Birding!

[jjohnwm]

Seeing a Snowy Owl in Minnesota is not unheard of, but it's not common either. I was a little jealous when you and tlindsey were posting about them back in January.
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This afternoon while I was driving around a clover-leaf I was intrigued by what looked like a plastic shopping bag caught on a tree branch, only it was standing up from the branch. My mind wondered at this sight until two eyes rotated around and I realized it was an owl.
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I had to irritate my wife by taking all four clover-leafs again just to catch a second glimpse. I think this is the second time I've a Snowy Owl.
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It seems strange that it was this far South in the summer. I think of them as denizens of the North.

Congrats, that is a very cool sighting! I had to laugh about the 4-cloverleaf thing; been there, done that, got the verbal abuse that goes with it.

I wonder if this is a sign that this winter we will have an irruption of Snowy Owls? It's been awhile, feels like we are due for one.

 

[jjohnwm]

Birders are weird. Have I mentioned that before?

The out-of-season Snowy Owl posted above came to mind when I read a post this morning by a local birder, relating to the "sighting" of another winter bird in his yard in September; in this case it was a Snow Bunting. We'll have flocks of hundreds or even thousands of these during most winters, but this is way early to "see" one.

I put quotation marks on that because the bird was not seen...nor even heard directly. There's a new kid on the block in terms of birder cheating: Haikubox. It's described as "a dedicated outdoor hardware device that automatically monitors and identifies bird sounds 24/7". You buy this thing (for several hundred dollars), mount it on your patio or somewhere in your yard, and then it records bird calls on a continuous basis, keeps records that you can download, and apparently identifies the birds for you.

Now, I've been playing around with Merlin for awhile now. Merlin is a free app that you download onto your phone. When you hear something, or while you are actively birding, you turn the app on and then it listens and identifies all the bird sounds it hears. Or that's what it's supposed to do; I've found that it typically hears and identifies most nearby birds, often hears ones that are inaudible to my ears...but quite often seems completely deaf when there is something chirping or singing or screeching in a tree right in front of me. I don't trust the dang thing at all. It's a toy; when we are birding I will turn it on whenever we are walking or merely stop the car, and it will often alert me to the presence of this bird or that bird that I failed to hear. I don't need it to identify Robins and House Sparrows, and I usually don't care if ultra-common birds like that are nearby but inaudible to me. I want it to ID any calls that I can't recognize, and it is often completely useless for that task.

So, I don't see why I would trust Haikubox any more than I do Merlin. Nevertheless, there are birders who periodically download Haikubox's ID list and apparently count those birds! The human "observer" might be at work, miles away, sound asleep, whatever...but they count the birds that this mystery box claims it heard in their yard.

Gee...I wonder if they put on their hiking boots and Tilley hats, and sling their binoculars around their neck when they check the records...

 

[jjohnwm]

Woohoo!!! Another lifer, and a real rarity this time!

A posting appeared on the provincial rare bird alert site, regarding a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, an Asiatic shorebird that appears in very small numbers along the Pacific coast during fall migration. Anywhere else in North America it is a true rarity; range maps for the species don't display coloured patches indicating areas of occurrence, but rather small dots relating to individual birds found at widely separated sites. One of these was recently reported in Saskatchewan, the province just west of Manitoba where I live. I noted that with mild interest only; the odds of seeing the same tiny individual bird that somebody else spotted 700km away are too small to bother with.

And yet...here was another sighting, roughly 70km from my house! I was in the truck within 30 minutes; when I arrived at the coordinates I was greeted by the sight of a ginormous flock of Golden Plovers; I used the block method to estimate size and came up with at least 4500-6000 individuals of that one species. Lots of ducks and geese, some gulls, and a very small number of other shorebird species were present as well. I parked in the weeds 50 feet off the roadway, clambered into the truck bed and set up my tripod and spotting scope. The birds were scattered across a mudflat 100 to 200 yards distant. They were all actively feeding, milling about, flying up and re-landing in other spots; utter chaos. What were the chances of finding one small bird mixed in with thousands of other similarly-shaped small birds?

Turns out they were pretty good! The Sharp-tailed is relatively brightly-coloured, especially compared to the dull grey fall-plumaged Golden Plovers. Scanning rapidly over the flocking birds, it was easily and quickly found just by being so different. I found it, lost it and re-found it several times as it launched into the air with hundreds at a time of Goldens and re-landed nearby. All the major field marks of the species were easily seen (except the eyering) as long as the light was good. All this observation was done with a 60x spotting scope; these birds were far too distant to see clearly with binoculars.

That's two out-of-range lifers for me within less than three months; incredible. Both are birds that I never would expect to see in Manitoba, and yet both were within an hour or so of my front door. Amazing! Only other birders can understand how "quietly exciting" this can be!

Yeah, I know...small things, small minds...

 

[jjohnwm]

Lol, I just got off the phone with another local birder here, who called to chat about this bird. He had reacted as I did, except he did it for the Saskatchewan bird. Whereas I made a sandwich and filled a thermos of coffee for the 45-minute drive to our sandpiper...he had recently made similar preparations before making the nine hour drive to the site of the Saskatchewan sighting!

Thankfully for his sanity...he did see that bird.

When I jokingly asked him if he were going to see this new one...he is located about 1.5 hours away from it...he replied "Of course! I'm in the car now!"

 

[danotaylor]

Your passion and dedication is evident in your scribing tone John. Not a birder myself, but I sincerely appreciate vicariously enjoying birding through your writings!

 

[jjohnwm]

Thanks, DT! I enjoy posting that stuff on here because, frankly, it's much easier for me to find my "field notes" this way than to laboriously search through the archives of the local birding forum. Not only that, but...posts on that site are strictly limited to alerts, i.e. saw this species of bird at these coordinates at this time, observed these field marks, plus maybe a few comments regarding things like parking, light quality, times, etc. If you add any superfluous commentary or observations...which I have been known to do ...you can often have your peepee slapped by the powers-that- be and by other members who want nothing but cold hard data. "Just the facts, please."

Here, I can throw in any side commentary I want, since nobody gives a crap about the topic or is likely to read it anyway! I consider myself a fairly casual birder; I'd never make a spur-of-the-moment 9-hour trip to see a bird, as my buddy mentioned above did. But by the standards of a bunch of non-birding aquarists, well, I probably sound pretty hard-core.

Everything is relative!

 

[danotaylor]

Fair play. I enjoy reading your commentaries mate, on any topic actually