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Damn Jason

Well, I’m relieved to hear I’m a “bird watcher” and not a “birder”.

My life list, last time I checked was still shy of 500 species so I ain’t even remotely in the running.

They missed a term - “twitcher” - A twitcher is mostly a Brit term for those who dash around following unusual sightings, most often of single, out-of-range birds.

If that one guy was faking his sightings there’s another Brit term that applies:- “wanker”.

Sometimes my boat is a lister. I am a watcher. Today’s somewhat rare sighting was a CaraCara. They are occasionally seen to the West of Tucson. This one was seen near Redrock.

Birdwatcher;
Good morning to you sir, I hope the day down in San Antonio is behaving and you're well as we head into Easter.

My personal bird knowledge is woefully inadequate, as I found out often when visiting my friend and neighbor who was a fairly knowledgeable bird identifier. He's just moved a mile down the road and the new neighbor appears to be even more into birds, so more education is hopefully forthcoming.

Being the northern tip of some desert habitat, we've got some oddball birds for BC and especially for Canada, so Williamson Sapsuckers and Pygmy Owls come to mind.

While I'd been aware of Pygmy Owls, the Williamson Sapsucker was just another woodpecker to me until I ran into a young fellow with a clipboard and binos one day when I was coming out with a load of firewood. He was doing something for some university degree studying Williamson Sapsuckers and was eager to tell me about them.

Firewood season for me by the way is April and May, so a rifle for black bears comes along too, but mostly I'm looking to get up the mountain after a long winter of being valley bound.

All that leads to this then Birdwatcher, in that a few years later I'm coming out with another load of firewood and see a trio of chaps standing beside a higher end Euro SUV.

They've each got a spotter on a tripod set up as well as fair sized binos hanging off their chests, all with the Swarovski, Leica, Zeiss looking labels on them.

I pulled up, rolled down the window and said, "Morning gents, I believe you're a couple clicks too high for what you're looking for ..."

One of them cut me off and said, sounding just a wee bit superior I thought, "And just what is it that you think we're looking for by chance?"

To which I replied, "Well seeing the glass, I figured you were looking for Williamson Sapsuckers and you need to drop down a couple roads and head into the canyon for them"

For a brief moment they were speechless Birdwatcher, as if their dog had learned to speak or perhaps the building janitor had imparted life changing wisdom to them. It seemed to me they were having a tough time connecting a redneck who looks like me, with a not new, shiny or even clean truck full of firewood with anyone who'd know about Williamson Sapsuckers.

And yet, I'd said it.

One of them recovered first and asked where they should go and of course I directed them to the spot the young student had met me years before that.

They thanked me profusely and I rolled on home to split and stack the morning's work.

Of course I have no clue if they saw one or not, but the "bird watching" friends tell me that's the place to look for them still.

Thanks for twigging the memories this morning and all the best to you this Easter.

Dwayne

Here's the important part of that story


Just like the birding world, I think this place needs "better moderated"


Bwahahahahaha

Twitchers are an odd lot, eh?

I first heard of them when living in NW PA. Apparently an owl (Snowy? Great Gray?) not normally seen outside of the far north had come down and taken up residence in a tree by the river. Folks were driving in from hundreds of miles away to add it to their lists.

I guess, using the classification scheme in your post there and from the article, I'm just a watcher. Here I always thought I was just a wannabe birder. At University, near the room with all the dried birds they used for the wildlife students, the locals kept a list of birds seen in the county or some such. I glanced at it one day and realized I'd seen the majority of them outside of some shore/ocean birds and the unidentifiable (to me) LBBs (little brown birds). Since that time my wife and I have obtained multiple books and even though somewhat tech challenged I managed to get the Merlin app on the phone and have even used it. Picked up a bird I couldn't see in the trees and ID'd it for me too.

Having moved around the States for work and such, I've seen a lot of birds stay at home folks might not have. Was kind of weird vacationing in Hawai'i to see and African bird there too, and not an ostrich on a farm either.

I'm not gonna spend money on gas to drive 250 miles just to see some lost bird though. Maybe if I was headed in that direction for something else, but not just to add it to a life list.

Dwayne, cool story about the sapsucker!

Valsdad;
Good morning Geno, I trust life is at least as much as possible as you'd like it to be down in your portion of the planet.

Thanks for reading the story and the comment.

My late father used to walk to and from a taxidermy shop owned by a friend of his and their son and Dad would help them do work on whatever was happening that day.

He said he'd always had a fascination with taxidermy, that it helped him stay sharp learning new things in retirement and as well he got to pick up road kill on the walks which he'd then often mount up for display in their house. The grandkids from other parts of Canada really liked seeing the pheasants, the yellow bellied marmot and especially the Pygmy and Saw Whet owls.

As I understand it Geno, there was a fairly tough permit process to do the owls and it's even tougher now, nonetheless when first Dad and then Mom passed, we inherited the taxidermy including both owls.

It was therefore a wee bit of a "bird spotting Holy Grail" with me to see a Pygmy Owl and when either parent was alive I just never did.

Looking back it may well have been the year Mom passed, regardless I was up in a mulie spot where we used to hunt sheep as well, when I saw what I first thought was BC's fattest chipmunk.

When I pulled up my binos, low and behold it was a Pygmy Owl!!!

Then it gave a call like in the video and it dawned on me that I'd heard them reasonably often, but didn't know what it was making that call.



Oh also, while the video doesn't show it well, they're small enough to fit into an average coffee cup, not a big one Geno, just a regular old coffee mug like we all have on the shelf.

Since that initial sighting we saw one more taking off from the old skidder trail ahead of us going into the same area looking for sheep when my buddy had been drawn for an LEH hunt there.

Thanks again and all the best to you all this Easter.

Dwayne

The northern pygmy owl is one of those species that has eluded me so far, same with Williamson’s sapsucker. The Williamson’s of course will soon be called something else, dead White guys and all that 🙄

Pygmy owls are one of those birds you wouldn’t believe possible if it didn’t exist, a daytime predator sometimes taking birds larger than themselves. Here’s a photo of one with a starling it killed.



…..and a description from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website….

The male Northern Pygmy-Owl is alternatingly bold and surreptitious, often starting the day at the top of the tallest tree to broadcast his penetrating, monotonal song, before transitioning into a tiny forest ninja that moves clandestinely through the canopy and understory to strike unwary prey.

For all that they ain’t the top of their food chain and don’t live very long, compensated for by a high reproductive rate.

https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/nopowl/cur/introduction

As a small, diurnal forest species, the Northern Pygmy-Owl is vulnerable to attack from hawks, larger owls, and mammalian and reptilian nest predators. Its vulnerability is evident in the narrow, concealment posture it assumes when a hawk soars overhead or perches nearby. Females are particularly at risk. While laying, they are gravid, plump, and slow from over-eating, and are at risk of avian predators.

While incubating and brooding young their feathers become worn and broken, and they must maintain vigilance against predators like ermine that can climb trees and kill them in the nest cavity. Thus, after her young have departed the nest, it is the female that takes leave of her family group first to replenish herself, sometimes weeks before offspring independence and natal dispersal.

Birdwatcher;
Top of the morning and Happy Easter to you sir.

Thanks for that photo of the Pygmy Owl as well as the very cool description.

We've got a healthy population of California Quail that live on our place which are fun to watch but a wee bit of a challenge with the garden sometimes.

The ones I enjoy the most are the miniscule Pygmy Nuthatches which we've got 4 nest boxes built for around the place. Gravity just doesn't seem to be relevant to them as they run up and down the Ponderosa Pines and round and round the branches.

Thanks again.

Dwayne

Birding is my main hobby these days. I have only seen one Northern Pygmy Owl. I was fortunate to get a photo of it. It was fairly close and perched in a snag. It was facing away but had its head turned to face me. Way cool. This was in November of 2011 in the Huckleberry Mountains of NE Washington.