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

Thrush Saturation Saturday

As every week has begun since the beginning of time, I went to visit the Best Bird of the Weekend post on 10,000Birds this Monday morning.
The problem is - as it is with every Monday morning visit since the beginning of time - that I seem to be the most trigger-happy commenting birder from the Olde Europe to do so, and as I am 6 to 10 hours ahead of North America the comments section is usually empty and I get to not read anything but write the first comment instead.
If I have something, or rather anything, to tell - a basic requirement only rarely met by myself not since the beginning of time but since moving away from the Baltic to shabby industrialized, built-up and crowded yet Central Park & Jamaica Bayless Heidelberg.
Not so this time, and after telling the world who wasn't willing to know what I wanted it to know on 10,000Birds, I found myself wondering why I didn't turn this comment into a post on my own blog.
So here we are now, not sure if being here was a smart decision in the first place but as we can always blame Monday morning, we might as well stay and see how things will develop.

I do realize that this blog of yours truly has been very rich in words recently and poor in pictures. Therefore, I'll just quickly copy and paste my aforementioned comment here and then follow up with the story in pictures.


What was your best bird of the weekend?
"I’ve had quite an interesting weekend around Leimen/Heidelberg, on my usual stroller stomping ground. We had a sudden re-emergence of winter Friday night with approximately 10 cm (4 inches) of snow, extremely unusual for March.
A lot of migrant songbirds in the surrounding mountains of the Odenwald got caught in this mess and decided to quickly dash down into the warmer valley of the Rhine. On early Saturday, during cloudy conditions and occasional flurries of snow, I watched a constant stream of small songbird groups making their way west, mostly thrushes (5 Turdus species, sadly no Ring Ouzle though) but also a few skylarks and - rarest of all - a Wood Lark. During the afternoon, conditions were better with blue skies and sun, but the entire landscape except for the roads and paths was still covered in snow.
Along my stroller route, I encountered more than 50 song thrushes searching for snacks right beside the road. This is great as I’d normally be happy to see more than 2!
On Sunday, the entire show was over with just 8 song thrushes during the morning walk and only 1 in the afternoon.

So, I guess Song Thrush, despite being a very common bird, deserves to take the cake as best bird of the weekend.
However, I’ve also had a fabulous observation of a Common Buzzard and found the nest of a Long-tailed Tit. The latter is good to know in case a certain birder from New York shows up with vendetta on his mind…"

This is not what one expects to be greeted by upon leaving their apartment in southern Germany around the middle of March, but it certainly wasn't enough to deter me from my plans of going for a stroller walk with my son - weekend quality time is weekend quality time and always will be weekend quality time until the end of time. According to this post, New Yorkers would have died left, right, and centre in such a "blizzard" just by looking out of their apartment windows, but Leimen is not New York. Definitely and clearly not.

I will freely admit there were times during the walk when I questioned my decision to just ignore the snow and literally push on.

Especially as the landscape did not specifically hold out the promise of many birds.

... of any birds.

This Great Spotted Woodpecker only gave its presence away by its pertinent scolding. No, I did not mean to write "impertinent".

Looking at the state of its habitat, I can't deny I had sympathy for the old grump, despite being of a more sunny inclination myself even on winter days in March. There was clearly spring in the air, okay? Even if there weren't any gulls around to set (purely potential) doubters right. Yeah, right!

And yes, the tiny spot up there, that's it. No, not spring. I mean the woodpecker.

Unlike the weather and conditions on ground and tree, the sky was on fire. Apparently the weather was even worse in the surrounding mountains of the Odenwald and was actively pushing migrant songbirds down into the Rhine valley. Well, it might not have been pushing them actively, but if ever there were songbirds on a mission to get from somewhere to somewhere else and get there fast, it was last Saturday and it was around Leimen. The majority of the fugitives were thrushes, mostly Fieldfares as in the picture above, but with plenty of Song Thrushes mixed in, a few Blackbirds, an odd Mistle Thrush or two and even at least one Redwing.

Stupid Fieldfares, mistaking Leimen for Lisbon and coming down to roost.

This all happened before the high noon nap of my son. However, dad's weekend quality time doesn't end there, it goes on until bedtime and specifically includes an extensive afternoon stroller tour as well. And sure enough, times had changed from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., as seen in the two pictures below. The small and lovely flurry of snow .... ahem, I mean the ferocious and totally deadly blizzard of the millennium, for potential New Yorkers reading this, had ceased to shed its white shroud over the landscape and a ricocheting spring had managed to at least reclaim the roadsides.

This is Thrush Heaven, South Central.

Suddenly, there was grass! And boy, were the thrushes happy to see it. The grassy sides of the roads were literally covered in thrushes, mostly Song Thrushes with over 50 recorded where I'd normally be happy to encounter two during migrational days of excellence, but there were also a few Eurasian Blackbirds and a single Fieldfare who had lingered long enough to notice that those Fieldfares pushing on towards Lisbon were indeed the stupid ones...

In the above pictures, you can see a Blackbird with three Song Thrushes and three Song Thrushes with no Blackbird. The second picture may help you in figuring out which is which in the picture on top. Kidding. Look, the thrush isn't called "BLACKbird" for nothing, right?

Same game again: two Song Thrushes (identical bird) and a Eurasian Blackbird. I love Catharus thrushes. That's why I love the Song Thrush. The Song Thrush is not a Catharus thrush. But it reminds me of one, and beggars can't be chosers. Particularly those beggars residing in the moldy hell of Leimen. This is why even Blackbirds are more than fine, too.

Aaaand, the grand finale of our little crash course to Thrush Identification! Yupp, Song Thrush and Blackbird. Note the differences in size and how utterly unimportant this is as a field mark.

But of course there were other species as well:

Eurasian Tree Sparrows searching the road for food. Notice the right bird hopping to attract earthworms. This is very unwise as a) Tree Sparrows don't feed on earthworms b) only thrushes are supposed to be doing this and c) it's completely pointless on a tarred road anyway.

I highly recommend looking at Tree Sparrows head-on. Few birds look that sharp when seen head-on. With the possible exception of the Wrybill.

Prime first-wave male Chaffinch, humiliated by having to feed in the mud. Thankfully, the females and male whippersnappers are still somewhere out of sight in southern France and Italy, busy avoiding lime-twigs.

And all this glory was brought to you courtesy of the towering heights of the frightening Odenwald. Migrant Songbirds, heed the warning: don't go there! Fly over Leimen instead.

My weekend stroller schedule is Saturday and Sunday, 09:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 05:30 p.m. or by appointment in case of true vagrancy.

See you there!

Looking back at birding in the 0's, part 2

2005

This was a sweet year, due to two good news.
The first of the two good news came early in winter - it must have still been January or February - and actually started with what was a bit of bad news really: someone approached the company I was working for (a private consulting company specializing in environmental laws and impact assessments) because he planned to construct a fricking golf course right inside the potential home range of a known pair of Lesser-spotted Eagles.
European readers may know what this means, North American readers may not, so I’ll try to come up with an analogue. It’s not quite as severe as planning a parking lot on the last remnants of Louisiana’s Singer Tract in the 1940ies, but it also isn't that far away from it severity-wise. We have less than 100 pairs of the eagles left in Germany and they are not fairing too well.
Okay? So it’s bad, and it was our job to see if it was possible at all under German nature conservation law – I am not going to say it was our job to make it possible although that’s really what it was all about.
Well, the obvious thing to do was map the exact territory use of the eagles within the usual 3-km diameter around their nest and hope that by lucky chance and coincidence they would not be using the one field the golf course was planned on.
And the mapping of the eagles became a project of mine, which meant I was to patrol the entire potential home range for 10 days between April and September, scanning for the eagles or any other conservation-relevant bird species, mapping their movements, monitoring their behaviour and just have a really, really good time doing so.

The second of two good news had to do with my then-girlfriend-now-wife nearing the completion of her PhD and getting an invitation to spend three months at a lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Of course she asked me to accompany her for as long as possible and I was able to take a whole month off work. By circumstances beyond my control, the first month of her internship - where I was to come along and bird, err, help her organizing stuff and get settled - just so happened to be May.

May.
Around the Great Lakes.
Yes, May.
I didn’t really mind that a lot.


I’ll continue with my Michigan spring birding extravaganza and get back to the eagles afterwards because the best birding there was in August anyway.
Okay, so it was May around the Great Lakes and boy, did I have a good time.
First, my wife and I travelled to New York City for a week of sightseeing and a very tiny bit of birding, then she was to start working and I went to visit Point Pelee, Rondeau Provincial Park, the surroundings of Ann Arbor, the Sleeping Bear Dunes area and the eastern Upper Peninsular of Michigan.
Here is a short excerpt from the travel report’s introduction I wrote after getting back to Germany:

“This must have been one of the most enjoyable and successful birding trips of my life, not only in terms of species seen but also because most species were seen at very close range. And there are so many really beautiful species around it is hard to believe you are outside the tropics. Seeing a Northern Cardinal, a Yellow Warbler and a Blue Jay at close range within five minutes will probably bore the locals, but it is a breathtaking experience for anyone else. I recorded a total of 230 species, most of which were actually seen (which only means I did very badly on identifying them by sound alone). Amongst them were 36 species of wood-warblers (two of which – Prairie and Worm-eating - were only heard, but that still leaves 34 which I saw, and this apparently is a pretty good number compared to other trip reports I read) and 14 species of sparrows (not counting the Towhee and House Sparrows), including highlights such as brilliant views of Henslow’s, Le Conte’s and a beautiful Lark Sparrow.”

Other very noteworthy species (in my world) and good candidates for bird of the year were both American and Least Bittern actually seen, Sharp-tailed Grouse, Spruce Grouse, Sandhill Crane, Piping Plover (inland!), Upland Sandpiper, American Woodcock, Wilson’s Phalarope, Red-headed Woodpecker, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Plumbeous Vireo (yes, I know, but I never reported it), Cerulean Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler, Kirtland’s Warbler, Connecticut Warbler, Summer Tanager, Clay-coloured Sparrow, and Evening Grosbeak, just to name quite a few.

Now we quickly jump back to Germany, the meadows and fields surrounding a prime forest and the quest for the Lesser-spotted Eagles.
As if surveying for the eagles wasn’t already grand enough, the entire area turned out to be extraordinarily good for large birds, particularly raptors, and after informing local birders to this who repeatedly went there in the following years, we found that this might just be one of the most species-rich area for raptors in all of Germany (I kid you not). On my tours in August I would regularly see the following species of large, large birds:
Grey Heron, White Stork, Black Stork, White-tailed Eagle, Osprey, of course Lesser-spotted Eagles, Red and Black Kite, Marsh Harrier, both Hen and Montague’s Harrier were occasionally around although not breeding (in later years I even found a vagrant Pallid Harrier), tons of Common Buzzards (later in the year many Rough-legs as well and a few years later a vagrant Long-legged Buzzard was found by others), Honey Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Goshawk, Common Kestrel, Hobby, (in later years and/or other seasons also Red-footed Falcon, Peregrine, and Merlin), and Common Cranes, both breeding and migrants.

Impressed?
Well, you’d better be!
This isn’t all, however.

The area is right next to the Baltic coast and the salt meadows of Karrendorf, where I spent two lunch breaks of an hour or so each on my two survey trips in August (you know, just getting a short raptor break to prevent overload). On these two short birding lunch breaks, I found:
Broad-billed Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope, Marsh Sandpiper, Great Snipe, and Pectoral Sandpiper.

Again, North American readers my not fully appreciate that list. Okay, here’s the translation:
It is like visiting Point Pelee (or Central Park for that matter) for no more than an hour twice in May and finding yourself (not twitching others’ sightings) Kirtland’s Warbler, Connecticut Warbler, Nelson’s Sparrow, Summer Tanager, and Western Tanager.
You do get the picture.
All these birds, from the raptors and storks to the shorebirds, are more than deserving to be named bird of the year.


And now, the drawing of the winner:
It was hard.
You see I had a fabulous time in North America, packed with amazing birds, and the birding in Germany was also extremely rewarding, with an almost equal amount of absolutely equally amazing birds.
Which of these to chose as bird of the year?

Well, I gave it an entire lot full of thought and am now convinced that the bird of the year just has to be the Henslow’s Sparrow.
Why?
Well, I don’t know, but I give you another excerpt from my travel report:

“YES, HENSLOW’S !!! This was one of the species I wanted to see the most. The precise reasons for this aren’t even clear to me today and I can’t put forward any rational arguments for enjoying Henslow’s so much. Surely it is a North American endemic that is difficult to find in general and it is declining over most of its range, but this is also the case with other species I encountered that didn’t even get me half as excited. Well, it all comes down to personal liking and that’s just what it was: I somehow desperately wanted to get good views of this chap!
And these I surely got.
Many thanks to Chartier and Ziarno for their excellent description of the species’ habitat in the Michigan guide. Without their guide and habitat description I would have certainly missed out on one of my most wanted species of the trip. On the way to one of the sites mentioned for Henslow’s in their guide (where by the way I also would have found it according to the Michigan email forum. What a book!), I stopped at a grassland beside the road that looked promising, switched off the engine and the first thing I heard was … a Field Sparrow to be honest, but the Henslow’s started singing just seconds afterwards and had me running to the patch of prairie like I was on drugs. I then stood on the edge of the small stretch of prairie for at least half an hour and only got brief views of flying birds that dropped into dense cover after what were at best a very few seconds. Without them singing constantly I would have not gone looking for them in that particular patch in the first place and I also would not have been able to put an ID on any of the small brown jobs that zoomed across the meadow.
Eventually, a bird started singing about 50 metres away from me on a high perch right on the edge of the grassy area and I knew instantly that this was my chance! Silently crawling on my belly I managed to approach the bird and finally enjoyed extremely brilliant views of it singing right in my face at what must have been less than 10 metres. Amazing when you can see the feathers on its throat vibrate in full song. What a beautiful species!!
I am also very proud to say that I didn’t set a single foot into its habitat (crawling along the edge of the prairie), hence not damaging anything (which is completely out of the question anyway, but I just thought I’d mention it) and that the bird singing in front of me also left because it wanted to have a word or two with its opponent on the other side of the field, not because of me watching it.
CHEERS, Michigan!”


Yupp, that sums it up nicely: Cheers Michigan!!

Not dipping on a Dipper

As some of you (particularly those who regularly read Dale's excellent Discovering Alpine Birds) might know, I spent two weeks in January in and around Tirol.

The main reason of course was a ground breaking international event Dale's blogged about here (and that I will blog about at a later point in time if time herself, who is a river, will permit) but of course, while I was there and the family was with me, I thought that I might also try to get some birding done.

And yes, I did.

Well, I had visited the Alps before on a few occasions in the 1980ies and late 1990ies and was thus familiar with the very vast majority of its special birds, so there was no real rush to get lifers. However, I very much looked forward to re-connecting with a few enigmatic species I hadn't seen in a long, long time.

Amongst these species was the Eurasian Dipper.

The Dipper is a bird frequently found along mountainous streams and creeks (and therefore not a tricky bird to see or get), yet I had spent 12 years in the flatlands of northern Germany where it is but a rare visitor from Scandinavia, and one that had basically avoided my detection for the entire period there .

It was thus with great pleasure that I found a mountain creek with a lovely weir and heaps of boulders along its banks was running through our little holiday destination of Kiefersfelden, right on the German-Austrian border. And by a stroke of luck (aka a good and long nap of my son), I found myself searching said location on my first full day there, for the Dipper.
I will let the pictures do the telling in a few instances, and it will suffice to write that I found not one but five Dippers along the 1.5 kms of river I searched, although the first 5 minutes were spent in a state of anxiety when the weir, my expected hot spot, held only Mallards.

Shortly after the weir though is where this blog post really begins:

The weir where the Dipper wasn't at first - but was on later day's visits I won't blog about...

The river above the weir where the Dipper wasn't where the Dipper was at first - but wasn't on later day's visits I won't blog about (the weir is in the background)...

And here it is, the star of this post:

Dipppp...

...errrr!

The passerine diving machine - going...

... going ...

... gone - what an unexpected end to this series!

And it's back up again.

The claws of this species, by the way, must be amongst the world's sharpest. Because those rocks can be dippery when wet.

I had watched the Dipper for well over half an hour when I realized it got dark and that it was time to return home to the family.

Walking along the river bank back towards the weir, a strange and barely audible whispering caught my ear.

I stopped in my tracks.

There it was again, and this time I was able to locate it as coming from amongst the boulders underwater.

In tune with the waves' rushing and purling but clearly discernible against its acoustic background, there was a tiny, soft, and repeated "Who", and like Horton I bent down to investigate further.

To my amazement, I found a choir of caddisfly larvae had gathered on a small area of sand amongst the rocks where the current was subdued by their larval cases and the boulders sheltering them, and they sang a sad and mellow song that I will reproduce here to the best of my abilities and as I noted it out in the field, lying down in the snow by the river, and I will call their tune The Ballad of Jack The Dipper.

The Ballad of Jack the Dipper

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear
And he shows them pearly white
Just a jackbill has The Dipper, dear
And he keeps it out of sight

When the shark bites with his teeth, dear
Scarlet billows start to spread
A white bib, though, wears The Dipper, dear
So there's not a trace of red

On the embankment...around sunset,
Lies a dead aquatic critter
Someone's diving 'round the river bed
Is the someone Jack the Dipper?

From a boulder in the river
A small pebble’s drooping down

Yes, it’s from a larva’s case, dear
Bet you Dipper's back in town

Makes you wonder if we owe one of literature's finest stories to Brecht & Weill spending one too many holidays at a creek in the Alps ...

Wayward Blogger

I'll be off the blog again until the beginning of February, family holidays near the German Alps.
Let's hope for a Wallcreeper or two at the castle Neuschwanstein.


Here is something to keep you entertained:
The following picture was taken in North America. Which species is shown?







Cheers, I'll be missing you.

Admitting Defeat

I have added Fraser's Birding Blog to my link list.

It was hard, really hard as I have mentioned here (and someone else who should really blog more frequently again has mentioned here).

The following series of pictures was the best I was able to do while being at the in-laws in Stralsund over the Christmas and New Year holidays (I have fully recovered, thank you).
These are Black-headed Gulls at dusk, and I solemnly declare defeat.

Southern Germany Today

You know, I wonder if Copenhagen was such a failure simply because of lousy seasonal timing.

Somewhere down there is my foot, and it doesn't like it that way

Looking Back at Birding in the 0's - part 1

I really don't want to go down in blogging history as the one boring maverick that didn't participate, so here they are: my Top 10 birds of the last decade.

I have however decided to twist the rules somewhat. This was deemed a necessity as the first decade of the new millennium took me to the North American Great Lakes in spring, and just naming the top 10 birds would likely have resulted in a list of 10 North American warblers.

Therefore, I have decided to do a little write-up of each year's birding highlights (mostly pertaining to birding trips I went on) and then choosing a Bird of the Year for each of the last decade's respective years.
Furthermore, I have decided to divide this post into several parts, and here is part 1 which covers the first half of the decade.


2000
The year 2000 was one of my power-birding years - the last one actually in a remarkable series that started in the late 1980ies.
The first few months of the year were spent in Greifswald where I finished my Masters thesis ("On the Ecology of the Mountain Zebra in southern Namibia") to become a biologist. It was a very stressful period and thus there was little time to go birding, but as it was a true milestone (possibly more so for me than the rest of the world) I was fine with that.
In July I flew back to Namibia for one last time, having spent 6 months there each in 1997/98 and 1999, to sell my stuff (which means sell my beloved Toyota Hilux) and say my farewells to the newly found friends, the best scenery in the world and the wildlife, too - but not without getting some serious birding done. Together with a friend from Germany, I went on a trip through the southern half of Namibia and the Cape province of South Africa in July/August and later went on some shorter trips to Etosha NP, Spitzkoppe, Swakopmund and the Waterberg Plateau. In October, finally, it was time to head back to Germany for good - back to Greifswald to start fighting for grants for a PhD project (which never materialized for me, the grants came half a year too late and a good friend of mine did the project instead).
I finished the year visiting my mother in Spain (she was spending the winter there), from the middle of December to the middle of January, and we did a "southern circuit" trip, from Valencia to Andalusia, Extremadura and back.

What was my bird of the year then?
Well, I thought long and hard about it but eventually decided that it was the Antarctic Fulmar I saw on a pelagic trip out of Cape Town on August 12th. We saw an incredible number of tube noses that day, almost 20 species and including 7 species of albatross, and the cloud of a few thousand albatrosses following a (not long-line) trawler was possibly the most awe-inspiring sight of my birding career. All these birds were amazing and I struggled hard to identify the one species that would symbolize the best birding day of my life. The Antarctic Fulmar was possibly the rarest of the birds we saw, certainly the most unexpected, but also the one I had told our guides I was particularly keen on seeing before the trip. And that's why it took the cake.

2001
The year 2001 was still filled with fine birding and a few trips, although the trips didn't quite match up with the time spent in southern Africa.
Birding around Greifswald was as great and exciting as it always was and always will be and I yet again scored more than 250 species around the city in the course of the year.
In late May/early June, I went on a short trip to Greece, although we did not visit any birding hot spots. Good birding, but not as good as it can get in Greece.
July and August saw me back in central Asia (Kazakhstan) for the third time on a faunistic trip organized by the University of Greifswald. Again, this was not a pure birding trip but it nevertheless turned out to be fabulous. We travelled from Almaty north to lake Saizan and back.
The bird of the year was seen at the end of this trip, on a small lake in the Tian-Shan mountains just south of Almaty (Corey, Dale and Sharon: if you are reading this, I am most definitely not trying to rub it in), where we found and watched a beautiful Ibisbill.
I started to work - in a real job, for the first time ever in a 9 to 5 fashion, only more like 7 to 7 - around September 15th.

2002
This was a very quiet year for birding as the job got very stressful. A notable and brilliant exception was a marvellous trip to New Zealand where I spent 3 weeks in April.
Stewart Island is the only place I've been to that could admittedly rival Namibia.
Obviously, the bird of the year 2002 had to be one of the New Zealand lifers, but which one?
Seeing two Black Stilts, one of the most critically endangered birds in the world, and actually having found them myself without any outside help or hint, was truly impressive, but as it was such a bitter-sweet experience (I'd really prefer each species of bird to be so common that I'd be able to call it a trash bird) it didn't quite make it to position No. 1.
Surely, spending half an hour walking right next to a foraging Kiwi in bright daylight without the bird giving me as much as a casual glance would qualify as the observation of the year, if not the decade, but the one bird species that really hit me hard in the heart was a common New Zealand endemic, the New Zealand Fantail. That is my bird of the year 2002.
Why would I choose such a common bird that's easily seen over the Kiwi, a bird most Kiwis haven't even seen, or an albatross, or a penguin, or the Kea?
This is hard to put in words, but the Fantail's subtle yet beautiful colouration, its inquisitiveness and its movements - including its fanning of the tail - had an effect on me that's comparable to the Sandman's star dust, only it didn't make me tired. Instead, it magically conveyed an amazing joy of life, a feeling that life is beautiful and meant to be lived to the fullest. And that was very remarkable.

2003
This is the year the birding really slowed down. Again, the job was so stressful that there was little time for birding. In addition to that, I moved from the German birding-Mecca Greifswald (most Germans aren't aware of this though) to Stralsund (where I worked).
Stralsund is also nice, but it doesn't have a fraction of the birding potential Greifswald has and thus there was literally NO birding after work.
I went on two short (a week each) trips, one in April to the Mediterranean island Majorca and another one in September to Tenerife and Gomera, two of the Canary Islands.
The Majorca trip was nice but not overly so, especially as most of the island's birds can (and were) also seen on mainland Spain, although seeing the endemic Sylvia-warbler (can't think of its name now) was nice.
Therefore, the bird of the year was seen on Tenerife/Gomera, where I saw all of the occurring Canarian Island endemics (the chat only occurs on Fuerteventura where we didn't go).
Which one to choose?
Well, I did see some very nice sea birds from the ferry between Tenerife and Gomera, and seeing my first (and so far only) Great Shearwater was very impressive. I temporarily thought I would choose the Flying Fish that got spooked by the ferry's bow (you know, sort of birds in the broadest sense) and indeed this was possibly one of my most memorable natural history moments of the decade (I never realized they'd glide that far), but the price goes to a Laurel Pigeon that perched beautifully on a dead branch below a breath-taking viewpoint in the mountains of Gomera.

2004
Definitely the low-point year of my birding life. Nothing happened except some job-related nice Baltic birding, but nothing too far out of the ordinary.
This is one of the very few years of my life in which I did not see a single lifer (with the other ones being 2008 and 2009 - I really, really could do with a cool birding trip).
In September, I went on a second trip to Majorca where the birding was very nice again, just not mind-blowing. As I went with my soon-to-be-wife, a non-birder, and wasn't expecting any lifers or really rare birds, I took the birding slow and easy and enjoyed sitting on the patio of coastal pubs drinking espresso and fresh orange juice.
You know, birding is nice, but fresh espresso in a comfy chair overlooking the Mediterranean can be quite nice, too.
The nicest birds were possibly the Eleonora's Falcons falcons that offered superb views, but as the bird species of the year, I eventually chose the Eurasian Black Vultures.
They are just truly and astonishingly, impressively large birds.


This was the first half of the last decade. Come back soon to see just how well things picked up in 2005, a year that once again was filled with birder's joy and - yes, drool drool - lifers!

Cheers and a happy and birdy year 2010!

No words, just awe

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother picking up a camera.

This is one of these times, with a hat-tip to Dale.

Fighting the loss of Biodiversity - the UK way

We all know that apart from climate change and the continued production and consumption of butterfinger chocolate bars, the loss of biodiversity is one of the most severe crises the world is facing at the moment.
Luckily, this is not the age of leaning back passively in a wing chair, eating butterfinger and watching things go to waste - this is the age of fighting back, right?


Right?



Anyway...

Of course the main mode of countering species loss is to save species from extinction, but at the current rate bird populations are dropping all around us, that sure ain't enough. More needs to be done to supplement our conservation efforts:
If we lose species after species yet want to maintain our current species diversity, heck , we just need to make new species.
And - as so often when it comes to bird conservation or new music genres - the UK has taken a lead in creating new species, with a simple means:

BIRD FEEDERS

Here are the links, with a tip of the hat to Laurent:

LiveScience Article

Not Rocket Science Blog post

The LiveScience article features an interview with Martin Schaefer who participated in the research that is due to be published soon (see publications list on his site).

Now, on a personal note it might be nice for you to know - it sure feels nice for me to tell you, so there you have it - that Martin Schaefer is a very good old friend of mine and an amazing birder as well. He is one of those friends I haven't really seen in many, many years as we both traveled around the globe far too frequently to stay in constant contact and news exchange, but of all the people I have met in my life, he is amongst the ones I felt closest to.
Okay, sentimental off for now, normal blogging continues.

So apparently the providing of winter food has split the Blackcap in half.
Martin - being the thorough scientist he is - maintains doubts whether the two populations will evolve into different species:
He says human habits of feeding birds will likely change over the time that would be necessary, and we are still talking about quite some 1,000+ years, so the migration routes and segregating behaviour of the UK winter birds might come to an end sometime.

I say that he is generally right, but this is a problem that can be fixed easily. Nature conservation bodies simply have to promote the development of feeders that - once filled - will supply Blackcaps for the next few millennia to come, independent of changes in human attitudes.
I am hopeful that very soon, feeding wintering Blackcaps in the UK won't look like this anymore but more like this, and it will be a visible token of today's society's commitment to fight biodiversity loss and take a pro-active approach towards evolution.

And that sure is good to know.

Happy Thanksgiving

If Benjamin Frankling had had things his way, you'd now be eating Bald Eagles instead of Turkeys.

And refrain from saying you're eating Turkey on Thanksgiving, the Turks might take offence!

I am where you least expect it...

... over at Birder Hyde with a new post on some mysterious Gavia.

Is it GISS, or what?!

There's an interesting post (with tons of golden comments) over at the Drinking Bird, to which this post is some sort of follow-up, or rather the results of a few follies ("thoughts" - remember?) of mine that were sparked by the post and its comments.

Am I a GISS birder or am I not?

First, I think it is necessary to define GISS. It means General Impression of Size and Shape, and if someone identifies a bird by GISS, they only go for the bird's appearance, not really its field marks.

Now, of course I can see that one would be able to identify birds of obvious size and shape by these traits alone, say a Limpkin or a Great Horned Owl or an American Robin where other Turdus - thrushes don't occur, but I have a nagging feeling that most observations we do "from the hip" and thus attribute to GISS-identification actually are not GISS after all but something completely different.

An example should do nicely to get my point across:

We spot movement on the ground below a barren winter bush, raise our binoculars and immediately identify the bird as a White-throated Sparrow.
Asked a few moments later by what field marks we identify it, we just respond with a shrug of our shoulders, stating that it was just obvious the moment we looked at it.

Was that identification by GISS?

I think not.

I think this was just an extremely fast conversation between our eyes and our brain along the following lines:

Eyes: there's movement of a small brown bird on the ground.
Brain: check the back, is it patterned?

Eyes: yes, it is patterned in stripes and spots.
Brain: Sparrow! Check the head pattern.

Eyes: black and white stripes.
Brain: White-crowned or White-throated. Check throat.

Eyes: throat is white.
Brain: It's a White-throated. Mouth: YAWN

Mouth: YAWN

Of course, the last bit that involves the mouth would be completely different if our little scene would take place inside a visiting birder from overseas. Face it, North America: the White-throated Sparrow is amongst your finest birds, however common it may be.

This conversation can take as little as a fraction of a second, somewhat depending on our activities the night before, and we may therefore be unaware of it.

My conclusion is that most identifications that are done real quick and are often attributed to GISS are indeed very fast conclusions drawn from checking the precise field marks that are necessary by actively scanning the bird's features. And this means they are made solely because of our knowledge and experience, which is why beginning birders usually suck at this until they've done a few years worth of birding.

Knowing immediately into what broad group a bird belongs and then knowing which parts of the bird to check for which field marks has got nothing to do with GISS identification, it is just plain old bird ID gone ultrasound.

Another difference between a more experienced birder and a novice that is somewhat related to GISS-ascribed identification is the ability to focus our concentration on an object we see, the ability to take a mental snap-shot.

Okay, example:
Show two test persons of varying birding experience a bird for just a second, a bird neither one has ever seen.
The more experienced will probably manage a reasonable description.
The novice will just be overwhelmed by the bird's many features and later have no idea whatsoever when asked to sketch it.

This ability is also vital when identifying birds very quickly: The expert's assessment of "Catharus, weak reddish spots on breast" (this will again not take longer than a fraction of a second or so) is more likely to lead to Veery than the novice's "oh my gosh! a brown bird, wait (minors may potentially read this), where did it go?" even if we give the latter birder an extra second.
Now, if that novice birder would stand besides the expert, having just seen the same bird hopping by so quickly, hearing him say "Veery" immediately, and then ask him how and why s/he knew so quickly, the expert's answer would probably be "You know, just the whole thing, it was obvious" and we would call that GISS ID. As in the first example, the point is that an identification made real fast (in the first example it took us only a split-second, in the second example the bird gave us only a split-second) is often attributed to GISS- Identification.

And as in the first example, I think it isn't.


So, here's my assessment: the fact that expert birders are able to identify birds amazingly quickly whereas beginners struggle is due to these two abilities:

a) they know immediately which areas of the bird to check for which field marks
b) they can make a mental snap-shot of a bird

Neither of these has anything to do with the assessment of the bird's general impression of size and shape, it is based on having learned the area's species potential by heart and having practised your eyes/brain coordination.


Having said that, I will now get back to the initial question of this post: am I a GISS birder or not?

Well, for the most part I am not.
I am someone who has spent prolonged periods of time in various places of the globe and within these regions, I simply have learned the species over time, know what they look like, know what to expect and what features to focus on. Within these regions, I will identify the very vast majority of the birds I see within less than a second. However, this to me in not bird ID by GISS or intuition, it is just bird ID routine.


GISS does play a certain role though:

There are a few groups of birds where the general impression of size and shape is important, and that is birds seen mostly over long distances.
I can usually identify flying raptors by their flight style and very general proportions.
I can usually identify jaegers and jaegermeisters at very long range by their impression of size and flight style - which I find easier than identifying them at short range - but this is usually where the identification bit of the GISS technique ends.

The most important aspect of GISS however is this:
In my approach to bird identification, GISS is used mostly not to tell me what a bird is but to tell me what it is not!
A mismatch between the general impression of size and shape and the features I see is what gets my adrenaline flowing as it means I am seeing something I should not be seeing, so it's got to be something special.
Whenever this happens, I start making notes or hopefully taking pictures to allow for a thorough analysis of the observation. Usually, a bird whose GISS is okay but whose plumage does not correspond will be an aberrant familiar bird, like a leucistic or worn or whatever shabby individual. Sometimes however, it can end up being quite a special bird (although this one was caged).

To conclude, I would say that I am mostly a birder with a significant amount of routine on his familiar stompin' grounds who uses GISS mostly to seek the unusual amongst the usual, and not to really identify a bird.

This should make the rarity committees rather happy.

The Splitting of Birds

Taxonomy is an intricate, complex and often weird business that usually fills birders, or at least the keen listers amongst them, with no insignificant amount of joy nowadays, as taxonomy has more and more evolved into the Fine Art of Splitting Birds.

In other words, what was regarded as a single species with distinct subspecies or subpopulations in the past is now often re-evaluated as comprising two factual species.

If you've never seen any of the forms involved, you'll neutrally acknowledge the split.
If you've seen one of the two forms, it won't change anything which means no benefit but also no harm done.
If you've seen both forms, let the corks pop, you have an "arm-chair tick"!

However, we mustn't forget that all armchair-ticks come at a price, and that this price may seriously jeopardize our joy of watching birds. As a constant reminder, let us look at the recent taxonomic history of the Herring Gull, Larus argentatus:

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, all silvery-backed large white-headed and -tailed Gulls of the northern hemisphere were called Herring Gulls. The bird below, photographed on the Baltic Sea shores of Germany recently, is a fine example of this magnificent species.

Herring Gull during the Golden Age of the species

However, European researchers soon realized that the Mediterranean and central Asian populations were indeed not of the same species and the Herring Gull was split. We'll neglect the taxonomic fate of the Mediterranean and central Asian forms for now and focus on the remainder, the Herring Gull that was now confined to the shores of Northern Europe and large parts of North America. This bird, depicted below, was surely still majestic but had somehow lost a significant part of its former glamour.

The gull of former world dominion after losing the Mediterranean and central Asia

As if losing the lush dumps of the south hadn't already been a severe blow to the poor Herring Gull, more bad news came in form of a genetic comparison of the remaining populations in North America and the Old Europe: turns out both forms of what was presumed the same species aren't even each other's closest relative, so another splitting event was due and the Herring Gull lost a significant part of its kingdom again, confining it to the cold and often miserable northern part of Europe. The sorry remains of what was once a shining regent of an Empire can be seen below.

Crippled by taxonomy, a European Herring Gull would love to look at a brighter future ahead but fails due to losing its head

Now, firm supporters of progressive taxonomy might point out that the remaining European Herring Gulls can be separated into two forms, the south-western subspecies argenteus and the Baltic and Scandinavian form argentatus and that both forms differ significantly in many, many ways (that might one day be analysed here or on Birder Hyde, we'll see).

I would like to urge these birders to be cautious and considerate.

If we keep on splitting the Herring Gull, we might one day realize that there is nothing left for us to watch and enjoy!

Clearly Gone, for another "X" on a birder's list