The Strange, Sleepless, Tweaked-Out World of the Killdeer

By Mel Carriere

Image from:   http://www.urbanwildlifeguide.net/2011/08/killdeer.html

The killdeer is the "tweaker" of the bird world.  They never sleep, you can hear their incessant, fidgety, bone rattling, screeching complaints at all hours of the day or night, and they seem to be everywhere at once.  I have seen a killdeer under a street lamp on my block, I have frequently come across them in shopping center parking lots, they frequent public and corporate business parks, they are quite at home on school campuses, and I have also found them in natural settings on the muddy fringes of San Diego Bay and in salt marshes.  There doesn't seem to be any place relatively flat that is not on the killdeer real estate wish list.

All this, and a lot of folks don't even know that they exist.  This became clear last night as my wife and  I accompanied my son to the bank and could hear the harsh alarm bells of disturbed killdeer going off all around us.

"What is that?" my wife asked me.

"Those are killdeer," I said.

"Why killdeer?  Can they really kill deer?" she continued, asking the number one answer on Family Feud in response to the question "What do people say after you tell them the bird they hear is a killdeer?"

"Of course they can't," I said.  "They call them that because the noise they make is supposed to sound like Killdeer, Killdeer, Killdeer."  It doesn't sound anything like that, really, so maybe the real origin of the name is because this little bird has delusions of grandeur, or perhaps it has managed to run grazing multi-point bucks away from its ground nest in the past using its broken wing display, fostering the myth that it lured the deer off Pied Piper like to their doom.

The bird's ambulatory style also lends credence to the tweaker hypothesis.  Killdeer tweak their way across parking lots, meadows, and lawns, stopping and starting at intervals as if the highly taut spring within them needs to be rewound before resuming.  Then at the slightest facial twitch or groin scratch of a passerby they will launch into flight and loudly proclaim their outrage with the loud, klaxson call that theoretically gives the bird its name.

Because I've done overnight security jobs where the Killdeer in the area never seem to put on their stocking caps and go to bed, but instead spend the entire interval between dawn and dusk fleeing from their own shadows beneath street lights, I was deeply interested in the sleep patterns of these birds.  So I did a lot of researching around on the Internet and surprisingly enough, the insomnia associated with the Killdeer species turns out to be a real problem, not so much for the birds as the human inhabitants of wherever they live, who are often rudely awakened at 3 AM by what they think is the nerve fraying wail of a neighbor's car alarm, but is actually only a family of killdeer fleeing from the terror of a passing moth or a bouncing bunny rabbit.  Internet chat rooms are full of complaints on this score.  One Killdeer complainer says:

"Killdeer, the little plover looking birds... what the heck are they doing making so much noise at night? Sheesh, the last 3 nights they've been flying around chattering their heads off at like 3:30 am. Anyone else have noisy killdeer? GO TO SLEEP! ROOST! Aargh!"

This comment generated a lot of responses, so it is apparent that the sleeplessness of Killdeer is definitely not something confined to my neighborhood.

The next time you see these little winged tweakers stutter stepping across your driveway, offer a glass of warm milk, or better yet a nightcap.  This bird with its apparently taped open eyelids seems like it should be collapsing from exhaustion at any minute, but instead there it is, orbiting around you or trying to lure you off the edge of a cliff with that bogus broken wing act.  You're not much bigger than a young buck, young man, so mind your manners around these tweaker Killdeer.  Remember, they never sleep.


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Nighthawks, Anyone? Thoughts on a Tennis Court Feeding Frenzy

By Mel Carriere

Image attributed to:  http://utahbirders.blogspot.com/2014/05/utah-big-day-record-pt-1-scout-route.html

If they play tennis at night, which I'm not really sure they do because I'm not much of a fan of the sport, I wonder if Serena Williams or her sister ever looked up and noticed the remarkable nighthawks engaged in amazing, fluttering flight among the flood lights above.  Even though I do not play tennis at night, I have been to places where they do, and have stood in awe of this spectacle - not at the amateurish, clumsy swings of the tennis players, but of the smooth, precise, coordinated flight of the Lesser Nighthawks catching bugs in the lights.

As it turns out, tennis courts are a mini ecosystem.  In addition to the primates sweating and grunting down below as they make crude, awkward attempts to imitate the graceful and beautiful Serena, there are hundreds of moths, beetles and other bugs attracted to the brilliant bulbs that illuminate the courts, and following these bugs are the predators that feast upon them, including perhaps a few bats that pass by incognito because their dark coats blend into the night above, and also the Lesser Nighthawks whose wingtip safety reflectors and bright strip of reflective tape across the chin clearly announce their identity for the spectators at the courts.

I accompanied my son to the park a few nights ago so he could do his jogging.  As he slogged around the park's pathways, I sat outside the gym and watched the parade of Nighthawks that were circling around the tennis court lights across the way.  There must have been at least a dozen of the birds, but it was impossible to count because not all of them were illuminated at the same moment.  The Chordeiles acutipennis would dash and flutter in, scoop up hordes of bugs in their enormous bug shoveling gapes, then vanish into the darkness beyond the range of the glare of the floodlights.

One thing about Lesser Nighthawks is that, even though they straggle into work in rather lackadaisical fashion, once they are on the clock they are all business.  I have seen them commuting slowly in from the higher sage scrub around dusk, appearing to be fighting off the effects of a bender the day before, dipping and swirling in a rather aimless, pointless fashion, as if they were trying to delay the inevitable, like we all do when we have had a rough night but we still have to make a living.  Once within the limelight of their tennis court theater, however, the flight of the sluggards instantly transforms from haphazard into precise as they pirouette about the flood lights with swiftly executed, geometrical turns.  Although they can glide a straight line as efficiently as any raptor I've seen, Lesser Nighthawks alternate their smooth, flapless flight with a rapid fluttering motion which made me think of bats as I sat there and observed.

This line of thinking took me to the concept of convergent evolution, which basically means "...the independent evolution of similar features in species of difference lineages (per Wikipedia)."  For instance, bats and Nighthawks are nothing alike, one being a mammal and the other a bird, but they have evolved a superficially similar pattern of fluttering flight, and I couldn't help but wonder if chasing insects on the wing requires these quick wing beats.  It seems that swifts and swallows also pursue bugs through the air using this same rapid fire flapping motion, followed by quick glides.

While on the subject of convergent evolution, there are other examples in the bird world that demonstrate how species of different evolutionary lineages nonetheless evolve the same physical traits.  For instance, have you ever noticed that birds who inhabit flat areas, such as meadows, parks, beaches and construction sites develop white edging on their tail feathers?  Meadowlarks have this, as do Pipits and Horned Larks, all birds that forage in wide open areas.  I wonder if this white edging along the tail feathers breaks up their silhouette and helps them disappear into the landscape, so that they are not so easily spotted by predators flying overhead.

Life is full of wonders like this to observe and ponder, if we take the time to observe and ponder.  So the next time you are playing tennis at night, look up!  Don't worry - your name is not Serena and this is not Wimbledon, so if the ball misses your racket and hits you in the belly while you are marveling at the fluttering Nighthawks, no one is going to care.


Get this cool Lesser Nighthawk puzzle on Amazon! 


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Phoebe "Phreaks" Out, Dive Bombs Bird Blogger

By Mel Carriere

My experience with birds has always been a positive one.  I have never been harassed by angry crows or dive bombed by infuriated nest-defending Mockingbirds.  Sometimes little Anna's hummingbirds take umbrage to my proximity to their digs and will frighten me off with a majestic J shaped swoop that doesn't even come close enough to ruffle the few remaining hairs on my balding head.  For the most part, however, I have kept my distance and lived in peace with members of my local avian community, and they have reciprocated by regarding me as a harmless feature of the landscape.

But sometimes aerial threats come at you from unexpected directions, and such was the case last week when I was attacked from a quarter of the sky that I never would have expected.

The culprit was a Black Phoebe, a bird I have observed can be fierce in defending its home territory against invading members of its own species, but have never known to be aggressive against me or any other members of the Homo sapiens set.  Indeed, my wife and I enjoy sipping our coffee in the dining room while we watch the tail wagging antics of Sayornis nigricans as they dive bomb for bugs from a planter hanger perch they make use of in our back yard.  These birds never seem to object to, or even take notice our presence, for that matter.

But last Sunday, as I turned the corner of a building that is part of a large complex where I work security one day out of the week, I was the bug who was Phoebe dive bombed .  An angry Black Phoebe, standing watch in a Sweet Gum tree just outside a window, took wing and began flying intimidating circles around my head as I walked by.  Not prepared for this air bombardment I scurried off for safety, and when I was outside the Phoebe's comfort zone the bird assumed I got the message and went back to its vigilant post on the Sweet Gum.

As I continued my solitary rounds, I wondered about the Phoebe's unexpected bad temper, and could only conclude that the bird was jealously protecting a nest in the vicinity.  When I swung by the same place again a little later the Phoebe was no longer using the Sweet Gum as a base for its Stuka operations, so I chanced a quick peek up into the rafters.  There as expected was the rather unkempt mud cup that this Phoebe had constructed to raise its young in.  Since I could not hear the urgent, hungry peeping of any bird babies, however, I concluded that the nest was empty, so it seemed a little strange to me that Ma Phoebe should be so urgently and insistently defending the place.  It also seemed a bit odd that this bird should still be nesting so late in the season.

I conducted a little investigation on this bird's breeding habits, and found out that Black Phoebes do indeed "...nest in mud cups anchored in protected nooks, often under a bridge or the eaves of a building (per allaboutbirds)."  The female does all the nest construction while the sperm donor Dad goes off on a bug bender, hence my attacker was most probably a lady.  Phoebes raise 1-3 clutches, so it is possible the nest you see photographed above was a late brood, but I couldn't find any definitive dates about how late in the season this bird breeds.  Even though I can't verify it from any bird authorities, however, I know now from personal experience that in July Phoebe love is still in the air, and these tail flicking fiends remain in "high feather" against anyone who might intrude too close to one of the ugly mud splats that their children call home.

I have decided not to declare war on Mrs. Phoebe, but to write off her unwarranted attack as a case of raging hormones.  As a married man of near 25 years I can definitely understand female hormones run amok.  Therefore, I will do my best to maintain a positive outlook on the Phoebe clan as I go about my terrestrial based duties and leave the sky to the birds.

A great place to start for beginning birders!


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The image is a composite.  The photo on the right of the Phoebe nest was made by me, the photo on the left is taken from Wikipedia, and is attributed to:  "Sayornis nigricans NBII" by John J. Mosesso, NBII - http://images.nbii.gov/details.php?id=56595&cat=Birds. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sayornis_nigricans_NBII.jpg#/media/File:Sayornis_nigricans_NBII.jpg

Do Birds Mourn Their Dead? - Notes on a Starling's Untimely Demise

By Mel Carriere

I confess I have never liked Starlings much.  First of all they are an invasive species - a kind of weed with wings that drives out other more desirable feathered favorites, notably Bluebirds.  Secondly, Starlings typically inhabit mundane, barren industrialized areas and add their sparkling ugliness to the already blighted urban landscape, so that there is not much romance at all associated with the species.  Point three is the voice. I'm pretty sure there are no bodice-ripper novels that feature Starlings singing sweetly in the garden as the two lovers finally lock in amorous embrace.  The song of the Starling is just not that sweet; consisting largely of a series of dissonant hisses, clicks, and whistles that are definitely not  music to the ears and definitely do not inspire poets.  Finally, there is something downright creepy about the bird and the flocks in which it thrives.  Starling flocks seem to be possessed of a hive mind, much like a swarm of bees or a plague of locusts, and it strikes me as unsettling to watch their undulating flocks moving in choreographed unison, as if directed by an invisible controlling entity.  This particular Starling behavior, in fact, used to creep me out so much that I once wrote a fantasy novel featuring Starlings as the bad guys; an army of foul avians being led by a grotesquely proportioned boss Starling that directed the insidious affairs of his kin from the dark bowels of an abandoned refinery.

Over the years I have come to appreciate Starlings a little more.  I found that they are superb mimics - much better than any Mockingbird in my opinion, a fact I discovered when I heard one outside the bedroom window perfectly imitating my wife's cuckoo clock.   Indeed, research has shown that whatever their voice lacks in beauty is more than compensated by the complexity of their vocalizations.  It turns out that Starlings have an extremely complex language that employs recursion, a phenomenon that in general allows for extremely complex sentence building, something that at one time was thought to be unique to humans.  In 2006, however, scientists began to discover that Starlings also use recursion in their speech, shattering yet another arrogant misconception of man that we alone employ complex language and are superior because of it.

These discoveries have made me respect Starlings a little more.  Not love, mind you, respect.

While doing my security rounds in a building parking lot on Sunday I came across a dead Starling on the pavement that had obviously been ripped apart by some predator.  Its body had been gutted and one bloody wing ripped away and dragged a few feet.  The unsightly carcass remained in this state for a couple of hours until scavengers came along and thoroughly finished the job; even taking the beak, leaving nothing but a few feathers.  A trio of crows loitering nervously nearby, looking a bit shamed by their gluttony, were probably the clean up crew.

This sounds silly, but my first thought upon seeing the dead Starling was to wonder if any of this bird's friends and family mourned its death.  Scientists have demonstrated that Scrub Jays actually conduct impromptu funerals for their dearly departed, so is it beyond the realm of possibilities that such a complex, intelligent songbird like the Starling wouldn't do the same?

One of the themes I am going to frequently write about here is how human arrogance misinterprets animal behavior.  Until very recently, traditional science always maintained that most animals function on a purely instinctive level, basically doing everything on impulse without moderating their behavior through the process of rational thought, as humans supposedly do.  I have always thought this idea to be pure bunk, complete hooey.  I believe scientists circulated this notion on purpose without really investigating it first, probably so they can justify killing animals in cruel experiments. 

Now science is reluctantly waking up to the true capability of animals, and the Eureka revelation is that they are not really much different from us.  Our unique evolutionary advantage, one that has fueled further vital adaptations such as an opposable thumb and powerful brain, is the ability to stand on two legs for extended periods.  Animals can't do this, which means we can stand up and throw things at them all day but they can't throw back, which is a definite liability in a fight.  Well, I suppose a chimpanzee can stand up and throw a rock at us, but then it has to run away on all fours, meaning its hands will be occupied while running.  Humans, however, can run and keep throwing things the whole time, an ability that definitely put us ahead in the struggle to dominate the planet.  It also means we can stand up and manipulate increasingly complex tools.  In summation, it's not that we are innately smarter or better, it's simply that we can stand up, and this has given us leisure time to experiment with ways to better control our universe.

Since Starlings have developed complex language, therefore, why can't they also have complex social behavior, such as funerals, like the Scrub Jays do?  Scientists refer to these Scrub Jay last rites with the impressive title of "cacophonous aggregations in response to dead conspecifics," a label that seems to demean their purpose.  If you have ever seen a video of one of those Arab funerals with the hysterically shrieking women mourners, you might be inclined to call that a "cacophonous aggregation" as well.  Human funerals certainly can be quite a cacophony.  So what is the difference?  I think that putting a clean, technical label on the emotional outbursts of animals makes it easier for us to cancel out their feelings and suffering, which means its okay for people to kill as many of them as we have to.

What was that the great philosopher Kurt Cobain said? - "...it's okay to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings."  Well, turns out that if the Scrub Jays and the Starlings do, then why not fish?  So now what, Kurt?

Hear Kurt's immortal words for yourself:



More bird thoughts by Mel on Hub Pages

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The Says Phoebe Gets Around - New Mexico Notes

By Mel Carriere

I just got back from vacationing in Colorado and New Mexico for a few days, and hopefully the bird blogging business will crank up a notch or two.  This little family reunion road trip didn't turn out to be the birding bonanza I was hoping for.  There were plenty of barn swallows for everyone and then some - one pair was actually nesting in a hole in the roof above the front porch of the farmhouse where my mother grew up, and the birds got very nervous waiting on a high wire for the old codgers swapping yarns from the past to clear out so they could get about the business of feeding their babes.  I'm sure the swallows will have a future family reunion story or two of their own to tell about that one.  

I think I was the only one who even noticed the swallows.  The codgers just kept on jawing and lying while my soul bled for the anxious parents waiting above - but to my shame I did nothing. 

I also saw a Violent-green Swallow perched in a nook of an ancient stone wall at the Quarai ruins, a part of Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument just outside of Mountainair, New Mexico.  The ruins there are remarkable and if you get off your butt and go right now it might still be green, a temporary blessing that has been visited upon this area after a decade of dismal drought.  So there's a plug for the ruins, of which there are actually three in the area, and here's a plug for my ancestral town of Mountainair, which is a fine spot from which to embark upon your ruins exploration, with the single disadvantage that there is not a single drop booze in town unless you break and enter into somebody's private liquor closet.  If you do enjoy a nightcap, plan accordingly, and if you elect to stay in Mountainair I highly recommend the Rock Motel.  It looks sort of Norman Bates-ish on the outside, but don't be frightened.  It is remarkably clean and new where it counts, on the inside.  The Ancient Cities Cafe just across the street from the Rock Motel also has wonderful food - great breakfasts, outstanding Mexican fare, and you can conveniently call out for their passable Pizza from the menu in your room at the Rock.

What does my little travelogue here have to do with Says Phoebes?   Not much, except to say that if I would have just gone ahead and brought my own neighborhood birds with me they would have felt right at home there on our old family farm south of Mountainair.  With the exception of a single Juniper Titmouse making  himself at home in one of his namesake shrubs, the birds I saw were the same ones I have seen time and again in my current San Diego neighborhood.

The barn swallows I mentioned before are not exactly common in San Diego, and tend to get lost in the swirling flocks of our signature Cliff Swallows, but if you look closely into the midst of such an aerial assemblage long enough you will spot a forked tail or two.  Their cousins the Violet-greens are also common up on Cuyamaca Peak, about an hour and a half from where I live.  

Another bird I could have just packed into my suitcase, TSA permitting of course, is the Mockingbird, which carves out its territory in the open fields between the New Mexico Junipers just as it defines its dominion in the open spaces between our Queen Palms and Sweet Gums back in San Diego.  I could see the distinctive white wing flashes of the Mockers as they flitted between fence posts, and at one point I spotted a pair tenaciously harrying a crow, also a sight I could have seen from my front porch in San Diego and kept the $119 plane fare in my pocket to boot, with which I could have bought a couple six packs of that elusive beer that disappeared from Mountainair along with the indigenous Tiwa Indians of the Salinas Pueblos, sometime in the 1600s I think.

There were also enough Says Phoebes out there on the farm to munch the house flies in my yard to extinction.  Fortunately, if you are a Musca domestica, there were sufficient flies in Mountainair's Pinyon-Juniper biosphere to harass a herd of buffalo over the edge of a cliff, so the Phoebes didn't seem to be lacking for food.  A Phoebe joined the swallows by nesting in the farmhouse roof, but did it a more remote corner where its activities seemed to be unhindered by human interference.  Again, I could have stayed home and watched Says Phoebes nesting.  Well, maybe not, my neighbor's cat seems to have extirpated them from my particular neighborhood just lately, another drawback of suburban birding.  Luckily, these Phoebes get around, and just like we prodigal sons, they always head back to the farm sooner or later, where there is enough open space to avoid feline deprivations.

So my New Mexico trip wasn't much of a bird Safari, but a change of scenery is always delightful, and I'll take a day sitting on a porch with a favorite Uncle or Aunt, watching a Phoebe dive bombing for bugs over a Southern California traffic jam any day.  

 Photo By Sayornis_saya_5.jpg: Linda Tanner from Los Osos, California, U.S.A. derivative work: Berichard (Sayornis_saya_5.jpg) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons



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Winged Sights and Sounds of the Sage Scrub

By Mel Carriere

Now would be as good as time as any to take a walk through the sage scrub, I suppose.  The unseasonable rainfall has somewhat rejuvenated things around here a bit, and the life down in the canyon bottoms should not be as dry and brittle as has been the norm since the politicians started getting serious about the water crisis.  Do the birds that bounce from sage to sumac worry about the drought on some level, or does nature automatically adjust for them, limiting their reproductive capabilities through the skillful application of hormones, or perhaps just "culling the herd" via natural Darwinistic survival of the fittest methods; in the process making sure there's enough to go around for the few that survive.

These are some heavy questions, but all I really want to do is take a walk through the canyon bottoms and get in touch with the bird life down in them.  When I first started birdwatching, a visit to the local canyon corridor was a monthly occurrence at least, but now it seems like years since I've gone.  I think I just ran out of new birds down there and sort of got tired seeing the same thing all the time.  Now I miss it, and I think it's time to go back.

San Diego has these fantastic undeveloped wildlife corridor canyons that criss-cross the city limits.  Depending on how much and how consistent the water that flows through their streambeds is, anything from low, scrubby willows to massive sycamores can be found growing there, along with the occasional invasive Pepper Tree or Russian Olive that has sprung up from a seed that strayed from someone's garden.  On the walls of these mini refuges within the sprawling metropolis one finds the Coastal Sage Scrub habitat, characterized by its low, drought tolerant scrubs, most notable of these being the chamise, various varieties of sage, buckwheat, and two or three kinds of sumac.  The chamise is also called greasewood, probably because it ignites like a grease fire when the autumn Santa Ana winds put it to the torch.

The sage scrub doesn't sound like much, and in truth it is not that impressive to look at either, especially during the long, dry summer that stretches through October.  Nonetheless, the sage scrub is the secret home of several interesting and lovely birds, and if you stick to the shaded canyon bottom and conduct yourself in an unobtrusive manner, many of these denizens of the Canyonlands will sneak down toward you and make their presence known, even though the bird guides and websites tend to describe them as "secretive."

Some are more secretive than others, I have discovered.  The bouncing ball song of the Wrentit is common everywhere, although the bird itself skulks in the thick brush and is frustratingly difficult to see.  The California Gnatcatcher is especially secretive for me, because I have yet to have a confirmed sighting of one, even though I have crossed its poor desert country cousin The Black Tailed Gnatcatcher off my list already.  Not so secretive are the Rufous Sided Towhees that flash their rusty flanks and muscle for territory with their drab California Towhee cousins that sneak down from the cool human gardens on the mesas above.  An occasional Roadrunner makes an appearance, and the California Quail can be heard singing that Frank Sinatra tune about the Windy City as they hunker down somewhere out in the brush.

The California Thrasher, which you see above, is also referred to as "secretive," but to me this is inaccurate.  The Cal Thrasher will boldly perch on a dry stick to proclaim its ownership of the Canyon in its rambling, disconnected, rather avant garde song that says "Yes I am the signature species of this place and without me it would suck down here."  Of course I have failed to capture the poetry in the message, but the real meaning is lost in translation.  You have to go and hear it for yourself.

One of my favorite memories of the sage scrub involved resting in the shadow of a Pepper Tree and watching as a California Thrasher strolled by casually within a few feet of me.  It looked like a Roadrunner in miniature, scratching through the dried leaf litter for edibles.  For a moment, at least, man and bird were at peace with one another there in the shade.

There is plenty of life just like this scratching around in those dry hills that line our Southern California coast.  It is a disservice indeed to say it is dead up there, because dead is far from the truth.  The beauty of this life is admittedly stark, but the hidden art of the sage scrub is all the more valuable because one has to work to see it.  It's time for me to get back to work; I need to return to the canyons before the cloud cover of the May Gray and June Gloom has disappeared; leaving me swooning in the July sun with my inert binoculars in hand.

The book below is highly recommended if you are planning a hike through the sage scrub or elsewhere in Southern California.





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Above photo of the California Thrasher is attributed to:  "<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toxostoma_redivivum_-Morro_Bay,_California,_USA-8.jpg#/media/File:Toxostoma_redivivum_-Morro_Bay,_California,_USA-8.jpg">Toxostoma redivivum -Morro Bay, California, USA-8</a>" by <a class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/people/72825507@N00" rel="nofollow">Mike Baird</a> from Morro Bay, USA - <a class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2532590105/" rel="nofollow">California Thrasher, Toxostoma redivivum, Morro Bay, CA 28 May 2</a>Uploaded by <a title="User:Snowmanradio" href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Snowmanradio">snowmanradio</a>. Licensed under <a title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0">CC BY 2.0</a> via <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/">Wikimedia Commons</a>.

Strange Sounds from my Neck of the Woods - Western Tanager Updates

By Mel Carriere

My bird blog has been grounded for several days by a strange stomach bug I have been battling with that has left my typing fingers drained and weary, with no urge to take flight.  I hope those of you who are regular readers will pardon my absence as I shut myself up in my nest to recuperate.

There have been a couple of interesting developments in my little corner of the bird world since we last touched base.  On April 29th I went outside in the morning to hear the unusual sounds of what could have been Robins, which are very rare in this part of the country even though they are in extreme abundance in Northern California, but which I suspect were probably Western Tanagers, the bird you see in the photo above.  The song of the two is creepily similar, almost as if one was deliberately imitating the other, but the reason I lean toward Tanager is because the first of May is the time that these birds typically migrate through our suburban San Diego neighborhoods, on their way to breeding grounds in our county's higher, conifer covered elevations.  This is strictly anecdotal and does not have any research behind it, but it seems like since the 2007 fire stripped our Cuyamaca range of much of its tree cover I have not seen this species pass through in the numbers that it did formerly.

My first encounter with this bird came on 6 May, 1999, when I was delivering the mail on my route in South San Diego, very close to the area where it abuts with Imperial Beach.  The male tanager appeared very unexpectedly in an unkempt garden, and for me seemed as peculiar and out of place as finding an elephant drinking from your bird bath.  I was familiar with this splendidly colored bird because the beautifully plumaged males appropriately adorn the cover of many a field guide, but I had imagined the species to be restricted to the cool conifer canopies of upper elevations.

That day and for a few days afterward I came across Tanagers in abundance in some ornamental fig trees that lined a dead end street on my route.  I thought perhaps they were attracted to the thick clumps of fruit that hang down from those trees at that season, or maybe the insects attracted to the ripening fruit, or perhaps both.  At any rate, this brief apparition was not an anomaly because the tanagers returned punctually every year in the early days of May before moving on to the sugar pines and incense cedars of our higher peaks, where I would encounter them while roaming through the then blissfully shady glades that have since been laid barren and exposed by fire.  Then I myself migrated to other temporary job opportunities and lost touch with the tanagers for a while.

Fast forward to this 29th of April, when I thought I heard one singing from the row of Eucalyptus trees to the south of my neighborhood, but the thick foliage would not permit me to confirm the identity of the songster.  It could very well have been an equally rare, equally transitory Robin, but the proximity of the date to the first of May made me think, or perhaps want to believe because of an air of nostalgia for the past, that it was a tanager that was stopping by to refresh my memory of 1999's golden age of birding, when everything I saw with wings was new.

The same day I thought I saw a male tanager perched on a wire as I drove by it in my mail truck in approximately the same area I saw my first, but the glimpse was too fleeting to confirm it.  They could be out there in droves for all I know; this being, appropriately enough, the 16th anniversary of that first encounter, but because I sit here at home nursing my sick tummy they are singing out their wheezy Robin imitations without my being there to witness it.

I guess I will have to give my other bird updates later.  The tanagers have taken up more space than I expected.







Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.



Wonderful image of this Western Tanager is by Kati Fleming, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution, taken 26 June 2010 in Wyoming.  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Tanager_piranga_ludoviciana;_body_visible,_male.jpg#file

Crow Eats a Mouthful of Teeth - Thoughts on the Warm Blooded - Cold Blooded Conflict

By Mel Carriere

I guess it is only fair on a blog about birds to take pause, change directions, do an about face and write about reptiles for a change.  The ornithologists tell us, after all, that birds came from reptiles, although whether they were reptiles springing up from the ground (leaping lizard theory) or reptiles parachuting down from the trees (Rocky Flying Squirrel though a mammal not a reptile theory) is still the subject of a great deal of debate.  I take no position in this evolutionary hair splitting.  Who is to say that birds didn't develop from both directions at different times, or even at the same time?  I'll coin this as the Gliding Gecko in the Middle of the Wall Theory.

I'm not ready to completely fly the aviary and wriggle on my belly over into the field of herpetology, however.  This is not necessary, because ectotherms and endotherms still interact from time to time, and from what I've seen there is a great deal of vestigial resentment among the scaled set over this secession, combined with a fair amount of enmity within the feathered community that emancipation did not happen sooner.

For example, on my route today I witnessed a Crow doing battle with a feisty alligator lizard.  I have written a lot about Crows lately on this blog; mostly about a Crow I call Clyde who frequents my yard every morning and evening, poking about for provender.  My wife has been feeding him dried mealworms as a snack because she is afraid my son might start munching them in a fit of ravenous, insatiable, late night hunger when he comes back from the bar.  Last Sunday evening Clyde graciously accepted this snack offering from my wife, although he seemed to grow tired of the stale dried grubs and sauntered off looking disappointed, perhaps having assumed she had dumped a bag of tasty Doritos on the lawn, as any self respecting upright walking monkey normally would.

Just like these upright walking monkeys that we call human beings, Crows are unfussy omnivores that will eat just about anything.  This could be why throughout the course of history Crows and Humans do not get along.  These birds compete with us for the same food, and this is why there have been great Corvid purges during which we brand them as the minions of Satan as a justification for their extermination.  Fortunately these Crow holocausts never work; the birds are just too clever and adaptable and no matter how many we kill they always come back.

Every once in a while, however, a Crow meets a bump in the road, and the Crow I saw today met his personal speed bump in an alligator lizard that he was trying to consume.  I was driving by the warm blooded cold blooded conflict in my Postal vehicle, and because I had cars behind me I couldn't stop to take a picture.  All the same, the millisecond snapshot I captured in my mind revealed a lot.

Alligator lizards are feisty little beasts and notorious biters. Any experienced amateur herpetologist schoolboy will approach the business end of this reptile with extreme caution.  The particular Elgaria multicarinata I caught a glimpse of day before yesterday was no exception.  He was a scaly package full of fierce teeth, all of which he bared defiantly upward in the Crow's direction.  For his own part, the Crow was trying to figure out a way to carefully work around those fearful fangs.  Since the alligator lizard was missing his tail, I am assuming the Crow had at least scored a mouthful of rump roast, but apparently was not completely satiated by this wriggling appetizer because he seemed determined to supplement that scaly cut of meat with some choice tenderloin from the lizard's flanks.

I don't know how the battle turned out.  If I had to bet, I would say that the lizard's teeth were too much for the Crow.  As I have mentioned before on this blog, Crows are the kings of easy pickings, and will gladly forsake a potential banquet that requires a substantial expenditure of energy for a meager diet plate that is an easy grab.  Dried mealworms handed out by my wife will do in a pinch, if the alternative is a chancy reptilian smorgasbord that means fighting around some nasty dental work.




Photo from Arachnodemon on:  http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?35013-Southern-Alligator-Lizard

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My Life List #1 - Snow Goose

By Mel Carriere

Turns out my life list was wrong.  I wrote a previous post here about the Common Loon being the #2 bird on the list, but that bird should actually be #30.  I made this error because in the field guides the Loons are always first, but on the American Ornithologist Union (AOU) Checklist the Loons actually come after the Timamiformes, Anseriformes and Galliformes.  Therefore, since my own list conforms to the AOU guidelines I ask that the real occupant of first place please stand up - and this is the Snow Goose, Anser caerulescens.

I am happy to write about this bird, because it takes me off on happy birding trips with my family a long way from home, a long time ago.  My first encounter with the Snow Goose was in 1999, an excellent year for my list, because that was my first year birding and everything was new.  I actually made some totally Asperger's spreadsheet out of my life list, and the calculations there demonstrate that 1999 gave me 54.89% percent of my bird total as it currently stands.

More specifically it was 27 March, 1999 when my family visited Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico on our way home from Albuquerque, where my Mother lived at the time and where I grew up.  More neckbeard stats - spreadsheet says that although Bosque Del Apache has contributed only .08 percent of my list, the state of New Mexico is responsible for 11.16% of the total, a distant second place from California, my home state, which has an almost insurmountable lead with 83.26 percent.

I remember it being sometime toward evening that we were driving the dirt roads in Bosque Del Apache that form little levees around the flooded fields where the birds are.  Spotting an enormous flock of geese to the North of the road I stopped the car and got out to have a peek.  I believe these birds must have been recently hunted because they were very skittish.  No sooner had I satisfied myself through my binoculars that these were Snow Geese then I was spotted and the entire spooked flock of at least a few hundred took flight in magnificent fashion.

The second time I saw Snow Geese was at Sony Bony NWR in the Imperial Valley, not far from here in San Diego.  Those birds were indeed being hunted; we could here the booming of shotguns all around us, and a park ranger actually stopped me to check that I wasn't one of the shooters.  Satisfied that I was armed with nothing but a pair of cheap binoculars he drove off to look for the real offenders, being concerned that these hunters had intruded onto the refuge.  I remember that my wife got some pretty good pics of these Snow Geese, and I may just look for them.

The snow goose is mysterious in its own way because it breeds in the far north above the Arctic Circle, which means that since this Goose has to spend 6 months out of the year travelling the birds I saw were undoubtedly on their way to the Arctic or on the way back. The Snow Goose reminds me of my own travelling, so apart from holding the prestigious #1 spot on my list it is dear to me because it brings to mind the truth that in order to refresh the body, mind, and spirit, one must migrate.

Photo from:  "Anser caerulescens CT8" by Cephas - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anser_caerulescens_CT8.jpg#/media/File:Anser_caerulescens_CT8.jpg

Fuzzy snow geese in the Imperial Valley are either by me or my wife.  I blame my wife.

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Gloomy Drought Thoughts - I Will Miss Scenes Like this Crow Among my Queen Palms

By Mel Carriere

I apologize that Birds by Mel was grounded for a few days - my wings were clipped by some sort of weird bug that got stuck in my crop and kept me snuggled in my roost as I recuperated.  Luckily I think my brain might have taken wing again; we'll see what happens as I forage along on my writing lawn, looking to pull out a tasty verbal grub or two to whet your appetite.

The drought has become serious business here in Southern California.  The Sierra snow pack is at 8 percent of normal and the Governor's shrill, constantly repeated mantra is "those days are over!  Do you enjoy a game of golf - Those days are over!  Do you like a dip in the swimming pool on a hot day - Those days are over!  Anything that involves aquatic fun is now over, per the Governor.  Do you take pleasure wiggling your tootsies in your cool green grass - Those days are over!  Yes, even that.

We here in California have been given a mandate that we have to reduce our water usage by 25% or else face dire consequences.  The almonds need to be watered, and we can't invest in desalinization plants on the coast to give us unlimited access to H2O because we really need that 60 billion dollar high speed rail through the Central Valley, even though it is mostly a depopulated desert now.

The city of San Diego, where I do not live, is apparently initiating a program where they will pay home owners $1.50 per square foot to replace their lawns with drought tolerant plants.  I imagine it will only be a matter of time before the city of Chula Vista, where I do live, follows suit.  And then, as the drought continues, sooner or later lawn removal will no longer be voluntary and the homeowner payments will, of course, cease as the funds dry up with the withering grass.

Therefore, I think it behooves me to get on board with the destruction of my front lawn sooner rather than later. I really enjoy looking at this little piece of God's green earth, even though the only time I actually wiggle my own tootsies within its soft, verdant blades is when I mow it every two weeks or so.  Most of the reason why I enjoy it is because of the feathered visitors I receive there regularly, such as this crow I found foraging among the Queen Palms this morning.  Crows are seen as morbid harbingers of death, as merciless raiders of birds nests, and as a general neighborhood nuisance whose raucous, dissonant  hawk scolding cries have put an end to many a pleasant afternoon nap, but I still like them.  Their alert eyes sparkle with intelligence and appear to be windows into a cunning, clever Corvid mind full of secrets and lore.

My wife likes crows too.  She has been trying to feed them lately with a bag of dried meal worms we have had in the pantry for a long time and that my oldest son has been threatening to eat as snacks.  Because he is eccentric enough to attempt it my wife has been desperately trying to get rid of them by offering them to the crows, but they just won't come when the dinner bell rings.  Despite the fact that they live in our yards and eat our excess food, the independence of these birds is fierce and legendary.

Anyhow, when I finally have to break out that spade and pick and rake and remove the grass I toiled so strenuously to plant I will miss crow visitations like the one I had this morning.  The bird you see above was generous above to pose for a picture or two as he scrounged for edibles in a lawn that is like a little green ocean, unruffled on the surface but full of life underneath.  The grass has been a little ecosystem all its own for about fifteen years, sustaining the Crows and Yellow-rumped Warblers that feast on its bounty, sometimes Pipits when the place was new and not so overgrown. It is hard to say, and sad to think about, whether the hard bitten desert flora that takes its place will provide an ecological climate capable of giving these same kind of pleasant avian visitations.


Photo is my own.  The Crow was very generous to cooperate, because I am always slow on the draw.

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Corvid vs. Corvid - Crow and Scrub Jay Battle for Bragging Rights

By Mel Carriere

There are two worlds that human beings live in, two worlds that are superimposed upon one another, or perhaps two layered worlds would be a better way to put it.  The top layer consists of the rather illusory technology-dominated society that Homo sapiens inhabits, and the other world is the "real" world dominated by living and competing organisms that struggle to survive.  

Sometimes humanity changes layers involuntarily, like when there is a major natural disaster or a war, or perhaps a zombie apocalypse, and in these cases the electrical grid, telephone systems, and all creature comforts disappear.  In such circumstances we humans revert back to our natural state and conduct ourselves according to the dictates of our rapacious animal nature, because we are no longer equipped to live in the layer that is subject to the cruel, capricious, merciless whims of nature.  At other times we willingly forsake the illusion of this technological "matrix" layer, eat the red pill and go off the grid because we choose to.  In these voluntary cases living in the natural layer can be peaceful, contemplative, and rewarding.

Then there are other times when we willingly oscillate back and forth between layers, or even exist in both at once.  When we make ourselves aware that both layers are superimposed upon one another the layering really ceases to exist and we can enjoy the comforts of civilization while at the same time appreciating the natural world.  Such happens to me when I am delivering the mail.  While keeping one eye on my scanner and the bar codes on the packages and the clock on my phone to make sure I am on time, with the other eye and with both ears I try to stay tuned to the world of birds around me.

The birds that inhabit the neighborhoods I deliver to have little, if any, technology to speak of.  They live completely in that separate, off the grid world where survival is a daily battle and one misstep or miscalculation means either death or reproductive failure.  

For example, I witnessed such a struggle today when a flash of brilliant blue drew a swoosh across my field of vision, which made me look up from the mail to see a Scrub Jay chasing a Crow out of its territory.  The Jay's harsh, non musical, raspy complaints were enough to indicate its severe displeasure.  After the suddenly meek, contrite, non threatening Crow had been driven back a safe distance the Scrub Jay went back into the thick foliage of a tree that I assume was in close proximity to its nest.

Earlier I had seen this same Crow loitering around this tree, perching itself upon a rooftop from where it kept tabs on the goings on at chez Scrub Jay.  I think it was waiting for the adults to disappear so it could trespass into the living room of its Corvidae cousin and help itself to an omelette, kind of like when your trashy trailer park cousins show up unannounced and raid your fridge, except that they are hopefully not eating your future children. 

The Jay was in no mood for hospitality and the Crow was not hungry enough to press the issue seriously.  I have noticed that Crows in particular are very economical in terms of the energy they expend feeding themselves.  The Crow was significantly larger than the Jay and could have kicked its butt in a fair fight, but it chose to look for easier pickings elsewhere.  "Pick your battles" seems to be the wise motto there in the natural layer.  Unlike Homo sapiens here in the matrix layer, Crows do not indiscriminately bomb their enemies for effect, leaving behind a mass of blood and dead bodies with nothing to show for it.

Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.

Scrub Jay picture is from:  "Western Scrub Jay holding an Acorn at Waterfront Park in Portland, OR" by Original uploader was Msulis at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User:Common Good using CommonsHelper.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Western_Scrub_Jay_holding_an_Acorn_at_Waterfront_Park_in_Portland,_OR.JPG#/media/File:Western_Scrub_Jay_holding_an_Acorn_at_Waterfront_Park_in_Portland,_OR.JPG

Are you a Bird Activist? Maybe it's Time for Birders to Give Something Back

By Mel Carriere

Birding can be a fun sport, if you want to call it a sport.  There are many definitions of the word "sport," some limiting the term to an athletic activity requiring physical prowess, and others delineating the concept much more broadly as a "diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime (Dictionary.com)."  I suppose if we use this latter meaning we could call anything a sport as long as it is a pleasant pastime.  Watching TV could be called a sport; even washing dishes if that is the way you release your stress.

While we let others quibble over semantics, I will cease my digression into verbal nonsense and go back to the immediate subject of birding as a sport.  The truth is, there are thousands of birders that treat birding as a sport, and there are massive birding competitions now among bird listing devotees who fiercely compete over who can compile the biggest list for any given day.  Even the Christmas bird count I participated in seemed to degenerate into a competition over which counting group could check off the coolest birds.  There I was, thinking it was more of a scientific endeavor to count the birds that were really out there, but it seemed like some of the counters were ignoring the flock of boring House Finches on yonder rooftop and crawling into the sagebrush to see if they could flush out a Bell's Vireo.

There is nothing wrong with friendly competition, but with a lot of birders I think obsessive listing sometimes becomes the end rather than the means.  When this happens the pure intellectual and spiritual contemplation that I think is the essence of birding sometimes gets lost.

I gained a new Twitter follower the other day named Becky who sort of grounded me in what birding really should be all about.  Becky's whole trip is trying to save birds from flying into windows.  She has a website dedicated to bird window deaths and she is very passionate about it.  I'm going to put a link to this site if I can find it again, because it always impresses me when someone loves something so much that they are willing to get out there and fight for that cause, even if others think it is silly or they don't think they have time for it.

Bird window deaths touch my heart as well, because I have encountered avians in peril from windows a few times.  One day last year, while delivering mail to an apartment complex I saw a beautiful White-crowned Sparrow that had crashed against a laundry room window and died.  The bird was still in pristine condition, almost as if it had just come from the taxidermist, so I know its demise had been very recent.  I had never seen one of these birds so closely and intimately and I had no idea how vivid and pure their colors really are.  It was a sad thing, indeed, that it took a death to instill in me a pure appreciation of this specie's beauty.

Another time while walking on a sidewalk next to an office building I stumbled upon two male Anna's hummingbirds locked in epic combat, an engagement that ended when one of them crashed into the building's window and fell immobile onto the sidewalk.  The victorious hummingbird was on the concrete next to it, breathing heavily and unable to move.  It was so exhausted I could have picked the winner up if I had chosen to, but I left nature alone.  When I went back around later both birds were gone, so I am hoping that the bird I assumed to be dead was merely stunned and was able to fly away.

Then while working security at a construction site I observed a Raven battling its own reflection in a window.  It was thrashing the glass so lustily that it actually drew blood and left feathers scattered beneath the pane.  I shooed the bird off and covered the offensive window with a piece of plywood before the Raven could do any more damage to itself.

These examples demonstrate that birds and windows don't mix.  Their avian minds cannot grasp the concept of a reflection, so they will fly into the spotless mirror panes of a tall building because they think the blue sky reflection is the actual blue sky, or they will fly into a laundry room window because they think the reflection of trees they see there are actual trees.

Meanwhile, a lot of birders, myself included, fail to take these avian deaths seriously because we are too busy flooding the Internet with bird pictures or madly checking off more birds than the other guy in big day birding competitions.  We use the birds for our own pleasure, and we spend millions of dollars globetrotting off to Indonesia to see how many of the 39 species of Birds of Paradise we can cross off the old list.  Meanwhile, how much are we giving to bird conservation efforts, and how much are we doing to prevent birds from flying into our laundry room windows?

I think it is time for all of us to give something back to the birds.  In addition to paycheck deductions, I am willing to give back 50% of what I get off this blog to bird conservation, including the fight against window deaths.  At present this is half of 23 cents, which means your continued visits to my site and your support of my sponsors will help.  So lift you head up from that silly list for a moment and look in the mirror to find a guy or gal who can help.  Don't beat yourself silly against that mirror thinking you have an intruder in the house; no need to go to that length of solidarity to show your support for the fight against avian window crashes.




This is the link to Becky's birds and windows blog.

The picture above is a crappy cell phone picture of a Mockingbird that belongs to me.  It is a bad picture, I will admit, but the barbed wire the bird is perched upon gives it a sinister, prison-like feel.  I did not take this from my jail cell window, however.  At present, both myself and the Mockingbird have still not been incarcerated.  

Swirling Swallows Soar in SoCal Skies

By Mel Carriere

     I can't help it, Swallows just make me happy.  No matter how many years and cycles of nature pass me by on this planet I still feel a little giddy when the Cliff Swallows arrive here in San Diego.  Something about their extraordinary journey mystifies me.  I'm well aware that plenty of birds migrate, but the way that the Cliff Swallows do it in big bunches and on such a precise schedule is one of the miracles of nature, to me.

It could be that this normally precise schedule was just a little off, or it could be that I just wasn't paying attention, but it seems like they got here a little late this spring.  The truth is that I had almost forgotten about them until last Wednesday, when I finally saw a large swirling mass of Swallows above the High School on my mail route, where it seems like they had locked in to a very fruitful bug source for aerial dining.

One reason why I might have missed the arrival of the Cliff Swallows is because they are no longer nesting on my neighbor's house, and seem to have eschewed residence in my neighborhood completely. I think this might be because many people consider them a pest and they find their mud nests hanging beneath the eaves of their tidy homes to be an eyesore.

The popular online bird fact mills appear to be of the opinion that Cliff Swallows like to nest in large colonies, and although this is certainly true I know they don't mind nesting in small scale groups where they can.  As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, for several years the Swallows nested on the North side of my neighbor's house, under an eave that provided very ample shade.  This locale turned into an annual spring maternity ward consisting of only three or four nests; a tiny but fruitful outpost.  The former residents of this home were very zealous of protecting their bird hatchery, but when the house was unfortunately sold a few years ago the new owners knocked down the nests and the Swallows don't even try to come back now.  As they say, "there goes the neighborhood," for man and Swallows alike.  Unlike the Swallows, the new humans have not been good neighbors, and not only from an ornithological perspective.  But I won't bore and distract you with bad human behavior in this particular venue.

When I was observing the swirling Swallows in their large flying mass last Wednesday I noticed that they seemed to be flying in formation, something that I have not observed with these birds before.  Several dozen Swallows actually seemed to have joined together to create a large circular shaped vortex, almost as if they were herding the insects into a concentrated group for easier munching.

I was watching a television show called Planet Earth that showed dolphins exhibiting this same herding behavior - not with bugs, of course, but with schools of fish beneath the ocean surface.  Could it be possible that the bird brains of the Cliff Swallows are capable of similar complex cooperative hunting behaviors such as this?  I for one do not doubt it.

Just my pet hypothesis.  It's up to real scientists to prove or disprove this, if they choose.  Meanwhile, a brief glance at the Wikipedia page, from where I stole the above picture, provided a new fact  for me that the Cliff Swallows have also eschewed colonizing the famous San Juan Capistrano Mission, where their clockwork March 19th return was the stuff of legends.  But now it appears that the Swallows have taken up nesting at a nearby country club, proving that these birds have very discerning tastes in their choice of nurseries, and now when they are not busy chewing bugs  they are busy eschewing a lot of things; having also apparently eschewed organized religion in favor of a more secular, worldly, jet-set style of existence.

"Petrochelidon pyrrhonota -flight -Palo Alto Baylands-8" by Don DeBold - originally posted to Flickr as Cliff Swallow in flight. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Petrochelidon_pyrrhonota_-flight_-Palo_Alto_Baylands-8.jpg#/media/File:Petrochelidon_pyrrhonota_-flight_-Palo_Alto_Baylands-8.jpg

Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.

Mockingbirds are Singing, but not in My Neighborhood

By Mel Carriere

All around us here in Southern California the signs of spring are in the air, but since we really didn't have much of a winter there is not a significant difference, except for the sun riding a bit higher in the sky.  As I walk the streets of my postal route I try to keep my eyes on the mail but I also keep my eyes and ears tuned to the re-energized  avian activity that comes with the changing of the seasons.  With sadness I take note of the urgent calls of the White Crowned Sparrows as their singing intensifies, meaning that they are probably rounding their friends up for the long flight back north.  In a few days I will hear them no longer.

It is also with a degree of sadness that I hearken to the tune of Mimus polyglottos, best known as The Northern Mockingbird, and I use the word sadness because this persistent, rambling, consistently inconsistent song seems to be heard everywhere these days except in my own neighborhood, where it has been missing for quite a few years now.  Some people wish those damn Mockingbirds would just shut up, especially when at the height of their horniness they sing long into the night, but to me it is a soothing, reassuring sound, indicating that all is well in the in the little ornithological habitat bubble that I live in.

When I first moved into my home in the late spring of 1999 Mockingbirds were very common.  I have an Audubon bird clock in my garage that bellows out a different bird song on the hour, and I remember when, about 15 years ago, a pair of Mockingbirds stopped in a tree across the street to listen to it attentively, perhaps considering whether to add these unknown melodies to their repertoire.

It was also around that time when my wife and I, peeking from our upstairs window, thrilled to the sight of a Mother Mockingbird (could have been a Father, how could I know since they are not sexually dimorphic) feeding its recently hatched fledgling upon our lawn.  These were but a few of the voyeuristic glimpses we have enjoyed into the secret avian world that is available all around us, every day, true life episodes that very few people take advantage of; to the detriment of their own edification and enlightenment.

Perhaps this is relevant, perhaps this is not, but one day many years ago some boys with BB guns moved into a house a few doors to the north, and began the systematic process of shooting down just about everything with feathers in the neighborhood.  For a few months we didn't hear any bird songs at all, but eventually these destructive hominid pests moved away and the birds repopulated.  Repopulated, that is, except for the Mockingbirds, whose absence from the neighborhood's avian chorus that brightens our evenings and mornings is quite deafening; especially when it seems that everywhere else it is business as usual with the Mockers.

I don't know if I can blame the BB gun death squad entirely for the Mockingbird Holocaust that occurred on my block; there could be other ecological factors involved that I have missed.  I also understand that Mockingbird populations are cyclical and some years you just see more than others. But taking these other factors into account, I can also say with a bit of certainty that the Mockingbird's habit of perching conspicuously on a high, open place while singing probably makes it an easy target for marauding boys with BB guns.

February used to be the time when the Mockingbirds started singing on our block.  February passed in silence, and now March has practically swept by us also without a peep from this branch of the Mimidae.  It appears that, with April just around the corner, it is going to be yet another "silent spring" where the Mimus polyglottos community is concerned.


Image is from:  "Mimus polyglottos1" by Ryan Hagerty - This image originates from the National Digital Library of the United States Fish and Wildlife ServiceThis tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.See Category:Images from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mimus_polyglottos1.jpg#/media/File:Mimus_polyglottos1.jpg


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My Life List #2 - Common Loon

By Mel Carriere

I have decided that when I lack for inspiration for this blog, as I am now, I will simply go back through my life list and pull a bird from it to write about.  This should give me 200 plus topics to pull from in emergencies, so it should serve as a reliable fallback source whenever Mother Nature is hiding her winged marvels from me for whatever cruel, capricious reason.

I don't know how you do your listing, and I'm not at all sure I'm doing mine correctly, but my life list is actually a copy of the American Ornithologists Union (AOU) checklist, which I converted into an Excel spreadsheet that I keep stored on my computer.

I decided to start blogging my list in taxonomic order, but I may change this and jump around randomly from time to time, particularly because when I get to a group like the dabbling ducks or the shorebirds or the gulls that have quite a few entries on the list you may get weary reading about the same locations or circumstances that I first observed these species in, because most of them probably came from the same small group of places.

If you are an observant person, and I expect you are because you engage in a hobby where careful observation is what it is all about, you have probably already asked yourself why this first blog in a series that I just said was going to begin in taxonomic order actually started with the #2 bird on the list.  My answer is that I already wrote about my initial encounter with bird #1, the Pacific Loon, just a couple of weeks ago.  I'll put a link to this article at the end of this one, in case you are interested.

Anyhow, my initial encounter with Gavia immer, and boy was it ever a brief one, came on a combined whale watching slash pelagic birding expedition sponsored by the Audubon society that I went on very close to my birthday in February 2007.  My mother was in San Diego to help celebrate my big 43, so I thought this would be a fun family outing for everyone.  It really was satisfying for everybody except my oldest son, who had no sea legs and spent almost the entire tour below decks, lying on a bench in the cafeteria.  Truth was I should have taken some Dramamine myself as my mother suggested, but being an old salt of 6 years in the Navy I thought I could take anything the Pacific Ocean could throw at me.  As it turns out, however, the small boats toss about a lot more than the big warships do, and I did feel a bit queasy for a while.  The moral of this story is that you should always listen to Mom.

Everyone else in the family was fine because they took their Dramamine, including my youngest son, who was running about topside like a little monkey and would have been swinging from the rigging if they would have let him.  Other than that I won't go into too many details about this expedition because it contributed at least six or seven birds to the life list and I want to save some for later.

The encounter with The Common Loon was so quick that I would have missed it if I had been on my own, but as it turns out there were several highly qualified birders on the boat who pointed out the Loon just past the big 'L' curve in San Diego bay as we were passing the submarine base and making our way out to the end of Point Loma to cross the breakwater.

Luckily I was able to fix my binoculars on the Loon before it dove, and all I saw of it really was a very drab diver in winter plumage.  I did not have the pleasure of laying eyes upon the bejeweled back that was the inspiration of many a Native American legend, and I never heard the haunting call that lends a mysterious quality to Midwestern glacial lakes.

But with so many certified birders on the boat this Loon was a keeper, so I folded it up and tucked it away in my list before the choppy waves on the bay caused me to lose sight of it completely.  Particularly tricky were those long, protruding legs and feet, but I finally got the Loon to reel them in, stop squawking, and go into the list quietly.  And then we were on to the open water, where many a pelagic wonder awaited...


Read about bird #1, the Pacific Loon here


This stupendous shot of a Common Loon in breeding plumage is from:  "Gavia immer -Minocqua, Wisconsin, USA -swimming-8" by John Picken from Chicago, USA - LoonUploaded by snowmanradio. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gavia_immer_-Minocqua,_Wisconsin,_USA_-swimming-8.jpg#/media/File:Gavia_immer_-Minocqua,_Wisconsin,_USA_-swimming-8.jpg


Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.

Birds that I Missed - A Lamentation with a Poem at the End

By Mel Carriere

I didn't really start seriously paying attention to birds until 1999, when I was 35 years old, and by that time I had already missed dozens of great opportunities to lay eyes upon unique and beautiful avian life forms and then reduce them to satisfying little check marks on my life list.  Now I really don't have the resources to travel too much, so I often kick myself thinking back about the things I could have seen had I just taken my nose out of book for a little while and looked around me.

When I first joined the Navy in 1983 I was stationed in Northern Illinois and then the Virginia Beach area, so there is no telling how many birds of the Midwest and Eastern States I could have captured and locked up in my little Pokemon birding ball.  There were great unbroken stands of deciduous woods around the Damnek Naval Training Station at that time, and I tremble with regret when I think of the untapped avian marvels I left behind in these thick forests and surrounding swamps.

It seems like all of these stories are going to be from my Navy experience, because that was the only time that I traveled far and wide outside of the continental United States.  And it was the travelling itself that presented the greatest opportunity to observe birds that not many people, not even very serious birders, get many chances to see.  I went on three six month long Westpac cruises in the Navy covering thousands of miles of ocean, and any number of local operations where we spent days and weeks playing war games in the Pacific well out of sight from the shoreline of San Diego.  But at that time I didn't even know what a "pelagic" bird was and I definitely had never seen one.  Truth is I probably had seen thousands but they never registered in my mind.

I do recall seeing birds that would follow our ship across the Pacific on our long voyages, but I assumed they were just seagulls.  Hell, they looked like seagulls, and I since I didn't know anything about Tubenoses or convergent evolution at the time, that's just what they remained for me for a couple dozen years.  Retrieving this memory from the dusty scrap heap I recall that these "gulls" were rather grayish in color, so I assume they were Fulmars.  I didn't see another Fulmar until 2007, on a whale watching expedition that I had to pay for.

Back in those cheery good old days of the US Navy when we ran over whales and polluted the ocean without a second thought and without regret, we still dumped our trash and garbage "clear the stern," on a near daily basis.  I look back regretfully at the mass "seagull" fests that would gather at these free ocean smorgasbords.  Had I been on the lookout for pelagic species at the time I don't think there would have been a single Procellariiforme that would have been able to elude the dangling snare of my life list.

Perhaps my biggest birding regret comes from my two trips to Australia, where I was too busy drinking Emu lager and chasing birds of the human female persuasion to give a second thought to the feathered variety.  Now I see Facebook photos from Australian birders of parrots, parakeets, and little marvels called fairy wrens that have extraordinarily colored plumage, but what good do they do me?  I was literally on that boat for four years, travelling hither and yon to the four points of the compass, but I figuratively missed the boat completely when it came to birds.

There was one bird that I did manage to lock in my mental cage and bring back with me, and I still guard it jealousy and possessively, even though its raucous chattering sometimes keeps me up at night.  This was the Galah, a pink and gray Cockatoo that swarms across the beautiful green rolling hills of Western Australia in flocks of hundreds of birds.  I managed to capture this one bird, this one among hundreds of potential species that I thoughtlessly skipped, because my shipmates and I had rented a car and driven out into the countryside.  This is probably not a good idea when you are full of Emu lager and you have to drive on the wrong side of the road, and as could be expected at some point we had to pull over on a road in some beautiful farm country to respond to a call of nature.

As we looked on in complete awe, up above us on a wire several dozen, perhaps hundreds of Galahs had perched in voyeuristic fashion to observe the proceedings.  All of us having grown up in the US, where farm country birds are typically very drab, we were not at all accustomed to these brilliantly pink birds gathered in audience above us.  I think this spectacle of three or four Yanks peeing in the dirt for the amusement of parrots made an indelible procession in our memories forever.

The Galahs in their thousands still mock me every time I go the bathroom, seeming to say "You were there and you could have seen a lot of better birds than us!  What the hell were you thinking?"

Therefore, in an attempt to put the Galah ghosts to rest I have composed a little poem.  It contains subtle references to urination, so keep the kids out of the room:


Birds that I missed
Boy am I pissed
Tubenoses at sea
Were ignored by me
Australian wonders
Were birdwatching blunders
The Galahs conspire
To mock me from a wire

Birds that I missed
I'll forever insist
With your nose in a book
You should turn up and look
Or you'll get no surprise
From winged joys in the skies
And forever regret
The checkmarks you don't get


This photo of scores of mocking Galahs on a wire taken from the Graeme Chapman collection.  Visit his extraordinary Website here

Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.