Back to lifer 249

Yesterday I wrote about my day of birding trip, and announced lifer #250, Pigmy Nuthatch…

Well, on further review….

In discussing the bird with one of the senior birders, he pointed out that this species is quite rare at that location. We talked over why I made that ID and what field marks I used for the identification. Since I have no photo of the bird, field marks are crucial as a way to help other birders accept your call as the eye witness. I went and did more research on the species and alternatives last night as well.

I’ve decided that given the species would be a special find there and that it’s a lifer bird for me (officially, my first ever confirmed sighting), I don’t think the sighting meets the burden of proof I’m comfortable with to make that call. I’ve removed the bird from the list and left it identified as a nuthatch, but not as either a Pigmy or as a White-Breasted (the likely alternative).

This is obviously a compromise position — I feel comfortable with the call, but in describing the bird last night, I found I couldn’t describe what I felt was the absolute required field mark (the black mask across the face and eyes); all of the other marks (lack of red around the vent, relative size) to me left the bird ambiguous. Since I didn’t get an extended look at the bird, it’s possible I didn’t see the marks properly. Since it’s a lifer, I can’t claim familiarity with it, and I try to be really strict about declaring a lifer bird. If this had been a more common bird in the area, I’d accept this ID; since it’s not, I don’t feel like I got a good enough look at it to make the call against the historical evidence, but I also don’t feel that it’s clear I made a mistake and mis-called the white-breasted as pigmy.

If I’d realized the bird was a potential rarity, or even if I’d realized it was a life bird for me (I didn’t), I would have stopped and tried to chase it down for an extended look and photos. Since I didn’t, it’s going to remain ambiguous and anonymous. this is actually a part of birding I really enjoy — the challenge to get it right. and the more I work at my birding, the more I realize just how complicated it is to do well — if it was easy, we wouldn’t bother…

So I’m off in search of #250 again. And I feel good that this is the right call and right decision…

 

 

A few site updates

I took some time to tweak a few things here on the blog and my photo sites. Here’s a quick summary:

First, I’ve spent some time setting up some things over on my smugug photo site. you can now purchase prints or downloads of images.  I’ve also created a gallery of free downloads sized for use as wallpapers for your computer; these have a small watermark but are licensed via Creative Commons. I’ll try to add images to that collection every week or two, and if there’s one you’d like to see available as a watermark, feel free to ask.

I also decided that Google Buzz has none, and so I’ve removed references to it from my site. The content that I used to point you to (primarily the shared items from Google Reader) are now being posted to my twitter feed via twitterfeed. That’s one less place I have to worry about trying to convince people to subscribe to, and it seems the appropriate place for this. Since twitter gateways into facebook, that content also ends up there as well. The big trick in trying to figure out where to put stuff is how to allow people to get access to the parts they find interesting without shoving lots of duplicate entries into their faces or making it an all or nothing situation for them. I think the current setup (Blog for longer form writing, twitter for casual, short form chatting and “hey, this is interesting” linking) makes the most sense.

I’ve also started hanging out in a couple of new places, and so they’ve been added to the site in the About Me areas: I’ve liked JPG Magazine for a while, and now that it’s back moving forward and I have some photography I think is good enough to share, I’m starting to dip my toe into the community there. And there’s a new photography discussion forum sponsored by the Stack Exchange folks, and it seems to have good content and conversation, so I’ve started following that and contributing a bit as well. You’re encouraged to check them both out and maybe decide to join in the fun there with me…  I’ve cut back some of my activity on Flickr, but I think that’s temporary while i figure out how much time I want to spend there and what I want to do while I’m there. We’ll see.

I’ve also made a slight change to the “Stuff to Read” section on the blog, it now has a listing of the most popular pages on the site over the last 90 days; since those are the pages most people are coming to see, I think it makes sense to promote them a bit, so that section is now showing the pages you find most interesting as well as the pages I think are worth reading.

The new blog design is now about 2 months old, and I have to admit I still like it and I think it’s accomplished the goals I set out to in the redesign. I like how images are displayed a lot better. The number of people subscribing to the blog hasn’t changed (but I didn’t expect that), but page views are up about 14%, while number of pages read per visit is up almost 20% and the time spent on the site per visit is up about 6%. Since I felt the big issue with the old site was that people showed up ti see a specific page and never saw any other content (and therefore had no reason to consider subscribing or reading any other items), these are all good indications that the new design is helping people see some of the other content and some are exploring a bit. I’m also quite happy with the increased views of images both on flickr and on smugmug. the real draw is always good writing (and good images), but neither does you much good if it’s hidden from sight by a bad site design, so I think this is a nice step forward.

And onward into fall!

big day of birding…

So I decided to get away from email and cell towers for a while and I
went out on an extended birding run, starting out way too freaking
early in the morning and driving up Mount Hamilton and out to the
Stanislaus county line, then backtracking and out Mines road to
Livermore, over Altamont and then through Gustine to San Luis NWR,
then home via O’Neill Forebay and 152. I hit the Grant park area just
as the light started going grey, and got home again about 3PM, driving
about 270 miles in the meantime. low temperature was 52 in the fog on
the way up mount hamilton, high temperature was 97 degrees at San Luis
reservoir on the way home.

The drive was awesome, the birding was interesting but not
spectacular, the photography was pretty mediocre. And I had a great
time… I was going to try to loop in merced NWR as well, but it was
hot enough in the central valley that it made no sense. All in all, I
checked birds in five counties, adn I considered looping down into
Santa Cruz and up the coast into San Mateo, but I decided that was
tempting insanity (besides, I’m thinking of hitting pigeon point and
gazos early monday…)

Santa Clara highlights:

For some reason, I have problems seeing california quail on the
county. I swear they see me coming and hide, laughing. Today solved
that and gave me numbers to last me for a while, since quail were
freaking everywhere. They definitely went forth and prospered this
summer. I saw at least 30 families from the base of mount hamilton to
when I entered alameda county, the largest being about 45 individuals,
and that large family included some tiny (week to ten day old) baby
quail numbering about 15. they were maybe 2″ tall. Everywhere I went,
quail were diving for cover…

I also saw massive numbers of scrub jays, the largest family group
being ten. And large numbers of Acorn woodpeckers. Lots and lots of
acorn woodpeckers.

But overall, birding wasn’t stupendous, about about 10AM when the
temperature in the valley hit about 84, the birds all headed for shade
and said “dude! some other time” (except for the jays…).

Specific highlights:

California thrasher at Smith Creek CDF (year bird! 192).

ten ravens looking for trouble to cause around Grant park at sunrise.

an adult female bluebird and a bird in juvenile plumage up at the sky
ranch gate, indicating they nested there this year. no sign of the
tree swallows that I’ve seen nesting at that location before, they’re
gone (if they were there). Just downhill from here I ran into the
band-tailed pigeon and one of the flickers.

Just below that, a tree with ten turkey vultures hanging out in a
roost waiting for it to warm up.

On the way down the hill near one of the ranches, a hawk in a tree
turned out to be a sharp-shinned.

Down near ranch 71 (in the flat among the horse pastures) I ran into a
few interesting small birds, including a single Lark Sparrow, an oak
titmouse, and a pigmy nuthatch. Pigmy nuthatch, much to my surprise,
is a lifer on ebird and is my lifer bird #250 and year bird 193. Last
year, I hit year bird 193 November 28th. That’s my 11th lifer this
year. the other flicker was in this area.

also in this area as I was driving I flushed a full adult bald eagle,
who turned out to have staked out a roadkill rabbit and when I got too
close flew off and past my car about 4′ away. Absolutely awesome
sight. From the size and the bill, I’ll say 80% sure it was female.

at O’neill forebay it was pretty quiet, I stopped just long enough for
a quick look in the heat, and saw mostly coot’s and a small flock of
western grebes. If there was a clark’s in there, I didn’t stop to sort
them out (my bad). Didn’t see much of anything else from my vantage
point, the water looked pretty empty.

(out of area, San Luis waterbird route was pretty hot, dusty and
empty; mostly I pissed off great egrets and great blue herons who felt
the need to move out of my way, although I did see a green heron, a
loggerhead shrike and a single american kestrel female).

———- Forwarded message ———-
From:  <do-not-reply@ebird.org>
Date: Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 3:26 PM
Subject: eBird Report – Del Puerto Canyon (SCL Co.) , 9/4/10

Location:     Del Puerto Canyon (SCL Co.)
Observation date:     9/4/10
Notes:     long drive, from alum rock to stanislaus county line, back
to mines road and alameda county
Number of species:     26

California Quail     350
Turkey Vulture     12
Bald Eagle     1
Sharp-shinned Hawk     1
Red-tailed Hawk     3
Band-tailed Pigeon     1
Mourning Dove     75
Acorn Woodpecker     45
Northern Flicker     2
Black Phoebe     1
Steller’s Jay     15
Western Scrub-Jay     70
Yellow-billed Magpie     X
American Crow     X
Common Raven     10
Cliff Swallow     2
Oak Titmouse     1
Bushtit     8
Pygmy Nuthatch     1
Western Bluebird     2
Northern Mockingbird     3
California Thrasher     1
California Towhee     X
Lark Sparrow     1
White-crowned Sparrow     X
Red-winged Blackbird     X

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)