Scream Treason !

We have a traitor amongst our ranks, a person who has put his personal benefit above the Greater Good of bird and birder's welfare. He clearly must think that his act of severe treason will elevate him to the rank of an internationally well-known birder, as his field knowledge will obviously never suffice to achieve this aim of his.

I am talking about Corey F., of 10,000Birds.

You see, I had trusted him, and have done so once too often, which I regret severely now. He misused my trust and went public with one of the best-kept secrets of ornithological history, the European Treecreeper mystery.

When I learned about his intentions, I tried to convince him to abandon his endeavor in an email I wrote to him. It was of no use. He didn't even have the guts to cite me correctly, stating my "comment" was too long.

This, Corey F., is pure and sheer cowardice.

And as the secret is out now and the web is abuzz, I - as one of the Treecreeper Secret Keepers - may as well come forward with the entire story behind what is commonly referred to now as a "prank".
Here is the email I wrote to Corey F., in full length, uncensored and unaltered.
May your birding career rest in peace, Corey.


"Corey, I am not entirely sure you are fully aware of what you have done! My only hope is that 10,000Birds is too small a platform to make this go public any further than it already has, and I sincerely urge you to back out of this before more damage is done.

This "prank" has a very long and honorable history, and I think this needs to be respected. To emphasize my points, I'll give you a quick summary of the events.
You see, the "prank" (let's call it prank for now, even though it deserves a more respectable naming) started in Germany in 1820, which is 190 years ago, Corey. Please, this is a historic dimension I urge you - again - to respect! It was initially directed at the British ornithologists and only later evolved into the trans-Atlantic dimension we see today.

Back then, Christian Ludwig Brehm discovered that the Treecreeper of continental Europe shows not only sexual dimorphism in its plumage but that male and female Treecreepers also have distinct songs and vocalizations. Their reproduction strategy is comparable to e. g. the phalaropes in that the females also take a more active role in courtship. This difference in plumage and vocalizations is far less pronounced on the British Isles, likely as a result of genetic drift or other island-related factors.
Christian Ludwig Brehm immediately recognized the opportunity to use this against the British.

Well, I guess you'll need some historic background about the ornithological "community" of the Old World in the early 1800's to appreciate why he did this.

Back then, Germany was at the forefront of ornithological research worldwide. Those nations in the lead today, e. g. the British, were still largely in the hunter and gatherer state while the scientific standard in Germany was particularly high. Christian Ludwig Brehm for example was an "ordinary" man, not a professional scientist, yet he had the largest collection of bird skins in the world, numbering 15,000 specimens. More important still, those specimens were labelled and allowed for biogeographical and seasonal studies of birds and their variation. Most other collections of that time were simply very "showy", and no particular importance was given to the labelling. He also was the father of Alfred Edmund Brehm, who is to German ornithology what Audubon is to you and your hobby, and who must rate as one of the most popular and influential zoologists of his time worldwide.

I have now hopefully demonstrated to you how prestigious German ornithology was back then. In the first half of the 19th century however, the British ornithologists increased their knowledge and scientific expertise gradually and Brehm felt that the pioneering role of Germany was jeopardized by this development. Germany as a nation didn't exist back then, it was made up of numerous independent states, but a feeling of patriotism and unity was starting to emerge, and this patriotic trend (so to speak) made the newly arisen challenge of the British so unbearable to Brehm.

You have to understand all this, Corey, even if it might bore you at the moment.

So, thanks to the labelling of his specimens he discovered the sexual dimorphism in the Treecreeper and that this was less pronounced in Britain. To give German ornithology a permanent and unbreakable lead (to give them a "blocker" in modern twitching slang), he decided to "split" the Treecreeper and assign species rank to the two genders. More specifically, he scientifically described the female as the Short-toed Treecreeper and split it from the male, further stating that the "Short-toed Treecreeper" only occurs in western mainland Europe and not the British isles.

By doing this, he completely fooled the British. As the sexual dimorphism was far less pronounced on their territory, they had no means whatsoever to double-check his findings and thus had to accept the split as scientific fact without giving it too much consideration. Those British ornithologists who had the rare privilege of travelling through mainland Europe tried to investigate the situation but invariably failed to see through the "prank" as the differences are so subtle. Whenever a British ornithologist would notice that e.g. "Short-toed" and ordinary Treecreeper were attending to the same nest (as all bird parents are wont to do), a German ornithologist who was privy to the conspiracy would step in and state that individual variation was significant as well, that correct identification required substantial field experience which the British lacked due to there being only one form on their islands and that the Brit had therefore simply misidentified the birds.

As a consequence, the British got the clear impression that they weren't "advanced" enough yet to tackle such complex identification challenges and the superiority of German ornithology was saved and preserved for the time being.

During the course of the following decades, the "prank" gradually became more and more known in Germany and also amongst the British. This is not something you can cover up indefinitely, of course.

Then, however, things evolved miraculously. By the time the truth started to leak through, Britain had evolved into the Great British Empire and British pride and prejudice made it completely impossible for its ornithologists to acknowledge being fooled for so long. Therefore, the British became part of the conspiracy and promoted the "prank" further to the point we are at today: the "prank" is even maintained in the world's most modern and advanced field guide, written by a team of Irish, British and Swedish bird identification experts - who definitely knew what they were doing.

Of course, even today most birders in Europe and Britain aren't aware of the "prank" and readily identify and tick the two Treecreepers. Whenever I get a birding visitor from the USA or elsewhere, I always nonchalantly bring up the Treecreeper in a conversation. If the other birder is evidently not aware of the true situation, I'll always ask if they are missing one species. If that's the case, I'll either call the first Treecreeper we see their "lifer" or the one they already have - depending on whether they had bought me some decent beers the night before or not.

It is great, it is big fun, and even you, my dear Corey, fell for it easily when we met at the Baltic!

You might therefore reconsider your decision to uncover the "prank".This issue is bound to get very messy once discussed openly, a lot of high-profile birder careers are at stake and if the truth emerges, those - like you - who had been fooled so easily will look increasingly stupid.
And, Corey, this is not a threat but a warning: if you proceed further with this mad endeavour, you'll regret it. I know for a fact that influential US birders are involved, too. This means your birding career will definitely come to an end. Surely, you can still watch the House Sparrows and European Starlings at your Queens feeder and keep it all to yourself, but you will have no option whatsoever to proceed with a more open, public birder career - and you won't even have to bother ever reporting anything to a records committee.

You'll be deleted as a birder.

Therefore, I urge you even in your very own interest: do not post your article on the blog. You have been warned by a friend. "

He just wouldn't listen.

Important Question!

I have a question that I kindly ask readers from Europe or with field experience on European raptors to answer in the comments:

Have you ever seen a Common Kestrel fly very, very high during migration? And if so: have you ever seen small parties or groups - 4, 7, 10,... - migrating together ?

I am talking about 500+ metres above the ground, so high that you could either only barely spot it with your unaided eyes - or - that you only accidentally discovered the bird waaay up high in the background of another soaring raptor/bird you were looking at with binoculars - or - in the middle of a kettle of soaring/migrating buzzards you check with your binoculars, so high the kestrel itself is not discernible by naked eye only?

I can't recall a single situation where this happened to me, but that could be old age or prolongued fatigue. Which is why the field experiences of others are important for me to find out.

The cast in alphabetical order:

Common Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, Turmfalke [tower falcon]

You are doing it WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

* natural sausage casings; direct translation from German: natural guts. I don’t know about you, but I prefer not to be reminded by one metre high letters that the sausage casing I eat once held the stuff that makes a pigpen smell the way it does…

Another bird's name finally makes sense

Bruce Bowman, of Bowman's Bird Stuff fame, has finally captured on film (as the old folks still call the process of taking a picture, digital or not) what was long suspected yet never proven, that the name "Sandhill Crane" can occasionally make sense:



Sandhill Cranes !

Introducing "The Cast in alphabetical order"

Hilke of "One Jackdaw Birding" recently commented that she had trouble finding the bird species I mentioned in one of my posts in her German field guides as I only provided the English names.

This had me thinking, and even successfully so as I realized that she's got a significant point there:
Even though I blog in English, this is still a German bird blog (sometimes), so I really ought to also mention the German names in those posts that are about the birds of Germany, or more generally about European bird species.

Therefore, from this day on my blog posts (those with European content) will conclude with a list of the birds mentioned. Therein I will provide the English name, the scientific name, the German name and the English translation of the German name (as in this post of mine).

Alpine Eye Candy: Snowfinches in Austria

Some may remember that I spent two weeks in Tirol (that's part of the Austrian Alps) last January.

On one of the finer days of this trip, I teamed up with Dale (or rather he took the risk of meeting me) to do some very fine birding after Dale was able to shake off his job duties Friday afternoon.

We drove up, up, up into the mountains to the small village of Kühtai, at a height of approximately 2,000 m above sea level (around 6,000 feet), for two reasons:

1) We were to attend the first international Austrian-German bird blogger convention.

It turned out to be the most successful bird blogger convention ever, anywhere, as definitely 100% of all the bird bloggers of Germany and Austria attended. A picture of the entire delegation (the complete German and Austrian bird blogger scene) and a few more details can be found here (yes, I had a good reason for looking that tired - check the comments there).

2) Dale wanted me to see Snowfinches. And I wanted me to see Snowfinches just as bad.

Snowfinches are a species of birds related to Sparrows of the Old World kind (yes, North America, rub it in some: here, we have some issues with common names not meeting taxonomic standards, too), and they occur up, up, up, in the highest mountains of Europe and central Asia. To give you a rough idea how much up I am talking about: they move down quite some ways in winter, and we were there in winter, and we were up at 2,000 m above sea level.

That's up.

I had seen Snowfinches twice before in the Alps, once in July or August of 1987 when a handful of birds quickly flew away from me somewhere around Switzerland's Matterhorn, and in February (or January?) of 1997 in the German Allgäu, where a small flock of around 5 birds would regularly fly away from me whenever I turned up at the peak of the Fellhorn during a week's trip there.

Yes, I wanted some better looks.

The first Snowfinch we saw at Kühtai ... er ... kind of flew away from me, so it seems it's some sort of a tradition thing. But then a few birds landed at a feeder nearby, and then more and more birds showed up, and then I got some amazing looks at the birds sitting, and then hopping, and then flying. Yes, away from me again, but also towards me, around me, and above me. Not below me, but one always ought to leave out one thing in order to have a reason for coming back, so I was fine with that.

And then I took some pictures:

A small group sitting amidst empty sunflower seeds on the roof of a ski-lift station

"We need to talk."

The marching bird.
I've never seen birds with such determined walking gaits. Not as goofy as the Ovenbird, but surely with a comparable mindset.

Best ... Feeder Bird ... Ever!

The Underdogs' feeding frenzy below the feeder.

And now the Eye Candy: the flock in flight.

We were there on a cloudy day, and the sky was as pale and uniformly white as the snow on the surrounding mountain slopes.

In theory this is bad. And it might be bad if you are trying to enjoy 9,999 of the world's 10,000 bird species.

But for viewing Snowfinches, this is perfect weather.

Against a white sky (or snow) the white in the birds' wings and tails merges in perfectly with the background and the Snowfinch has thus one of the most peculiar flight silhouettes I have ever seen (well, have ever partially not seen).

The following two heavily cropped images may convey part of it, but it is so astounding it needs to be seen in life to be appreciated.

Such marvelous avian wonders.

So many names in the names

The following post was written quite some time ago but then got lost in the archives, half finished and half forgotten, until I stumbled upon this particular and peculiar post on Nate's incomparable Drinking Bird blog.

Bird names.
Oh, some might remember while others had hoped to forget, but this is a topic I am very fond of. I'll need to add tags to my posts one of these days - and this is not the one of the lot - but I can recall three posts on the subject (here, here, and here), with a few more surely buried in the archives.

Nate, inspired by a flaming and brilliant email from Ted Floyd (I'll have a lot of good to say about him soon) to a bird forum, writes about honorific names.
Well, I was about to look it up, but then quickly deduced that this had to mean bird species that were named in honour of a certain person by naming it after that certain person.

And as a matter of fact, this is something I had not failed to notice shortly after setting foot on North American soil for the first time in 1987.
I had bought myself a sweet little field guide - actually I had three, Peterson, the Golden Field guide and a third one whose name I can't recall, with photos instead of drawings.
Anyway, so I was trying to memorize the birds, their names and identification and struggled, because so many names were characterized by names. I'll let my comment to Nate's post do the fine tuning:
"... It is already difficult enough for a European birder to learn the identification of a few “difficult” bird species by heart before he visits North America, but to memorize in advance which warbler is from Connecticut, Kentucky, Tennessee, Nashville, Cape May, or is the sole property of Swainson, Townsend, Virginia (Virginia who?), Kirtland, MacGillivray, or Wilson, is a near impossibility, especially as the visiting birder has likely never been to any of these places, might have no idea where they are as he’s visiting Point Pelee in Ontario on his first trip to the continent, and has certainly never been introduced to the owners of the birds, let alone had a conversation with them. ..."

So quite a while ago, I started flipping through the pages of my trusty ol' Sibley and actually counted the birds named after names.

The result was impressive, as can be seen by the list at the end of this post. I am fairly sure the list is incomplete, but nevertheless:
The list contains 69 different persons, and 89 bird species are named after a person, which is roughly 11% of the bird species regularly found in North America. However, I should not fail to mention that the number of persons is likely larger than 69 as I have (for reasons of simplicity and because I just didn't want to freakin' google all the 89 honorific bird names) attributed all the Wilsons and Clarks etc. to the same person. I am fairly certain however that the two Clark birds (grebe and nutcracker) are named after two different Clarks and that this will likely be the case for a few more names.

And these are only the honorific bird names that contain a person's name. How about geographic names that honour or mention (or whatever it is that pleases) landscape structures or geographic entities, which in my honest opinion also fall into the same category?

Oh dear!


If we take geographic references and names of landscape elements into account as well, the number of birds named after a name increases by roughly 105 species to at total of at least 204 species or 25% of all the bird species of North America.


You doubt that figure?
If in doubt, think it out...

1. All the "Eastern"s and "Western"s and "Northern"s like Eastern Kingbird, Western Grebe, Northern Shrike, ...
Seriously, they may seem to make sense, but in reality they mostly don't. A few examples:
The "Northern" in "Beardless-Tyrannulet might make sense if you live somewhere in Mesoamerica but for citizens of the USA or Canada, it's a joke. And look at Texas recently, where birders were able to see a Northern Wheatear (a vagrant from the far North) and a Northern Jacana (a vagrant from the far South) at the very same time.
And last but not least, just picture Clare up at Arctic Bay. Northern Cardinal? Well, he must be chuckling all the way through his Sibley...


2. All the states and cities, e.g. California Gnatcatcher, Kentucky Warbler, Connecticut Warbler, California Gull, Florida Jay, Carolina Parakeet (oh dear), Baltimore Oriole, Virginia Rail, Savannah Sparrow, ...
All you have to do is ask birders in Connecticut if they have the namesake's warbler on their state list and you'll have to agree that it's all a bit less then perfect.


3. All the geographic areas: South-Hills Crossbill, Mississippi Kite, Gunnison Sage-Grouse, Laysan Albatross, ...

Ha! Look, while in St. Louis I never saw Mississippi Kites anywhere near the Mississippi, they were all in residential areas. The hawk might as well be called "University City Kite" if it was up to me.

And last but certainly not least, yes, you know it applies, no matter how much you may think it is unfair:

4. All the Americans: American Robin, American Crow, American Goldfinch, American Black Duck, ...
I am sorry but I just don't think that bird names were meant to sound patriotic, especially as American bird names just mimic European species that aren't even closely related to them, and I frankly feel the American Tree Sparrow and the likes deserves better.

Yet, worst of all:
5. All the Europeans or rather Eurasians: European Starling, European Tree Sparrow, etc.
Apparently, being invasive ecologically just wasn't enough.




Now, if you still disbelieve that 1 out of 4 species in North America is named after a name, go ahead: flip through your Sibley, page by page, and see for yourself.
I've been there, I've done that, and while the results were fun, the process wasn't particularly so.
I'll now leave you with the list of North American honorific bird names, the birds that were named after persons. It's a long, long list...

But rejoice: African birders must surely be worse off, but I am just not prepared to flip through my entire SASOL just yet...



Honorific Bird Names of North America

Abert (1): Towhee
Allen (1): Hummingbird
Anna (1): Hummingbird
Audubon (3): Shearwater, Oriole, Warbler
Bachman (2): Sparrow, Warbler
Baird (2): Sandpiper, sparrow
Barrow (1): Goldeneye
Bell (1): Vireo
Bendire (1): Thrasher
Bewick (1): Wren
Bicknell (1): Thrush
Bonaparte (1): Gull
Botteri (1): Sparrow
Brandt (1): Cormorant
Brewer (2): Blackbird, Sparrow
Brewster (1): Warbler (hybrid)
Buller (1): Petrel
Bullock (1): Oriole
Cassin (5): Auklet, Kingbird, Vireo, Sparrow, Finch
Clark (2): Grebe, Nutcracker
Cook (1): Petrel
Cooper (1): Hawk
Cory (1). Petrel
Costa (1): Hummingbird
Couch (1): Kingbird
Cravieri (1): Murrelet
Fea (1): Petrel
Forster (1): Tern
Franklin (1): Gull
Gambel (1): Quail
Grace (1): Warbler
Harlan (1): Hawk
Harris (2): Hawk, Sparrow
Heermann (1): Gull
Henslow (1): Sparrow
Herald (1): Petrel
Hutton (1): Vireo
Kirtland (1): Warbler
Kittlitz (1): Murrelet
Krider (1): Hawk
La Sagra (1): Flycatcher
Lawrence (2): Warbler (hybrid), Goldfinch
Leach (1): Stormpetrel
LeConte (1): Sparrow
Lewis (1): Woodpecker
Lincoln (1): Sparrow
Lucy (1): Warbler
Manx (1): Petrel
McCown (1): Longspur
McGillivray (1): Warbler
McKay (1): Bunting
Murphy (1): Petrel
Nelson (2): Gull (hybrid), Sparrow
Nuttall (1): Woodpecker
Ross (2): Gull, Goose
Sabine (1): Gull
Say (1): Phoebe
Scott (1): Oriole
Smith (1): Longspur
Sprague (1): Pipit
Steller (2): Eider, Jay
Swainson (3): Hawk, Thrush, Warbler
Thayer (1): Gull
Townsend (2): Solitaire, Warbler
Traill (1): Flycatcher (pre-split)
Vaux (1): Swift
Virginia (1): Warbler
Wilson (3): Stormpetrel, Plover, Warbler
Xantus (1): Murrelet