Listing Through Life

I am creeping every closer to my long-sought goal of 500 birds on my life list. In pursuit of that goal, I have made a list of species that (1) I haven’t seen and (2) I have a good chance of seeing in Colorado.

Two of these are Tyrant Flycatchers of the genus Empidonax. The 11 “Empids” all look extremely similar, and I’ve never pretended to be able to tell them apart by sight.

The field guides are full of statements like these:

• Plumage and structure can be so similar among species within the various genera that voice is the primary field mark.
• At any season it is possible to see individuals of the same species with contrastingly different plumage wear.
• Eleven confusing little birds, with wing-bars and (usually) eye-rings, all looking very much alike.
• Their specific characters are so subtle that there is often more variation within a species than there is between any two species in the genus.

Up till now, if I saw an Empid that wasn’t singing, I haven’t counted it. But on the rare occasions when I find myself in the company of other birders, I have happened upon a few individuals who don’t hesitate to call out a species based on plumage alone. A little gray-green bird will land on a branch 70 feet away in a wood lot and some guy will immediately say “Willow.” That bird will fly off into the woods and, five minutes later, another one will land on another branch. I always figure it’s the same bird. But the expert will call out, “Least.”

I’ll be honest — I’m a skeptic. How do they know if they’re right? Are they so confident because they are actually able to detect minor differences in bill color or primary extension? Or are they confident because they know nobody will be able to prove them wrong?

Recently, a friend and I were birding on the Vindicator Valley Trail at 10,000 feet. Pikes Peak loomed in the near distance. I saw a small flycatcher perched at the top of a small bush near the ruins of an old gold mine. It wasn’t just sitting there. It was singing.

A couple of years ago, I identified a Dusky Flycatcher not far from this very spot, based on song and habitat. Was this another Dusky? Or was it a Hammond’s, one of the species I needed for my life list? I pulled up the songs of the two birds on my phone app and read this: “Song of the Dusky Flycatcher is similar to that of Hammond’s Flycatcher.”

Great. A species that can only be positively identified by song, and the song isn’t noticeably different from an identical-looking species that inhabits the same areas.

The bird flew down and landed on a fence post and gave me great looks. I tried to see bill color, breast pattern, primary extension, tail length … I even took some video, but the bird made no noise.

The primaries looked … I couldn’t tell. The tail seemed short. The “vest” on its breast was obvious. The bill was yellow at the base. All this was consistent with Hammond’s. It didn’t sing often — maybe three or four times. I thought I could detect a similarity to the Hammond’s song. The bird flew back up hill. We walked the trail and 10 minutes later were back in the same area but up slope. An Empid was making a “che-bek” call that reminded me of the Least Flycatcher more common in the east.

I was about 70% convinced I’d seen a lifer. We walked on. Half an hour later, low in the middle of a stand of short aspen was another Empid. I immediately thought the tail on this one looked longer — like a Dusky’s tail was supposed to look. To test my theory, I played the song of a Dusky Flycatcher. The bird flew across the trail and landed above our heads in another Aspen, not 20 feet away. It even sang a few times. I thought the song sounded higher-pitched, and it definitely had more syllables. So this was a Dusky, right? Especially considering that it had flown to the perch when I played a Dusky song.

I even recorded this one’s song.

When we’d circled around and were back near where we’d seen the first one, we saw one again. This one looked longer-tailed also. Had we been looking at three birds, two birds, one bird? I had no idea.

I decided to solve my problem the easy way. I posted videos of bird one and bird two on the Denver and Colorado Field Ornithologists Facebook pages and asked for help. One person said bird one was a Dusky and bird two was a Hammond’s — the reverse of what I’d figured out. Another guy said much the same thing. A third guy, with great confidence, said that bird two was a Dusky and bird one was unidentifiable.

So either nobody can tell, or the third guy (and me, kinda) are right but can’t prove it.

I may never add a Hammond’s Flycatcher to my list.

basileuterus (from basil-, royal, kingly, and euter, music) culicivorus (from culicis
midge, and –vorus eating)

Monday, May 21, 2018 — 10:15 am

Cheyenne County, Colorado — County Road 9

In the middle of the prairie/farmland of eastern Colorado, 120 miles from Colorado Springs, a birder found this Golden-crowned Warbler in a patch of trees around a ranch. That was last Wednesday. I had no opportunity to go see it over the next three days. Saturday was rainy and cold and, quite honestly, I forgot about it. I was a little relieved to see that nobody saw it that day. When I saw that it was found again on Sunday, I knew I had to give it a go. As it turned out, I’d already taken Monday off work to bird with a friend, who’s in Colorado on vacation.

We left my house at 6:15, stopped a few places along the way, and got to the spot where the warbler was being seen a little after 10:00. We could see the trees a long way off. What we couldn’t see until we’d crested the last rise was the group of birders already there. When I got out of my car, a young guy turned and gave me a thumbs-up, then urged me to hurry. I jogged to the spot and immediately saw the bird dart through the low choke cherry bushes. Moments later, I had a full-on head view from six feet away. The warbler stayed low in the brush, occasionally jumping up after insects. I saw it briefly several other times until it disappeared. Nate got a good look at it too.

We were told that it habitually circled around to that spot about every 45 minutes, so we stood around looking at other birds and talking with the other birders. As it turned out, this circle only took 35 minutes. It didn’t stay around as long this time. I tried to get it on video with minimal success. But as we’d both seen it and we had other birding we wanted to do, we took off. The guy who motioned me over when we first got there was named Joel. He’s 17 and has been birding for five years. He already has over 500 birds on his life list. He was teasing me a bit because it took him four hours to find the bird, and I saw it within 20 seconds.

The Golden-crowned Warbler’s normal range extends from northern Mexico south to Argentina. Eight or ten of them have been seen over the years in extreme south Texas, and one showed up in New Mexico in 2005. A couple of the birders who were there with us were calling it the rarest bird ever spotted in Colorado.

Other birders got tons of photos. I “borrowed” this one online to show the bird better. This was very close to what my first look at it looked like.

Phalaenoptilus (from phalaina, moth, and ptilon, feather) nuttallii (named for Thomas Nuttall, English botanist and zoologist)

Monday, May 14, 2018 — 12:20 pm

Colorado Springs, Colorado  — Monument Branch

The only way to see a Poorwill, or so I thought, was to drive dirt back roads through open areas, watch for their eye-shine, and listen for their calls. I had already planned on doing this sometime this summer.

Or … I could just walk into the open area near my work on a cool, windy midday and flush one. I was walking my usual path through the scrub oak and pines as I do nearly every weekday.

A bird flew up from the ground near the pines (on the left in my photo) and disappeared into the scrub oak (on the right). It wasn’t more than eight feet away when I first saw it. It flew off to the right, giving me good views from the side and back. It probably wasn’t in view for more than two seconds, but that was long enough for me to see it well.

My first impression was that it was an immature of some species because the rounded wings seemed far too large for the short tail. Its head was rounded and it had no noticeable neck. The wings and tail were barred with black and warm brown. The corners of its tail had white rectangles — like a terminal band that was white on the outer two sections and brown in the middle. It flew with deep, floppy wing beats.

I was not remotely expecting to see a Poorwill, so it took me a couple seconds to process what I’d seen, but once I rewound the evidence in my head, the i.d. was obvious. I checked the branches of nearby trees along the creek and walked back through some arid open areas on the other side of the scrub oaks, but I didn’t spot it again.