Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

For the past few days, I haven't added a new species to my list and feel like I've hit a wall. In some respects I have, with many of the early migrants that I haven't seen before as well as, those commoner birds that I'm more used to seeing around my house and in neighboring areas. As September has slipped away and allowed the fall to begin, I feel the time slipping away as well. It's nearly October and with 282 species on the list, I feel like I'm wasting time. In the same moment however, I also know that I'm way ahead of the curve and would only need a few sightings here and there to finish this task. I don't know why I'm so worried. Could it be because I'm actually interested in completing a long-term goal or is it an added challenge that I've brought to my birding that has pushed me from familiar haunts and hideaways into the wider birding world around me? I personally think it's the latter. By having such a goal, I have been able t...

After experiencing the high of finding so many warblers over the past few days, not finding anything this morning at Heard's Conservation Land was certainly disappointing, but it was made up for it by seeing a family of Northern Flickers ( Colaptes auratus ) I recognized from earlier in the summer. Even though I've only starting concentrating on warblers in the past two weeks or so, I've already run into some problems in regards to correctly identifying species (provided they don't give me "warbler neck" first or in my attempts to follow their flitting and twitching through the understory causes me to fall backwards down a hill I already had trouble climbing to begin with.) This also includes the usual issues with timing, weather, habitat choice, and of course, luck. This past week or so, I've experienced the joy of mistaking Blackpoll Warblers ( Setophaga striata ) with everything else that possesses wingbars (a feature that still annoys me in regards t...

I'm now just 20 species away from the glorious 300 and got there, thanks to a renewed interest in warblers. I wasn't always like this. I remember years ago when I had a National Audubon Society Guide to the Birds of North America CD-ROM and like most things in my birding life, used it until it worked no more (or at least until technology advanced to the point where I couldn't upload it anymore). I listened to most bird calls religiously (mainly waterfowl due to an early interest in waterfowling history and decoys), but avoided some of the larger groups such as sparrows, shorebirds, and of course, warblers. Warblers terrified me with their random patches of yellow, small size, high-pitched songs, and other clues towards their baffling variety. At such a young age, I thought I could reasonably get away with never having to identify them in the field or by their songs and instead concentrate on the larger, more visible birds. It remained this way pretty much until I made it ...

My journey to reach 300 species by the end of the year has been fairly consistent lately. I currently have 278 species after some trimming and additions to the list. I've also gone to the trouble of making my list taxonomic for the sake of perceived order and neatness, but it is anything but. In the past two weeks, I've added the following to my life list: Nashville Warbler ( Oreothlypis ruficapilla ) Wilson's Snipe ( Gallinago delicata ) Northern Waterthrush ( Parkesia noveboracensis ) Tennessee Warbler ( Oreothlypis peregrina ) This is a short update, but I just wanted to have a bench mark for the rest of the year. I've seen nearly 42 new species this year and hopefully will see many more in the coming weeks. The reason for the short update is that I'm planning to do a longer one on my critique of Aububon's Birds of America later this week (even though it's later in the week to begin with) and I need some time to prepare notes and such. Other than t...

Alpha code. Date Seen. Location. # Seen. Name of Observer. Repeat. This has been my progress since meeting with Marjorie Rines of Bird Observer magazine yesterday afternoon. The task is to assist in the creation of additional BO records that are dated pre-1994 (which they have records for already). Seems simple, right? However, I've been at this for two hours and I've only just broken into the herons. It's extremely tedious, but building a database always is, and I know I'll be pleased with the end product, but still know there's a long way to go. I got to this point by making the rounds on the jobs sites as well as emailing various bodies that might consider my work on these fledgling blogs of mine. After contacting BO by mentioning my blogs and prior authorship in the magazine, I was contacted by Ms. Rines and we set up a meeting at her house. (If any of you have the August 2000 edition of BO, there's an article in there detailing the life history of the...

The bird world is filled with species that beguile and amaze us with their plumages, displays, flight styles, and call notes. They range from the unusual Wrybill ( Anarhynchus frontalis ) with its right hand facing bill to the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock ( Rupicola peruvianus ) with their vibrant orange plumage and crest to the majesty of the Whooping Crane ( Grus americana ) that continues to recover despite the daunting odds that it faces in its future survival. Those daunting odds are more apparent these days as many species of birds are endangered with a few that are even critical. The little guy in front of the Curlew Sandpiper( Calidris ferruginea ) is the one who needs our help! One of those species is the Spoon-billed Sandpiper ( Eurynorhynchus pygmeus ), a critically endangered shorebird that breeds in the Siberian Arctic and is feared to number at less than 100 breeding pairs! I recently became enamored and concerned about the plight of the SBSA (alpha code being used for co...

In my struggle to get to 300 species before the end of the year, the start of the fall migration should be a point of joy for me. Instead, I'm feeling anxious that I won't meet my goal, despite having 277 species on my life list with the recent additions of Northern Fulmar ( Fulmarus glacialis ), American Pipit ( Anthus rubescens ), Steller's Jay ( Cyanocitta stelleri ), and Purple Gallinule ( Porphyrio martinica ) and the quickly closing gap that would mean I only need 23 more species in order to reach my goal. (For clarifications sake, I didn't go on a whirlwind tour to see those birds, but instead happened to remember seeing them in the past and put them on my own list. This benefits me more than simply using eBird as I mentioned in On the Wing post #7, due to the flexibility I have with the entries in that I know I saw them within a given time period without having a particular date or time of seeing them.) My reaction to meeting this daunting challenge has been...

The dreaded NGWS as seen on a Northern Gannet. As you can probably guess from the title, I have a bone to pick with the National Geographic Field Guide System. Recently while plodding around the internet looking for a way to get more species on my life list, I noticed an advert for Seven Seas Whaling Trips out of Gloucester, MA. While I'm thrilled that they've been seeing several pelagic species (Sooty ( Puffinus griseus ) and Great Shearwaters ( P. gravis ) mainly), my eye was drawn to a particular picture on the Northern Gannet ( Morus bassanus ) page. It was an image of a Northern Gannet doing something I'd never thought I'd see a bird do ever in the wild. It was making "the pose". "The pose" I'm referring to is National Geographic Wing Syndrome (NGWS for short) and can be seen in the picture on the right. Of course, one could argue it's just the positioning of the bird at a slight angle as to give the suggestion of the wing bending in...