the idea and am curious what will come out of it.

So for now, I'll be doing some thinking about what to put on my blog while watching tonight's James Bond movie on TV.

So, I hope to be seeing you here again tomorrow, last of the faithful readers.

349 !

Change has come to America.

Hope has been restored.

Thank you!! From the rest of the world!!!