Are invisible.

I mean, I know they’re out there. The Montana Field Guide, a helpful online compendium provided by the state government, lists seven species. Three of those — the Black-chinned, Calliope, and Rufous Hummingbirds — breed in the Missoula area. That is, in extremely precise mathematical terms, three times more species of hummingbirds than breed near the Olde Homestead. But my mom sees hummingbirds at her feeder constantly, and here my feeder sits, all forlorn. As far as right now, the first report of a Calliope Hummingbird from the local bird mailing list came in on April 22. The first Rufous was reported two days later — at a feeder, not mine — and the first Black-chinned on May 3.

There is nothing about the yard that is unbirdy, I don’t think. It certainly drew plenty of feeder birds over the winter. My cat stays inside, and my new dog Dublin has opened a series of delicate negotiations with the neighborhood free-roaming cats, meant to curtail any unfortunate incidents. The feeder is new, the red bits shiny, the nectar fresh. It hangs in a location that is sunny in the cool morning and shady in the oppressive afternoon. There are perches in the lilac bush.

I examine the species accounts in detail, searching for clues.

The Calliope Hummingbird at least has an excuse. It prefers the mountains over the valleys, willow and alder thickets over lilac bushes in downtown backyards. It’s also the smallest hummingbird to be found north of Mexico, which is the closest to invisible. I’m not mad at you, Calliope Hummingbird. But if you did want to come visit…

The Rufous Hummingbird is best known for tenacity and toughness and widespread wandering. It breeds into Alaska. My yard is nicer than Alaska (sorry Claire.) When I was young, it was the only western hummer to routinely stray east in the winter months. My life Rufous was wintering in New York just outside the Museum of Natural History. My yard is way nicer than theirs, though my indoor space may fall just short in terms of dinosaurs.

The Black-chinned Hummingbird may not be the flashiest of its tribe, but it is cosmopolitan, nesting in deserts, in mountain forests, in oak groves and riverside cottonwood stands. Cornell’s All About Birds describes it as “one of the most adaptable of all hummingbirds, often found in urban areas”. So what gives?

The ways of birds are mysterious. Perhaps, as with the Baikal Teal, merely complaining to the universe via the medium of this blog will produce results. Or maybe I’ll keep throwing away undrunk nectar all summer and feel like a tool. Or maybe it will all go to feed invisible, undiscovered birds.

Do you think flying flamingos look like flaming pencils? Jochen does!

May is in full stride now, which means migration is in full stride, which means most nature lovers are spending as much time outside as possible. Frankly, I’m amazed many of you even have time to read this. Is anybody out there?

Corey and I will be doing our respective things in our respective corners of New York state. How about you? Where will you be this weekend and will you be birding? Share your plans in the comments below.

Whatever your plans this weekend, make time to enjoy SkyWatch Friday. Also be sure to come back Monday to share your best bird of the weekend!

Via Buzzfeed.

Well, that brings a new meaning to the phrase “the eagle has landed.” In the case of two Bald Eagles at the Duluth International Airport in Minnesota, the landing was of the not-so-smooth variety. The birds had locked their talons during a mid-air battle and plummeted to the tarmac together.

When they hit the ground, both were alive, but unable to separate themselves. Fortunately, a quick-thinking airport employee called the state’s Department of Natural Resources. (Randy Hanzal, a conservation officer with the agency, snapped the remarkable photo above.)

During transport to a rehab center, one eagle made a quick escape. The other was transferred to the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center with deep talon wounds, but was expected to do well. (You can check for updates on its progress at the Center’s Facebook page.)

While all the posts I see in the blog (when I can bring myself to read it and let’s face it, that isn’t often at the best of times) are about spring and migrants and birds that are so gauche they actually dress in pink, here in New Zealand we are experiencing the start of winter. Don’t mind me. Just keep posting about how great things are. I don’t mind, because a, as I noted, I don’t read your posts anyway, and b, I’ll have my revenge come November.

Well, maybe January.

Actually, we just came off the best summer I have ever experienced. Sure, the complete absence of rain for most of it did a number on the farmers, left Wellington with barely twenty days of water and meant we couldn’t have outdoor fires, but it was nice. For. A. Change. Of course, we paid for that. Usually we are so traumatized by the relentless misery of summer we barely notice the change of seasons. This time, however, there was a shift. One day, it seemed, it was summer. Then it wasn’t, and once again those of us not born in this country cursed the fact that Kiwis seem unable to grasp the concept of insulation.

The birds don’t dramatically change in winter here either, or at least so much as you might notice. Seabirds do vary quite a bit, if you happen to risk swells to go out to sea, but sadly that doesn’t happen as much as I might imply so as I make to make Corey jealous. We lose most of our shorebirds from the northern hemisphere, but again, I don’t get to many estuaries to check.

 Variable Oystercatchers are a constant here.

We do have a certain amount of intra island migration, but not in huge numbers. Most of teh species that do this are uncommon, so while you might find a Wrybill in WEllington in winter, you’d be lucky. As for landbirds, only two migrate, and both of them are cuckoos, and I have seen cuckoos about four times in the seven years I have lived here, so again it isn’t a pattern I’d notice. So the changes of the seasons don’t really bring the excitement you’d get on the continents.

Weta don’t migrate either.

Of course, this des mean that we can enjoy birds year round. I made it to Karori Wildlife Sanctuary the other day, and all my friends were there. Kaka entertained tourists, Takahe cropped the grass, Brown Teal, uh, do whatever it is that they do.

If Takahe could migrate it would be on foot.

Anyway, am I jealous? Not really. I’m getting my change of season fix this year by taking a long weekend in Sydney next week. So I’ll get my variety that way. And how many places in the world can you take long weekends in Australia from? Not many!

A Variagated Fairy-wren awaits me, for sure!

So enjoy your spring, your long days and your unfashionable pink birds. I’ll take this instead.

Wellington in winter, from my house.

ARUBA — Of all the places that I’ve had the privilege to bird, Aruba is probably has the poorest birding coverage. For starters, it’s small. And really windy. And mostly desert. None of the things that really lend themselves to high bird diversity. It has no avian endemic species (only one subspecies), and its most spectacular birds like Venezuelan Troupial and Fiery-Topaz Hummingbird can be found in greater numbers across a narrow strait in mainland South America, where you can pick up an additional 400-500 species besides. So why waste your time on this mostly over-developed island anyway?

With few exceptions, almost no one does.  Jeff and Allison Wells, a pair of Americans who run the excellent Birds of Aruba website, being the sole keepers of Aruba’s historical records, and Steve Mlodinow, the Colorado birder who travels there annually and eBirds the heck out of the place, being the only ones I can find. This, like most things, offers some pros and some cons. Cons include poor field guides, incomplete knowledge and the paralysis of not knowing what you might see on any given day. Pros include the opportunity to offer valuable data to the record simply by birding and the ecstasy of not knowing what you might see on a given day.

For instance, Aruba’s position just north of South America, source of a ridiculous percentage of North American birds we erroneously considered “ours” (particularly this time of year), means that if there are any species of birds up for making a run north, Aruba is one of the first places they’ll hit. The Caribbean is a tempting pathway for expansion and a handful of birds have traveled this well-trodden route to establishment in the ABA-Area. The most famous of these is Cattle Egret, but Masked Duck looked like it might make things interesting for a while and Antillean Nighthawk has more or less staked out a little niche for itself in extreme southern Florida.

For a long time in the 90s, the next big thing was going to be Shiny Cowbirds, which would make landfall in the south with all the stealth of the Normandy Invasion. The species was predicted to sweep up the eastern seaboard turning aside hordes of Brown-headed Cowbirds in its wake and causing the extinction of forest bird just by looking askance at them. That, obviously, never happened, and truly the cowbird du jour in Florida anymore is the Bronzed, so the conquering army is not a specialty bird, sought out by birders between the Snail Kite boat ride and the Mangrove Cuckoo swamp stomp. In any case, they’re still present in the Caribbean in numbers that make you think that the long-anticipated invasion is only a matter of time. But they prefer to hang tight in the islands. Not that I can blame them.

But Aruba is not only the source of these avian explorers, it’s also seeing expansion of its own on its shores. I learned about the Cattle Tyrants at the super-posh Tierra del Sol golf course when I emails Jeff Wells about a Yellow-rumped Warbler I had found, at the time thinking that it was a 3rd island record according top the field guide I’d been using. Not true, said Jeff. It’s a good bird, but there are a small handful of other records. But by the way, did I know about the Cattle Tyrants, a strange species of open-country South American tyrant flycatcher that has pushed its range northward in recent years.

Of course not. My field guide still had them listed as “extremely rare”, and if there’s one thing I know about birding travel, it’s that the extremely rare stuff doesn’t usually get seen unless you make a real effort to find them. Since time and transportation was a problem, I’d given up on it.

Nonsense, said Jeff. Go to the TdS golf course and look around. as luck would have it, my golfing father and brother-in-law were heading that way in the morning. So I hoped in the car and planned to walk back. But as soon as I stepped out of the car, I could not one, but two Cattle Tyrants preening in the trees. If that’s extremely rare, than I’m extremely lucky.

Cattle Tyrant is one of those species folks are predicting will show up in Florida not if, but when. Their northward trajectory has been the stuff of legends. And from there, up the coast? Who knows. The species could find a niche in agricultural areas like the Cattle Egrets or remain stuck in place like the Shiny Cowbirds.

And when it does, I can say I saw it back when.

It’s always good to be reminded that when you are looking at birds you are actually looking at dinosaurs. And xkcd is excellent at just this type of reminder.

After several weeks of putting in way too much time at work I finally finished bargaining a contract early last week and had it ratified by mid-week. That meant I could finally take a day off from work and I chose Friday.

After a couple of weeks of really lousy winds for migration in late April and early May the winds finally stopped coming out of the east and changed to the southwest at the end of last week. That meant that neotropical migrants were around in force on Friday.

What a fortunate confluence of events! I decided to spend my day Friday birding the heck out of my home borough to see how many species I could track down for the day. I didn’t plan very carefully and didn’t spend every minute in the field. (In fact, a mid-morning high tide made this a less-than-ideal day for a real big day in Queens and stopping home for lunch and a shower and ending the birding day with almost two hours of daylight left meant that it was nowhere near a real big day.) Nonetheless, I ended up with 124 species of birds in Queens in the just-over-twelve-hours I spent birding. Not bad, not bad at all.

Magnolia Warblers are always a show-stopper. This one was at Edgemere Landfill.

What was my route? I started at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge pre-dawn to pick up American Woodcock and then headed to the coast to see if there was any flight happening. There wasn’t much of one but I did see the nice sunrise I shared at the top of this post. From there I went back to Jamaica Bay where I was treated to a tanager, grosbeak, and wood-warbler show in the North Gardens. After over two hours at Jamaica Bay I headed to Big Egg Marsh for high tide and a bunch of shorebirds. From there I hit up Edgemere Landfill for what grassland birds I could find and also to check the surprisingly active woodland near the entrance. A quick stop at the beach netted me some beach-nesting birds and then I did a quick tour of some woodland parks, Alley Pond Park and Oakland Lake. A stop at Alley Pond Environmental Center in an attempt to pick up some marsh-nesting birds was fruitless as was a stop at Flushing Airport where I had found several swallow species recently. Then I stopped home for a shower and some food before checking out Kissena Park and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Then I finished my day at the waterhole at Forest Park.

Had I been doing a real big day I would have went back out to the coast at the end of the day and I also would have made sure to hit some of the wooded parks earlier in the day in order to maximize my findings of migrant songbirds. Still, any day in New York City with 124 species is a day well worth experiencing!

Check out the images below for a taste of my big day…

This Rose-breasted Grosbeak gave itself away with its “sneaker squeak.” They were all over the North Gardens at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

Though I have been unable to prove it, I am convinced that these Northern Harriers are breeding at Edgemere Landfill.

As if Scarlet Tanagers aren’t compelling enough, this one was freakishly-colored.

Green Herons are surprisingly easy to miss in Queens on a big day. This one was at Edgemere Landfill.

You can’t count a Red Bat for a big day but they are worth watching nonetheless.

Wood Thrush are great to listen to and not bad to look at. This was one of many at Alley Pond Park.

It is a good thing that Common Yellowthroats live up to their name or birders would be fighting for a good look.

It is annoying that the only game bird you can see in Queens are an introduced species.

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How was your weekend? Did you see awesome birds? Take good care of the mothers in your life? Most important, did you love our Pink Bird Weekend? What was your favorite part?

Birds were certainly on the move around here despite frigid temps. I got into a great little wave of migrants on Saturday morning, coming away with blistering views of Blackburnian Warbler, one of my all time favorite warblers. Corey had lots of birds to choose from as his Best Bird of the Weekend but he couldn’t resist the siren song of the Wood Thrush, which were moving through in numbers this weekend.

How about you? What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.

Bubble-gum pink legs. That’s how the limbs of the Black-necked Stilt, Himantopus mexicanus, were first described to me, and that’s what I’m going with for 10,000 Birds Pink Bird Weekend (or, as I call it, Think Pink Week).  Sibley describes them as “extraordinarily long red legs”.  Pete Dunne calls them “coral red”.  Stokes and the National Geographic Field Guides go with simply “pink legs”; Kaufman likes coral too, only with pink, as in “coral-pink legs”.  The classic book Shorebirds very thoroughly describes Black-necked Stilt legs as “Pinkish-red in adults, brighter when breeding, dull fleshy-pink or greyish-pink in juveniles.”*  I read all this and I still can’t help but think of bubble-gum when I look at these elongated bright pink legs. They make a bird that is quite watchable to begin with, totally irresistible.

Larry Jordan wrote a profile of The Unique Black-Necked Stilt for 10,000 Birds in 2011; he points out that they have the second longest legs in proportion to their bodies of any bird, exceeded only by the Flamingo (another Pink Bird).  When you watch the Stilt as it walks along the beach, like this bird,  that I photographed in the Dry Tortugas last year, you tend to wonder how its legs are capable to holding up its body.

Those bubble-gum pink legs never seem to be straight, there is always something going on with the knees and the feet (which have a half web between the middle and outer toe and lack a hallux, a big toe). And then,  you see a stilt standing on one straight leg, without a wobble, and you realize just how graceful and elegant these birds can be. You also try to figure out where that second leg went, but, as with most shorebirds, they are too clever to show us the trick.

The legs can act a a fulcrum when the Black-neck Stilt feeds, like the bird below, which I observed in the Florida Everglades. This is called the “Head Immersion Method”, according to Birds of North America (BNA), a feeding process in which the bird dips its head in the water and mud to feast on aquatic invertebrates. (I did not make this up, there really are names to the various ways this bird feeds.)

At Bombay Hook earlier this month I observed a Black-necked Stilt using the Scythe-like Sweep method of feeding. The bird walked slowly through the shallow water, swishing its needle bill in one direction and then another. A lot of leg bending and tilting activity is involved in the Sweep method to get the exact angle that makes the swishing work.

I couldn’t find anything in Birds of North America or Shorebirds about WHY the legs of the Black-necked Stilt are bubble-gum pink. Or coral red or coral pink or just plain pink or red.  If anyone knows, I would appreciate a comment.

In the meantime, I’m going to speculate. It could be that the brightly colored legs help attract those aquatic insects to the bird as it strolls through the water.  And brine shrimp. Brine shrimp and brine flies are major favorite foods.  (Ingestion of brine shrimp could certainly be a reason why the legs are pink. This is how it works with flamingos.)

Or, as with most birds with crazy features, the legs might be a factor in courtship.  Is the male stilt with the pinkest-reddest legs the sexiest one in the pond, the bird most apt to be chosen by the female stilt?

It could just be that Black-necked Stilts were endowed with bubble-gum pink legs because they look so spiffy when combined with a black-and-white body.  Certainly, the look works for stilts around the world: Black-winged Stilt, White-backed Stilt, White-headed Stilt, Hawaiian Stilt, they all wear variations of the stilt tuxedo with bubble-gum pink legs.

Adult Black-necked Stilts have a tinge of pink on the breast, and juveniles have pink-based bills. Like good fashionistas, they carry their signature color throughout the outfit.

Black-necked Stilts tend to feed with American Avocets. BNA says that both species share a passion for brine flies, and tend to share habitat. Well, that may be so, but you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that the real reason stilts and avocets hang out together is that the stilts’ bubble-gum pink legs look very good next to the avocets’ grayish-blue legs. Something I will need to keep in mind if 10,000 Birds ever does a Blue Moon Weekend.

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Books and resources used in search of the term “bubble-gum pink legs”:
The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of North America, by David Sibley. Random House, 2003.
Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion, by Pete Dunne. HMH, 2006.
The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Western Region, by Lillian and Donald Stokes. HMH, 2013.
National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 6th ed. by Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer. NG, 2011.
Kaufman Field Guide to the Birds of North America, by Kenn Kaufman. HMH, 2005.
Shorebirds: An Identification Guide, by Peter Hayman, John Marchant and Tony Prater. Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

For background on Black-necked Stilts:
Robinson, Julie A., J. Michael Reed, Joseph P. Skorupa and Lewis W. Oring. 1999. Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online:http://bna.birds.cornell.edu.proxy.library.cornell.edu/bna/species/449

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It is Pink Bird Weekend on 10,000 Birds! Whether we are discussing birds shaded roseate, fuchsia, rose, coral, salmon, blush, or just plain pink, we have them all covered on Pink Bird Weekend. Why would we bother with such an esoteric topic? To put it simply, pink birds are awesome! Think about it, have you ever seen a pink bird and not wanted to see it again? Of course not! Make sure to check back all Pink Bird Weekend long as we delve into every possible pulchritudinous pink bird we can think of…