The Lesser Big Day

I woke up at 3:00 a.m. to go birding the other weekend. Though I consider myself a beginner, waking up so early made it seem as if I were crossing some invisible line that set me apart from the casual birder. The stated goal was to hit several spots along the Washington coast in search of shorebirds. There were five of us who went. The three beginners included Sugata and me and one other person. Tony DeFalco of Feathers of Color was one of our two experts.   

The first place we stopped was Ocean Shores, Oyhut Wildlife Area. The experts had timed our visit to be within two hours of high tide, and we were on schedule. We passed a structure that emitted a pulsing sound and bore labels warning us that interference could result in loss of life. Something about air traffic control. We ducked through some bushes and followed a narrow path that led us to a muddy flat land.

At first sight, everything looked quiet, but out came the spotting scopes and mud-colored birds quietly picking at the sand came into view. Plovers. Sandpipers. And with the expertise of our experts I added to my knowledge base of shorebirds:

Western and Least Sandpipers flock together. When they land, they tend to separate; the smaller, Least Sandpipers head toward the land, while the larger Western Sandpipers wade into the shallow water.

The other beginner commented that it seemed remarkable that when the sandpipers took off in a flock, they didn't run into each other. This, in turn, sparked a story from one of the experts with the moral that perhaps birds have a harder time predicting the movement of different species of birds.

It can be difficult, I learned even for experts to tell certain shore birds apart. Thus I began to learn the patience required by those that would ferret out the true identity of the species we were observing. While the experts spent ten to twenty minutes trying to determine if the Plovers in our view were American Golden Plovers or Pacific Golden Plovers, we beginners stood around pointing our binoculars at moving objects.  "What's that over there in the mist?" I asked. I'd seen an intriguing large-billed silhouette disappear below a mound that separated us from the ocean proper. It turned out to be a Brown Pelican. Had I known how many Brown Pelicans we would see that day, and how close, and how little we would see of Plovers, I might have attended more to my shore-bird education. 

The experts had resorted to peering hard through the scope to count "primaries," that is, the feathers found at the wingtips of the birds, which, when the wings are folded, and the subject of study is going about its feeding and could care less about you counting anything on its body, can be difficult to do. Identifying the the Black-bellied Plovers proved no trouble for the experts. One showed up in breeding plumage, brandishing its distinctive black belly. I quickly became confident that I, too would be able to tell Black-bellied Plovers from the rest of Ploverdom, but at home the next day as I leafed tbrough my Sibley's guide, I noticed that all Plovers in breeding plumage boast a beautiful black belly. So much for the brief candle of confidence.

A few drops of rain accompanied by a rumble of thunder sent us scurrying back to stand under the pulsating something-to-do-with-air-traffic structure for cover. In a few minutes the rain subsided and we ventured out again. We saw a flock of Wilson's Snipe, Short-billed Dowitchers probing the sand, Pipits, Dunlin, Killdeer, and a Semi-pulmated Plover which looks very similar to Kildeer but has only one band on its neck instead of two. The Kildeer has more rufous coloring on its back. It also has that distinctive call, the one where it supposedly cries its own name. But the calls we heard it utter were only one syllable and there was some disagreement among the group about whether the poor bird was crying "kill" or "deer." 

The Pipit is named onomatopoeically as well, and its flight undulates much like its call. Up and down, up and down as if hopping over invisible hills of air.

We saw Lesser and Greater yellow legs. A slightly larger size identifying the Greater, along with a slight curve of beak. The experts  seemed to concur that the Lessers tend to be more active, and stride about more vigorously on their long, (yes, and surprisingly bright) yellow legs.

Sugata and I took notes on paper, but we lost track of precisely how many sights we visited and which birds we had seen. But Tony was well-prepared and subtle in his record-keeping. I saw him look occasionally at his phone and assumed he was sending or receiving texts. What he was really doing was noting down each location and each species in a special app. His records indicate that we visited at least nine different locations in our quest for birds. 

The other expert had an especially keen ear for birds. Before the three of us in the back seat could entirely extract ourselves from the Toyota Rav 4, he would be pointing skyward or to a tree, incanting, "Hairy woodpecker," or "Orange-crowned warbler." 

We were not, of course, restricting ourselves to shorebirds. The smallest Savannah Sparrow feeding among the red sedge was worthy of our list, as were the song sparrow, the starling, the gull.  Sugata cried out with delight every time he saw a pelican, though we saw many. The other members of the party who had already turned their optics toward scarcer and more exotic birds, may have been amused, but for Sugata, Pelicans always proved magnificent subjects for photography.

We'd seen plenty of the Double-crested Cormorants near the Willamette in Portland, but on the coast we saw the Pelagic cormorants which are all black, and a little sleeker looking. Sugata noticed that one of the cormorants was sitting with its wings spread out and asked what the bird was doing. "Drying its wings," the experts told us. Cormorants are ancient birds, and unlike many younger waterbird species, never developed water-repellent feathers.  

Once while birding in an isolated location, the other beginner spotted  someone in the distance and asked jokingly whether the "White-capped human" was male or female. "Male," was the immediate answer. Tony claimed that the hobby tended to be male-dominated. Which led us to a discussion of gender bias in bird-watching. He suggested that one of the reasons for the gender bias was that women generally weren't as comfortable being out alone as men were. The other expert, who teaches classes at the Audubon society, claimed that 95% of the students in his classes were women. Thus it became unclear as to the true ratio of male to female birdwatchers as the female may be well-inclined to learn about birds, but less inclined to bird alone.

Individually, Sugata and I recognized, growing in the sand, the sea beans we often buy at the farmer’s market.

We walked out on piers and jetties for chances of seeing birds that prefer the open ocean to land. One expert pointed out a line of dark shadows skimming just above the surface of the sea.  I could barely make them out. He identified the shadows as Sooty Shearwaters, and they were travelling northward in a steady but somewhat sparse stream that seemed to break into clumps of about half a dozen at a time. 

I was initially unimpressed with the Sooty Shearwaters, those nearly invisible wisps in the mist, though one expert piqued my curiosity by mentioning that they breed in Australia or thereabouts.  He scanned the sea with his binoculars hoping to find among the Sooties, a glimpse of a Manx Shearwater, a "life bird" for him. He told us that once on a Pelagic trip, he'd seen 100,000 Sooty Shearwaters migrating. Pelagic trips tend to truly separate serious birders from casual birders. Pelagic trips involve going at least 25 miles out to sea on a small boat, getting immensely seasick and seeing birds that you wouldn't otherwise see on shore. Shearwaters are among these. Tony told us of his Pelagic trip. He was sick the whole time he told us, but had a great time. A true and valiant birder.

On our way to our final destination, the Tokeland Marina, we noticed a heavier stream of Sooty Shearwaters and pulled into turnout for a better look. I spied down the line, what appeared to be a sort of bird rave with gulls, Sooties, and Pelicans. There were birds circling and diving and sitting on the water. "What's happening over there?" I asked pointing. The experts said it must be a “bait ball,” a huge school of small fish, ready for the taking. I know of few species that can resist delicious free food. The bait ball made its way back toward us, until the air and the sea in front of us was swarming with birds. The expert told us that what we were seeing, right there on the coast was what we'd normally see on a Pelagic trip. We stood agog for several minutes, our faces toward the sea. One local pulled into our turnout, and getting out of his truck remarked. "I've never seen anything like this," he says. "I live here and I've never seen anything like this before."  The expert first estimated the number of Shearwaters as somewhere near 100,000, but changed his number as we traveled farther down the road kept seeing the birds flock in. The final estimate entered was 250,000.

Many other species of birds were a significant part of this trip. I'd like to thank the Marbled Godwits, the Elegant Terns, The Heermann's Gulls, The Belted Kingfisher, and the Bald Eagle. Each of you helped make this trip memorable. A special thanks also to the two experts without whom, I might have seen less than half of the species that I did, and certainly wouldn't have identified most. I hardly have time to thank all my "sponsors" (i.e. bird species) as there are seventy-one of you in all, but to each, I want to extend a personal thank you for all you contributed to this Lesser Big Day.

Why a Lesser Big Day? Despite the fact that I arose at 3:00 a.m. and returned home at 10:30 p.m., we were informed by the experts that on a true "Big day" we would have gotten up earlier and gone on to look for owls.