Will Brooks talks about his Washington State big year record along with his good friend Jason Vassallo who completed the 9th highest Lower-48 big year in 2021. Fun stories and a chance to live vicariously through their birding.
Enjoy.
The Bird Banter Podcast #121 with Will Brooks and Jason Vassallo Additional Information
Ed
Ken really loves taking the club, previously the class, on our annual freezathon to North Central Washington. For the second straight year Covid made us reluctant to get a big group together for the trip, but Ken, Bruce, Jacob Miller and I managed a 4-day trip last over the MLK weekend (Thursday – Sunday actually) and as usual it was great. Read all about it on the Bird Banter site under Ed’s Birding Notes here.
Here are a couple of photos to tempt you. Snow cover was really heavy, and weather great except for some patchy fog at times.
Good birding. Ed
October 17, 2021 – CROWS!!!
by Diane Yorgason-Quinn
Adam and I did our yearly Halloween trek to the famous crow roost at Bothell. From our vantage point atop the North Parking garage, we could look down into the protected wetland where so many birds of all kinds spend the night. Arriving 45 minutes before sunset, we saw only one crow at first and wondered if this phenomenon had moved on. But soon, here they came! Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands! The noise increased and drowned out the I-405 traffic noise!
A special treat was that the U had left the game lights on the playing field just south of where we stood, and the crows showed up to play! It was amazing how many crows were playing there, but when the lights went off, the crows slowly dissipated into the swamp to the east.
As was their habit, about 15 to 20 minutes after sunset, the crows suddenly hushed all at once. We could still see a few, but they were no longer moving around, and they certainly did not vocalize. We had tried to count them, but when you’re in the eye of the hurricane, you are not in a position to measure it. Nevertheless, we entered 15,000 into eBird, and eBird didn’t even flinch!
Show over. We thought. As we turned to the car getting ready to leave, Adam said what’s that? It was quite dark by then, but there was no mistaking a large flock of birds circling the wetland. They were not crows, neither by their voices or their formation. We watched as they were joined by several other large groups, making the entire group probably around 5000. Photos were hardly possible, though I did try! And a little movie to hear their voices. Later we decided they had to have been Cackling Geese! What a great encore to the Crow Show!
To see more of our photos and videos, go to: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76552838@N03/albums/72157720070686191
Every wonder how Bushtits make their cute hanging nests? How many eggs to Sprague’s Pipits Lay. (scroll to the bottom of this post for screen shots) Information like this is easy to find in Birds of the World, an online subscription resource from Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. Have a bird question. The answer is likely there. I use it all the time. Now WOS members will have access to this subscription-only resource as a benefit of membership- no added cost!
Washington Ornithological Society has teamed with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology to add a terrific new membership benefit. WOS members will be automatically be granted access to the Birds of the World resource. For those of you who are not familiar with this it is a collection of extremely detailed and complete collections of information about every species of bird in the world! It used to be called Birds of North America, but a couple of years ago it expanded to cover the whole world. When I have a question about a bird species it’s my go-to resource. I’ve been a subscriber for years, though at $6/month it has been a bit pricey, I’ve considered it my donation to the cause. Now, for your $25.year WOS membership you get access to BOW included. DO THE MATH! It’s a great value. Maybe BOW is not worth$6./ month to you, but is WOS membership including BOW access worth about $2./ month? A no-brainer. Spread the word. Join WOS and get this fabulous resource as a membership benefit.
This came about as the WOS board deliberated on ways to add value to membership. With the pandemic, less in-person meetings, field trips on hold. This was suggested, the board leadership looked at the cost and it seemed like a great value. WOS has agreed to pay a fee for every WOS member to have this benefit. Every member will have the benefit (unless you intentionally opt out- which simply directs WOS not to share your membership information with the Cornell Lab and means that you will not have this benefit, but does not reduce the cost to WOS) as it is at a price to WOS that must include every member.
The hope of the board it that adding this membership at a bargain price to WOS, will give added value to current members by sharing the definitive ornithologic species monographs to members and thereby increasing our individual and collective birding knowledge, as well as potentially increase membership to others who may want this discounted BOW access.
Members as of Oct 1, 2021 will get access. This will be updated quarterly.
You can join WOS at the WOS Membership page by clicking on this link.
Share this info with your birding and science loving friends, just join WOS and get this member benefit youself.
Thanks for reading, now just Do It!
Story and photographs by Max Warner, May 17, 2021
Chambers Bay area Ospreys have arrived from migration on April first every year for quite some time and have usually reclaimed existing territories and nests. But this year, a non-migratory female Canada Goose had earlier taken possession of a well-established pole nest near the Chambers Bay Dam and refused to give it up to a returning Osprey Pair. This behavior by geese had been noted in the area sporadically before.
After a day or two, the Ospreys decided to build a new nest nearby, right on top of a utility pole with many energized wires attached, and went at it vigorously. This being a hazard both to birds and potentially to power transmission, Tacoma Power and the Department of Fish and Wildlife were notified. A day or two later the new Osprey nest was removed, apparently with a permit allowing this because of safety concerns. Anti-nesting devices were placed on the pole and a nearby one.
But the Goose remained on the original nest and indeed was plucking breast down and lining the nest with it. However, in the next two or three days she and her pile of down were removed and the Ospreys, who had been hanging around stubbornly, reclaimed their home and have proudly remained on it ever since.
Final Score Ospreys 1, Goose-0. (“Goose egg” ?)
Unable to do our Big Year celebration this winter, we still recognize our big hitters!
Congratulations to our people who broke into the TOP 10 (via eBird) in 2020:
PIERCE COUNTY TOP 10
Heather Ballash (235)
Marcus Roening (234)
Bruce LaBar (229)
Ed Pullen (222)
Will Brooks (220)
Peter Wimberger (214)
Wayne Sladek (214)
Margie Sladek (189)
Charlie Wright (185)
PIERCE COUNTY HONORABLE MENTIONS: Art Wang, Shep Thorp, Kathryn Cooper, Shelley Parker, Heather Voboril, Bryan Hansen, Scott Saunders.
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MASON COUNTY TOP 10
Ken Brown (185)
Jacob Miller (170)
John Riegsecker (165)
Faye McAdams Hands (150)
Ed Pullen (150)
Bill Tweit (138)
MASON COUNTY HONORABLE MENTIONS: Jon Anderson, Diane Yorgason-Quinn, Donna La Casse, Lisa Pedersen, Mark Biser, Laurel Parshall, Kirsten Tucker
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KITSAP COUNTY TOP 10
Brad Waggoner (226)
Ken Brown (200)
KITSAP COUNTY HONORABLE MENTIONS: Ed Pullen, Chazz Hesselein, Heather Voboril, John Riegsecker
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THURSTON COUNTY TOP 10
John Anderson (179)
Tom Schooley (173)
Bill Tweit (172)
THURSTON COUNTY HONORABLE MENTION: Shep Thorp
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LEWIS COUNTY TOP 10
Dalton Spencer (163)
Rachel Hudson (158)
Dave Hayden (123)
Will Brooks (110)
LEWIS COUNTY HONORABLE MENTION: Whittier Johnson
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KING COUNTY TOP 10
Anonymous (262)
Dave Slager (231)
Ryan Merrill (230)
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STATE OF WASHINGTON TOP 10
Shep Thorp (351)
Blair Bernsen (330)
Bruce LaBar (319)
WASHINGTON HONORABLE MENTIONS: Ryan Merrill, Will Brooks, Brian Pendleton, Ed Pullen, Teri Martine
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CONGRATULATIONS! See you for next year’s Big Year Party!
I learned yesterday that our ABCBirding website has been broken, and today I finally managed to get it back up. Hope soon we can be back to meetings and field trips. Here are some photos to tide you over.
Good birding.
Ed
On eBird prior to the latest update you could use the summarize findings to create a trip list. I cannot figure out how to use that feature now, but Chazz Hesselein answered an Facebook query with a link to a cool website that allows an eBird user to create an Excel spreadsheet with a trip list by just copying the ebird list urls from eBird, pasting them into a box on the site, clicking to create a list, and presto, an Excel spreadsheet is automatically downloaded with your trip list. See the screen shots below if you don’t understand this, but the directions are all there, and pretty simple. I believe you can use Google Sheets or other free tools to open the Excel Spreadsheet if you don’t have Excel.
Good birding.
At this spooky time of year, crows signify the bird identity of Halloween spirits, which is why Adam and I always choose October to go see the crow spectacle in Bothell. The University of Washington’s Bothell campus is host to thousands of crows with one of the biggest, if not the very biggest, nighttime roost in the state. They have become very well known on campus, and the University sponsors their very own webpage (https://www.uwb.edu/visitors/crows), plus students are now studying this bonanza that just landed in their lap due to their choice of college. Much media has been focused on these Corvids in the greater Seattle area, but the roost is less well known in the south Sound. We have our own crow roosts, but really nothing like this.
It was a balmy evening when we drove up on October 17th to an empty campus due to the coronavirus pandemic. We drove to the top of the north parking terrace as usual and waited. At first we saw a few crows. As it started to get dark, more crows came in, and soon it was apparent that there really were more crows, not just the same bunch circling us. Just at sunset, the numbers increased logarithmically. We couldn’t really get a good count because it was getting so dark, and these are very dark sinister-looking birds, but we put 10,000 down as our count on eBird, and eBird didn’t even blink. Might have been twice that number.
Adam and I were very happy to have this pandemic-safe outing with just us. Most of the time we were there, there were no others on the parking garage roof, so we were able to push our masks down and breathe freely. The only protective equipment we might have wanted would have been earplugs to blunt the crow symphony a bit. But just as in previous visits, a half-hour after sunset, the noise suddenly ceased, as if some demonic conductor had put down his baton.
We noticed people down on the ball field just south of where we were, and one of them came up and told us that crows line up on the east side of the field, then when their social group has all arrived, they just seem to fall down into the swamp/wetland there. We saw a bit of that, but we were so busy looking up that we couldn’t really enjoy that part. The woman who told us that was a local, and she brought dry cat food and sprinkled some out on the parking garage floor. We knew she was a regular because They Were Waiting for Her! Maybe they’d already sent a contingent to her house to threaten her if she didn’t show up with the goods
We cast our own magical spell for Corvids (Corvus brachyrhynchos) to beat off Covid-19. And we think the spell will work. Once the coronavirus has passed, we predict the numbers of crows in Puget Sound will be higher than ever. A safe bet since there are always more and more crows as the numbers of Homo sapiens increase and unwittingly invite them. So bet on Corvids, not Covid.
Some of our photos are posted here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76552838@N03/albums/72157716526428897
Our report from last year is here: http://abcbirding.com/a-birdy-halloween-haunting/
I spent most of the last week at Wapato Point in Manson, near Chelan on the lake. It was really hot, so decent birding was an early morning thing, and a drive up the very steep road to Chelan Butte was a highlight. FOY Dusky Grouse, Gray Flycatcher, and many Lewis’s Woodpeckers were highlights. The really steep road was fun to drive both up and down, and the vistas were stunning. So the grouse makes Best Bird of the Last Week for me. How about you? Tell the club about your best bird of the last week in a comment below. Good birding!
