Excitement at Inglewood

This afternoon I took a brief stroll around Inglewood Bird Sanctuary.  There had been reports of possible Cackling Geese - a potential life bird, as well as early arrivals of Ring-billed and California Gulls, and a Harlequin Duck - a new Alberta bird for me.  When I made my way down to the river, I found the number of geese slightly down from Thursday's reported "2000+" to a total of 4!  There were about three dozen Mallards with half as many Common Goldeneyes and four Buffleheads, so I enjoyed watching their antics through my scope (the Bucephalae, not the Mallards - I'm not sure Mallards really do "antics" very often).  I was also scanning for the Harlequin.

What followed was one of those great "who says birding can't be exciting?" moments.  As I arrived at the last (furthest downstream) viewing point along the riverbank, half a dozen Mallards flushed from behind a gravel bar in a fast flowing section of river.  Each bird in the group registered in turn: brown female, ring-necked male, female, another male, another, another ring-necked male... who's really tiny... and sort of blue... wait a second!  Bins up...  on the bird...  Harlequin!  And they were behind the trees.

I waited.  If the birds were going to circle back to the same part of the river they would likely stay low and come back over my head, choosing the bird sanctuary rather than the busy freeway behind the opposite bank.  Sure enough, a few moments later, there they were back over the trees, up the river, and landing on the far side, a hundred yards upstream.  Scope in hand I raced back up the trail - much to the bemusement of a passing photographer - and I set about watching the bird and capturing the images below.

My first Alberta Harlequin.  Even though this male Mallard it clearly trying to psych out the stranger, they really are pretty tiny ducks - 23" Mallard vs 16" Harlequin 

The duck was keeping close company with the Mallards most of the time I was there.  Notice the Common Goldeneye in the right of the frame: there was a lot of this displaying going on, much of it directed at the Harlequin.  The Mallards, on the other hand were almost completely ignoring the celebrity in their midst, who seemed at times to be using them for some measure of protection.  Perhaps the Goldeneyes perceive competition from other diving ducks, while the Mallards, as dabblers, are ambivalent.  Any thoughts?  Or perhaps you've seen this behaviour before?

That was about it for my Inglewood birding.  A couple of gulls flew over while I was admiring the Harlequin.  They were probably Californias.  Or Ring-Bills.  My day had already been made.

An Interesting Post About House Sparrows... no, really.

Not much time for blogging or birding this week, due to report cards.  I did manage to head out with a group to look for Northern Flying Squirrels on Friday night but we dipped out and settled for a Ruffed Grouse, feeding just a few yards away in near darkness.  If you are looking for some bird-related reading check out this very interesting article about House Sparrows on the Smithsonian Magazine website.  These birds are extraordinarily widespread and Calgary has the dubious distinction of the highest Christmas Bird Count total in North America, so it behooves us to learn a little about them even if they aren't everyone's favourite bird.

The ubiquitous House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, on our feeder

A fairly terrible photo of the aforementioned Ruffed Grouse, Bonasa umbellus.  This is a 1/2 second exposure, f4 at 300mm with ISO 3200 - it was REALLY dark!

Speaking of Penguins...

We now have penguins at the Calgary Zoo: Gentoos, Rockhopper, Humboldt, and King.  They're all housed in a spiffy new building with underwater viewing, including two sections of glass floor where you can see the birds swimming by under your feet.  There was a big line this morning so we had to wait a little over an hour to get in.  Fortunately there were docents working the line with biofacts for the kids to see so we managed to pass the time without too much difficulty and learned something along the way (penguins have barbed tongues like cats - who knew?).  Once the penguins are acclimatized to their new home the more southerly species (King and Gentoo) will be outside in the winter season.  In the summer they will flip them around so the Humboldts and the Rockhoppers can enjoy some fresh air while the cold weather specialists keep cool inside.  Here are a few photos of the new residents (click to enlarge as usual).

3 Humboldts and a Rockhopper

2 Gentoos

Rockhopper penguins look slightly demonic at times - I would not want to be on the business end of that bill

Michael meets a King Penguin.  Some people aren't big fans of zoos but I think that anything that makes people, especially kids, more passionate and informed about wildlife must be an ultimately worthwhile enterprise.

Book of the Month - Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica by Noah Strycker

Our dream trip and they're doing it!  Throughout January I had mixed feelings enviously following birders Jim Danzenbaker and Ann Nightingale on the Birdfellow blog as they sailed from Argentina to Antarctica, via the Falkland Islands and South Georgia.  The accounts of their adventures as told from the perspectives of both Jim as the experienced guide and Ann as the novice polar explorer were highlights of my January blog reading.  No doubt this was what put penguins, leopard seals, and albatrosses on my mind and influenced my decision to pick up Noah Strycker's tale of his Antarctic adventures. 


Noah's adventures are rather different from Jim and Ann's in several key respects.  Geographically, he begins from New Zealand, flying to McMurdo Station and then on to a tiny research station.  Economically, he is not a tourist paying many thousands of dollars for the experience but rather the prototypical "starving student" who lucks into a research assistant position at the ends of the earth.  And ornithologically, he is not on the frozen continent to build a life list but rather to research that most unique of avifauna - the penguin.

Adelie Penguins (image by jWOUW! from Flickr under Creative Commons license)

Within this framework the narrative is simple enough.  We begin with Noah's arrival at McMurdo Station and preparations for his time at a research post with two companions.  He attends survival school, builds a "snow coffin", and meets some of the colourful characters who inhabit the frozen continent.  He then heads out to a tiny hut at windswept Cape Crozier where they begin their three month sojourn studying the colony of 130,000 breeding pairs of Adélie penguins.  The remainder of the book is set at the research post but the story is interspersed with diversions both literal - counting marine mammals from a hilltop observation post and visiting a small colony of Emperor Penguins - and literary - reminiscences about Noah's experiences as a birder. 


When the book is focused on the Antarctic environment it paints a vivid picture of the life of a wildlife biologist in an extreme environment.   Some detail is provided about the purpose, methods, and results of the research being conducted and, while the scientist in me craved a little more detail, the depth of this material is probably appropriate for the scope of the book.  Noah's obvious passion for his subject shines through the text and I was quickly drawn into the experience of Antarctic life.  More disappointing were the sections on Noah's personal history.  There is no doubting his passion or aptitude (he was the ABA Young Birder of the Year in 2004) but some of his comments about the merits of his peripatetic lifestyle rubbed me the wrong way.  It's not that I don't respect his choice - and a part of me is more than a little jealous - but in my opinion his message would be clearer if presented with a little more humility and maturity. 


Overall I enjoyed reading about Noah's adventures and give this book a qualified recommendation: it is an essential read for anyone with an interest in Antarctic travel and wildlife and may be of interest to those readers looking to immerse themselves in an enthusiastic young birder's adventures in field research. 

“Among Penguins: A Bird Man in Antarctica” by Noah Strycker was published by Oregon State University Press in April 2011 as a 224 page paperback.  It is available from Amazon or Chapters for about $16.

Rosy Finches - Third Time's the Charm

One of my target birds for 2012 was the Gray-crowned Rosy Finch.  These little songbirds spend the summer nesting in cliffs or rock piles in high alpine or arctic tundra, such as at Sunshine Meadows near Banff.  However, rather than spending July hunting out nesting pairs while dangling from cliffs and dodging grizzly bears, a simpler option is to look for them in the winter when large flocks descend to valley floors to feed and to spend the cold season in more sheltered conditions.  Having struck out twice in recent months I was not holding my breath as my daughter and I drove over to Exshaw early on Sunday morning to check the feeders along Barrier Mountain Drive.  However, this time the supposed "sure thing" did materialize and, as you can see from these photographs, we had great views of a large flock along with a few dozen Pine Siskins and a couple of Mountain Chickadees.

I really needed my wider angle lens - less than a fifth of one flock of Gray-crowned Rosy Finches, Leucosticte tephrocotis

The particularly neat thing about this sighting is that the flock contained both of the two main subspecies (out of 6+) of this type of Rosy-finch.  The littoralis subspecies ("Hepburn's Rosy-Finch") and the nominate tephrocotis subspecies are both fairly migratory and since western Alberta is close to the overlap of their ranges it's not surprising to see them together.  Why are there so many subspecies?  The most likely explanation is their breeding habitat, which puts small populations in relatively isolated alpine and island locales.  This reduces gene flow between the groups, particularly the four less widespread subspecies.  Drawing meaningful taxonomic lines is challenging and some scientists consider the whole Rosy-finch complex (3 North American and 1 Asian species) to be a single species.  This conclusion is supported to some extent by the extensive hybridization observed and by DNA sequencing.  In any case it's an interesting example of the complexities of avian genetics.  Here are a few pictures from Exshaw showing the key differences (click to enlarge as usual).

Leucosticte tephrocotis tephrocotis - note the gray crown which stops at the eyeline

Leucosticte tephrocotis littoralis - aka. "Hepburn's Rosy-Finch", note the completely gray head

On reviewing my pictures later in the day, I realized that by pure luck I had both subspecies in the same frame on one shot

Hope you enjoyed these finches as much as I did!

Information for this post taken from Dunn and Alderfer's Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 6th ed. (great subspecies maps!) and Kaufman's Lives of North American Birds.

A New View on the Local Patch

My local patch, just a couple of blocks from my house, is Confederation Park.  This past week I picked up a new teleconverter - an attachment that goes between the camera body and lens on an SLR camera to increase the magnification of the lens.  The park can be good for songbirds, small birds of prey, and miscellaneous "inner city" waterfowl so it seemed like a good place to try out my new purchase.  This being February there wasn't a huge amount to be seen but I did find a flock of House Finches (first of the year - no, I haven't been out much!), before biking downtown via Prince's Island where there were several hundred Mallards with a few Canada Geese that seemed happy to pose.

Female House Finch, Carpodacus mexicanus

A male counterpart in the same bush

"Who's the fairest goose of all?"

Adding some more glass hasn't made this lens any less pin sharp - if you enlarge the image you can see the reflection of the city skyline in this lady Mallard's eye 

For the photogeeks, this is the teleconverter in question.

I'm using it with a 300mm f4 lens.  This type of teleconverter results in the loss of one aperture stop - in other words you get half as much light into the camera - so the effective result is a 420mm f5.6 lens that remains relatively compact.  I look forward to getting more practice in San Diego and on Vancouver Island over the next couple of months.

Book of the Month*: Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed by Simon Barnes

One of my birding goals for this year is to learn better identification of birds by their vocalizations.  With this in mind, the first birding book I picked to read this year was this little paean to the joys of birding by ear.  The author, Simon Barnes, is the head sports writer for the Times newspaper in England, so one would expect this book to be well written.  He is also an enthusiastic and knowledgeable birder, so one would equally expect it to be comprehensive and accurate.  I can vouch that it is both of these and the real question that you should therefore ask is “why should a North American birder read a book about identifying British birds?”

The reason is simple –  Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed is not primarily an identification guide to birdsong but rather (and I cannot put this more succinctly than the dust jacket does) “a way of hearing”.  The book is organized around notions of "time and place" and:

In order to recognize and begin to understand birds, you need to recognize and understand the times and the places.  And that works the other way round as well, creating a rather pleasingly virtuous circle, in which each visit to a place adds to your understanding of its bird, and each acknowledgement of a bird adds to your understanding of its place.

So birding is all about context, and birdsong provides us with clues about species, their behaviour and habitats.  It makes sense then, that the book is structured around 5 seasons of birding.  “First Spring” moves on to summer, fall, then winter, and ends with “Second Spring”, by which time Barnes is confident that you will, by immersing yourself in birds, become fluent in the language of the common species around you.  The free podcast that accompanies the book provides the soundtrack to these seasons, although I confess to not listening to it entirely – my head is struggling with Alberta species without 40 or so of Britain’s birds competing for space.

Putting aside the specifics of the songs themselves then, the North American birder will enjoy this book for three reasons.  Firstly, it reinforces the importance of birdsong and behaviour in identification.  While we will not be presented with the dilemma of willow warbler vs. chiffchaff in Calgary, the principles of using song for identification work equally well for distinguishing, say, willow and alder flycatchers.

The Chiffchaff

The Willow Warbler - good luck with that! (photos from Google Images - www.birdguides.com)

Secondly, the book is peppered with fascinating little tidbits of birding trivia.  Did you know that the British wren’s song (our Winter Wren) contains 103 notes in an 8 second song?  Or that Mozart had a pet starling that whistled his piano concertos and for whom he held a funeral when it died?  Or that birds may pick up and share song snippets from tropical species during migration?  The many connections Barnes makes to science, history, art and music make bird song more relevant for the reader.

And the final reason to bother with this geographically displaced book is that it is infused with the joy of being out among birds, and who doesn’t need a little more of that in their lives.  I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in birdsong, the birds of Britain, or who is looking for a short simple read to fill a cold winter’s evening.

“Birdwatching With Your Eyes Closed” by Simon Barnes was published by ShortBooks in November 2011 as a 288 page hardcover.  It is available from Amazon for $21 and will be released in paperback in Canada in May.

*For anyone who is (inconceivably?) keeping track, this is the book of the month for January - it's been a busy few weeks!