Saturday, December 26, 2015

Close encounter with a Prairie Falcon on the Carrizo Plain

Returning from a long road trip to northern California, Marlene and I veered through the Carrizo Plain. We left the smoggy oil fields of Kern County west of Bakersfield and climbed the mountains on a thin ribbon of pavement, barely wider than a single-lane road. Down the other side of the mountain we drove into an enclosed dry, barren, grassland, surrounded by mountains. In the lowest part of the valley was Soda Lake--a dry alkali lake bed--tucked away in the inland of San Luis Obispo County.

Carrizo Plain

As barren as it was, there was little opportunity for spotting, much less photographing, birds. But at one point we spotted a Prairie Falcon on a fence post and were able to drive slowly by it and obtain the photos below.

Prairie Falcon
Prairie Falcon. Carrizo Plain, San Luis Obispo County, California. November 29, 2015. Greg Gillson.
Prairie Falcon
Prairie Falcon
Prairie Falcon

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Royal and Elegant Terns

A year ago I wrote about the identification the larger orange-billed terns in southern California (see ID: Elegant, Royal, and Caspian Terns). That ID article showed birds in flight.

Recently I walked out on the beach near the Oceanside harbor and encountered a flock of about 40 terns resting on the beach. Most were Royal Terns as expected for this time of year. A few were Elegant Terns--it's getting on the late side for them.

Royal and Elegant Tern
One of these birds is not like the others.
Most of the birds above are Royal Terns. The bird on the far right is an Elegant Tern. Let's take a closer look at two together.

Royal and Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern (left) and Royal Tern (right). Oceanside, California. November 8, 2015. Greg Gillson.
There are 3 marks to note on these non-breeding terns on the beach: size, bill, crest.
  1. Royal Terns are a bit larger than Elegant Terns.
  2. The bill on Royal Tern is stout and dark orange. The bill on Elegant Tern is thin and down-curved and often yellower.
  3. The crest on Royal Tern is short and bushy, straight back from the eye. The eye is usually isolated from the crest and the crown above the eye is usually extensively white. The longer crest on Elegant Tern encircles the eye, starts on the crown above the eye and wraps down the nape.
Royal Tern
Royal Tern
Both Royal and Elegant Terns have fully black crowns (including forehead) in the breeding season (April-June?) and thus are even more similar looking then.

Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern
Royal Tern
Royal Tern
Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern
Royal Tern
Royal Tern
Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern.
Royal Tern
Royal Tern
Royal Tern
Royal Tern
Elegant Tern
Elegant Tern

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Two crops of Yellow-rumped Warbler at Lake Hodges

Which one do you like better?

Most of the photos I present are cropped tightly. So I present below the original cropping and two alternates.

Yellow-rumped Warbler
Original frame; no cropping.
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Less tightly cropped.
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler. Tightly cropped. Lake Hodges, California. November 26, 2015. Greg Gillson.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Heermann's Gull at Oceanside

Presented below is a 2nd cycle Heermann's Gull. For more information on this gull and photos of a breeding plumage adult click here.

Heermann's Gull
Heermann's Gull. Oceanside, California. November 8, 2015. Greg Gillson.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Scaly-breasted Munia at Lake Hodges

A few weeks ago I presented some photos of Scaly-breasted Munias in Carlsbad. Recently I found 5 more birds at Lake Hodges near Rancho Bernardo.

Scaly-breasted Munia
Scaly-breasted Munia, male. Lake Hodges, California. November 26, 2015. Greg Gillson.
Scaly-breasted Munia
Scaly-breasted Munia, female. Lake Hodges, California. November 26, 2015. Greg Gillson.
Scaly-breasted Munia

Scaly-breasted Munia

Scaly-breasted Munia

Scaly-breasted Munia

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

BirdLog is dead! Long live eBird Mobile!

eBird Mobile for Android just came out, joining eBird Mobile for iOS that has been available for about 5 months. These Apps replace BirdLog.
eBird Mobile Review

eBird is a real-time online checklist program by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. It was first introduced in 2002. Frankly, I wasn't enamored with it until 2010-2011 when useful tools showed up that allowed anyone to view recent bird sightings maps and frequency and abundance bar charts anywhere in the world. Other enhancements that followed included selectable alerts and photos embedded in the checklists. In December 2011 I called eBird "an absolutely indispensable real time world-wide bird status and distribution tool." eBird can even make you a better birder.

The power of eBird was greatly enhanced in 2012 by the introduction of BirdLog by BirdsEye Nature Apps. I called BirdLog the "'killer app' for eBirders!" Now one could submit bird sightings directly from the field on their smart phone! No more transcribing field notes into eBird on your computer at the end of the day. It is so easy that you just start a new checklist for each new location during your birding trip and keep track of the birds as you see them. In July 2013 I wrote an eBird best practices post on using BirdLog. These best practices apply equally to the new eBird Mobile.

You know what's even better? eBird Mobile is 1) FREE! and 2) one App covers the whole world! Previously, BirdLog for each region (North America, Mexico and Central America, Australia and New Zealand, etc.) was priced at $10 each, while a world App was $20. eBird Mobile is now available in 5 languages.

In February 2011 I wrote: "Just as binoculars and field guide has defined a birder for the past 75 years, I believe eBird will define what it means to be a birder in the coming decades."  I believe this to be more true than ever, and now with eBird Mobile it is free and so much easier!

Many thanks go to the developers of BirdLog for making field data entry into eBird so wonderfully easy. Now that this functionality is moved directly to the eBird team, I expect even smoother integration and regular enhancements. Well done to all involved! Congratulations.

Monday, December 7, 2015

How to identify birds in flight

Birds fly. At least, most can. In fact, “flight is the defining characteristic of birds” (as Jonathan Alderfer and Jon Dunn and Kenn Kaufman write). Then why don't field guides teach us to identify birds in flight?

How to identify birds in flight

Depending upon the type of birding you are doing, your first detection of a bird may be of a bird in flight. For instance, you are walking along a hedgerow and previously unseen sparrows fly up from the grass and disappear into the brambles. You turn a corner and a bird takes off from a tree and flies away. Movement catches your eye and you see a flock of birds flying in formation overhead. You scope out the ocean from a promontory and view numerous birds winging by offshore.

How to identify birds in flight

These are the common ways that we see birds. It only makes sense that your field guide should tell you how to identify these birds in flight. But they don’t. Oh, some occasionally mention the unique flight styles of a certain few birds. There are a few specialized guides for hawks and ducks in flight. But these books are often based only on shape and pattern, not actually the behavior of flight that might help you to identify distant or quickly-viewed birds.

How to identify birds in flight

This manual teaches you the basic mechanics of flight and gives you the vocabulary necessary to describe a bird in flight in such a way that you may identify it to family or even species by flight alone. Combine flight style with flight call notes or key observable plumage field marks, and most birds in flight are readily identifiable.

How to identify birds in flight



The above text is the introduction to my 38-page manual on how to identify birds in flight. As far as I know there is no other book or manual that explains how to go about describing flight characters in order to identify birds. Flight style mechanics, silhouette and shape, flapping and flight path progression, and other ID clues are all brought together in a "Bird flight style identification worksheet." This is followed by 11 examples describing the flight style differences between such groups and species as West Coast Shearwaters, European Starling versus Cedar Waxwing, Crows and Ravens in flight, Late autumn sparrows in the weedy marsh, Flight style comparison: Red-winged Blackbird and Brown-headed Cowbird, Flight of American Robin, and several more.

How to identify birds in flight

Using what you learn here, and the examples given, you will be able to describe flight characters and learn the ID of flying birds you observe.

The entire manual is now loaded into a stand-alone page on my Greg in San Diego blog. It is here: How to Identify Birds in Flight.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Book Review: Better Birding

Princeton University Press sent me this new bird book to review. I am very interested in teaching others to improve their field birding skills. So naturally, I was anticipating this new offering.

Better Birding: tips, tools & concepts for the field. George L. Armistead and Brian L. Sullivan.
Better Birding: tips, tools & concepts for the field. George L. Armistead and Brian L. Sullivan. Publication date December 8, 2015. Paperback 360 pages. 8.5 x 5.5 inches.

The first thing I had to do when reading this book is to adjust my preconceptions. You see, based on the title, I was expecting the entire book to be a "how to" manual, similar to Alderfer and Dunn's National Geographic Birding Essentials (2007). In fact, it is a guide for explaining tricky identification problems in North American birds using more than just plumage. It is thus more similar to Kaufman's Field Guide to Advanced Birding (2011). In this regard the book does not disappoint.

The 18-page introduction describes the design of the book with the catch-phrase "Wide-Angle Birding." Bird identification is not just plumage. Birds are not just field marks; they are living entities. Behavior, habitat, natural history, and taxonomy helps separate one species from another.
"You learn more when you can also zoom out and see the big picture--see the bird in context. Sometimes you have to lower your binoculars and step away from the scope, look at your surroundings and habitat the bird is in, consider the conditions, and use your ears. Relying too much on the view through your optics can actually hinder your attempts at identification."
So, then, rather than telling how to better identify birds, the rest of the book is dedicated to showing how to identify individual species from among groups of North American birds. For instance, the first "chapter" covers the 5 loon species. Each age group and gender is covered--from the easy breeding-plumaged adults to the more difficult juveniles and immatures. This "Loon" section has 18 pages that is divided into about 6 pages of text and 12 pages of photos (44 different loon photos of all species and ages). A bit of natural history is given as an overview to all loons, then each species account covers identification individually by age class.

The book continues with 23 more groups that prove to be an identification challenge, such as White Herons, Tropical Terns, Godwits, Small Wrens, Swifts, Yellow-bellied Kingbirds, Pipits, and Cowbirds. The book contains hundreds of color bird photos and collages. The groups were chosen for 3 reasons as Armistead and Sullivan explain. The group represented an opportunity to build core birding skills. The group could use a refreshed identification treatment. The group was interesting to the authors.

Each new group has a "Focus on" sentence telling you what to look for when identifying the bird. It could be voice, range, habitat, or perhaps structure of bill or body. It tells you what plumage features to concentrate on for each group, whether head, rump, or wing pattern. This then leads you into a "Hints and Considerations" section that uses bullet points to specifically apply the "Focus on" point to individual species. The "Identification" section further refines identification techniques for the group before covering each species individually.

In July I reviewed Birding by Impression: A different approach to knowing and identifying birds by Karlson and Rosselet (2015, Review here). The ideas are similar. Both volumes stress 'holistic' birding--the bird in its living context, not just field marks on a page. These volumes complement each other nicely, I think.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Song Sparrow at Oceanside

Here's a photo of a Song Sparrow on the cement wall at the San Luis Rey River Mouth in Oceanside. I was able to place the camera right on the wall for a low angle photo right down the length of the wall. My 100-400mm camera lens shoots best at f7.1. Fully extended to 400mm gives my camera about 12x magnification and only a very few inches of depth of field as can be seen by how quickly the cement wall goes out of focus in front and behind the bird.

Song Sparrow
Song Sparrow. Oceanside, California. November 8, 2015. Greg Gillson.