MEGA: Hawaii's First Spotted Redshank!

You know the saying "Go big or go home"?  Well, I defied that by going big, then going home.  I was in Hawaii visiting friends and enjoying its amazing natural and not-so-natural history from October 24th to November 8th, and boy did I ever make it memorable!

On November 2nd, I was hiking the incredible Pu'u O'o Trail off the Saddle Rd. that traverses the Big Island between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.  I had the good fortune of bumping into Jack Jeffrey - a well-respected ornithologist and photographer in Hawaii - and he mentioned the Kona Wastewater Treatment Plant is a great place to search for migrant waterfowl and shorebirds.  There is almost an irony in this recommendation, as Jack's central focus is native forest birds.  Regardless, I immediately decided it was a place I wanted to visit.

Despite seeing some of the incredible native forest birds that are too gawdy for words, I found there was also something equally incredible about seeing migrant waterfowl and shorebirds, ones I see here on southern Vancouver Island, way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  How they manage to find terra firma when the nearest major land masses are thousands of kilometres away is beyond me.  That was the major stimulus for following Jack's advice to hit up the Kona Wastewater Treatment Plant on November 3rd.

The treatment plant is not open to the public, but birders have graciously been allowed to venture around the facility, staying outside the chainlink fence.  Janean and I ventured in and followed a dirt road onto a dyke that offered a good vantage of the wastewater treatment ponds.  Scanning the edges of the ponds, I found many of the expected Hawaiian marsh birds: Hawaiian Stilts, Hawaiian Coots, Pacific Golden-Plovers, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings, and a few Wandering Tattlers.  Additionally, I spotted a lone Cackling Goose that has apparently been a long-staying uncommon bird, plus a single Lesser Scaup.  I also spotted a large wader in the corner of the furthest back pond on the left (i.e., southwesternmost).  The heat haze was horrid and I figured it must be a Greater Yellowlegs, which would be a pretty good bird.  I tried my best to get good looks from the dyke, but the heat haze was too strong.  I got distracted by a small tern flying over the ponds and my attention was focused on it for a while.  Even my views of the tern were unsatisfying, but I managed to ascertain that it was a Least Tern.  A look on eBird confirmed that a juvenile had been reported there within the past month and since then I have learned that Least Terns actually bred in the area.

Coming from the wet Hilo side, the dry Kona heat not only made the viewing conditions difficult, but it spurred me to move on because Janean is quite fair-skinned.  Oh... and we were at a wastewater treatment plant in Hawaii.  How fair is that?!?  I gave one last look at that large wader and just had to shrug.  "Probably just a Greater Yellowlegs" I thought, but there was something that didn't sit right with me about it.  The legs seemed quite bright even through the haze.  I knew I would be coming back to Kona on the last day and I would have the whole afternoon to explore the area.  Janean is very accommodating and said I could go back on our last day.

November 7th was our last full day and we weren't scheduled to fly until 12:50 a.m. on the 8th.  We worked our way towards Kona in the morning, heading north from Ka'u.  We had a fairly leisurely morning, including stopping in for a nice coffee and using some WiFi, so we didn't get to the treatment plant until noon.  Janean said she would rather just relax in the car so she didn't feel like she was rushing me - what a lucky guy!  I marched out to the dyke and set up the scope, hoping the "vog" (volcanic fog) would cut the haze.  The large wader was in the exact same spot, but the heat haze still hampered views.  I scoped around quickly for anything else unusual and then focused back on the wader.  It moved up out of the water and onto the black plastic lining, which provided a much better contrast to evaluate the legs.  I thought "Man... those legs are glowing!"  I packed up the scope and decided that I had to get closer to see if there was any chance it was the outrageous thing I thought it might be.

I skirted the facility to the left of the entrance and got to a place that was much closer and hopefully still offered a view of the bird.  I set the scope up and started scanning... no dice.  I figured it was just out of view, so I waited a minute and checked again.  There it was... creamsicle orange legs just screaming "Hey dummy... my shanks are red!"  I started to piece together the other features I knew off the top of my head: the basal half of the bill's lower mandible was reddy-orange, the overall colour was tan-brown with the speckled pattern reminiscent of a yellowlegs, it had white supercilia and dark lores, and the neck down to the belly had a tan wash, including blurry streaking on the upper chest.  There was something else I was supposed to look for... right, redshanks are supposed to have a white wedge running up the back, in the same vein as dowitchers,  I watched the redshank as it bobbed its way along the edge of pond.  I was hoping the Hawaiian Coot would be curious enough about the foreign visitor to peck at its legs.  Instead, the noisy activity of a nearby Hawaiian Stilt caused the redshank to make a short flight.  As its wings opened, the white patch was revealed up the back and, to separate it from Common Redshank, it lacked broad white trailing edges on the wings.  I was looking at a juvenile SPOTTED REDSHANK!!!  I guarantee I was muttering expletives to myself and I was certain this was a mega rarity for Hawaii.  I wasn't sure exactly how good it was, but I knew it was going to cause a stir.

When you're close, there's no doubt about its identity! (Photo: Eric VanderWerf)

Excellent shot showing the white between the wings (Photo: Eric VanderWerf)

White supercilium and dark lores showing well here (Photo: Eric VanderWerf)

So, I had just seen a Spotted Redshank in Hawaii and I had no idea what magnitude the rarity was and I wasn't sure who to contact.  My only attempts to contact locals failed, so I did the next best thing: social media.  I contacted Jeremy Kimm and asked him to put the word out on the ABA Rare Bird Alert page on Facebook and anywhere else relevant.  He did just that and the more relevant page he got it on was the Hawaii Birdwatching group on Facebook.  From there, enthusiastic local birder Lance Tanino grilled Jeremy K. for more details.  It was, after all, a Hawaiian first - that's when I truly grasped the weight of the sighting.  I called Jeremy to get all the information out in a prompt manner and this convinced Lance and also Jean Campbell that they should be there first thing in the morning the next day.

I was grateful to Lance and Jean because they got down there and photo-documented the bird.  My camera was out of commission, so I wasn't able to document the bird.  They both managed to obtain tangible evidence that it existed and soon more Hawaiian birders were making the trip to see this far-flung Asian shorebird.  Similarly, I must thank Eric VanderWerf for supplying the photos he managed to obtain, as they make this entry less bland!  This is conceivably the rarest bird I have ever found: a state first!  I have had two provincial second records (Ross' Gull and Painted Bunting) and one third record (Lesser Nighthawk) for BC, but never a first.  What a thrilling event and one hell of a way to end my first trip to the Hawaiian Islands!

Where my peeps at?

The answer is Esquimalt Lagoon!  I made a run out to Esquimalt Lagoon after work today in hopes of catching up with the Franklin's Gull that was seen off and on last week.  It hadn't been reported for a couple days and a similar-looking bird turned up at Clover Point yesterday, so I wasn't too hopeful.

As I rolled along, I saw a birder set up with a scope and thought I would hop out and see if they had found anything of interest.  The birder introduced herself as Monica and I said I was Jeremy.  Just using my first name puts birders that haven't met me in a tricky position if they follow the birding groups.  Am I Jeremy Kimm, Jeremy Tatum, Jeremiah Kennedy, or Jeremy Gatten?  She guessed Gatten and I guessed Nugent and we were both right.  Monica was over to look for a few species that are a little trickier to find over on the Lower Mainland, including Black Turnstones, Rhinoceros Auklets, and Heermann's Gull.  She had knocked off her targets and was just exploring some of the local hot spots.  When I asked if she had anything interesting at the lagoon, she said she had a group of sandpipers.  I scanned out with my binoculars and could see a handful of Leasts and a Western.  Looking further along the shoreline, I could see a couple other peeps.  One appeared to be a Western Sandpiper resting and the other appeared to be larger and quite uniform in colour on the back.  I had an inkling it was a juvenile Baird's Sandpiper and a look through Monica's scope confirmed my suspicion.

I walked along the beach to get a closer look and to try to snap off a few shots of the Baird's.  I didn't want to flush it, but I wanted to get right at the water's edge to get the light as close to being at my back as possible.  The peeps were all relatively close together and I gave them a decent amount of room, so my shots actually provide a nice comparison of the three species.  If I was better at capturing a broad depth of field, it would have been a really good comparison.  Instead, the shots have the Baird's as the primary focus and Leasts and Westerns are slightly out-of-focus.

These are always the most instructive situations - multiple species side-by-side for a perfect comparison!

In the above photo, the leftmost bird appears to be the largest and this is the juvenile Baird's Sandpiper.  Baird's are slightly bulkier than both Least and Western Sandpipers, averaging an inch longer and weighing  approximately one-third more.  In addition to their size, juvenile Baird's can be distinguished by their brown-buff upperparts, scalloped appearance to the back created by pale-edged feathers, long primary projection and ever-so-slightly decurved bill that tapers to a fine point.  It is also worth noting that the bill and legs of Baird's Sandpipers are black.  The front bird and one behind it are Western Sandpipers.  The overall impression of a Westerns is a greyish-backed bird with rufous upper scapulars, a relatively long, drooping black bill, and black legs.  Westerns average around half an inch longer and one-fifth heavier than Least Sandpipers and one of the first steps most take to separate them is to look at their legs and bill.  In addition to the front two, the first and last bird of the rightmost group of four at the back are also Westerns.  Least Sandpipers have yellow legs and a shorter, slightly more strongly decurved, finer-tipped bill.  Adult Leasts are drab brown on their upperparts, while juveniles have dark-centred back feathers that are rufous-edged.  The bird that has the Baird's Sandpiper's bill crossing it, also partially obscured by a Western, is a Least.  Even harder to tell is the centre two birds in the righmostt group of four at the back, which are also Leasts.  Nothing beats experience in the field with multiple species in close proximity.  The photo does not do the best job of showing the differences but you hopefully get the idea.

This is same scene but a little shuffled to give better perspective on the Least Sandpiper just right of the Baird's Sandpiper

I added one more shot to show the Least Sandpiper a little better.  Based on my description above, you can see the Least is a juvenile.  Typically the majority of the adults move through first and then juveniles, so most of the birds in the late summer are juveniles.  The other feature this shot shows off nicely is the long primary projection of the juvenile Baird's - note how the primary tips project past the tail.  That's one of the classic field marks for the species.

Now is a good time to get out for peep diversity, with Least, Western, Pectoral, and Baird's as the likely species to be encountered.  Get out and see what you can find at your local shorebird hot spot!

Crosses and Crossbills

I'm back on familiar birding grounds and making up for lost time.  On Friday, I stopped in at the Vantreight bulb fields and had my first self-found Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) in a sizable blackbird flock and yesterday (Saturday) I met up with Jeremy K. and did the Sooke-Metchosin-Esquimalt circuit to see if we could turn up any interesting fall birds.

Our day started with a frigid stroll to the tip of Whiffin Spit and back.  This walk always seems to be the football equivalent of a Hail Mary pass - nine times out of ten it doesn't pan out, but the rewards are huge for the one time you make the pass.  Today was not the big payoff we had hoped.  Bird activity was plentiful with flocks of Zonotrichia sparrows, but we just couldn't seem to dig out anything unusual.  We did manage to start a running theme for the day here when we saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) cruise over, followed by a few Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and a Merlin (Falco columbarius) zipped through in pursuit of a morning meal.  Every stop hereafter we managed to see a raptor of some sort.

A stop in at the Goodrich Peninsula wasn't quite as brisk as Whiffin, but the level of success was similar.  My personal highlights for this stop were a lone Bonaparte's Gull (Chroicocephalus philadelphia) flying over the marina and a flock of Black Turnstones (Arenaria melanocephala) and Surfbirds (Aphriza virgata) on the floating logs by the docks.

We continued on to Metchosin via Lindholm Rd. and stopped to check out the small farm pond near the Galloping Goose crossing.  The pond was quiet but we located a huge, uncooperative blackbird flock.  We only managed short, partial views of the flock and consequently came up empty.

The best stop of the day was Swanwick Rd.  We started with a nice flock of geese on the main field, which contained 26 Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons) and 30 Cackling Geese (Branta hutchinsii) in with the usual Canada Geese (B. canadensis).

Three species of goose in one flock is always a nice sight!

My personal highlight for the day came next as three Red Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) descended from the top of a conifer to a couple of puddles right in front of us.  I believe it was a family group as there was a single juvenile bird with an adult male and female.

The male Red Crossbill is the reddish bird with dark wings, while the streaky, olive-infused is a juvenile.

Here's a better look at the streaky appearance of the juvenile Red Crossbill.

This is the female Red Crossbill and she is really showing off her namesake crossed bill!

Swanwick Rd. was also our best raptor location of the day with two Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), a Sharp-shinned Hawk, a Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperi), a Peregrine Falcon (F. peregrinus), and seven Turky Vultures (Cathartes aura).

After a rather fruitless stop in at Albert Head Lagoon, we finished our day off at Esquimalt Lagoon.  The high  tide limited the amount of birds along the shore and the close flocks of ducks and gulls all seemed to be at the north end of the lagoon.  We were starting to study a male Eurasian x American Wigeon (Anas penelope x A. americana) when a Bald Eagle put all the birds.  I managed one distant shot that shows some of the key characteristics, including mottled grey and pinky-brown flanks and oddly-coloured head pattern.

Note the male's (right) largely grey flanks which is a feature of a Eurasian Wigeon, whereas the head pattern is closer to that of an American Wigeon.  This bird looks much less Eurasian-like than most reported hybrids.

After the dust settled from the eagle stir-up, I noticed an adult Thayer's Gull (Larus thayeri) had landed on the shore.  Shortly after, I found a nice American Herring x Glaucous-winged Gull hybrid (L. smithsonianus x L. glaucescens).  After commenting on its identification to Jeremy K., a classic adult Western x Glaucous-winged Gull (L. occidentalis x L. glaucescens) joined the other bird.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph the two side by side!

The dove-headed look is a good way to distinguish Thayer's Gulls from the more block-headed American Herring Gulls.  With experience, this species is not too hard to identify (with exceptions of course) but it is hard to tell you exactly why it is a Thayer's and not one of superficially similar species.

The left bird is a typical Western x Glaucous-winged Gull based on the mottled head and not overly dark mantle, while the right bird appears to be an American Herring x Glaucous-winged Gull due to the slight fading to the primaries and dark eyes.

Here is a closer view of the American Herring x Glaucous-winged Gull hybrid, which shows the slight fading in the primaries mentioned above.  The structure of this bird is more representative of its American Herring side as it is more slender than you'd expect for a Glaucous-winged.

That's all I have from this weekend's outings.  I hope to get out during the week, but whether I'll have anything worthy of posting is another story altogether!

Take the last tern when you get to Calgary...

Sometimes you don't even need to try to find something unusual.  This was one of those occasions and it always seems this sort of event happens when I'm not on familiar ground.

After my three week work trip up to Fort McMurray, I dropped in for a visit at my uncle's place at the south end of Calgary in a community called McKenzie Towne.  Today, I offered to take my uncle and grandma out to lunch so we headed out just after noon.  While my uncle drove, I looked over at a small pond just around the corner from his place and I noticed a tern fluttering over the water.  I was quite surprised as I thought all the terns would have passed through already.  Then again, I don't really know the typical windows of all the birds in this unfamiliar territory.  I decided I would wander over when I got back from lunch.

After lunch, I looked in the corner of the pond where I saw the tern darting about, but it was nowhere to be seen.  I decided I would walk to the far end and see if it was by chance just out of view.  Once again, the tern wasn't immediately obvious.  I scanned a little patch of muddy shoreline at the far side and was happy to see not one but two terns.  Being from British Columbia, I am not very familiar with Forster's Terns (Sterna forsteri), but I know they have a black smudge over their eye as juveniles and non-breeding adults.  These two fit that description and I felt confident that's what they were.  I took some very distant record shots and then worked my way around to get better shots.  I only had a work camera that doesn't function properly, but still managed some decent shots between two visits this afternoon.

This Forster's Tern shows the classic black smudge over the eye, while the brown-tinged scalloping on the back points to this being a juvenile.

Without a DSLR handy, I only made a couple attempts at catching them in flight.  On this occasion, I happened to catch it scratching!

I rarely see terns land on water, but I watched the two juvenile Forster's Terns land on the water twice this afternoon.

Finally, here's a shot of the two juvenile Forster's Terns together in the same frame - what a nice and unexpected find!

Looking back over eBird, I can only see one report entered for Forster's Tern between October and November in the past decade.  This does not necessarily reflect reality as many people probably did not go back and enter in their older notes into eBird.  It does, however, give an indication as to how rare it is to find this species in Alberta at this time of year.  This year, you can see that all records of Forster's Terns in October are well south of the two I encountered today (although I don't know if the link will get updated or not to reflect my record).

I don't have much to add, but I figure I may as well add a shot of one of Calgary's dirt birds that we only get on Vancouver Island on very rare occasions.  This is one of those birds that everyone takes for granted if you live around them, but you see them in good light and they are just the most spectacular birds!

Unfortunately the light wasn't hitting this Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia) quite right, but they're striking birds regardless of how the light hits them!

I have enjoyed some of the sights I've taken in over my stay in Alberta, but I'm excited to get home and start taking photos of some of the fall birds in Victoria.

Rock out with your hawks out!

Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus) alert!  In that last few decades, the mystery of Broad-winged Hawk migration has been slowly unraveling on southern Vancouver Island.  Every fall, the species is now recorded in small numbers (usually <10 individuals) primarily from hawk watch efforts at Rocky Point Bird Observatory and Beechey Head.

I had an unfortunately brief but exciting encounter with a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk at Mount Tolmie on Friday (September 21, 2012) afternoon.  I had never seen a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk on southern Vancouver Island and I'm not sure if that's because I primarily hone in on the more obvious pattern of adults or if they're genuinely less frequent here.  I always enjoy actually identifying something rather than complacently accepting it as the obvious choice by range.  As a result, I decided to go through the identification of this bird as a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk and not a Red-shouldered Hawk (B. lineatus).  Before a well-documented record of an adult Red-shouldered Hawk over Rocky Point in 2009, the species was considered hypothetical based on a handful of sightings with insufficient details.  Obviously I had a vested interest in trying to make it a Red-shouldered, but seeing a juvenile Broad-winged would be quite exciting as well.

I managed a couple photos which I mildly adjusted due to compensate for the extremely backlit conditions.  When I first saw the bird, it had its wings swept back and was moving rapidly past me.  It was much smaller (approximately two-thirds the size) than the Red-tailed Hawk (B. jamaicensis) just ahead of it, so my immediate reaction was Broad-winged Hawk.  I thought I was never going to be able to say for sure because I lost sight of it in seconds, but I jogged up to upper viewpoint of Mount Tolmie on the off chance that it would find a thermal to rise up on and start circling again.  And that's what happened.  With a better look at the bird, I still suspected it was a Broad-winged Hawk but felt like I was in slightly over my head because it was a juvenile.  I noted the pointed wings which seemed reminiscent of my previous encounters with adults, and that proved to be a helpful feature.  Here are a couple cropped shots of the bird in question.  I know the lighting is still bad, but I didn't want to make it too unnatural and possibly distort the actual appearance.

This bird lacks dark patagial marks (the "shoulder" area) on the leading edge of the wings and a band of streaks on the belly that form a distinct band.  Instead, you see the chest and belly is uniformly streaked, the underwing coverts are  flecked with dark spots with no strong patagial mark, and the throat has a central dark stripe, which matches a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk.

This shot shows the pointed wings off nicely, which is apparently good for Broad-winged Hawks and should distinguish it from the more squared look of a Red-shouldered Hawk's wings.  Additionally, a pale crescent near the  wing tips would likely be visible in this backlit shot if it was a Red-shouldered Hawk.

Aside from the wing shape and pale wing crescents, I was having trouble finding obvious differences between Broad-wingeds and Red-shouldered Hawks.  I then realized most of the references I was looking over referred to the lineatus subspecies from the east and I should have been comparing to the western subspecies elegans.  The bird documented in 2009 belonged to the latter and it is expected more will show up with their slow-but-continual northward expansion.  Western juveniles have stronger barring on their flight feathers and are heavily marked with rufous-brown on the underwing coverts not unlike an adult, as indicated by a helpful information sheet from Princeton Press found here.  As a result, if my bird was a Red-shouldered Hawk it would show some rusty tones on the underside of the wings.  The individual I saw definitely did not possess any rusty tones under the wings.  There has been one record of an eastern Red-shouldered in California, however, so it was good that I noted the pointed wings and lack of crescent-shaped panels near the wing tips just to eliminate this unlikely scenario, as well.

This exercise has been very enlightening for me and I think I will be that much more ready if a Red-shouldered Hawk decides to cross my path.  Hopefully you gained something from this breakdown analysis as well.  If you want to see more photos to compare some juvenile hawks, check this juvenile hawks in flight entry on the Stokes Birding Blog.  Now get out and enjoy the hawk migration while you can!

Let's Get Quizzical

Update: The quiz is now over.  The mystery bird is a juvenile Palm Warbler (Setophaga palmarum).  The greyish head and pseudo-spectacles likely threw off most that chanced a guess.  I will add a different view of the bird that shows the chest of the bird, which gives it a stronger likeness to Palm Warbler as West Coasters know them.  The feature that helps the most (in my opinion) in pointing toward this being a Palm Warbler is the olive-brown back that strongly contrasts the dark yellow rump.  Thanks to all that participated!

The lightly streaked chest is a field mark that probably would have pointed a little too strongly to Palm Warbler to make this a good quiz bird shot.

I took a photo today and thought it would make a great quiz bird shot.  I think it would be sad to have only a few votes in a poll, so I'll just leave this one open as a quiz to anyone who cares to take a stab at it.  I think it's a little tricky, so I'm hoping some of you will not feel shy and take a guess either in private or in the comments section.  Heck, if you're feeling up to the challenge you can also try to guess the age too!

Here's the bird in question - the photo was taken on August 6, 2012:

Who am I?  We now know it's a Palm Warbler!

Put your thinking caps on, dust off your Golden Guide and flip to the fall warblers page, and share what you come up with for an identification.