It’s time, once again, to reflect on the most recent year in the field. As always, we focused on birds doing what they do. Please take a look!
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.—Leonardo da Vinci
©2014 Elisa D. Lewis and Christopher R. Cunningham. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.
Unseasonably warm weather over the past week has has made me think about migration: Last weekend felt more like April (complete with mosquitos) than mid-December. Even in winter I like to review my Neotropical migrant songbird field marks lest I grow too rusty. The songbird return is only a few months away, after all.
One of the trickier points of identification that I hear birders argue about in the field is how to distinguish Louisiana from Northern Waterthrushes. Both waterthrush species are (rather strangely) wood warblers. Both are large-bodied, primarily ground foragers, and display a peculiar fore-and-aft rocking motion and tail-pumping behavior (not unlike Spotted Sandpipers!). But waterthrush species have very different biogeographic distributions. Northern Waterthrushes are much more wide-ranging birds than their Louisiana cousins. Northern Waterthrushes summer across Canada and Alaska and winter from the Mexican border to northern South America (with small pockets in Louisiana and Florida). The Northern Waterthrush is even listed in Birds of Peru as a vagrant. Louisiana Waterthrushes summer in the eastern U.S. and winter in Mexico and Central America (and just barely into the northern tip of South America). Texas Gulf Coast birders typically only see waterthrushes during migration, though.
Several reliable field marks distinguish waterthrush species. Throat color is probably the easiest single feature to check. Louisiana Waterthrushes have a predominantly white throat, and Northern Waterthrushes have strong brown stripes, becoming flecks, on a white background up to just beneath the mandible. The supercilium (eyebrow) in the Northern tapers to a point behind the eye, whereas in the Louisiana it tends to flair before termination. The feet of the Louisiana also tend to be a brighter shade of pink. Despite these field marks, though, I feel the overall look of these birds is the best path to identification. The Northern has crisper, sharper, and more contrasting markings. The Louisiana tends to look smoother and softer, with more blended transitions between patches of color over the entire body.
Well, now that we have identification issues sorted out for these two warbler species . . . there are only forty-seven more to go!
I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.—Ray Bradbury
©2014 Christopher R. Cunningham. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.
Several weeks ago it seemed as if Marsh Wrens were everywhere we were along the Upper Texas Coast. One minute they were singing, and the next they were hiding. Then, just as mysteriously as they appeared, the Marsh Wrens disappeared completely. A week later, there were Carolina Wrens–also alternately singing and sneaking–where the Marsh Wrens had been before. House Wrens, too, should be around at this time of year, but where are they? Hiding, no doubt.
The name for the Wren Family, Troglodytidae, refers to a “creeper into holes, or cave dweller.” One can, of course, think of many examples to justify this name. The booming voices of Canyon Wrens can be heard up and down the arid canyons they inhabit. They are fun to watch as they climb up vertical cliff walls and poke around nooks, crannies, and caves. House Wrens nest in cavities, and we’ve seen Rock Wrens in the Gila National Forest (New Mexico) nesting in limestone caves.
While birding the rain forests of Olympic National Park, Washington, we were treated to the incredibly loud and penetrating songs of the Winter Wren. Finding and photographing the birds was a challenge, though. These birds favor the understory vegetation among the massive fallen logs of mighty conifers. This humid, gloomy, atmospheric environment is low on light, and the birds scurried and sneaked suspiciously among the shadows when not serenading.
Be they House, Carolina, Canyon, Rock, Cactus, Marsh, or Winter, all wrens seem to have this now you-see-me, now-you-don’t personality. One minute they are singing their lungs out obliviously ten feet from the birder, the next they re scurrying and hiding.
Of course, this contradictory behavior is the result of two competing impulses. Most of the time wrens are secretive and shy—like most birds as they try to remain inconspicuous to predators. Then the singing begins, for all the reasons songbirds sing. They have no secrets . . . from potential mates and pretenders to their kingdoms, that is.
How infinitely charming, though, when after an hour or so of playing hide-and-seek with the birder, a wren hops up onto stump or low branch and starts his aria, “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (Love is a rebellious bird)! Fortississimo, if you please!
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.—Ayn Rand
©2014 Christopher R. Cunningham. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.
Over a three-day period this Thanksgiving Holiday we visited a number of our favorite Coastal Bend birding haunts in and around Port Aransas and Corpus Christi. These included Paradise Pond, the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center, the Nature Sanctuary at Charlie’s Pasture (all Mustang Island), and San José Island, and the Hans and Pat Suter City Wildlife Nature Park in Corpus Christi. And yes, when it was over we were wiped out!
All of these sites were flush with birds, except San José Island which proved to be such a disappointment that we found ourselves photographing crabs! With the exception of San José, all of these sites are really better for birding than for bird photography for one simple reason: Narrow boardwalks make tripods problematic, especially when other birders are present.
Highlights of these late Fall and early winter trips to the Coastal Bend are often the waterfowl. You just can’t beat a crisp morning with formations of ducks and geese overhead and wet, feathered-friends paddling peacefully around the waterways. Although we saw plenty of ducks and geese, seeing vast tracts of prairie and wetland without a single bird (and often hearing the crack of gunfire in the background) got me wondering about duck populations in North America.
A quick survey of a recently published U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report reassured that duck numbers are (in general) large by “historical” standards. This report presented data but provided little analysis or discussion. Overall, a few duck species are down relative to recent years, but the total number of ducks is close to 50 million. So humans must not be adversely affecting waterfowl populations, right?
Wait! The above cited historical quantitative records of duck numbers begin in 1955. The 1930’s (think Dust Bowl), 40’s, and 50’s were times of drought across North America. Could it be that our concept of how many waterfowl there “should be” in wetter times is too low? Again according to the report, some duck species (Northern Shoveler, Redhead, Blue-winged and Green-winged Teal, and Gadwall) show a steady increase in numbers, with minor ups and downs, beginning in the mid-1950’s—perhaps indicating a recovery from a time of ecological decimation? Given the interplay of anthropogenic, meteorological, and ecological influences, we’ll never know for sure what waterfowl populations would look like without the pervasive human impacts of the past fifty years. But in North American waterfowl numbers there is certainly food for thought.
The fallacy of presentism is a complex anachronism, in which the antecedent in a narrative series is falsified by being defined or interpreted in terms of the consequent.—David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies
©2014 Christopher R. Cunningham. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.