!! Olive-backed Pipit !!

Olive-backed Pipit, Yorba Regional Park, 11/2/14. Photo by Tom Benson. (Thanks, Tom!)

Twitching—that strange pastime of expending copious quantities of time, money, and fossil fuels to lay eyes on some avian waif—is ever contentious in the birding community. The die-hards will drive from San Francisco to, say, Orange County for a single bird. Then there are the sanctimonious types who scoff at such Iditarods and laud local green birding. I align more closely with the latter group but still enjoy the occasional twitching libation.

My surveillance of the rare bird networks is woefully nonchalant. Case in point: when Jeff Bray laid eyes on a funky pipit Saturday afternoon, I didn’t hear of the news until a full twenty-four hours later when I was leafing through my inbox and saw the OLIVE-BACKED PIPIT headlines. Binoculars in hand, I stumbled downstairs, grabbed the car keys, yelled, “Mom, you don’t need the car for the next hour, right? Okay, great, bye.”

I was halfway to Yorba Regional Park (a drive of perhaps ten miles—nice and close for a Code 3) and hearing about the UN’s latest global warming report on NPR when I realized that I should have biked. Oh well.

The parking lot was full of birders packing up tripods and camera lenses. Was the bird gone? I power-walked toward the pipit’s lair, briefly stopping to interrogate a white-bearded birder bearing Swarovoskis and a BigPockets vest (incidentally, the quintessential Birder). “Yup, still there…don’t worry, there’s seventy pairs of eyes on him.”

I found a symmetrical semicircle of birders in the open woodland with all manner of scopes, binoculars, and cameras aimed at the circle’s origin.  To the uninitiated, the scene would recall a druid ceremony. The newest convert, I followed the gaze of the dumbfounded crowd to the streaky bird that looked very much like a pipit trying to be an Ovenbird.

The power of this bird is enviable. Those twenty-five grams of fluff altered the afternoon plans of hundreds of adults. It is only the third Olive-backed Pipit to appear in North America away from Alaska. That’s pretty amazing. Although I still cringe at the thousands of miles we twitchers collectively logged, I am awed by the power of The Bird and flame it ignites in a thousand hearts.

Context

I issue you a challenge: go to Pere Marquette Park in Muskegon during the winter, look out over Lake Michigan, and avoid seeing the clouds of thousands of Long-tailed Ducks swarming over the water. Accomplish this, and I will surrender you my binoculars, complete with the casserole composed of granola bar crumbs, sand, and dried snot caked in the ocular lenses.

So why care about one measly Long-tailed Duck at Riverside Park in Grand Rapids, a mere half-hour away? Well--Pere Marquette is on Lake Michigan, and Riverside Park is, as its name implies, on the Grand River in landlocked Kent County. Context is important.

But still--why care? There's the superficial excuse of county listing. County listing--the fun and often addicting practice of listing birds seen within a particular county--isn't the entire answer. My Kent County listing career has suffered from limited transportation; ninety-eight percent of my birding takes place either on campus or at Reed's Lake a few miles away. As satisfying as it was to tick Bucephala hyemalis (errr...Clangula...thanks JOHG) on my Kent County list, it wasn't the sole reason for seeing the bird.

Hmmm. The Grand River is choked with ice during the winter, and all the ducks are forced into small patches of open water within feet of the shore. That's it--this particular Long-tailed would offer close, extended study, resulting in a more satisfactory duck experience than the distant flock scenario. But, what of the hormone-charged male Long-tailed displaying to a group of disinterested females within peeing distance at Pere Marquette? Those were good views, for sure--and the birds were even calling.

Seeing birds in unexpected places is one of those inexplicable joys of birding. Let's examine hypothetical situation. If a Barrow's Goldeneye appeared at Riverside Park, would you chase it? Or would you fly to Seattle and watch a whole flock of them? In an ideal world, I would prefer the latter, but the former is more convenient when there's only an hour available before class.

To Twitch...Or Not?

If you call yourself a birder, sooner or later you will be driven to twitch a rare bird.

twitching-n.-The act of chasing rare birds found by others, mostly for listing purposes.

Nowadays it is easy (too easy?) for birders to twitch birds. Most serious birders are connected to rare bird alerts and birding listservs. Word of a rarity often gets out within minutes of discovery via phone calls, texts, and Facebook. All the birder has to do is to grab his binoculars (even this step isn't completely necessary, since plenty of other birders will be there to mooch off of), jump in the car, and drive to the place. More often than not, the birder finds the bird, loses interest after a minute or two, and then begins chatting with other birders until someone's phone buzzes with a text about another rare bird fifty miles away. The process is repeated.

I don't know about you, but I don't see the point of twitching. Sure, you get to add a species to your life list, but who cares? I've drifted away from listing. I know my life list is somewhere above six hundred, but beyond that I have no idea. I've allowed nearly all of my lists to fall into disrepair.

Hard-core listing barely counts as birding. The birds become mere objects, worthless once they've been ticked off. For this reason, many die-hard listers aren't even decent birders. I know plenty of birders with impressive life lists but very little knowledge of the birds to go along with the names.

Now that I've spent sufficient time bashing those filthy twitchers, I have something to confess. I sometimes fall prey to the evil temptation. My latest lapse came on Wednesday.

It actually started on Tuesday. As I made one of my routine checks of LACounty Birds, I noticed a few posts with "Yellow-billed Loon" in the headlines. I continued on, seeing a post about a Baltimore Oriole, and nothing much else...

Wait. WHAT?! Yellow-billed Loon?!

I've never seen a Yellow-billed Loon. I've always wanted to. To make matters worse, several friends of mine saw one in Michigan a couple months ago. Of course, they rubbed it in my face...

That's why I dragged myself out of bed at five on Wednesday morning. That's why I battled through beastly traffic jams on the 1-210 near Pasadena. That's why I shelled out eleven bucks into the waiting hand of the grumpy, sleep-deprived attendant at the entrance booth at Castaic Lagoon. That's why I tumbled out of the driver's seat, stretched, extricated my scope from the trunk, and walked to the lake's edge...

I huddled in my jacket from the dawn chill. Sweeping the lake with my scope, I quickly spotted the loon out in the distance. It was darker than I expected. Then the bird turned--and I could see it was a Common Loon.

Shoot.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Then, a huge, tan loon with a pale horn-yellow bill popped out of the water a short distance off. No mistake this time--this was the Yellow-billed Loon!

I made a point of enjoying the bird. When I do break down and chase rare birds, I like to hang around for awhile and photograph, sketch, and simply watch them. I ended up spending nearly three hours with the loon. By the end of my visit, I felt like I had gotten to know the bird. Not only that, I had seen some other nifty birds--Swainson's Hawk, Lawrence's Goldfinch, Rock Wren, and Common Merganser. Around midday, I loaded my trappings back into the car and headed home. As I pulled onto the freeway, driving with a knee while munching on a sandwich, I happily reflected on the loon.

I felt only slightly guilty.