The meadowlarks of Andrews

Some more shots from the Andrews Museum. Earlier this spring Tim and I had the chance to compare the 2 meadowlark species at Tiscornia. Andrews had a couple specimens of each and we spent the bulk of the time comparing the two species.


I'm not sure that I've ever heard of an albino meadowlark, but apparently they exist...
The collection info (species, sex, date of collection) was lost on this specimen. It's mounted singing, if it was heard singing that would have been helpful though if collected in the 60's, (like a lot of the stuff there), there may not have even been tapes for people to learn the songs. The distribution of yellow on the malar suggests a female Western, so if so, it probably wasn't singing anyway (but could have called).

Next are a couple Eastern Meadowlarks, with completely cream malars, Pyle would make these females. One was collected in Berrien in June 1961, data is lost on the other. Only one had a tail worth reviewing (the other was quite ragged and missing at least 3 feathers). There are 2 solid white outer tail feathers with narrow terminal shaft streaks, r4 has mostly white outer with some buffy inner, and r3 has a little bit of white extending out along the vane. This is closest to Pyle type B, but has less white on r3 than he illustrates most Easterns' as having.

Now we move on to some Westerns. This one is a male Western (almost entirely yellow malar), specimen 885, with unknown collection data.

Its tail is actually quite similar to the previous bird, 2 white outer tail feathers, with a fair amount of white on r4, though the buffiness on this feather is on the outer edge and the white on the inner, a difference that would probably be hard to see in the field. This pattern is very similar to the classic Pyle D meadowlark tail,

Next is a female Western, with a square of yellow on the malar. This is specimen 1768, collected in Berrien in summer of 1978.

This bird also has r4 with buffy outer edge and a white inner edge. Note that the terminal shaft streaks on r5 and r6 are actually sections of patterning rather than the very narrow streak that the Eastern had.

Next is specimen 309, unidentified by the collector. It's another straightforward Western, with extensive yellow on the malar, likely a male:

Its tail has even more patterning of the terminal streak on r5 and r6 than the last bird:

Finally we come to this bird which caused us some problems, specimen 277, collected in Berrien in Sept 1962. We looked and looked at the face, the yellow didn't seem to extend onto the malar tract which would seem to make it a female Eastern. Even if there is a narrow stretch of yellow along the edge of the feather tract, that would be consistent with male Eastern (female Western has a square of yellow and male Western extensive yellow):

The pattern of white on the tail however, is exactly what is shown in Pyle for Western. The plate could literally have been drawn from this specimen.

I'm not sure what it was. I wish we'd photo'd the upperparts with some of the known birds.

Below is a comparison of 2 Western's on top, and an Eastern on the bottom:

It was interesting how many of the Berrien specimens were Western. Currently Eastern probably outnumbers Western in the county by at least 100:1. Last year there were no Western's on known territories; I can't remember if there are any known in the county at present. Clearly there seems to be some shift in the ranges or local population (unless the collectors focused on what seemed like interesting birds to them, which obviously would bias the results).

I wish I'd looked at the flank streaking on the specimens (though their condition would might have made it hard to peek under the wings). The streaking of our April Western was a lot finer than the Eastern we photo'd the same morning. It'd be interesting to see how consistent that is.

With an infinite amount of time it'd be nice to go over to the U of M museum and go through some of their specimens...

How to mis-ID birds, part 2(?) of infinity

If you'd like to learn to mis-identify birds, one important rule to follow is (Over)-Confidence is Everything. You should keep your reference books in nice mint condition on the shelves at home and prevent them from getting used and abused in the field. That way, when you kick two meadowlarks out of the grass and notice that one has a white malar and one has a yellow-ish malar, you can choose the wrong one to focus your attention on. You can ignore that one is plainly sandier and more washed-out than the other (and rationalize that by observing that winter-plumaged meadowlarks are duller) to focus attention on the obvious Eastern Meadowlark on the upper right in unsuccessful efforts to make it a Western:
Fortunately the camera gives us a second chance, even if I was timing the shutter to optimize images of the Eastern (this is one of only 2 frames that show the paler bird's face). Next is a crop of the above photo. The bird on the left has paler marking, yellow washing up on the malar, and little contrast between the pale brow stripe and the upper area of the cheek patch. The bird on the right is marked darkly with a white malar and much more contrast to the face pattern. Open up Sibley, Pyle, or National Geo, and it's fairly plain to see that the bird on the left is a Western Meadowlark. Furthermore, if you read Pyle, you see that it's in August to January (September to January in Sibley) that the birds are paler and washed out. In essence, 2 bits of mis-applied knowledge (forgetting which one has some yellow extending onto the malar, and the timing of paler plumage) led us to conclude in the field, "Huh, something doesn't seem right about this, too bad they didn't call," when it could have been, "Western Meadowlark 9-o-clock in the tree, on it? First Tiscornia record. Ni-ice."

Not convinced yet? Do you think that, well, maybe it could just be paler because it's an atypical bird in mis-timed moult with some weird lighting artifact making the anterior malar washed with yellowish? Fortunately, we were lucky enough to collect more data. What turned out to be the Eastern flushed at angles that the cameras didn't pick up very much on it. The bird that turned out to be the Western flushed much closer.

Here's the bird flushing in front of Tim:

I was about 20 yards to the right so more of a side view for me:

What we see is a bird with 2 white outer tail feathers (r5 and r6) with a third feather (r4) that has dark coloration along its leading edge with a larger white pane on the broader trailing/inner "half." Sibley does note there is some overlap generically between the two species on the extent of white in the tail, but fortunately in Michigan, the subspecies that we encounter do not overlap. In Michigan, per Pyle range descriptions, we have the neglecta Western Meadowlark (which has the exact tail pattern of our bird with white r5 and r6 and partially white r4 as illustrated in Nat'l Geo and Pyle) and the magna Eastern Meadowlark (which Nat'l Geo and Pyle agree has 3 solidly white outer tail feathers (r4-r6) with r3 being partially white).

Note that the tail patterns exhibited by some of the other subspecies is more muddled. Pyle and Nat'l Geo disagree on the pattern shown by the confluenta Westerns of the Pacific coast states as well as the pattern exhibited by argutula Easterns of the southern Great Plains. Fortunately neither of those subspecies is very likely to occur here so the tail pattern is also helpful.

Triumph of the the Wing(nut)s

Well, maybe triumph is an exaggeration but the Wings did just win the Stanley Cup (ok a little background to the title, back in my Washtenaw days the local rag did a feature on Roger Wykes, one of the local birders in Ann Arbor who would typically rack up more species on an annual basis than anyone else, and called him a "Wingnut" in the headline. Someone then gave him a "trophy" at the end of the year with a wingnut on the top of it, and ever since the Wingnut award has been given to the Washtenaw county birder with the highest annual total... ). Anyway, led a trip for Washtenaw Audubon hoping to feature some of the local southern specialties that are much more difficult in Washtenaw than in Berrien. Ideally this trip would have been run at least a week earlier, but that was my anniversery and you have to draw the line somewhere right?


We started out in the morning down at Forest Lawn for the yellow-throated warblers. Since I expected them to be hard I figured it'd be best to start there with the coolest part of the morning to give us our best shot. It nearly back-fired when our first pass down the road produced nothing; we headed back towards the cars when I heard one which we got a few unsatisfying backlit views of. We again headed back to the cars when the bird started singing again. This time it was more cooperative and nearly everyone had at least a brief view of it through the scope as well as binocular views. After watching an acadian flycatcher at really close range through the scope we headed north into areas traditionally good for dickcissels and I picked one up pretty quickly. This bird was very cooperative, perching up on the wire and singing away, a lifer for several members of the group.



We headed next to Warren Dunes SP where the prairie warblers were surprisingly un-cooperative. My general experience with prairies is that they tend to sing from a perch and, while difficult to find initially, will tend to sit and sing. This was not the case today, we heard the birds well, but only a few of us had a fleeting view of one. Interestingly there was a bird at the periphery of the blow-out that sang ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-weet-eo, starting out with the typical prairie song, though maybe a little thinner, and then ending with a hooded warbler turn.


After stopping for lunch we headed up towards Sarett, starting at Brown where we had brief views of a prothonotary which I hit a couple times with a tape, getting a view of the bird as it flew past and then sang from a thicket. The Sarett Prairie had a good numbers of bluebirds perched up, a willow flycatcher for the scope, and an orchard oriole at the entrance, but the ammodramid sparrows were no-shows (though both Henslows and grasshopper can be found in Washtenaw). We ended at Anna Lane where after some waiting, we were rewarded with a perched-up view of the western meadowlark there, another lifer for a decent proportion of the group. This was my first chance to get a good study of the bird visually; the first time I saw the bird at the end of April I could see some white on the malar (more of an eastern mark), the second time I saw the bird a few weeks ago it seemed quite sandy in appearance. This time a decent view revealed that while there is an edge of the malar that is pale, most of the feather tract is yellow, which is indeed what Sibley and Peterson illustrate.