11.9 Monterey Bay
Northern Fulmar
Pink-footed Shearwater
Flesh-footed Shearwater
Buller's Shearwater
Sooty Shearwater
Black-vented Shearwater
Red Phalarope
Pomarine Jaeger
Bonaparte's Gull
Heermann's Gull
California Gull
Herring Gull
Thayer's Gull
Western Gull
Glaucous-winged Gull
Sabine's Gull
Common Murre
Risso's Dolphin sp.
Humpback Whale sp.
11.9 Aberrant
Marbled Godwit
After returning to harbor, Dan Singer
and I went to Moonglow Dairy to check out a reported Bar-tailed
Godwit. Dan Singer more or less immediately found the bird and
we got outstanding looks at the bird, at times full-framed in
our scopes at 20x magnification. Original field notes can be
found here,
here and
here.
Photos and comprehensive discussion of this bird by Don Roberson
can be found here.
Description:
An obvious godwit with a bright orange bill. The distal third or so of the bill was dark as was the culmen. The overall impression of the plumage was quite cold with prominent streaking on the crown extending down the nape and onto the back and extending down the forehead to a point at the culmen. The flanks and upper breast were finely barred [sic; the photos show the barring to be relatively prominent] with barring running perpendicular to the folded wing. The eye was dark and there was a prominent pale supercilium delimited by a dark preocular eye line.The tarsus did not appear to be significantly different from the nearby Marbled Godwits. The tail showed stronger black barring at the tip and finer barring basally including the uppertail coverts. Wing coverts very worn, some of them all the way down to the shafts and the little left of these feather tracts appeared to be pale buff. The first tract of scapular feathers appeared to be missing from the bird. The scapulars had pale notching on the outer webs and were solid on the inner webs.
The belly, center breast and undertail coverts were all uniformly white, washed in certain areas, e.g. the vent, with pale buff. The primaries were black and long; they extended well beyond the tail. The tertials were strongly worn; the fringing on the outer webs was almost completely gone. The inner webs were unmarked. In flight, the underwings were pale cinnamon/buff.
Analysis:
Of the four regularly-occurring North American godwits, Black-tailed and Hudsonian can immediately be ruled out by tail pattern. This leaves us with Marbled and Bar-tailed. The bright pumpkin orange bill is the first indication that something might be unusual with the plumage of this bird. No plumage of Bar-tailed shows that bright of a bill and the bill was noticeably brighter than any nearby Marbled. Clearly then, we need to be careful in terms of using coloration to identify this bird.No plumage of Bar-tailed shows the amount of streaking that is shown on the upper breast and flanks. Though Bar-tailed can show some very fine marking along the sides of the breast, the breeding females tend to show fine arrow-shaped marks along the sides of the breast. Juvenile Bar-tailed can show some fine barring along the sides of the flanks, but this barring tends to run longitudinally rather than perpendicularly to the breast.
A Bar-tailed should show a significantly shorter tarsus than a Marbled, which clearly was not present on this bird since at times the bird was immediately adjacent to other Marbleds. The underwing on Bar-tailed Godwit is either clean white with fine brown barring on nominate lapponica or heavily barred dark brown on a clean white underwing in L. l. baueri. Neither subspecies shows pale cinnamon or buff underwings as in this bird.
Nominate lapponica should should show white uppertail coverts leading into a clean white vee on the upper back, though baueri can show fine barring on the uppertail coverts and lower back. The pattern of fringing on the remaining scapulars eliminates adult breeding and non-breeding Bar-tailed. So the only real possibility for Bar-tailed would be a juvenile bird, but a juvenile wouldn't shown the worn coverts of this bird, the streaking is wrong, the underwing coloration is wrong and there's also a the tarsus problem.
So we're left, by default with Marbled. This obviously solves the tarsus problem and the streaking on the upper breast is very Marbled. But why does this bird look so different from the other Marbled Godwits? Part of it may be just aberrant plumage, but I think it's mostly just very worn. Adult basic plumage Marbled still can show quite a bit of barring along the sides of the upper breast as shown in this bird (c.f. Shorebirds of the World, plate 100f) and can show a prominent pale supercilium as seen in this bird. Also, pale Marbleds can approach the paleness of a Bar-tailed. The bird is obviously very worn, so it seems like the most likely explanation is a very-worn MARBLED GODWIT, probably in basic plumage.
Update: 11.25
After further discussions, I believe that the age mentioned above is incorrect. Most shorebirds, including apparently Marbled Godwit, go through a complete prebasic molt and partial prealternate molt. Thus, if there are (at least) two generations of feathers on a bird, as is certainly likely in this bird, then it is much more likely that the bird is in very worn alternate plumage, likely retained from this summer. If the bird is indeed in alternate plumage, certain feather tracks, particularly the wing coverts, would be approaching almost two years of age, which would explain how badly worn these feathers are. Thanks to Dan Singer for pointing this out.
11.9 Monterey Bay
Just as we pull along the inside
of the breakwater someone calls out
NORTHERN FULMAR. Lo and behold there is a fulmar paddling about
inside
the jetty. We stop the boat so folks can get a photo. The bird
paddles
alongside and at one point it looks as though it might climb
up into the
scuppers and board the boat. Little do we know that this little
guy is
a "harboringer" of things to come.
A check of the outer jetty yields only a
few BLACK TURNSTONES. Coasting
along Cannery Row and we find a single basic plumaged PIGEON
GUILLEMOT
and a few PELAGIC CORMORANTS but the bird that gets our attention
is a
single RING-BILLED GULL. Not a rare bird but very unusual here
along the
rocky seashore. Outside the harbor we see that fog has enveloped
Pt.
Pinos and the city of Pacific Grove so we opt to make a quick
escape and
head WNW. It's a beautiful morning on the bay as long as we manage
to
avoid the thick marine layer. A nice flock of PACIFIC LOONS goes
by in
the early morning light.
Our six shearwater day begins with PINK-FOOTED,
but soon we add SOOTY
and get nice looks at a couple of SHORT-TAILED SHEARWATERS flying
by
the stern just beyond the wake. Only 4 BULLER'S SHEARWATERS are
seen. We
see multitudes of NORTHERN FULMARS and our skipper, Richard,
remarks
it's as if someone has opened a box of them overnight and into
that box
have gone the South Polar Skuas which have disappeared. Up to
the day
before he'd been seeing skuas but very few fulmars. We do see
a dozen
POMARINE JAEGERS but only one distant PARASITIC.
Our first of 3 BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS appears.
RED PHALAROPES now
greatly outnumber the few RED-NECKEDS. When we come upon an area
with a
lot of shearwater activity a great deal of excitement ensues
when a
GREATER SHEARWATER is called over the FRS radios and immediately
on the
PA. Everyone gathers at the spot but the bird flies away into
the
distance. We spend a fair amount of time trying to refind it
without
success. This is only the 6th record for the Monterey Bay.
We venture into the fog hoping to find some
cetaceans reported the
previous day but see only a couple of very lost ELEGANT TERNS
offshore.
As we break back out of the fog Richard spots a blow and we manage
to
find what is initially puzzling. Turns out to be a male KILLER
WHALE
with a flopped over dorsal fin. This limp dorsal is assumed to
be a side
effect of stress. Soon we find he is in the company of three
others
including a fairly young calf. These and several groups of PACIFIC
WHITE-SIDED DOLPHINS are the only cetaceans we'll see today.
Later in the day Don Roberson calls out TUFTED
PUFFIN and we enjoy some
great looks at this bird right beside the boat. This stirs the
nappers
on board but not as much as a FLESH-FOOTED SHEARWATER that flies
right
in front of the wheelhouse windows and then to the chumline where
he is
attacked by a HEERMAN'S GULL behaving very much like a jaeger.
The
flesh-foot flies all around the boat trying to shake the gull
and
everyone on board gets looks that couldn't be better.
Also, a SABINE'S GULL was very late.
11.16 Broad-billed
Hummingbird, Town of Sonoma, SON
Today, I visited the residence of Karen and Dave Palmer, who
had had a Broad-billed Hummingbird visiting their hummingbird
feeders. I wasn't disappointed; the bird regularly visited one
of their feeders about every 15 minutes. Original field notes
can be found here.
Description:
An obvious hummingbird very similar in size to the numerous other Anna's Hummingbirds in the area with the following essential differences. The bill was fairly long, noticeably decurved and prominently red for roughly 3/4 of the basal portion, though the amount of red did appear to vary with the ambient light. There was an indistinct white post-ocular stripe leading from the eye down the rear of the auriculars before fading out at the shoulder. The head, nape and upper back were bright green, becoming greenish gold down the back and onto the rump. The tail was dark and showed at least three different graduations in length, all showing pale edges to the tips.The primaries were dark and fell well short of the tip of the tail. The tertials were noticeably browner than the primaries. The throat was bright blue blending into a bright green, mottled upper breast. The belly was white, in noticeable contrast with most other portions of the bird. The bird was most easily located by its call coming into the feeder by its vocalizations, a repeated ti-tick, ti-tick, ti-tick, quite unlike any vocalization of an Anna's Hummingbird.
Analysis:
Five North American hummingbirds have red bills. Violet-crowned Hummingbird is clean white in most plumages and shows a violet crown even in juvenile plumage. Berylline Hummingbird has prominent cinnamon wings and tail even in juvenile plumage. Buff-bellied Hummingbird lacks the white eye line and shows buff on the belly in all plumages. So we're left with White-eared and Broad-billed Hummingbirds, which merits some discussion.Aging and sexing the bird is important. The bird is clearly not in full adult male plumage of either species; adult male Broad-billed would have essentially no eye line and show a prominent post-ocular stripe. Females of both species can be ruled out by the presence of blue iridescent feathers on the throat and elsewhere on the bird, so we're left with a male bird. Both adult and immature White-eared Hummingbird would show a brilliant white supercilium, which is clearly at odds with this bird.
The long-decurved red bill is better for Broad-billed. The pattern of white on the belly actually appears to be slightly better for White-eared than Broad-billed, though immature Broad-billed can show a white belly with greenish feathers along the flanks. The graduations in the tail suggest a rather strongly notched tail which is better for Broad-billed than for the square-tailed White-eared. The call is better for Broad-billed than White-eared. Finally, blue on the inner webs of the tail, visible in the photo below, is diagnostic for male BROAD-BILLED HUMMINGBIRD.
The post-ocular stripe suggest that the bird is not fully mature, so it is illustrative to try to age the bird. Hatch Year (HY) male Broad-billed Hummingbirds have their upper mandible becoming bright red by Sep-Dec, central recrices bluish green to dusky with grayish-brown tips with significant iridescence showing up as early as November, which seems like a fairly good match for this bird. However, the whitish underparts do appear to be problematic.
For comparison, here is another view with an adult male Anna's Hummingbird:
11.26 Harding
Park Boat House
Today, Hugh, Bess Nericcio and I had
one and possibly two SWAMP SPARROWs at the brush pile just west
of the west entrance to the Harding Park Golf Course. There were
also at least two WHITE-THROATED SPARROWs at the same location.
Description:
An obvious sparrow that strongly resembled a Song Sparrow but with the following essential differences. The Bird had essentially no markings on the breast and only the weakest of submoustachial lines. The auriculars were pale dusky buff, contrasting with the otherwise gray face. The flanks were dingy buff. The wing coverts and tertials were brightly colored rufous, giving the overall impression of rufous upper surfaces with fairly clean pale gray underparts. Otherwise, the bird looked structurally much as any other Melospiza sparrow such as the Song and Lincoln Sparrows in whose immediate company the bird was occasionally found. No other Melospiza sparrow other than SWAMP SPARROW would show such a combination of clean underparts and bright rufous upper parts.While only one Swamp Sparrow was in view at any one time, during one observation, the (other?) Swamp Sparrow appeared quite similar above, but even brighter rufous and with clean, almost whitish underparts and less dusky auriculars, suggesting that there are indeed two different individuals present.
Harding Park Boat House
California Towhee
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Golden-crowned Sparrow
11.26 Long-legged Warbler Trichocichla rufa refound alive on Fiji
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