Extinct is (mostly) forever

We spent a day and change at the San Diego Zoo where the kids again enjoyed the "amimals."

On the tram ride we went by a condor exhibit. The saga of the California Condor is well known. I was really surprised by their size however. The birds were the length of a hen turkey but appeared to have twice the bulk. I can easily see how condors would have made simple aerial targets for bored hunters (the ones that didn't die of ingested, rather than high velocity, lead poisoning at least).

Andean condors are also apparently endangered, this young one was part of one of their shows and flew right past us.

This is a Guam Rail.

It's in the same situation as the California Condor; extinct in the wild. As a smaller bird I suppose it might be easier to propogate more of them in captivity. I don't know, however, whether there is any social impetus to do this. Given that their natural habitat is still over-run by introduced cats, rats, and snakes, I doubt that these flightless birds could ever be re-introduced.

I know that a re-introduction of captive-raised thick-billed parrots was attempted in the Chiricahua's a decade or so ago. If memory serves, most of these were picked off by great horned owls when they selected exposed perches for roosting. I don't know what the status of the Mexican population is though I'm sure they're threatened at minimum.

I've always thought red-breasted geese were one of the more attractive waterfowl, at least in my mental picture of one. Up close they take on more of a bizarre appearance.

Finally, a member of their menagerie that was not quite so endangered, a (drumroll please) red-breasted merganser.

Uppercase Western Gulls

I'm back from California, but have at least a few catch-up posts left. I'm going to focus on Western Gulls in this one.

They're big gulls, heavy-chested, and even heavier billed. The heavy bill was even obvious to the naked eye as they would fly over the highways.

I saw a few juvenile birds at various places, the only juvenile gulls I encountered. The dark brown spangled-edged feathers of the mantle and reasonably neatly checkered wing coverts reminded me somewhat of lesser black-backed (though that bill does anything but).


The second year birds take on more of a herring gull look, with plainer dark plumage; basically big ugly brown things.

Based on the black-tipped yellow bill and the retained brown tertials with marbled white edges (also something that always stands out to me on lesser black-backed) I think this is a 3rd summer bird:

This is probably a 4th summer bird given the remnants of brown on the head and neck, mostly bi-colored yellow bill, but with adult primaries growing in.

Finally the adult birds. Sibley notes that eye color varies between dark in the north and pale clear yellow in the south with there being a perceptible change in central California. I didn't try to grade the ones I saw, but clearly there was some variation in the population based on these 2 photos:

Finally is a probably a member of the Glaucous-winged x Western Gull hybrid swarm sometimes known as "Olympic" Gull so-named for the overlap zone in that part of Washington where virtually all of the birds have mixed parentage. The bird has a paler mantle than a Western Gull and some marbled head and neck patterning far greater than what a Western Gull should have:

Coming soon to a blog near you, the other Western gulls I encountered, Heerman's and California...

Western sandpipers ... in the West

As I mentioned yesterday, I probably shot 200 images of Western Sandpipers yesterday. I always worry about learning species (i.e. western sand and Ross's goose) strictly in areas where they're semi rare. Whenever I'm staring at a Ross's goose's bill base I always wish I could head off to the Salton Sea to see a thousand of them so I figured I should jump at this opportunity.

SO, for your viewing pleasure, various pics of western sand selected by a random process (the ones that have the best profile of the bill). I believe all are adults, as you can see they vary between just starting to moult into winter plumage to being well on their way. All at this point though, retain at least a few colorful scaps and all have at least a few markings on their flanks.

Somehow I doubt I'm going to get this quality of photo when one shows up at 3 Oaks...

San Diego Shorebirds

Berrien county is certainly a fun place to bird. However, if there's one drawback often noted (besides winter of course), it's that there's very few respectable mudflats. There's even fewer tidal mudflats. That's not really a problem when birding the San Diego River.

Here's a long-billed curlew from earlier this evening:
And another from yesterday evening:

The whimbrel, while it appears huge at Tiscornia beach has about half the bulk of its larger cousin:

Marbled godwits actually seem much bigger here than they do at Tiscornia, perhaps because they allow closer approach when there's a narrow channel separating it from you. This one finished a prolonged preening session with probably 2 minutes of scratching its chin:

Finally a break from the large shorebird theme of the blog, a black turnstone which appeared out of nowhere foraging past the edge of the mudflat where I was hunkered down. This one was a lifer, and quite away from the rocky ocean-side habitat I expected it:

While this post might not suggest it, I spent the bulk of my birding time this morning photographing Western Sandpipers given that they're back on the Michigan review list and abundant here, but that'll be a post for another time...

Improved Fish Crow recording

Well I've been spending an inordinate amount of my bird-related computer time on trying to figure out exactly what I'm capable of in terms of sound files and presenting them here. Technical difficulties with the way I would like them to work have abounded; some are presently insurmountable.

At any rate I returned to the Forest Lawn Landfill area on a weekend morning today without heavy equipment and did manage to record at least one of the fish crows much better than I have previously. I think there' s another one in the background. There were a number crows flying around over the dump at the time, most of what I heard were American's.

At any rate, here's the sonogram of the best section of the recording with both single and double-noted calls (an Eastern Kingbird or two fires as well and then another answers more distantly).

Here is the recording in (hopefully) clickable form, both .aif and .wav files, I'd appreciate feedback on which, if either, people are able to open:
Fish Crow (.aif file)
Fish Crow (.wav file)

A few more butterflies

I've been trying to work on getting some recordings uploaded on the blog but I'm still having technical difficulties, so I'll stall for a day or so with a few shots from when I returned to Sarett some days ago.

The Baltimore checkerspots were actually pretty common, their orange eyes and legs gave them almost a creepy-crawly hornet sort of look, impressive, but I'm not sure I like them so much anymore.
Here I finally caught one in more traditional butterfly pose, they seemed to like to bask in the sun with their wings fully extended aimed exactly perpendicular to the sun as in the first pic.

For the umpteenth time a tailed blue had me thinking I'd found a hairstreak, but no.

Finally a vastly improved shot of a eyed brown [2010 edit: as Cory Gregory points out, this is actually an Appalachian Brown as I look at Kaufman a little closer]. I did actually see a Mitchell's satyr at rest this time but it paused for about half a second only and kept on going.

Flutterbys and fens

I went with some of the family today to Sarett where there was a walk targeting Mitchell's Satyr, a small endangered butterfly whose current range is now mainly SW Michigan. We did see a few though none perched close by.

There were a few flowers in the area I'd never seen before, I think this is fringed loosestrife (don't let the name fool you, this one is apparently native (if correctly ID'd)).


Eyed browns are larger (and considerably more common) members of the satyr family, I digi-binned this one.

I was photographing a purple fringed orchid when a skipper flew down and started nectaring. I believe this is a mulberrywing based on the arrow/crossbow shaped mark on the hindwing, not a super-common species (for once) based on the light green rangemap in Sibley.

Finally is a distant digi-binned shot of a Baltimore Checkerspot, my 2nd most wanted butterfly (out of a list of 2, #1 is Milbert's tortoiseshell). I may even return to try to get a better shot of one (as well as one of the Mitchell's satyr).