Photography tip

Here's a great bird photography tip by Bill Schmoker on the ABA blog. Get low: A matter of perspective

Backyard birds of Portland, Oregon updated

For over 2 years the 4th post to this blog (Backyard Birds of Portland, Oregon) has been by far the most popular. Since the time it was first written I have posted photos and life history information on each bird listed. Thus, it only makes sense to update this post. Now you can click on each bird name listed to read these more in-depth articles. I hope this update will make this post even more useful. Enjoy! - Greg

I have another favorite bird guide... and even I don't believe it!

I've never met Donald and Lillian Stokes, but I owe them an apology. Based on their previous books I didn't take them seriously. I viewed them as a quaint mom-and-pop duo, producing beginner bird books in a "Birds and Blooms" vein--pretty pictures with little substance.

In fact (shameful admission), it was an afterthought to purchase their new field guide. I needed to spend $10 more to get free shipping on my other books ordered from Amazon!

Back in December, John Rakestraw had written a review of the new Stokes guide (The Stokes, Redeemed), so I was curious. He said, "there is currently no better photographic guide to all the birds of North America than the new Stokes. This book has taken the Stokes from the periphery of the field guide genre to the forefront." High praise indeed. But not enough to make me go out and buy it. Rakestraw discussed the abundance of photos, but he didn't discuss the real reasons this is such a great guide.



The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America (2010) has real meat. This 800+ page bird guide really teaches the identification of North American birds. It is the only modern guide that starts out with shape as the first field mark, before plumage colors. Well done! That's exactly correct. Then it follows up with tips to the identification of birds in flight. Birds have wings and most fly. Why is this the first field guide to teach us how to identify birds in flight? Donald and Lillian did this?

The Stokeses use to great advantage an ancient invention severely lacking in many recent bird books: ample text. That's right, this book has words describing bird identification. What a concept!

This book includes a "bonus" CD with the songs and calls of 150 common North American birds. But they didn't use the CD as an excuse to skimp on voice descriptions in the text. Both song quality and mnemonic renditions are given.

I have not been a fan of photographic field guides. There is so much variation that a single photo of one individual bird is not as accurate for the species as a whole as an artists' painting. The Stokeses get around this problem by including many photos of each species. They label each photo with sex, age, plumage, location and date photographed, when appropriate. They have addressed the most common "photos versus paintings" arguments in a satisfactory way.

Yes, the 3400 color photos show all the non-downy plumages of over 850 species, but that's not all. This book describes, and often shows with photos, all North American subspecies. That's right, Donald and Lillian do subspecies. Donald and Lillian!

Paul Lehman drew the 4-color maps. So these are very accurate and include migration paths and the "regular extralimital" range.

Who is this book for? While beginners usually appreciate photographic guides, "photo-matching" will not work here--there are just too many plumages shown. Thus, this book is your next step, helping you go forward toward advanced birding--identifying females, juveniles, non-breeders, and well-marked subspecies by shape, voice, plumage, and flight characters.

For a first edition, this book has been edited fairly well, so that I didn't notice any glaring errors. Some reviewers have complained that the coverage of Western birds is not as thorough as those in the East--especially pelagic birds. And, it is true, some of the photos of seabirds are grainy or pixelated--an artifact of magnifying a digital photo too much. The photo of summer Glaucous-winged Gull in California is an obvious hybrid. Since this guide also discusses known hybrids, that photo should have been labeled as such. Manx Shearwaters aren't shown in the Pacific--they occur regularly from Baja to Alaska and are no longer even on the California rare bird list. And the wonderful addition of the ID of birds in flight is uneven. Some describe flight style (wing beats and pattern), others plumage as seen in flight, but few species accounts describe both. There is room for improvement to this novel and welcome addition to North American field guides.

I look forward to future field guides building upon the work pioneered here.

In the backyard... Rock Pigeon

Rock Pigeon, Portland, Oregon, 19 February 2011 by Greg Gillson.

 

You may find the Rock Pigeon in older field guides listed as Rock Dove. Their name was recently changed.

Regardless, this is the common domestic pigeon. They are widely raised as free-flying "pets." However, they are also widely distributed as wild birds, breeding on highway overpasses, large bridges, and tall city buildings. You can find them in city parks in nearly every city in the world. They also breed on cliffs in remote settings.

The typical, "natural," plumage is blue-gray with wide dark wing bars and white rump--as in the photo above. They have been bred to be various colors and patterns, and even with feathered legs or odd neck ruffles or crests.

Though many people view these birds as dirty city birds, I can't help feeling a bit of attachment as they fly by--thanks to my favorite childhood movie, Mary Poppins!

Now where did I put my tuppence?

Mystery Gull

Mystery Gull. 26 June 2011 at Newport, Oregon by Chet Conklin.

 

Every summer a few very white gulls--similar to the one photographed above and sent to me by Chet Conklin--show up and really confuse birders. [Thank you, Chet, for allowing me to use your photos.]

Gulls like this with a bit more pink on the bill are often reported as first-year Glaucous Gulls on the West Coast in summer. But with the dark bill, one may be tempted to match this with an illustration of a juvenile Iceland Gull!

This is not a Glaucous Gull nor is it an Iceland Gull. Here is why.

Ignore the bright white feather color for a minute and look at other field marks, especially shape. This fairly stocky gull has wings that extend barely beyond the tail (it is “short-winged”). The eye is dark, but I do see a paler iris than pupil in one photo. The forehead is rather flat and sloping. Legs and feet are pink. The bill is nearly entirely black, with pink gape (the corners of the mouth on the face) and a bit of paleness at the base of the lower mandible. The bill is heavy and thick, “swollen” at the gonys (where the red spot would be on the lower mandible, if this was an adult of one of the larger species of gulls). The bill is strongly hooked.

The body shape of Iceland Gull is long and thin, with long wings. The bill is small and petite on Iceland Gull, and doesn’t show such a strong hook. The head should be quite round. The Iceland Gull as a whole is “petite.” The bird in the photo is stocky.

The body shape is all right for Glaucous Gull, but the bill is wrong. The bill of Glaucous Gull is stout, but not overly wide at the gonys. The bill shape is not a good fit. More importantly, the bill of young Glaucous Gull is 3/4 to 4/5 pink with the outer 1/4 (or 1/5) of the bill sharply black.



Now go back to the color. Only the Ivory Gull is this all-over-white in normal plumage. Other white gulls will show darker gray or brown bars on the body plumage. So this gull is not in “normal” plumage.

One condition that could explain the white coloration is leucism, a condition where the feathers are unnaturally pale or even white. This is not albinism, as that condition is the lack of all color, which would include pale legs and bill, with an eye with a colorless iris—blood in the vessels making the eye appear pink. I learned recently it was incorrect to call a bird a “partial albino.” But this bird is not leucistic, either, as a close examination of the feathers will reveal.

Take a look at the top photo. Click it to bring up a larger view. Can you make out any nice-looking individual feathers?

Not really. The feathers are shaggy and many look more like hair. This bird is extremely worn. The feather vanes are mostly worn away and only the feather shafts remain. White feathers are weaker than dark feathers; they wear away more quickly. Even though this bird did get new head and breast feathers in April or May, this bird is in desperate need of new feathers again. But it’s not going to get any soon. Gulls go through a complete molt of all their feathers in fall, September through November.

Because this bird has a mostly black bill, we can say it was hatched 1 year ago, probably June 2010. After a few weeks in a downy state, it grew its first set of feathers. But juvenile birds do NOT turn around and molt right away again in the fall. Thus it keeps its first feathers (wing and tail) for over a year. (Body feathers—head, neck, breast, belly, back—are replaced also in spring.) Such one-year old gulls can become very worn and sun-bleached by summer—especially the wings and tail. Thus, this is a very worn and bleached gull.

Now that we know this vital piece of information we can go on to ask: "what species is this?" Well, the angled head and “monster” bill, as well as short wings and stocky body, point to the common West Coast gulls: Glaucous-winged Gull or Western Gull. Since the bird is so pale and worn—and paler feathers wear faster than dark feathers—we can say that this bird was originally quite pale. That makes this a first cycle Glaucous-winged Gull (some plumage descriptions of the past may call this a “first summer” plumage, in the sequence of downy, juvenile, first-winter, first-summer, second-winter, etc. until it becomes an adult in the 4th winter).

As noted earlier, many Glaucous-winged Gulls of this age have a much paler pink base to the bill (though uneven) and are reported as Glaucous Gulls.

There. More, I’m sure, than you ever wanted to know.

But in case you're not satiated yet, here is more:

A previous post on Glaucous-winged Gulls.

My pBase photo album images of Glaucous-winged Gulls.