On My Nightstand: National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America, 6th Edition

My first-ever birding guide was the National Geographic guide. Well, it technically wasn’t mine – I “borrowed” it from my (non-birding but inquisitive) parents when I first took an interest in identifying birds several years ago.

At the time, (around 2003), I had no idea how dynamic and fast-changing birding knowledge was, and I figured the dog-eared book that my parents had picked up on a whim many years earlier – which I now realize was the inaugural edition of the National Geographic guide from 1983 – was, like my high school algebra texts, a source of immutable truths. Little did I know that everything from the genetic relationships among birds to their common names to their ranges and populations was in constant flux.  I was puzzled as to why people called those gorgeous white raptors in our area “White-tailed Kites” when the guide said clearly that they were “Black-shouldered Kites.” 

I still have that guide, along with many other, newer ones – Kaufman, Sibley, Crossley, and several other, more specialized guides.  So when I was given the opportunity to check out the newest update of the National Geographic guide, I couldn’t resist comparing it to the original – the book that helped launch my life as a birder.

Both the similarities and differences between the original and latest update are striking: the same signature Bald Eagle on the cover, quite a few of the same illustrations, and even same descriptions. Both list the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker as “probably extinct,” but for strikingly different reasons. (The description of its range and distribution in the new guide will be heartbreaking to anyone who rejoiced at its putative rediscovery a few years back.) But new illustrations, very much in the same style as the older ones, also abound, as well as significantly expanded or revised descriptions of certain birds. (The description of White-crowned Sparrows in the 6^th edition, for instance, goes into helpful detail about their various subspecies, their songs, and distribution, which the original, shorter description lacked.)

Another useful detail the guide includes is an index of subspecies range maps – this can be a great benefit to those who spend a lot of time birding on the road.

More striking to me was the extremely liberal definition of “birds of North America” used in the book. Flipping through it, one sees dozens of accidental and even extinct species not found in other North American field guides.  I personally appreciated these graphic reminders that North America (or parts of it, at least) is closely linked, biologically and geographically, to the far corners of Asia and Northern Europe, and for any enthusiastic birder, this feature will be a tantalizing reminder that any trip to the field can bring unexpected surprises. But for beginners or others looking for a straight-ahead quick reference to birds one is likely to encounter on a typical trip, this expanded inventory could be a needless distraction. 

A characteristic feature of any field guide is the front matter – all the stuff the guide presents before actually getting to the birds themselves. Kaufman’s useful pocket guide, for instance, has a friendly, simple preface that captures a “birding for everyone” vibe, and the first words in the preface of Crossley’s graphically rich guide are “I don’t like text,” which tells you everything you need to know about the orientation of the rest of the book. The National Geographic guide strikes an accessible, yet serious tone in its front matter: the brief descriptions of bird classification, ranges, and field marks are written to be understandable to beginners, but include enough information (such as a two-page illustrated spread of labeled head, wing, and body feather tracts) to be a useful reference for more experienced birders as well.

 Any review of a field guide is supposed to end up with the answer to the question “so, how does this rank among the other guides for the same area?” I really hate answering this question because I don’t have a single favorite North American field guide – like many birders, I like having an assortment of them for different purposes: Kaufman to keep in my back pocket for quick reference, Sibley to keep in my car for more comprehensive ID checks, and Crossley to keep at home to study before and after looking for a new bird. Also, I often find myself needing more than one set of illustrations to ID a bird definitively, especially if it’s molting or in some transitional plumage. The new National Geographic guide, for me, falls into the “keep in the car” category – a great combination of quick reference and comprehensive description that will be a useful addition to my arsenal of references.

How the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak Got His Chest

Once upon a time, long before you or I were born, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak wasn’t called that. Back then, Giorsbeaks’ chests were snowy white. And Grosbeaks were very proud of their looks.

At that time, there was one particular Grosbeak who loved two things: (1) berries and (2) himself. All the other birds said his egotistic, gluttonous ways would eventually come back to bite him in the vent.

One October day, this Grosbeak was feeling both unusually hungry and unusually proud of himself. He had planned his southward journey to go through the verdant land now known as Florida, which he knew was filled with berries in October – bright red magnolia berries, fat clusters of tiny, lavender-colored beauty berries, and big, juicy purple pokeberries. The very thought of them made him swoon, and he was very pleased with his itinerary.

He was pleased with himself for another reason, too: while the other Grosbeaks changed into modest brown plumage for their trip, he had decided to keep most of his snappy black-and-white spring feathers.

“You’re being an idiot,” the other Grosbeaks said. “That outfit’s too worn to make it all the way down south."

“What’s the point?” a disapproving Magnolia Warbler scolded. “Seriously. You’re going to be too busy eating and flying to check out any ladies with that getup of yours, and they'll be too busy to notice you.”

The Grosbeak didn’t listen. He know they were only saying that stuff because they were jealous.

That October day in Florida, things started even better than he expected. Almost immediately, he spotted shiny red clusters of ripe berries. Then he did what any discerning epicure would do when presented with nature’s bounty at its finest: he stuffed his face.

OMG those berries were amazing. Best of all, he hardly needed to move to gobble down one cluster after another, each more succulent than the next. Reddish juice dribbled down his snowy white breast, of which he was very proud, but he was too hungry to care.

“Look at you! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” It was some Grosbeak he didn’t know, who was dressed in an old man’s brown-and-beige fall outfit. “Show a little class. Look at all that crap you’re dripping on yourself!”

“Yaah pal? Well check it out, I’VE got this bush full of berries and you don’t.”

“That’s because I’ve already had my share. And look at me, I managed to keep myself clean. Mark my words, kid, no gal’s gonna want to nest with a slob like you.”

Whatever, Gramps, the Grosbeak thought. He kept eating. When he was too full to move, he decided to preen himself – not because he cared what the old guy thought but because he wasn’t sleepy or hungry and couldn’t think of anything else to do. Yeah, and it had been several hours since he’d cleaned himself. Okay, maybe more than that.

This was weird. No matter what he tried, the juice stains just wouldn’t come out. -- they were stuck to him like the black on his wings.

He panicked. He began to peck harder at his chest. Nothing. Still bright red, like a cowboy’s bandanna hanging in front of his breast. His beautifully pristine white breast was ruined, and it was all his own fault.

In South America, he made a point of hanging with birds who didn’t know him. But when it was time to go back north again, he know he’d have to face the music. Nesting season was approaching – how would he explain this to the girls?

The flight back to North America was the most depressing trip of his life. The breeding grounds were a playground of happy activity when he arrived. He saw a lot of familiar birds, but didn’t want to face any of them.

“Hey there!” It was the prettiest, fattest female Grosbeak he had ever seen. Great, she’s just here’s to taunt me, he thought.

“Did you just get here?” She was still talking to him,. “Mm, look at you! Pokeberries?” She was staring at his chest, cocking her head. “I like a man with a good appetite.” She hopped towards him. Startled, he hopped backwards.

“What’s the matter? Have you already got a mate?”

“N-no! I –“

“Well, if you don’t have anyone lined up, I’m here – unless you’d prefer me to spend the summer with him.” She turned her head towards a loudly singing voice nearby. “But I kind of like your looks.”

His heart felt as though it would burst. “I do, too,” he said.

Soon, word got out among the male Grosbeaks that the dork with the juice stuck on his chest had scored the hottest female Grosbeak in North America. Grateful and chastened, our Grosbeak built his pretty mate the biggest, nicest nest in the area. The other females eyed that nest and the happy couple from a distance, then gazed at their own dumpy nests and plain black-and-white mates and sighed. No, they’d say to their mates. Nothing’s wrong! What makes you think something’s wrong?

Miraculously, the guys got the hint. The next spring, when they returned to the nesting grounds, all the men were sporting handsome red bibs. And with all the time saved from not having to preen their breasts so much, they had the time and energy to build bigger nests and take better care of their chicks than ever before.

And that’s how the Rose-breasted Grosbeak got its chest.

Summer Flies

Where has the time gone?

I took a break from blogging (about birds, anyhow) with the intention of focusing on my paid writing assignments. The summer doldrums seemed like a good excuse. What's the point in writing about birds when there are no birds of note worthy of writing about?

But there were. Weirdly, just after our nearly warbler-less spring migration ended, all sorts of interesting things somehow ended up passing through Gainesville and surrounding areas. Late in May, a sighting of a white-morph Great Blue Heron (a.k.a. Great White Heron) brought birders from all around to Camps Canal, a tiny tributary south of Paynes Prairie State Park. When Glenn and I drove down to see it, we found it waiting for us in the shallows of the canal, right near where we parked.

Nearby was an immature Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, a bird unusual in our area.


A fairly new tradition among Gainesville-area birders, which has just started to spread to other areas, is the June Challenge. This is a friendly competition to see who can get out and bag the most birds in our county (Alachua County) during the month of June. It was designed as a fun way to keep birders motivated even during the slowest, hottest, most mosquito-plagued time of year. I wasn't feeling terribly ambitious this year (did I mention it was REALLY hot out? And mosquitos are everywhere?) so I sat it out. Officially, at least: I did go out and look for goodies that other, braver birders had previously discovered. The best thing about the June Challenge is that it is an oddly non-competitive competition: anyone who sees something interesting is supposed to report it so others can find it too. Among the interesting things discovered were a Common Loon who somehow ended up in a fountain at a busy intersection in the middle of town:

Towards the end of June, some local birders discovered a spot on the shore of Orange Lake filled with shorebirds, including numerous Roseate Spoonbills, which are locally uncommon. Even though this little point on the shore is in the painfully cute town of Macintosh, in Marion County, the lake itself is considered part of Alachua County, so birds found within are fair game for Gainesville's June Challenge. This made me wonder if one could count birds on the shore of the lake for the Alachua County June Challenge, which in turn made me glad I wasn't doing the challenge officially!

Orange Lake has proven to be a fun spot, and Glenn and I have returned several times since. This week, migrating shorebirds have started showing up there, including several Stilt Sandpipers (a life bird for me).

This week reports of southward-bound warblers have started trickling in, and this morning, I saw some: a couple of American Redstarts, a Black-and-white Warbler, and a few Prairie Warblers.

Meanwhile, the summer class I'm teaching is about to end, and students are already trickling back (however reluctantly) for fall semester--the other, bigger fall migration in Gainesville.

Where has the summer gone?

Birding at the End of the World

On Saturday, the world was going to end and the righteous among us were to ascend bodily to Heaven. Since we figured we wouldn't be going, we decided to try birding at Cedar Key instead.

It's a good thing we did, too: the birding was great. Not amazing fallout day great, but quite good for a day at the tail end of an unusually slow spring migration.

We weren't expecting much. But we did know of a spot where a good sighting was almost guaranteed: the Cedar Key Scrub Preserve, where we found three Florida Scrub-Jays in the exact same place where we saw them (or their cohorts) on our last few visits.

It would be more precise to say the Scrub-Jays found us. "Isn't that a Scrub-Jay?" our friend Elizabeth asked, pointing at a backlit bird on top of a tree about 50 feet away. Before we could answer, the bird swooped down--and landed on a bush right by the trail! His friends soon followed. Yup, it was a Scrub-Jay!

We spent about half an hour enjoying their company (and not seeing much else) before taking off to Shell Mound, part of the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge. I brought my spotting scope in hope of getting some good shorebirds, but we only saw the usual suspects: Willets, Semipalmated Plovers, and Ruddy Turnstones.

Once we got to Cedar Key proper, we noticed a Kingbird working the trees and utility poles right by the lot where we parked. I figured it was just an Eastern Kingbird -- I haven't seen one in a while and even "easy" flycatchers throw me -- but I never remembered them having such large bills:

Elizabeth pulled out her ever-present Sibley guide and I was happy to realize I was wrong: it was a Gray Kingbird, a bird that almost never appears in Gainesville, but does show up occasionally at Cedar Key. Even better, we soon found, there were TWO of them.

We saw both of them dash repeatedly in and out of a tree in the parking lot, which led to another discovery: they weren't only hanging out there, they were NESTING there! It was a life bird for Glenn, and a very cooperative one at that.

While in the parking lot, we ran into a birder who said he had seen a family of Great Horned Owls roosting in the cemetery a few weeks earlier. After a break for (a very tasty) lunch, we headed there and started looking into the trees.

No owls. But Elizabeth spotted a late Blackpoll Warbler, and we watched flocks of fledgling Northern Cardinals chasing their parents around the headstones, begging for food. We stood there and considered the striking juxtaposition between those energetic new little lives and the silence of the long-gone ones memorialized just underfoot.

Our best sighting came near the end of our day. While on the boardwalk overlooking the water by the cemetery, we saw a large vulture fly by. Only it wasn't a vulture: it was flying fast over the water, rising higher into the air until it disappeared over the cemetery. Its flight and wing shape and color were wrong for a vulture, it had the head and beak of a hawk, but it wasn't one of our usual suspects--what was it?

Glenn managed to get off a quick documentary shot:

Elizabeth pulled out her Sibley guide again, and then we had an answer: the closest thing our bird resembled in the book was a dark-morph Short-tailed Hawk -- an uncommon bird for this area. Back home, we e-mailed the picture to some expert local birders who confirmed our guess and told us that a pair of them had been nesting nearby at Shell Mound. Our third great hyper-local bird of the day.

It was too good a day for the world to end.

Eat Like a Bird!

(Cross-posted at my cooking blog. Because I'm too lazy to put up two separate posts.)

This Northern Parula flew 1,000 miles or more across the Gulf of Mexico – without stopping, eating, or sleeping – before landing in Florida during spring migration. This grueling flight took him somewhere between 18 and 25 hours.

Before setting off on this flight, he spent some serious time fueling up. In the days leading up to his trip, he piled on the calories, ballooning from a lithe 1 ounce or less to a staggeringly obese 2 ounces – virtually doubling in weight. Wired graphically described this phenomenon of avian gluttony as “the equivalent of having a hamburger for lunch on Monday, and 100 hamburgers for lunch on Friday.”

When Mammy told Scarlett O’Hara to eat like a bird, this probably wasn’t what she had in mind.

Those of us who enjoy watching birds also pick up strange eating habits during migration. These usually involve consuming large quantities of coffee before sunrise, feeding from ziplock bags filled with trail mix, and toting energy bars bent and flattened from hours in our back packets. Like our avian quarry, birders focus on high-protein, high-energy natural food sources when on the road. Birder snacks of choice usually involve nuts, seeds, whole grains, and/or fruit, often scented with hints of bug spray, sunscreen, and car exhaust. On the other hand, migrating songbirds – even some that typically eat seed – favor the high-calorie goodness of insects and their larvae, food sources most birders tend to avoid.

Still, our eating habits can be frighteningly similar. When shopping for bird seed for my backyard feeders recently, I saw a shiny little bowl filled with freshly shelled Brazil nuts, peanuts, sunflower seeds and unusually fat raisins. I was about to help myself to few bites when I realized it was sample of one of the store’s specialty birdseed mixes.

And it looked better by magnitudes than most of the cheap-ass trail mix I’ve lugged around on birding trips. The woodpeckers around here eat better than I do.

My husband and I joke that someday, we’ll have to buy a bag of that super-fancy fruit-nut mix, pour some into a pretty bowl, and feed it to our birder buddies. My prediction is that they’ll think it looks familiar, but assume it’s that pricey brand of organic snack mix they never quite felt like splurging on.

And since it’s near the end of another spring migration season and my Audubon chapter is holding its annual end-of-the-birding-year potluck soon, the occasion for our little experiment is now upon us! MWAAHAHA!

Seriously, I’m not going to do it. But I will do something very much like it. As a tribute to those hard-working birds and my friends who love them, I devised a munchable treat with the same base ingredients as that fancy bird mix – peanuts, raisins, sunflower seeds, and bigger, blingier nuts of some kind. And millet, because almost all birdseed mixes contain copious amounts of it. But being a good citizen, I resisted the urge to take these from a 25-pound bag with NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION printed on it.

Because just plain old nuts and raisins mixed together seem kind of abstemious, particularly for a festive occasion, I spiced them them up and converted them into a sweet-salty-tangy-spicy cocktail nibble. I’ve always been addicted to Indian snack mixes – exhuberently spicy blends of fried grains, nuts, dried fruit, and spices – and I’ve modeled the seasoning in my mix after these. The recipe on which I base my spice mix comes from Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking.

The optional chile in my souped-up birdseed mix not only makes me happy (since I love hot stuff) but evokes two rituals familiar to birders. Serious backyard birders know that an effective technique for keeping squirrels off suet and other bird feeder food is to spike it with hot pepper, since squirrels can’t tolerate the taste of it. Birds, on the other hand, can’t taste chiles at all. This evolutionary adaptation both allows the birds an additional food source and enables them to propagate chile plants, whose seeds pass undamaged through their digestive systems: a win-win for both the eater and the eaten.

Spicy, salty, snacky food, of course, also goes beautifully with beer. And for some sociological reason I’ve yet to figure out, serious birders are very often passionate hopheads as well. On the last fall migration count I did, two of the guys on my team brought a nice assortment of microbrews to go with their sack lunches. One of my favorite birding blogs occasionally features knowledgeably written reviews of beers that happen to have birds on their labels. The birds, I suspect, are just a happy excuse to enjoy another beer.

And so is my “birdseed.” Enjoy!



****************

Spiced People Seed

Note: Jaffrey’s recipe – which uses a different assortment of grains and nuts than I chose to use – calls for raw nuts and grains, all to be separately deep-fried and carefully drained. She assures readers the end result will not be greasy and she’s probably right (she usually is where Indian cooking is concerned) – but if you don’t need double in weight for an upcoming trip or don't want to mess up your kitchen, oven-roasting the nuts or using already-roasted ones will work just fine, at least for the choice of nuts and grains I have chosen.

Puffed millet is available from health-food stores. Amchoor, a tangy powder made from dried green mango, is available at Indian markets.


3 whole cloves
a 3/4-inch piece from a cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
neutrally flavored oil (such as canola) as needed for frying
2/3 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts (or raw peanuts, deep-fried and drained)
2/3 cup roasted, unsalted cashews (or raw cashews, deep-fried and drained)
1/3 cup shelled, roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds (or raw seeds, deep-fried and drained)
1/3 cup shelled, roasted, unsalted pumpkin seeds (or raw seeds, deep-fried and drained)
4 tablespoons raisins, briefly deep-fried until puffy and drained.
3 cups puffed (NOT raw) millet
2 tablespoons canola or other neutrally flavored oil
½ tablespoon whole black mustard seeds
3 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon or more ground cayenne, or to taste (optional)
1-1/4 teaspoons salt
2-1/2 teaspoons sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons ground amchoor

1. Grind the cloves, cinnamon stick, and peppercorns together in a mortar and pestle until powdery; set aside.

2. Combine the nuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, millet, and raisins in a large bowl; set aside.

3. Heat a small saucepan over medium heat and add the 2 tablespoons oil. When hot, add the mustard seeds.

4. When the mustard seeds have stopped sizzling and popping, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sesame seeds, turmeric, and cayenne.

5. Pour the fried seeds, spices and oil over the millet, nut, and raisin mixture. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until the seasonings are evenly distributed.

6. Cool the mixture, then store it in an airtight container.

The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

Oooh! Cute!

Spring migration has been a bust. My little corner of Florida has been blessed with calm, sunny weather for the past month, which is great for people and birds -- but not for people who want to look at birds. As one of my more knowledgeable birding pals told me, migrating birds want to get to their breeding grounds fast, and if the weather is clear, they're not going to stop. And in my area, not that many migrating birds have seen a need to stop.

Last week, Glenn and I went on Alachua Audubon's annual pilgrimage to Fort DeSoto, and scored a couple of Cape May, Black-throated Blue, and Blackpoll Warblers -- but no other migrants. Last night, a powerful thunderstorm hit Gainesville, and as I lay in bed watching the lightning flash across the sky, I wondered how many migrants might have chosen to spend the night in town rather than fly through the storm.

The answer: not many. A quick early-morning trip to Bolen Bluff revealed a single migrant warbler -- a male American Redstart -- and dozens and dozens of squirrels. Oh boy.

Still, the transition from winter to spring still shows itself in the changing inventory of birds. Local summer breeders such as Summer Tanagers and Blue Grosbeaks have started showing up, and rumor has it the Purple Gallinules have arrived on Paynes Prairie, just in time for breeding season. I haven't seen one locally yet this season, but on a trip south about a month ago, we got to see a particularly pretty one at the Orlando Wetlands, where they occur year round:

Luckily, when there's nothing else to look at during the hot season, there are always babies. Like the one above. He/she was one of four we saw peeping and sort-of walking in the underbrush at Lettuce Lake Park, in Tampa. Holy cow. Cutest. Thing. Ever. Times four.

All of us who watched the little family were enthralled. We figured the babies must be really young, given there were still so many of them (and there were a large number of hungry alligators nearby). We marvelled at how different they looked from their parents. The little puffballs made me wonder if there's some kind of universal template for all precocial chicks, and at some point in their fuzzy little lives a program goes off to turn the little things into chickens, or Mallards, or whatever.

I certainly wouldn't have been able to tell whose babies these were had the parents not been nearby: we heard them calling loudly and flying low over the lake all afternoon. One was always with the babies, never more than a foot or two away.

It still amazes me that in only a matter of months, those tiny little balls of fluff will turn into this:

Not just any old babies, but Limpkin babies -- a vulnerable Florida specialty. To see four of them being so well cared for was just as good as seeing some random migrant just passing through.

On My Night Stand: The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds

Cedar Waxwings from The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds.

Shortly after we first started birding, my husband and I saw an unusual hummingbird. It was mostly green and grayish underneath, like an immature Anna's Hummingbird (an expected and common species in southern California, where we lived at the time.) But unlike an Anna's, this bird had a distinctive golden crown, utterly unmistakable.

We didn't have a field guide with us, so we just stared at it for a few minutes, took several photos, then went home to figure out what its story was. And we drew a blank.

No hummingbird in either or our guides looked anything like our bird. There was an illustration of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird in one of them that showed some yellowish stuff on its head, but the build seemed wrong. Flummoxed, I posted the photo and a query on the Orange County Birding listserv. And the verdict was unanimous:

It was an immature Anna's Hummingbird. With pollen on its head.

Duh. It was, after all, feeding in a goldenrod bush, clearly visible in the photo.

The moral here is that birds don't always look like the canonical illustrations in field guides. This drove me nuts when I first started birding. (Sometimes, it still does.) Birds have an annoying tendency to move around, hold themselves in weird positions, or transition s-l-o-w-l-y from one plumage to another. They're no more likely to stand around all day in full profile view wearing canonical secondary plumage than are female homo sapiens to look like cover models in Vogue.

But for the past year or so, word was out that a new guide would change that. A few weeks back, I got my very own review copy of The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds in the mail and eagerly tore into it. Whoa.

Many, many far more knowledgeable birders than I have already reviewed Crossley's book, so I'll keep my comments fairly brief. As most have noted, Crossley deserves major props for originality--his is a bird ID guide that looks like no other. While most guides contain an illustration or two of each species, always in that nice full profile view or a top-down flight shot, Crossley dedicates a full page montage of half a dozen or more photographed birds (all from his own photos), each in a different position and plumage, to all but the rarest species.

If his plate of Cedar Waxwings doesn't give you a pretty good grip on what the bird can look like, both close up and at a distance, in flight and standing still, nothing will.

I field-tested the book once. (More precisely, I brought it with me in the trunk of my car to show off to a friend during a recent sparrow-hunting trip to La Chua--the book is way too large and heavy to be carried into the field.) Shortly past the trailhead, we saw a flock of sparrows we were unsure about--Vespers, perhaps, or maybe something else? In a winter sparrow hunts, it's way too easy to turn any expected bird into some exotic rarity. And the individual birds that gave us the best views, weirdly, posed themselves directly facing us so all we could see were their faces and bellies--were Vespers supposed to be that pale underneath? I honestly couldn't recall from any of my other field guides.

So we went back to my car, flipped open the Crossley guide to the sparrows and started looking. Almost all the plates showed frontal as well as side views of the birds, which was enormously helpful. One shot showed a bird that looked exactly like the puffed-up frontal view of the bird we just saw--a Vesper. Mystery solved.

Helpful and beautiful as the book is, it's not one I'd recommend as a sole resource for a beginning birder, although I'd definitely recommend it as a supplement to more accessible works such as the Kaufman guide. Because the photos take up so much space, there's little room for explanatory text. The ages and sexes of birds are labeled on some, but not all, of the plates--in his introduction, Crossley says this is intentional, so the reader can figure it out on his or her own. Much of the concise but useful explanatory text under the plates, as other reviewers have noted, contains banding ID abbreviations of bird names. For instance, part of the description under "Harris's Sparrow" reads "song like WTSP at one pitch." Aren't most newbies self-conscious and confused enough without having to figure out what WTSP means? Even experienced birders can get thrown by these--a local master told me he once spent hours staring at his list from the previous day, trying to figure out what the hell kind of sparrow a ROSP is. (Hint: he was birding in Florida.)

Oddly, even the labels under the individual birds shown in the comparative size guide at the beginning of the book -- a very useful feature -- are reduced to four-letter codes, even through there's more than enough space under each photo to print out the full common name. I can just picture some poor novice flipping through this, saying, "Honey, you know that pretty duck we saw at Kanapaha Gardens yesterday? It's called a Wodu!"

So what good is this book? If I had to carry something in my back pocket for quick reference on a day in the field, I'm sticking with my Sibley or Kaufman guides. But if I'm chasing something new, I'll be sure to get a good look at it in Crossley before setting out. And I'll be sure to keep Crossley in the trunk--or close at hand when I get home--for further study.

Backyard Birds (A GBBC Retrospective)

I didn't do the Great Backyard Bird Count this year for the simple reason that I spaced out and forgot it was taking place. But I've been thinking a lot about my backyard birds and the pleasure they give me. I work at home, and as I type away at my laptop, I can look out my window at just about any time and see a Northern Cardinal or even a Baltimore Oriole flitting around my feeders. What's not to like?

But the best thing about backyard birding is the sense of place it gives me. The inventory of birds in my yard reminds me of where I am in time and space, and connects me to the physical world in an intimate and tangible way. When I see Yellow-throated Warblers on my feeder in January, I am reminded that I am now in Florida, not back in California, nor anywhere else in the eastern U.S. The birds tell me this is home now. This is where I am, and where I have to make all the new connections in my life.

The birds tell me not only where I am now, but where I've been. As a thought experiment, I've compiled cumulative bird lists for the last few places I've called home, and I'm giving them below. The differences among them are stunning.

My Current Backyard Bird List (Gainesville, Florida)

Birds seen or heard in my back yard, or seen or heard flying overhead:
Northern Cardinal
Tufted Titmouse
Carolina Chickadee
Carolina Wren
House Finch
American Goldfinch
Indigo Bunting
American Crow
Fish Crow
Boat-tailed Grackle
Baltimore Oriole
Pine Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Palm Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)
Blue Jay
American Robin
Cedar Waxwing
Red-shouldered Hawk
Barred Owl
Mississippi Kite
Swallow-tailed Kite
Downy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Mourning Dove
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Eastern Phoebe
Brown-headed Cowbird
strange greenish thing that may or may not have been a female Painted Bunting

Bonus birds: Seen or heard within 100 yards of home:
Sandhill Crane
Whooping Crane (no, really!)
White Ibis
Cattle Egret
Killdeer
Northern Shrike
Northern Mockingbird
Summer Tanager
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Pileated Woodpecker
Northern Flicker

Where I hang out on vacation: Bird list for my parents' place in Los Angeles:

Birds seen or heard in or flying over their back yard:
Mourning Dove
California Quail
House Finch
Lesser Goldfinch
Anna's Hummingbird
Rufous/Allen's Hummingbird
California Towhee
Spotted Towhee
White-crowned Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
California Thrasher
Western Scrub-Jay
American Crow
American Raven
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Great Horned Owl
Hooded Oriole
Bullock's Oriole
Mountain Chickadee
Greater Roadrunner
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon's)
House Wren
Bewick's Wren
Bushtit
Black Phoebe

Bonus Bird: Seen or heard within 100 yards of the house:
Zone-tailed Hawk (seen by my husband)

Bird list for my last home: Costa Mesa, California:

Birds seen in the public areas immediately adjacent to our apartment, or seen flying overhead:
Mallard (wild)
Mallard (domestic)
Great Blue Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron
Black Phoebe
Mourning Dove
American Crow
Townsend's Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon's)
House Finch
Black-headed Grosbeak
Western Tanager
Tree Swallow
Great Horned Owl
Red-tailed Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Anna's Hummingbird

Bonus Birds (seen or heard within 100 yards of the apartment complex):
American Wigeon
Double-crested Cormorant
Downy Woodpecker
House Sparrow
Bushtit
Northern Mockingbird
Rock Pigeon

What's in your back yard?

Good Birds, Near and Far

Usually, when I don't post for a while, it's because I'm either too busy or haven't seen any birds worth writing about. But lately, I've found myself in a novel predicament: I've been too busy to blog but have seen TONS of good stuff -- way more than than can be done justice in a single post.

But some sightings are too fun not to share. So here is an abbreviated highlight reel of my last few weeks of birding.

1. Do You Want To Get Bitten by an Endangered Bird?

So said the conservationist leading our Alachua Audubon field trip through the Tall Timbers Research Station and the nearby Wade Tract, near Tallahassee, last Sunday morning. It was just after sunrise, and he had just caught and banded a very grumpy female Red-cockaded Woodpecker, which people couldn't resist trying to pet:

We had arrived at Tall Timbers on Saturday afternoon, just in time for a miserable downpour. This didn't stop us from our planned afternoon bird walk through the reserve, where we saw and heard two kinds of nuthatches: Brown-headed and White-breasted. The former are rare in Gainesville and the latter have long been extirpated, so this was worth getting wet. After a cozy night in Tall Timbers' very rustic bunkhouse (as a veteran of last year's trip told me, "it costs five dollars a night and is worth every penny") we got up way before sunrise, waited for the world's slowest drip coffee maker to do its job, then took off to the Wade Tract, just over the Georgia border, for a morning of sparrow and woodpecker banding.

Besides the RCW, our wrangling and banding efforts yielded a surprisingly colorful Bachman's Sparrow:

Worth getting up at 5 a.m. and slogging through the woods in 30 degree weather? Absolutely.

2. Snow Day in Florida

Yesterday's Alachua Audubon field trip was also to an out-of-town destination: Matanzas Inlet, near St. Augustine. One of the things Glenn and I have missed since moving to Gainesville is regular access to shorebirds -- back in California, we hit the beach just about every weekend to look for and photograph sandpipers, ducks, and waders. So we were looking forward to the opportunity to walk around on a real beach once again.

We also learned in the days leading up to the trip that a couple of rarities had been lingering there: a Snow Bunting and an Iceland Gull, which would be lifers for both of us.

We were SO there.

So we woke up at 5 a.m. yet again, joined up with the rest of the group at a local meeting spot, and carpooled to St,. Augustine -- where it was, once again, way colder than anyone had expected.

After half an hour checking out gulls and terns (including several Greater Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls) we saw something promising: another group of birders about 100 yards from us staring intently at something nearby .

"They must have the Snow Bunting!" someone said, and we moved towards them as quietly and discreetly as a dozen really hyped-up people possibly could. Glenn was photographing gulls a distance away from us and I wondered if I should fetch him to find the Snow Bunting.

"Guys, watch where you're going; from where they're looking, the bird must be really close to you!" our trip leader yelled.

"Omigod, there it is!" screamed someone just in front of me.

"Where?"

"THERE!!" She pointed at a cream-colored pouf that shot into the air, fluttered across the beach -- and landed right in front of Glenn!

A few minutes later, we all the bird in our sights. We explained to a curious bystander that the bird we were looking at normally lives in the far north, and rarely appears in Florida. "You guys drove 90 miles to see a bird?" he asked.

Hell, yes.

3. The Orange Revolution

I love my backyard birds, but I always thought my visitors were kind of boring. Lots of usual-suspect birds: Northern Cardinals, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadees. I always envied my friends who regularly got cool and locally rare birds at their feeders, such as Painted Buntings and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks.

But over the past two years, I've noticed that things tend to pick up in my back yard in the winter. Then, we get flocks of American Goldfinches, Pine Warblers, and a persistent Palm Warbler and a Yellow-throated Warbler.

Two weeks ago, we had a new visitor: a large, dusky orange bird lighted on our peanut feeder, and I realized it was a juvenile Baltimore Oriole! They winter here, but are extremely local and not often seen outside a few privileged neighborhoods -- and ours, until now, wasn't one of them.I told Glenn, who immediately set out an orange half impaled on an old chopstick. We waited a few days, but the bird didn't return. Then, early last week, I heard unfamiliar chattering outside and saw flashes of orange by our feeders: not one, but THREE Baltimore Orioles -- a juvenile and two adults!

The next day, I saw yet more orioles: an adult male and three female/juvenile birds. And they have been sucking down oranges and chomping on peanuts in our yard ever since. I love how they really get into fruit that's the exact same color they are.

The best part is I don't have to leave the house to see them.

Birding Is a Front for Something (We Just Don't Know What)

Birders get a bad rap in the public mind. Most people think we're senile, pith-helmeted dorks -- annoying, embarrassing to be seen with, but basically harmless.

Then this article in Slate.com (by Nathan Heller), comes along with its own strange view of what we do. This piece is so peculiar I couldn't help sharing it with the other birders in my life.

Here are some of the salient passages:

"...a bird-watcher's motives can seem puzzling, if not downright suspect. Rising at vampiric hours, these people leave polite society behind to spend long stretches staring not at dazzling vistas or strange beasts but at birds—and often unexotic ones at that. They pack enough high-end equipment and field expertise to undertake a hunt but never touch their prey; the consummating act of birding is, at most, a picture snapped for private use and from a distance, in the manner of a pervert with a beach pass. Birding is the sort of hobby that seems like a front for something."

I'm not clear what kind of mental leap was necessary to go from a fundamental misunderstanding of the pleasures and virtues of birding to an insinuation that birders are a bunch of perverts or worse. I could go on and on about his out-of-hand dismissal of "unexotic" birds -- which, to Heller, probably means anything smaller and less colorful than the Froot Loops toucan. But the bigger point is this: just because the pleasures of someone else's hobby are lost on you doesn't mean that hobby is somehow sketchy or evil. Seriously. If I lived in fear of everyone with a pastime I considered pointless and stupid, I'd never leave the house.

"...there are four species of birder at large in the world. The first and least intimidating group includes those who see bird-watching as an endeavor roughly equivalent to Tuesday-night poker, volunteer gardening, or mah-jongg—an open-access hobby and a chance to connect regularly with friends. These people are frequently novices... a second group, an autonomous cadre of enthusiasts who set their own schedules and often dwell on single bird groups or locales for stretches, like a book critic taking a month to read an author's full oeuvre. Then there are the specialists. These people focus on one kind of bird obsessively and always, often with accompanying Web sites. Fourth are the listers, who chase birds to check them off a list. Some keep life lists (birds they've seen in their lives);* some keep year lists (starting anew every January); and others make up to-do lists by country, state, and so forth (certain New York City listers work by borough). There is, possibly, something compulsive in this approach...."

There's perhaps some truth about the first and fourth categories -- but I don't think I've met anyone in the two middle groups. The only people I've met who systematically bird only one place are biologists who are paid to do so. And if there are serious birders who pursue only one kind of bird to the exclusion of all others, they are rare birds indeed. And many birders I know, myself included, fall into more than one category -- I love birding as a social activity, and I also like keeping lists of my sightings.

And what about the bigger, unspoken, fifth category that almost all birders fall into: people who enjoy birding as an opportunity to commune with nature and be reminded of the fundamentals of how the world works?

To his credit, Heller does actually follow a few birders into the field (he says nothing about whether he enjoyed his search for American Coots or not). But strangely, nowhere in his article does he ask any of them WHY they got into birding what they hope to gain from it, or how birders contribute to society as a whole. Instead, he wastes numerous column inches verbally scratching his head over why we're out there or trying to posit birding as a complicated metaphor for something related to environmental angst in the post-nuclear age.

Dude. If you want to know why we bird... just freaking ask.

Santa's (Partial) List for Birders

December brings many thoughts to a birder's mind: Sparrow ID. The Christmas Bird Count. And...shopping.

I hate shopping. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I hate mall crowds. I hate sacred music whose lyrics have been turned into commercial jingles. I hate the knowledge that most of American society judges people on the brands of clothes they wear rather than on any substantial features of intellect or character.

And yet, I love the holidays. I love the lights, cheesy decorations, and weirdly decorated foodstuffs. And strangely enough, I love getting gifts for those close to me whose tastes I know and understand (or who know me well enough to drop really large hints).

For me, the only fun part of holiday shopping is discovering something that I just know someone close to me will love. Extra fun comes from discovering said item is inexpensive. So as a service to the birding community, I've devised a short list of budget-friendly surprises for the birders on your list -- so you don't have to:

For the Completist Who Needs To Know the Root Causes of Everything:

We all know this guy -- and for some inexplicable reason, it's almost always a guy. He knows not only what specific birds eat (beginner stuff), but also the life cycle of whatever that food source is. He's memorized the annual arrival and departure dates of every migrant in his area for the past century, and is endlessly frustrated that nobody thought to document the fall arrival dates of, say, Magnolia Warblers in Alachua County, Florida, prior to 1885. He keeps track of every AOU attempt to re-classify birds and most likely has every bird book you think he'd like.

But chances are he doesn't yet own The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (Princeton Field Guides), and he definitely should. So he wants to know everything about birds going back to the beginning of time? Here, the roots of the avian family tree are magnified and illuminated in glorious detail. (Did you know that during the time of the first dinosaurs, the year was 385 days long and days themselves were only 22 hours and 45 minutes?) Meticulous colored illustrations of feathered dinos are accompanied by detailed accounts of their anatomy and life history. Think of a a bigger, blingier version of The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, but with dinosaurs instead. If this doesn't make your nerdy friend (or his dinosaur-loving kid) want to jump into a time machine right this very minute, nothing will.

For the Birder with an Aural Fixation:

In every birding community, there's always one person who can hear a millisecond-long chirp a mile away and immediately ID the bird responsible. I'm not that person. But I've always wanted to be: I've loved and wondered about bird song long before I started birding formally, and since I'm pathologically nearsighted (the first words any new opthamologist says to me are "holy crap, are you myopic!"), learning to bird by ear has given me a leg up in the field. I may be always the last person to actually see an interesting bird on any given day, but I'm often among the first to figure out it's actually there.

Of course, the more one birds, the more one realizes how much more there is to know. Birds are so fascinating to watch (if you're lucky enough to see them) that the complexity of their vocalizations is often overlooked. For a birder who wants to know more about all those wonderful songs and calls, there's no better source than The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong.

I discovered this book after hearing its author, Donald Kroodsma, give a talk at a bird festival last year. Of course, the topic of his talk was bird vocalization, its origins, and its uses in bird life.

His book is every bit as warm and engaging, yet intellectually rigorous, as his speaking style. As a trained linguist, I appreciated how he approached both the acoustic and neurological aspects of bird vocalizations. His writing shifts seamlessly from detailed discussion of bird evolution and how it is reflected in different types of song acquisition in birds to deeply personal impressions of how it feels to sit alone outdoors in the predawn hours, waiting to record awakening birds.

Kroodsma's book is a multimedia experience: it comes with a CD of bird song snippets that one should ideally play while reading through the relevant parts of the book. It also contains lots of graphic information--mostly spectrograms (voice prints) of the bird songs on the CD. Enjoying all this as Kroodsma intended, however, can be inconvenient--when I had access to a CD player (e.g., in my car), I wasn't in a position to read the book, and when I was reading the book (in bed, for the most part), I didn't have a CD player nearby. (Yes, I could have downloaded the CD onto my iPod, but since when should reading a book require effort or thought?)

It occurred to me that this book was the reason why interactive readers such as the iPad were invented--I can picture this as a killer e-book, with hyperlinks to sound files (instead of CD track numbers in parentheses in the text) and animated spectrograms so readers could simultaneously hear a bird song and see its graphic representation. Just a thought, if the right person is reading this...

For the Eastern Birder Who's Okay With Delayed Gratification, or Knows You're a Procrastinating Flake:

A dumb argument that tends to come up among birders is the debate over which bird guide is the best: Kaufman, with its user-friendly organization and carefully doctored photos or Sibley, with its wonderfully detailed drawings? Or is the best the National Geographic guide or the Stokes guide?

One reason this is a dumb argument is that different birders have different preferences and priorities; some may find one guide more comfortable to use than another. Another reason is that a serious birder really can't rely on just one guide: there is just too much variation in how a species can appear for any one guide to reflect accurately. And a field guide that's compact enough to be usable won't have absolutely all the information one might want on a given species. Different authors have different interests, and I find that having several guides means having several sources of complementary -- rather than redundant --information.

So I was happy to learn of another guide that may soon to added to my arsenal: The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds Like the Stokes and Kaufman guides, it's illustrated with photos --but the photos and lively and distinctive. Here's an example of one of my favorite winter birds, the Cedar Waxwing:


All this is well and good, but there's a catch: the book will not be available until January 1. But if you have a patient birding pal who wouldn't mind an IOU in his or her stocking, this could be a memorable choice.

For Relatives from Outside the Americas Who Go Crazy Whenever They See Hummingbirds:

This isn't just a hypothetical scenario. A few years ago, when I still lived in California, my South African nephews came to visit and were bowled over by the whole concept of hummingbirds. (And these were kids who grew up in a place where baboons and hippos occur in the wild!) Watching their fascination with hummers reminded me of how amazing those little birds really are.

It was only about a year after their visit that I discovered this. If only I had it around as a local present for them to enjoy during their stay here! Yes, it's more pricey than anything else on my little gift list, but it's still cheaper than taking the whole bunch of them to Disneyland.

Down the River

A scene from the St. Johns River, near DeLand.

Fresh-Squeezed Florida is one of my favorite non-birding blogs. Its owner—who blogs under the name Gainesville365—is, like me, a transplanted Californian in Gainesville trying to make sense of this place. So far, she's done a much better job of it than I have--in her two years here, she has explored and blogged about every interesting nook and cranny in north Florida.

So I was delighted to receive an e-mail from her inviting me to join her on a boat tour of the St. Johns River near DeLand. She had gone on the tour there a few weeks before, she wrote, and found it truly special. But Blue Heron River Tours, the young company sponsoring the tours, needed help getting its name and mission known to the public -- would I be interested in joining her, The Florida Blogger, and possibly a third local blogger on one of their tours?

Of course I said yes. We arranged to carpool out to DeLand together and stop at one of her favorite places nearby for a late lunch on the way back. I was thrilled at the opportunity to meet her and talk to her in person, and to see a part of Florida I hadn't yet visited.

But I got a sad e-mail from her shortly before the trip: she had fallen ill, and would not be able to join us. But two other local bloggers I followed would be there and the trip was still on.

Blue Heron River Tours is based at Hontoon Landing Resort and Marina, just down the road from Hontoon Island State Park. The river front resort was pretty and quiet, as was the stretch of the St. Johns River that we explored on our tour.

Our tour boat moved slowly, by design -- both so we could have time to look for birds and animals on the shore, and to protect any wintering manatees in the area from possible collisions. We didn't see any manatees, but birds were plentiful and cooperative. My favorite bird sighting was a pair of Purple Gallinules, which don't occur in Gainesville during the winter--but seemed perfectly happy wintering only two hours away. Here's one of them, just coming into its adult plumage:

Anhingas were everywhere, posing dramatically.

Our guide and captain, Gary Randlett, clearly loved the river and was deeply knowledgeable about its natural history and role in human history. He took us off the main river and down a narrow canal, which he explained had been excavated by loggers in the 19th century. Now it looked utterly natural, as if it had been there forever. Something about that canal struck me as deeply romantic, despite the fact that it existed just so people could find trees to cut down. And I wasn't the only one who thought so: the trees lining the canal's banks -- so close we could touch them -- were filled with colorful painted birdhouses, all put up by locals as memorials or tributes to loved ones:

Towards the end of the tour, we saw an Osprey dining delicately on a fish...

...and a deer grazing close to shore.

Only an hour from us, no doubt dozens of tourists were on a boat trip at Disney World, listening to a canned spiel from a "cast member" and oohing and aahing at mechanized animals and birds. Meanwhile, the real Florida, in all its glory, waited nearly undiscovered for its fans.

Buffalo, Buffaloed

What did I ever do to you?

For hundreds of years, wild bison have roamed the expansive area now comprising Paynes Prairie State Park. Believe it or not, bison aren't limited to the American west: at Paynes Prairie, seeing bison wading through a pond full of blooming lotus and flushing a sunbathing Anhinga or two isn't all that odd.

But if a proposed plan by Florida State Parks goes through, the bison will all but disappear, as will the herds of wild horses that also roam the prairie – not to mention a large part of the park's natural integrity.

The plan, allegedly still under discussion, is to remove all but a few bison and horses from the prairie. The animals, according to the Gainesville Sun, will be donated to whichever vendor takes them out, in return for their services.

The few remaining animals will be allowed to stay on the prairie – but in fenced-in enclosures close to one of the observation decks. This way every visitor will be guaranteed a bison sighting every time! None of that complicated stuff about nature taking its own course. And no more will visitors have to deal with tedious issues such as figuring out what the animals are doing as they wander rudely in and out of easy view. That's science, and science is HARD! After all, who goes to a state park to learn stuff about nature?

And gone will be the horrific possibility of seeing an actual WILD ANIMAL on the trail only a few yards from you! Everyone knows that WILD ANIMALS are DANGEROUS! WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??

But seriously...the plan is baffling in its short-minded stupidity.

For one, the very "need" to take out the bison and horses is questionable. The official story is that that herd of 44 bison is becoming overcrowded and inbred, and increased development in the areas on the perimeter of the prairie increases the risk of an animal escaping the park and potentially injuring someone. And because bison and horses are technically livestock, the Park Service, which owns them, could be held liable for any such injuries. And keeping the few token beasts in an enclosure would make visitors happy, because now it's too hard for people to see them.

Let's consider these. As longtime park volunteer Chuck Littlewood stated in a recent righteous rant (how's that for alliteration?), nobody has been injured by a horse or bison in the thirty years since the animals were re-introduced to the prairie. (I've seen bison the the trail only a few yards away – they're comfortable enough around people to hold their ground, but they certainly won't go after anyone who just leaves them alone.) And because the animals are replacements for naturally occurring, indigenous wildlife, there is a solid legal basis for classifying them as wildlife rather than livestock. The inbreeding and overpopulation problems could be solved by selectively culling the herd – they don't have any natural predators in the park except for unusually large or ambitious alligators, so this may be a necessary evil.

As for the risk of escapes, bison and horses outside the park are no more dangerous than those within its boundaries. And seriously, people who choose to live on the edge of a wildlife preserve have no right to get their panties in a twist if a beastie or two occasionally breaches park borders. When I lived in California, I knew that having a well-stocked earthquake kit and stabilized bookshelves were part of the price of living there. When I moved to Florida, I knew my earthquake kit should be re-purposed as a hurricane kit. Every place has its advantages and risks, and dealing responsibly and non-hysterically with the latter is called being a grown-up.

Speaking of which... some of the best commentary on this half-baked plan came from the Independent Florida Alligator, the University of Florida's (technically unofficial) student newspaper. Having taught at UF for two years, I can characterize the typical UF student as bright, but still a work in progress. But some of those darn kids actually nailed down the inconsistencies of this proposal with laser-sharp accuracy. I'll just quote some of their better comments on the matter. First, there's this righteous snarkfest. Then there are these more modest comments:

"45 bison don't have enough room on 21,000 acres???
No one can see them, yet having 45 of them risks injuring people: which is it?

And the prairie is NOT a petting zoo; reducing the healthy herd to 8 females stuck standing around the visitor center sucks. Why not add a sign at the visitor's center: 'we sold all the male bison to meat factories and there are no bison actually on the prairie. We just keep these here to give the impression wild animals roam free! Enjoy your view'"

"Little children have walked the trail and seen the bison from up close! The bison are prone to move away from people and have not been a problem, The repair of fences could vastly reduce the "risk to the community."
The thirty years that the bison have been there has not produced enough concern for fences or bison -- nor a problem.
Lastly, Why would you give away a herd worth $$$$$ Follow the money! "

"..'the Florida Park Service believes this is the best course of action after consulting with UF geneticists and the National Bison Association, a non-profit organization that matches bison sellers to meat buyers.'
Boy sounds like they have the animals' best interests in mind!"

Park volunteers I've talked to echoed the second commenter's concern: the plan is for the Park Service to simply give away the meat from several dozen bison. If they must cull some of the animals, the volunteers argued, why not sell them? Buffalo meat is more expensive than beef on the commercial market, and the monies made from meat sales – if a cull is deemed necessary – could go toward the upkeep of the fences surrounding the park. One volunteer said he calculated that the funds that could be earned from selling a few animals a year at retail value could keep the fences around the park maintained – and the rest of the animals safe.

A public hearing on the matter is scheduled for Tuesday, November 30 at 7:00 p.m. Details are available here (scroll down to the bottom of page 3). If you live around here and care about our state parks staying distinct from petting zoos, you should consider dropping by.

Failure To Launch

A late breakfast at the Viera Wetlands.

Florida both sucks and rocks. On the sucky side are sticky 100-degree summers, man-eating mosquitos, and a political climate that would make most Third World banana republics look like Switzerland. Honest to God, the stuff in Carl Hiasaen's novels is not exaggeration.

On the upside, there's an ecosystem like none other in the US -- third-magnitude springs seemingly behind every bush, a dizzying inventory of dragonflies and butterflies, and of course, tons of birds, including several species not found anywhere else in the US. And a couple weekends ago, Glenn and I spent an excellent weekend looking at them.

It started with what used to be a routine event: the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle, another wonderful and purely Floridian thing. Once upon a time, I had been a technical writer on the Space Shuttle program (it's not nearly as exciting as it sounds) and always felt a bit of pride whenever one of those things went up. Over time, I stopped looking for announcements of upcoming launches. But now the program was coming to an end, and this would be the second-to-last scheduled flight. Glenn thought it would be fun to photograph a space launch, we were only a two-hour drive from Cape Canaveral -- so off we went.

We knew, too, that the launch was likely to be delayed or cancelled--it almost always has been as of late. But even if this happened, there were still birds to see in the area. Lots of birds.

The launch two Fridays ago (a re-try from failed attempts on Wednesday and Thursday) was scheduled for 3:00. So we left Gainesville before sunrise and planned to spend the morning at the Viera Wetlands, about half an hour south of our planned launch viewing site in Titusville. At Viera, two potential life birds for both of us -- a Snail Kite and a Great Cormorant --had been reported, and even better, both had been making regular appearances over the past week or so.

We got to the Viera Wetlands at 9:00 and I immediately felt an alien sensation: cold. It was REALLY cold. Back in Gainesville, temperatures had been in the mid-eighties until a few days earlier, and it did not occur to me to bring a jacket. For that matter, I had totally forgotten that I even owned such an object, and after about half an hour, I found myself digging through my overnight bag (we were spending the night with Glenn's photographer friend Harry) and putting the second shirt that I had bought over the one I was wearing. Never mind that they weren't in even remotely harmonious colors and one of them had stripes and one of them a print. I was COLD.

This was one of those times I was glad I don't have kids: they would have been humiliated.

But thankfully, the wetlands were nearly free of other people, except for a few retiree birders, who generally have no business lecturing others about their fashion choices. And there were a lot of birds: within fifteen minutes of our arrival, we got great looks at two birds that almost never appear in our area, only a two-hour drive away: a pair of Caracaras and a noisy exhibitionist Limpkin.

And after about two hours of searching, we found the Snail Kite!

This bird was either an adult female or a juvenile. Still, it was distinctive and cool, and a new bird for both of us. Glenn called Harry to let him knew we'd arrived and found the Kite, and he told us the shuttle launch had been (unsurprisingly) scrubbed because of technical issues. But we no longer cared: this gave us more time to look for birds.

After a pleasant lunch chez Harry, he drove with us back to the wetlands to look for the Great Cormorant--who was exactly where Harry had said it would be:


After getting our Great Cormorant, we took another spin through the wetlands to get more looks at the Snail Kite. Then we headed back to Harry's place, where he showed off his cooking skills and his new barbecue by grilling up a raft of enormous steaks.

And it no longer mattered that the Space Shuttle launch had been scotched once again. We got two life birds, a splendid dinner, and a long evening with good friends. What more can one want?

Life Goes Ani

Fall migration has been great. So great, I've been too busy looking at birds to write about it. But I hope to make up for this shortly.

Last weekend was supposed to be the peak of fall migration for north-central Florida, and I was determined to squeeze in as many sightings as possible. But Saturday's Alachua Audubon field trip to Bolen Bluff-- where I had a record fifteen-warbler day this time last year--was pleasant, but uneventful: lots of Black-and-white Warblers and American Redstarts, but not much else.

The most memorable bird of the trip was several miles away. We had worked our way to the bluff and down into the prairie basin when the news arrived.

"GROOVE-BILLED ANI! GROOVE-BILLED ANI AT THE OBSERVATION DECK AT LA CHUA!" yelled one of the hard-core birders, holding up his cell phone. He had just gotten a call from the local birdhead who had just found it. We watched in puzzlement as he sprinted away from the rest of the group.

"Hey, where are you going?" our trip leader asked.

"GROOVE-BILLED ANI!" he yelled back.

As we progressed down through the prairie looking at Indigo Buntings and early Savannah Sparrows, we talked about the Groove-billed Ani. First, we explained what it was for the beginning birders present, who were beginning to think that the rest of us were insane. Then, we marveled at its presence in Paynes Prairie: these birds are rare visitors to our neck of the woods and this would be only the tenth sighting on record.

On the next morning's trip to Palm Point, everyone was still talking about it. We learned that our friend from the day before had shlepped two miles back to the Bolen Bluff trailhead, driven across town, then shlepped another two miles down the La Chua trail--only to find that the Ani had flown the coop. Meanwhile, Palm Point was yielding a terrific assortment of warblers, including a very bold Magnolia,

a strangely bland-looking Cape May,

and a third warble that Glenn managed to photograph, but couldn't ID.

"What is this?" he asked me, pointing at his viewfinder.

I looked at the bird. Some faint stripes on the head. Wing bars, A bit of streaking on the flanks. Definitely a warbler, but what? I called over our trip leader and asked him.

"Wow, that's a Blackburnian!: he exclaimed. "Where did you see it?"

Another confusing fall warbler for our collection--and Glenn had captured a life bird without knowing it!

But everyone was still talking about that Ani. The next morning, I opened my e-mail and found a message saying it had been seen on Sunday morning, while we were looking at warblers at Palm Point. It was still early. I showed Glenn the e-mail.

And then we went to La Chua. One of the great things about being self-employed is that you're free to make stupid decisions. Yes, I should have been making cold calls to potential clients or going to some shmooze breakfast with the Chamber of Commerce, but this was a Groove-billed Ani we were talking about here.

We got to the observation deck around 9:30 and met some local birders on their way out who said they had seen it about ten minutes earlier! So it was still there! Cool.

So we waited.

And waited.

Another birder showed up with a spotting scope. "So you're looking for it too?" I asked. "Looking for what?" he asked.

He hadn't heard about the Ani. But once I told him, he was all in.

An hour later, another birder arrived, an extroverted older guy who immediately introduced himself to the three of us on the platform. "Well, since we're going to be here a while, we might as well get to know each other," he said.

As the day progressed, it got hotter and hotter on the platform, and my lust to see the Ani was rapidly losing out to my lust for a hot pressed Cuban sandwich. The two other gentlemen on the platform with us were great company, but this whole experience was beginning to suck.

By 1:30, we gave up and headed home.

The next morning, I got another e-mail: the first guy who joined us on the platform -- who didn't even know the Ani was there -- had gotten a video of the bird and posted it on YouTube! Apparently, the video was taken around 4:40 that afternoon, which meant that guy had been waiting there a good five or six hours. Holy cow. Well, I guess he was more deserving of a sighting than we were.

And here's what we would have seen if only we waited around another four hours:

Okay. So the Ani had been there for a few days. It tended to show up either early in the morning, or late in the afternoon. So we'd try for an afternoon sighting.

On Tuesday, we got to the platform around 3:30. La Chua is invariably silent and birdless in mid-afternoon, and this was seriously depressing. But as the sun went down, the chorus of Red-winged Blackbirds got louder, White and Glossy Ibises began flying in, and things began to look promising. But no Ani. We waited until 5:00. The park closed at 6:00, and it would take over half an hour to walk back to the trailhead. So we left.

On the way back, we ran into a ranger in his truck, no doubt headed to the observation platform to herd any late lingerers back to the trailhead. I recognized him: he was not only a ranger, but also a serious birder. He stopped his truck and rolled down a window.

"So, did you see it?"

"No."

We saw him again on the way back, parking his truck near the trailhead. We asked him if he had seen anything. He smiled and looked apologetic.

We had missed it by fifteen minutes. Again.

We decided to give the Ani one more shot. But not until Thursday. On Wednesday morning at sunrise, we were meeting with a friend who'd show us where some of the last locally nesting Burrowing Owls were. And unlike the Ani, the Burrowing Owls were right where they were expected to be. Who doesn't love a Burrowing Owl, especially with a face like this?

We resumed our Ani hunt on Thursday morning. When arrived at La Chua, just before eight, it was foggy and cool out, and Palm Warblers and Indigo Buntings were everywhere. But our goal was the Ani, and we didn't stop until we got to the observation platform.

And there, about thirty feet off the trail in the fog, was a mid-size black bird with a long tail--not a crow,nor a grackle. I had brought my scope, and I focused it on the bird: it had a thick beak and shaggy head feathers: our Ani!

We spent the next two hours watching it. Some other local birders joined us on the observation platform, and we all watched in delight as it flew in and landed low in a shrub just off the trail. In books, the Groove-billed Ani looks fierce and predatory, but in real life, it's downright cute -- its vocalizations are gentle and sweet and the bird itself has a weirdly wistful face that reminds me of a Muppet. One of the other birders told me Anis are social birds, and this one looked like it wanted company. We all felt a little sad that it was so far away from others of its own kind. But its generous display for us more than made up for its elusiveness earlier in the week.

And it only took me a week of waiting to get the bird.