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:



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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.







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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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