Great-tailed Grackle at San Luis Rey River Mouth

Great-tailed Grackles were first discovered visiting California in 1964. Of course, now, they are widespread and common in southern California around lake shores and river bottoms, from the Colorado River to the Pacific Ocean. Even as recently as 1990, they were more restricted to desert ponds and streams: Colorado River Valley, Salton Sea, Death Valley (California Wildlife Habitat Relationships System, S. Granholm).

Great-tailed Grackle. Oceanside, California. May 24, 2015. Greg Gillson.

Their calls are varied and loud, interspersing musical whistles and squeaks. The words raucous ("disturbingly harsh and loud noise") and cacophonous ("a harsh discordant mixture of sounds") are often used to describe this bird's calls.

These birds are in the blackbird and oriole family (not the crow and jay family). Males of all grackles have a large wedge-shaped tail that they hold in a folded 'V' shape, rather than flat as other blackbirds.

Sexually dimorphic, males are much larger and glossier bluish-black than the grayer females, such as the female below.

Because they are loud and bold, they are considered pests in many areas, such as campgrounds where they raid garbage cans and steal food from picnic tables (not to mention waking campers at  God-awful early morning hours... oops, I did mention it after all).

Thank goodness for the crop feature in Photoshop Elements. See the original photo below of the introductory photo above! I was able to remove the Barq's root beer can and some other shoreline trash.

See a previous post where I kept the garbage in the photo with the birds.

I love boobies! Brown Booby on San Diego pelagic trip

Brown Booby. On a pelagic trip 3 miles off San Diego, California. September 21, 2014. Greg Gillson.

In 1934 Henry Miller wrote a book where he called a woman's breasts "boobies." Since then, that has become the first and primary meaning for that word in American English, sometimes with a vulgar connotation. However this meaning of the word has moved into mainstream usage. For instance, in 2000 the Keep-A-Breast Foundation coined the phrase: "I love boobies" to bring awareness to breast cancer.

Prior to that, however, a booby was the term for an awkward or stupid person. It is this meaning of the word that is the basis for naming a group of tropical seabirds. It seems that starving sailors in times past had no respect for birds with no natural fear of man. Thus, we have boobies, gooney birds (albatrosses), and the dodo. All these words mean foolish or stupid (a.k.a. "an easy dinner" or "it tastes like chicken").

Brown Boobies are found in tropical oceans all around the world (but with a gap in the central and eastern South Pacific). In North America they are found in the Caribbean and southern Atlantic States. The white head of this bird in the photos is unique to the male Brown Booby of the "Brewster's" race found primarily off West Mexico. Identifying the gender of Brown Boobies elsewhere in the world is a bit more difficult. Breeding males have blue facial skin at the base of the bill while females have greenish facial skin. In these photos you can make out the bluish hue of the facial skin around the eyes.

Brown Boobies began breeding on the Coronado Islands a few years ago. These islands are about 9 miles off Tijuana, Mexico, and 15 miles south of San Diego Bay. Brown Boobies and, recently, a few Blue-footed Boobies have become regular visitors off beaches near the Mexican border. I haven't actually gone to look for them there yet at the end of Seacoast Drive in Imperial Beach.

There are 7 species of boobies and 3 closely related species of gannets in the world. I've seen Brown, Blue-footed, and Masked boobies. But I have a special affinity for brown boobies.

The first Brown Booby I ever saw was while leading a pelagic trip off Depoe Bay, Oregon in October 1998. This large dark bird was flying directly at the boat, making it difficult to see exactly what it was. But I knew it was big, perhaps a skua. As it approached quite near I finally could see the classic "pointed at both ends" look. Since this was the first record of a booby of any kind in Oregon--and I'd never seen a booby other than in my field guides--I wasn't really prepared, and couldn't remember the name immediately. According to a nearby passenger I shouted out a stammering "b-b-b-b-booby!" It took a while to identify the bird to species as it was a juvenile bird, very dark, similar to the bird in the photo below. It is always exciting to discover a first state record!

This immature Brown Booby off San Diego in September 2014 is actually paler
than the first one I identified off Depoe Bay, Oregon in October 1998.

A few years later, in October 2012 another Brown Booby was spotted and photographed from a pelagic trip I organized and led. This time the bird was an adult female and was, by then, a 5th state record for Oregon.

Besides my two Oregon sightings, I've seen Brown Boobies in Mexico a few times (including 90 individuals in the harbor at Mazatlan). But the three birds I saw last month (two photographed in this article) were my first for California.

That daring young man on the flying trapeze

Double-crested Cormorants. San Elijo Lagoon. August 3, 2014. Greg Gillson.

When another Double-crested Cormorant landed on this wire over the lagoon, the whole wire swung back-and-forth, nearly causing some birds to lose their balance. It reminded me of the song "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze." 

He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease, 

That daring young man on the flying trapeze.

So, where did that little ditty come from?

It is an 1867 song based on trapeze artist Jules Leotard. He invented the trapeze and, yes, the leotard!

Learn more about Mr. Leotard, the song, and trapeze here 

"When I grow up, mom, I want to swing on the wire, too. But I don't want to wear the tights!"

New names for old birds

I recorded and photographed two new bird names on my list of today's birds. But I didn't record any new life birds. These weren't even new year birds for me. How?

Well, every year at this time the scientifically-slanted AOU (American Ornithologists' Union) publishes its checklist of North and Middle American birds (North Pole to Panama), adding new species discovered visiting North America the past year, changing names (common and scientific), reordering the checklist, and splitting and lumping species based on new DNA or morphometric or other evidence. Once published, the ABA (American Birding Association), the "birding-as-a-sport-club" adopts the checklist changes (but only for US north of Mexico, Canada, and the French Island of St. Pierre et Miquelon, and out 200 miles into the ocean or half the distance to another point of non-included land (but not Bermuda, Bahama (♫ come on pretty momma ♫), Greenland, or Hawaii).

Thus the following two birds I saw today now have different names for different reasons.

Nutmeg Mannikin becomes Scaly-breasted Munia. Kit Carson Park, Escondido, California. August 3, 2014. Greg Gillson.

Just last year this feral former cage bird became a countable species in southern California. Wild birds are widespread in river bottoms along the coast. In the pet trade this bird is known as Spice Finch or Nutmeg Mannikin.

The bird has nothing to do with nutmeg, nor is it found where nutmeg comes from. [Maybe it is nutmeg-colored. But that's not a real color. It's a made-up color. The only real colors are those original 8 in the Crayola box. As a kid, my family evidently couldn't afford the 64-color box for me, or the unbelievable 128-color box, so now I refuse to recognize any other colors. This bird is brown (or close enough).]

The Nutmeg Mannikin is NOT related to the bird family of Manakins. Mannikins are finches (known for their lively songs and seed-eating appetites); Manakins are related to flycatchers (sub-oscines, which means they can't sing to save their lives; they eat bugs); Manikins are, well, Mannequins. Where's Ogden Nash when you need him?

Scaly-breasted Munia Lonchura punctulata is the last bird on the ABA checklist--the last bird in your field guide, following House Sparrow and Eurasian Tree Sparrow.

Okay, enough silliness. On to Bird Number 2.

Western Clapper Rails become Ridgway's Rail. San Elijo Lagoon, Solana Beach, California. August 3, 2014. Greg Gillson.

It was low tide at San Elijo Lagoon this morning. Over a dozen of these large rails snuck (sneaked, for you word snobs) out of their marsh vegetation where they usually hide unseen to eat the many exposed fiddler crabs and clams or whatever those lumps in the mud are. They were quite excited and called out often, eliciting a response from all the other rails in the marsh--quite a noise! It is more usual not to see or even hear any rails during a birding visit.

Last time I saw these birds they were called Clapper Rails. But a bunch of Clapper and King rails (several in Mexico) were split in this recent AOU update (see definition of "cryptic species" in yesterday's post about White-breasted Nuthatches). "Clapper Rails" are now found on the Atlantic. Ridgway's (yes, without an 'e') Rails are now the form found in coastal salt marshes in California and along the Colorado River and coastal western Mexico.

Ridgway's Rail  Rallus obsoletus
Clapper Rail  Rallus longirostris

Clapper Rail: "Thin as a rail" a big fat lie?

Clapper Rail. Tijuana Slough, California. March 2, 2014. Greg Gillson.

Rails are one of the more difficult birds to see. They generally live in wet fields or marshes, hiding in dense, soggy vegetation. Many birders know these birds by not much more than strange cries from the dawn marsh and glimpsed shadows through the grass. Secretive, they can compress their bodies to slip between adjacent water plant stems without giving away their location as Audubon noted. Thus the expression: "thin as a rail" as many a birder has no doubt heard and is repeated in many places. Or not. It is argued rather convincingly that the term refers to a fence rail, pole, or even a garden rake, thus the parallel expression: "thin as a rake." Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore.

Needless to say, as hard as two-dimensional rails are to actually see, they are harder yet to photograph. Thus my collection of rail photos until now consisted of a couple poor shots of a Sora and a blurry Virginia Rail.

So I was delighted to find the Tijuana Slough NWR visitor's center in Imperial Beach and the North McCoy Trail. Marlene and I walked out less than 1/4 mile on this trail, over a foot bridge across a tidal channel. As we stood looking over miles of marsh grass, this Clapper Rail nonchalantly walked out of the salt marsh vegetation just below us!

Tijuana Slough

Fat Clapper Rail

Today's English lesson: Dissing the gruntled worker

A recent legal blog post (here) on wind generators being given a permit to "take" (read, "strike dead") Bald Eagles had the headline that the eagles were "nonplussed." I had to look it up.

The prefix "non" usually means "not," but nonplussed without the "non" is nonsense. I'm confused. Actually, the Latin (non plus) does mean "no more to add." But there is no English word that describes a person's mental state as "plussed," as in perfectly clear. Got it?

That reminds me of several other confusing words I've noted over the years.

What's the difference between flammable and inflammable? Well, it turns out that inflammable comes from the Latin "to light on fire." In the 1920's the National Fire Protection Association thought that people were confusing inflammable (easy to catch fire) with nonflammable (not able to catch fire). Inconceivable! (not conceivable) That's bad. What to do? Invent a new word! They coined "flammable" and encouraged its use over inflammable. Both mean exactly the same thing, easy to catch fire.

When is the last time you heard of a gruntled worker wreaking havoc at their place of employment? It could happen, because gruntled is a word. No disrespect, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Disgruntled means dissatisfied. The "dis" that prefixes "satisfied" means NOT satisfied, right? But the "dis" in front of gruntled does NOT mean mean NOT. Gruntled is an old form of "grumble." It does not mean "happy." The "dis" in front means "more." So, while a gruntled employee is a grumbler, a disgruntled employee is a real problem.

Want more examples of words that have negative connotations without corresponding positive meanings? See Grammar Girl's "Don't worry, be gruntled."