Entitled The Birds That Audubon Missed, Kenn Kaufman‘s new book is about much more than just those birds and John James Audubon. What Song of the Dodo was to ecology, this book is to American ornithology – an often fascinating and rollicking tale about the stumbles and successes of early ornithological pioneers. Kaufman was gracious enough to send me an advanced copy; the book comes out in two weeks and can be pre-ordered here. For me, it inspired these reflections.
Though included in Audubon’s book, there are still no records of Great-crested Grebe in North America.
Traveling without binoculars, early ornithologists relied on shotguns and specimens to distinguish new species. They focused on things like toe palmations – an early name for the Willet was Semipalmated Snipe. They got a lot wrong. Out of shotgun range in the middle of lakes, Western and Clark’s Grebes were widely considered to be Great-crested Grebes, a European species, for nearly half a century. Sexually dimorphic and highly migratory, the Red Knot was divided into eight different species across Europe and America. Meanwhile, birds that looked alike – small plovers, Catharus thrushes, Empidonax flycatchers – were often lumped.
Small-headed Flycatcher — Some of the birds described by Audubon are a puzzle to figure out, if they ever existed at all. He may have made this one up.
A huge caveat, of course – and Kaufman makes this clear – is that we’re talking about white European colonizers here. Because much of their work coincided with ethnic cleansing, the early settlers also lacked meaningful exchange of knowledge with their Native counterparts. Without both binoculars and shotguns, early Indigenous knowledge-keepers had one advantage – they focused on bird songs and calls, naming most species using onomatopoeias. It would be decades, if not a century, before European ornithologists began listening to birds as keys to their identity. It was only then that those thrushes and flycatchers were separated. Traill’s Flycatcher was only split into Alder and Willow Flycatchers during my lifetime.
The result is that modern ornithology stands on the shoulders of giants who had very wobbly knees, stumbling around the continent like brazen men, refusing to ask directions.
Many local chapters are changed “Audubon Society” to “Bird Alliance.”
No one was more wobbly and brazen than Audubon, desperately trying to make a living publishing his art and describing new species. In the end, about half the species he described had already been previously described by other European scientists, not to mention Native peoples. Today many of these birds are represented by eponymous bird names with descriptive scientific names (e,g., Euphagus cyanocephalus became Brewer’s Blackbird, and Peucaea aestivalisbecame Bachman’s Sparrow), because the scientific names strictly adhere to the first name they were given. The English names were more flexible.
Kaufman, ever gracious, puts a positive spin on all this, focusing on how recent our knowledge is, and how much there is still to learn about the birds we all love.
The son of a Haitian slave plantation owner, Audubon did not seem predisposed to seek out local Indigenous knowledge. Somehow he ignored the iconic ethereal song of the Swainson’s Thrush.
There are 21 subspecies of Spotted Towhees, but only three of them occur in the Pacific Northwest. Even then, there is confusion.
Our local oregonus birds, like so many PNW subspecies, are dark and dusky. I call them Nearly-spotless Towhees. But sometimes in winter we see more spotted ones. In my quest to uncover the differences between curtatus and arcticus, the most likely candidates, I discovered there are more questions than answers.
Figure 1: The breeding ranges of oregonus, curtatus, and arcticus, the only three subspecies that occur in the northern US and southern Canada. The data (in red) is from summer eBird reports. The solid lines reflect the crude subspecies map in Birds of the World (in Figure 2 below). The dotted lines and question marks were added by me; the dotted lines reflect obvious breaks in breeding densities along the Continental Divide, rather than transecting riparian corridors where there are lots of towhees. An analysis of their songs (at the bottom of this post) suggest my dotted lines are more accurate, and the breeding birds in interior British Columbia, Washington, and Idaho are actually curtatus, not arcticus.
The confusion goes back to the 1800s. To quote from Rick Wright’s Sparrows of North America (2019), the taxonomy of Spotted Towhees is a source of “much confusion.” He’s actually quoting William Brewster from 1882. Yet, 137 years later, Wright spent the next 15 paragraphs describing decades of confusion – which persists to this day.
According to the Birds of the World (BOW) species account: “There exists no review of subspecies and no modern, quantitative study of geographic variation” outside of Mexico and the Pacific Coast (which was studied by Swarth in 1913).
Because there are so many subspecies – some of questionable legitimacy – they are grouped. Even the groupings are confused.
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Figure 2: Spotted Towhee subspecies with BOW and Pyle groupings.
At present, BOW divides the 21 subspecies into 5 groups. Of relevance to the PNW, oregonus is in the oregonus Group, curtatus is in the maculatus Group, and arcticus is by itself, presumably because it the only Spotted Towhee that is entirely migratory and it also shows the most sexual dimorphism – that is, the female arcticus is quite distinctive.
(There are other Mexican subspecies separate from all of this, such as soccorroensis, which has been considered a separate species altogether.)
Because eBird uses the BOW approach, birders in PNW coastal regions encountering a heavily-spotted Spotted Towhee typically see these options on their app:
By “maculatus Group,” eBird, at least in the PNW, implies curtatus. Though arcticus is not listed, it does tempt birders to figure out how to distinguish arcticus from curtatus, because simply using “maculatus Group” on eBird implies the bird is not arcticus.
Oregonus is largely resident (though some go south in winter). Curtatus retracts from the northernmost part of its breeding range. Highly migratory, arcticus winters entirely south of its breeding range. Both are candidates to visit the West Coast of Cascadia, though curtatus is far more likely.
Despite its proximity (and the BOW range map), there are no confirmed eBird records of arcticus in Washington, and Wahl et al (2005), Birds of Washington, assert only oregonus and curtatus are expected. British Columbia has just two winter records for arcticus (2014 and 2016), both from south Vancouver Island, and one July record from just north of the Washington/Idaho border (perhaps based on the BOW map?).
Peter Pyle’s Identification Guide to North American Birds, 2nd Edition (2023) suggests a very different taxonomy (though tentative, as we all still await a DNA study). His 1st edition was similar to BOW, but even then he had arcticus with curtatus in what he called the Interior Group. In his 2nd edition, oregonus is limited to just itself; the rest are in the coastal megalonyx Group. (Peter tells me he’s suggesting reducing Spotted Towhee’s 21 subspecies down to seven, based on morphology.) As with his 1st edition, all the interior subspecies north of Mexico City are in the same group, which he now calls the arcticus Group. The maculatus Group is reduced to just four subspecies in southern Mexico and Guatemala.
By putting curtatus and arcticus together in the same group (and suggesting they be merged?), Pyle makes our lives easier – we don’t need to worry about the identification challenge to use the eBird subspecies offerings. Except Pyle calls it the arcticus Group, while eBird calls it the maculatus Group.
Let’s set aside the taxonomic and range map questions. Can we even tell them apart? Answer: sometimes.
Identification
Focusing on oregonus, curtatus, and arcticus, I’m relying on BOW, Wright, Pyle 1st and 2nd editions, photos on eBird, and personal observations (at least for the first two subspecies). Note that upperpart color tone varies depending on lighting, and the differences are subtle. Likewise, dorsal spotting appears to vary tremendously across individuals, and varies with angle of view and posture of the bird due to feather ruffling. Tail spots (the big white spots on the underside) may be the most definitive, yet there is overlap between forms and often they are difficult to see.
These sources also discuss how pale or bright the rufous flanks are. I’ve not included this, as the photos seem quite variable in this regard, probably due to lighting.
Of all the Spotted Towhee subspecies, Sibley only illustrates oregonus (which he calls the Pacific Northwest form) and arcticus (the Great Plains form), the least- and most-spotted forms.
oregonus
curtatus
arcticus
Upperpart color tone
Male: glossy black; any streaking/mottling variable, but often quite limited. Female: dull black, sometimes with a hint of brown, with faint bold black and dark gray streaks on the back.
Similar to oregonus, but less glossy, more flat black in male.
Male: dull to grayish black with bold black and gray streaks on back. Faint olive tone to rump. Female: brownish; with narrow blonde streaks on back.
Dorsal spotting
White spots largely limited to the shoulder area, with a line of white spots along the scapulars; back largely dark.
White spots coalescing into bright white streaks in shoulder area, with smaller spots extending onto back.
Similar to curtatus with even more white spotting.
Tail spots
About ¼ to 40% the length of the tail. (Pyle: 12-25 mm long on r6)
About 1/3 to ½ the length of the tail. (Pyle: 22-35 mm long on r6)
Can be ½ the length of the tail or more. (Pyle: 27-42 mm long on r6)
The National Geographic Society guide, 3rd edition, illustrates these tail spots and undertail coverts – dark in oregonus; paler in every other form. I assume curtatus would be similar to montanus. Note that tail spot sizes have considerable variability (see chart above). Thanks to Dave Irons for alerting me to this illustration.
The photos below are mine or from eBird. It is frustratingly difficult to find photos of females in summer when they should be on their breeding range, and thus known.
Figure 3a: oregonus male; Port Townsend, WA; 6 Jan 2022. A typical nearly-spotted look. Note slight mottling on back.Figure 3b: oregonus male; Port Townsend, WA; 4 Mar 2024.Figure 3c: oregonus male; near Issaquah, WA; 21 Jun 2019 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S67832978 Glen Chapman). This is bird showing a lot of white.Figure 3d: oregonus male; Port Townsend, WA; 27 Jun, 2023 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S142894263 Michael Long). Illustrating rather small tail spots, only about 1/4 the length of the tail.Figure 3e: oregonus male; Port Townsend, WA; 16 Mar 2024. This one has larger tail spots, about 40% of the length of the tail, which would overlap with curtatus. But the undertail coverts are dark rufous.Figure 3f: oregonus female; Port Townsend, WA; 10 Mar 2024. A typical female, showing some back streaking, visible in good light.Figure 4a: curtatus male; near La Grande, OR; 30 Jun 2023 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S143142401 Glenn Pannier). Much more boldly streaked white than any oregonus.Figure 4b: curtatus male; near Summer Lake, OR; 25 Jun, 2012 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S100771094 Scott Carpenter). Note the tail spot, nearly 1/2 the length of the tail, and the undertail coverts are paler.Figure 4c: curtatus female; south of Asotin, WA; 25 May, 2023 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S139221422 Dave Koehler).Figure 5a: arcticus male; near Crawford, NE; 15 Jun 2019 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S57397630 Steven Mlodinow). Note the tail spots over 1/2 the length of the tail, and the paler undertail coverts. Figure 5b: arcticus male; South Sioux City, NE; 27 Oct, 2022 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S121410819 Bill Huser). Note the boldly streaked back, though this bird is currently showing only modest white spots, which could be due to ruffled feathers. Many arcticus pics on eBird are wintering in areas where Eastern Towhee occurs. That’s why they got their picture taken and were identified to subspecies.Figure 5c: arcticus male; south of Bismarck, ND; 16 Jun, 2021 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S90269105 Ted Wolff). Note the large white tail spots, well over 1/2 the length of the tail.Figure 5d: arcticus female; near Dickinson, ND; 4 May, 2018 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S45246538 Jesse Kolar). Note the brownish hood and buffy streaks on the back.Figure 5e: arcticus female; Ontario, CAN; 12 Feb 2021 (from https://ebird.org/checklist/S81352507 Brad Carey). Another out-of-range arcticus pic, illustrating the distinctive fawn brown female with buffy streaking on the back.
Songs
An analysis of songs of their songs suggest a different story — that oregonus and curtatus are very close to each other, but arcticus is quite separate, and with aspects similar to Eastern Towhee.
Spotted Towhees give two types of songs: a buzz or trill; and a slower electronic rattle or what I call the “shaka-shaka” song (example: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/587645701). I focus only on the former, and limit my window to May thru July, focusing on breeding birds in their summer range. They all give a distinctive “mew” call, quite different from Eastern Towhee, and rarely a few odd calls, such is a sharp “piew” that sounds like an Evening Grosbeak (example: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/447207011)
On to the buzz or trill songs. There are basically three different types:
The buzz (dark green on the map). Example: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/584320661. This is often too fast to see the distinctive notes (vertical lines) on an eBird sonagram, unless it’s a very high quality recording. It seems more common on the Pacific slope (thus, oregonus), but is also given in the curtatus range. I could lump #1 and #2 here, as there seems to be a cline between them.
The fast trill, often with a high-pitched introductory accent note or squeak (light green on the map). Example: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/464938911. The accent note seems more common and pronounced in the interior (the curtatus range). The same bird can give both the buzz and the fast trill.
The trill with 2 to 6 sweet or scratchy intro notes, or even an intro trill (light blue on the map). Example: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/104621711. This song is the only one recorded on eBird in the arcticus zone, and it may be diagnostic for arcticus. Birds further east and around the Black Hills seem more likely to have more than two intro notes or an intro rattle. This song can be quite similar to Eastern Towhee, though Eastern typically has two different intro notes. With arcticus, the intro notes are alike. I found one exception, an arcticus with two different intro notes: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/220722981.
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Figure 6: Trill songs by type, as posted to eBird, using only data from May – July, all years.
The map of song types also suggests the BOW map of subspecies is indeed off. The song type I’m associating with arcticus seems largely limited to east of the Rockies, though it does cross the Continental Divide and extend further west near Idaho Falls and also into eastern Utah near Dinosaur National Monument (not on map). That is beyond the scope of this post.
Summary
A heavily-spotted Spotted Towhee in western British Columbia or Washington, presumably in winter, is far more likely to be curtatus than arcticus. In eBird you would choose “maculatus Group,” even though, for Pyle, that would mean a form from Oaxaca or further south. Identification can be made by the back spotting and size of tail spots, though both are subject to overlap in appearance.
Figure 7: apparent curtatus male; Port Townsend, WA; 22 Nov 2022. Out-of-range winter bird in my backyard.
arcticus vs curtatus
arcticus can be separated from curtatus if: 1) it sang its distinctive song (unlikely in winter?); 2) the tail spots were large, more than 1/2 the tail length; 3) this was supported by a streaked back; and/or 4) it was a female, which are distinctive.
Thanks to David Bell and the Cascadia Advanced Birding Facebook group for alerting me to Pyle’s treatment of these birds, and for inspiring me to do this deep dive. And thanks to all who posted pics and audio to eBird! I’ll never looks at towhees the same again.
References
Bartos Smith, S. and J. S. Greenlaw (2020). Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculatus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (P. G. Rodewald, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.spotow.01
Dunn, J.L. and Alderfer, J. eds., 1999. Field guide to the birds of North America, Third Edition. National Geographic Books.
Pyle, P., 2023. Identification guide to North American birds: a compendium of information on identifying, ageing, and sexing” near-passerines” and passerines in the hand. 2nd Edition. Slate Creek Press.
Pyle, P., 1997. Identification guide to North American birds: a compendium of information on identifying, ageing, and sexing” near-passerines” and passerines in the hand. Slate Creek Press.
Wahl, T.R., Tweit, B. and Mlodinow, S., 2005. Birds of Washington.
Wright, R., 2019. Peterson reference guide to sparrows of North America. Peterson Reference Guides.
I realize a lot of people are pretty burnt out on this issue, myself included. But, in the face of persistent efforts by detractors to petition the AOS for a case-by-case approach to bird name changes, some important backstory is necessary.
Here goes: The controversy over changing English bird names began at least 24 years ago. The current proposal, to change all the eponymous English names, is connected to that history. The process that changed the name of McCown’s Longspur, while it succeeded in creating a new name for that one species, essentially killed the case-by-case approach.
I was a member of the Ad Hoc English Bird Names Committee, but I only reached the conclusions above after our task was done. In the fall of 2023, we made recommendations to the American Ornithologists Society (AOS) regarding changing “harmful and exclusionary English bird names.” You can read our recommendations, along with all the justifications, in detail at this link.
Now I’m adding more to the story. After our committee disbanded, I did a personal deep dive – one that I probably should have done from the start – into the backstory of this debate, to understand just where our Ad Hoc Committee fit in this history.
Here is what I learned.
2000: The duck
There has been a simmering conflict between AOS leadership and the North American Checklist Committee (NACC) that goes back at least to the Long-tailed Duck proposal in 2000. The South American Checklist Committee (SACC) is also part of the story, but I’ll focus mostly on the NACC.
In 2000, a proposal came before the NACC to change a bird name not because of some refinement in taxonomical understanding, but for a cultural or social reason. The bird was the Oldsqu*w, a name that incorporates a painful slur about Native women. (The word is derived from an Algonquin word for woman. Over time, it was appropriated by European men, given new meaning, and spread by cavalry and pioneer wagons across the continent. It often appeared in first-hand accounts of impregnated captive Native women held in US forts. This term is especially insulting and dismissive in Indigenous cultures, where women traditionally held, and still hold, positions of much greater influence and respect than their European counterparts.)
The proposal to change the name of the duck came from the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, where coordination with Alaska Natives is a necessity and an obligation. After what must have been considerable internal debate, the NACC agreed to change the name to Long-tailed Duck, begrudgingly. If you read their explanation, they went out of their way to say they were “not doing this for reasons of political correctness,” but only to bring the name into alignment with English-speaking counterparts in Europe, who already called it the Long-tailed Duck. They didn’t mention the partnership issues in Alaska at all. Their inflammatory comment was a shot across the bow. They were making clear they were pressured into the name change, and resented it, and so contrived an alternative justification for it.
The Supreme Court of birds
The most surprising thing I learned while on the Ad Hoc Committee is that the NACC has changed little since 2000. The majority of the members on the committee back then are still on it today. That’s because they have no term limits. When there is a vacancy, such as when someone dies, the existing members choose the replacement. Thus, they are an island unto themselves, with no external appointments and little oversight from the parent organization. Structurally, they are more protected than the Supreme Court – and have less turnover.
In such a context, of course, a committee can act with a sense of entitlement and impunity. I was shocked when a few of their members criticized the mission of our Ad Hoc Committee publicly. As a former high-level manager with the California Department of Fish and Game, we would never permit one arm to attack the other in public. These attacks cast a shadow over our meetings, as if the NACC carried more weight than the millions of other bird name users. While I acknowledge there was an organizational awkwardness in that the Ad Hoc Committee was tasked with making recommendations regarding part of another committee’s purview (English bird names), there were appropriate internal channels for communication. Most significantly, a member of the NACC was also a member on our committee (with whom we always had respectful and professional discussions).
2011: The dove
Eleven years later, the NACC considered another proposal to change just the English name of a species. Remarkably, the proposal came from within the committee, from Van Remsen, one of its most preeminent ornithologists. Having been on the committee since (so long I can’t figure out when), he was on it during the Long-tailed Duck discussion in 2000.
Remsen immediately recognized that considering a change for social reasons was not the norm. He opened his proposal, entitled “Change English name of Columbina inca from Inca Dove to Aztec Dove,” this way: “I‘m serious. At least I want us to think about this one. As you know, I‘m strongly opposed to meddling with English names, and I regard stability as paramount. And as far as I know, this species has been called “Inca Dove” forever. But in this case, it‘s not just a bad name, but also a completely misleading, nonsensical, embarrassing name that should not be perpetuated – I think it reflects badly on us as a committee…. Its perpetuation only confirms to Latin Americans how ignorant most Americans are of anything beyond our borders.”
His primary issue, however, was not political correctness, but factual incorrectness. The dove’s name was “misleading,” Remsen argued. His colleagues rejected the proposal 5-4 (with presumably Remsen, as the author of the proposal, abstaining). Many names are misleading, they argued. One dissenter summarized the prevailing view, “The name doesn’t reflect our ignorance, but Lesson’s. This vote is for stability.” This illustrated two key themes in NACC jurisprudence: 1) mistakes of the past are allowed to stand, no matter how offensive; and 2) stability, critical for taxonomy, will be applied to English names as well as scientific names.
Another dissenting member stated, “I was a reluctant yes on this, but then canvassed some respected birders and was met with complete non enthusiasm. English name changes always invite acrimony and I fear that result here.” This comment reveals two more characteristics about the NACC. Despite their credentials in taxonomy, they are notably sloppy when it comes to social science, much less public relations. The survey pool of “respected birders” were likely older white males, the demographic most likely to be described that way, and presumably acquaintances. At the very least, the dissenter does not go out of their way to say they were Latinos, either from Mexico or South America, or that the sample was representative in any way. Second, the dissenter fears acrimony, and thus gives high priority to how the users of English bird names, mostly white Americans, will view a name change, even if the name involves a bird which lives primarily south of the US, or involves a moral issue affecting non-white people. In short, they do not want to offend a certain subset of bird name users.
Their comments paint a picture of a committee unprepared for public relations, yet cavalierly unafraid of developing opinions on issues outside their field of expertise.
2011: The honeycreeper
The same year the Inca Dove proposal narrowly failed, the NACC considered one other proposal to change just the English name of a bird. The proposal came from Hanna Mounce, a PhD ornithology student involved in protecting the critically endangered Maui Parrotbill.
The use of Hawaiian names for Hawaii’s birds is common – Elepaio, Apapane, Iwii, Amakihi. But the indigenous name for this bird had been lost from local memory. It was thought to be extinct after 1890. The English name was given after it was rediscovered in 1950. Parrotbill is misleading, to borrow Remsen’s word for the non-Aztec Inca Dove. Parrotbills are an entirely separate family of birds, which includes babblers and the Wrentit. The Maui Parrotbill is actually a Hawaiian honeycreeper, which are part of the finch family.
Of the 21 Hawaiian honeycreepers, only two carry official English monikers, the Maui Parrotbill being one of them. Seeking community support for preservation actions, Hawaiians – specifically, the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project and the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee – initiated a re-naming process to replace the name lost to colonization. In 2010, the name Kiwikiu was selected. Like many indigenous names, the name included a reference to its appearance, with double-meanings for its habits and habitat. A re-naming ceremony was held on the slopes of Haleakalā, where the last few hundred Kiwikiu still cling to existence. In the name change proposal, it was noted that Kiwikiu “is now widely used in avian conservation in Hawaii.”
Today, despite the lack of official NACC support, the name Kiwikiu is in widespread use in Hawaii, in scientific publications, and by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Compared to the Aztec Dove proposal, the Kiwikiu had a lot more going for it. First, it addressed a taxonomically misleading name, and second, it had a groundswell of local support driven by conservation concerns to save one of the world’s most critically-endangered species.
The NACC, however, was unmoved. They rejected the proposal 10 to 0. In reporting their decisions, the NACC publishes their votes and comments online, redacting the names of the committee members. Thus, all the reader sees is a vote and their rationale. In this case, they also saw unprofessional disrespect and racial bigotry. The comments included: “NO. The last thing we need is yet another ridiculous Hawaiian language name.” Another said the new name was “contrived, unfamiliar, and unpronounceable.” As for “parrotbill” referring to a completely unrelated family of birds, this was dismissed as “at most a minor issue.” One committee member conceded that “the name Maui Parrotbill is a lousy one” but added “I’d leave as is…. Has it ever been called a Kiwikiu by anyone?” Apparently, anyone did not include the Hawaiians involved it its protection.
Among the NACC, Remsen’s advocacy garnered four votes for the dove, but the Hawaiian bird conservation community could not sway a single one.
2018: The jay
What would happen if a bunch of white people, with close ties to the NACC, wanted to change an English name for social reasons? We found out in 2018 with the Gray Jay. The proposal came from seven Canadians, all academic ornithologists, one who was a member of the NACC, and another the president of the Society of Canadian Ornithologists. Where the honeycreeper was represented by an unknown soldier, the jay had inside connections and a prestigious army.
Personally, I do like the name Canada Jay better.
The Gray Jay, they argued, should be renamed the Canada Jay for several reasons. First, it was called that before a cascade of name changes in 1957. Second, they were considering it for their national bird. And third, the spelling of “gray” was American, not Canadian, and therefore not acceptable as a national bird. In their justifications, they included a possible threat to the NACC’s authority: the Canadian government could justifiably choose the Gray Jay as their national bird, but rename it, at least for official government purposes, the Canada Jay, just as Hawaiians were already doing with the Kiwikiu.
With intimate knowledge of the NACC’s policies and procedures, they targeted a procedural mistake in 1957. They argued that the name should have reverted to the old historic name of Canada Jay at that time.
The NACC embraced this argument by a vote of 9 to 1. Astoundingly, four of the “yes” votes were without comment. Those who commented embraced the technical argument that the name should have, following their rules, resorted to Canada Jay in 1957. Several mentioned that they had no real concern that the jay occurs well south of the border. And several mentioned the potential of it being a candidate for national bird. Finally, one summarized their rationale with let’s “be cordial to the Canadians.”
The lone detractor was curmudgeonly unbiased. They dismissed the importance of the national bird campaign and argued that 1957 was “the starting point for English names for birds,” so Gray Jay should remain.
While the cultural concerns of Native Americans regarding the Oldsqu*w and Native Hawaiians regarding the parrotbill were explicitly rejected, the Canadians were successful, an illustration of how white privilege and structural racism works. They rely on bylaws and policies. Social justifications are downplayed. Instead, they use inside connections to navigate the bureaucracy, while marginalized people founder on the rocks of regulatory minutia.
2019: The longspur
A year later, Robert Driver, a young academic ornithologist, submitted a proposal to change the name of McCown’s Longspur. John P. McCown, the proposal explained, had been a prominent officer in the Confederate Army. The proposal cited the AOS’s 2015 diversity statement, arguing, “All races and ethnicities should be able to conduct future research on any bird without feeling excluded, uncomfortable, or shame when they hear or say the name of the bird. This longspur is named after a man who fought for years to maintain the right to keep slaves, and also fought against multiple Native tribes.”
The NACC would no doubt have been cognizant that similar arguments could be made about Audubon and Bachman, both proponents of slavery, not to mention Clark, Scott, Abert, Couch, and others, who were active participants in ethnic cleansing, as well as Townsend, who dug up Native skulls for Sameul Mortensen’s Crania Americana.
Diversity arguments notwithstanding, the NACC rejected the proposal 7 to 1, with one abstention. Reading their rationale, most of the committee members embarked on a seemingly apples-to-oranges comparison of McCown’s early days collecting birds and his later life as a Confederate officer, ruling that the significance of the former outweighed the transgressions of the latter. In the words of one, McCown “made important contributions to ornithology and that his remaining life (from what we know right now) did not prove so morally corrupt that we should cease to recognize his name in association with this bird.”
In short, rather than discuss the message that these names send to bird name users today, they simply put the long-dead McCown on trial in a weird kangaroo court that compared his ornithology to his offensiveness.
This is a rather bold endeavor for an all-white committee. If any of them sought assistance in making this evaluation from Black or Native users of bird names, they do not mention it. They do state they solicited feedback from the AOS Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, though no details are provided.
Several mentioned “judging historical figures by current moral standards is problematic.” At issue were slavery and ethnic cleansing. Both were extremely controversial then. A war was fought over one. The Indian Removal Act was quite possibly the most debated piece of legislation ever considered by Congress. And that’s just among white people. Blacks generally opposed slavery in the South, and Natives opposed their ethnic cleansing. These “moral standards” have not changed. What has changed are the people at the table today.
By implying that slavery and ethnic cleansing were not considered offensive or unethical then, they offer an olive branch to past slavers and Indian killers. They seemed to defend McCown as if they were defending one of their own, a fellow ornithologist. They failed to even discuss the larger question of what message these names send to Natives and Blacks who are part of the birding and ornithology world today.
The Trail of Tears was hotly debated by white society. My ancestors, the Cherokees, were also cultural products of that era. They opposed ethnic cleansing. With respect to this and slavery, there has been little change in the moral standards of marginalized people. We would have opposed many of these bird names back then, but no one asked. The only difference now is that we are at the table and the AOS acknowledges we should be welcome there.
2020: Revised guidelines
In their McCown “ruling,” many of the committee members, including the sole voter to change the name, and the abstainer, expressed discomfort about a group of taxonomists embarking on this decidedly non-ornithological task without a clear guiding policy. In the words of the abstainer, the committee needs “a general policy about issues of this type so that we are not responding to them as one-offs.”
Anticipating more proposals of this nature, the committee revised their Guidelines for English Bird Names. It was released on June 3, nine days after the killing of George Floyd. It included Section D: Special Considerations. If the goal was to add clarity to the morass they encountered during the 2019 McCown trial, the new guidelines made little progress.
First, they opened with this: “The NACC recognizes that some eponyms refer to individuals or cultures who held beliefs or engaged in actions that would be considered offensive or unethical by present-day standards.” Again, this centers the white experience and ignores the historic ethical standards of Blacks and Natives.
I enjoyed watching these Mexica (Aztec) dancers at the Gathering of Nations Powwow in Albuquerque. April 2023.
The second disturbing element of this introduction is that the NACC seemed to contemplate putting entire cultures on trial. It would be difficult to grasp what they meant by “or cultures,” except that at least one member of the NACC has suggested, in recent public retorts about changing eponyms, that Aztec is a potentially inappropriate name. This member repeated white stereotypes about Aztecs – killing prisoners via brutal methods – and applied these actions to an entire people and culture, an argument that reeks of double standards and tropes about Native savages.
(I consider Aztec, Mayan, Chaco, Chihuahuan, Urubamba, and Ayacucho in the same way as American, Japanese, Chilean, Mexican, Ethiopian, and California – these names use human societies as geographic descriptors, not as an honorific.)
The new guidelines continued to use the framework of a criminal trial, moving into details as if they were a code of law: “By itself, affiliation with a now-discredited historical movement or group is likely not sufficient for the NACC to change a long-established eponym. In contrast, the active engagement of the eponymic namesake in reprehensible events could serve as grounds for changing even long-established eponyms, especially if these actions were associated with the individual’s ornithological career.” Just being a member of a bad group is not a crime; you must actively participate.
They also acknowledged that some names could become derogatory or offensive over time, when at first they were not, and that the new guidelines would have allowed the name of Oldsqu*w to be changed based on that alone. All questionable names, however, would be subject to the same apples to oranges comparison: “The committee will consider the degree and scope of offensiveness under present-day social standards as part of its deliberations.” The “scope of offensiveness” will be compared to their contributions to ornithology. Specifically, eponyms that “have a tighter historical and ornithological affiliation” will have “a higher level of merit for retention.” It is difficult to see how this would work: minus two points for slavery but plus one for each new specimen collected?
Yet, this is where we are: the case-by-case approach rests on a committee – primarily white and male, with no term limits or external review – essentially putting historical figures on trial, comparing a name’s “scope of offensiveness” to the historical person’s “level of merit.” At no point do the new guidelines contemplate seeking input from a wider audience.
2020: The honeycreeper revisited
As these guidelines were published, the nation was embroiled in the threat of police violence against Christian Cooper and the murder of George Floyd. Birders and ornithologists who felt excluded from the largely white cis male confines of birding, ornithology, and the environmental movement in general, created multiple affinity groups where women, LGBTQ ornithologists, and Black birders could find a home. In this context, the AOS was forced into a deeper review of its actions, particularly the actions of the NACC.
There was no formal apology from the NACC. That the name Maui Parrotbill remains unchanged to this day illustrates the power balance between that committee and its parent organization.
2020: The longspur revisited
As the Kiwikiu controversy was simmering, somehow, behind the scenes, the longspur proposal was resurrected, revised, and resubmitted. Officially, it came from Terry Chesser, a member of the NACC, as well as Driver, the original author in 2019. Packaged in Supplemental Proposal Set 2020-S, it was the only member of the set. Clearly it was an emergency measure. It was also carefully constructed to achieve the desired result – changing the name of McCown’s Longspur – while simultaneously building a narrow jurisprudence that would avoid opening the door to similar proposals.
Again, the NACC adopted the approach of putting McCown on trial. The proposal reads like a criminal indictment, focusing on McCown’s resignation as a US Army Captain in order to join the newly-founded Confederate States Army in 1861. He was not known to keep slaves. Instead, they focused on a Confederate flag he kept in his home as proof of motive.
The proposal glosses over his first 21 years in the US Army with this: “He led campaigns against Native tribes along the Canadian border before being moved to Texas to serve in the Mexican War. He later fought the Seminoles in Florida and served several other positions before the onset of the Civil War.” That’s it. In fact, McCown was involved in the ethnic cleansing of the Seminole, Ute, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Comanche, from Florida to Utah to the Dakotas. Of people honored with bird names, perhaps only Clark (of Lewis & Clark) was involved in more Indian killing. When McCown collected the longspur in 1851 in south Texas, the Comanche Empire was actively pushing the Euro-American frontier backwards.
Instead, the proposal goes into great detail about his switch from the US to the Confederate Army, as well as the significant role he played in the Confederate Army. Essentially, they put McCown on trial for treason. When he was killing Indians, he was following orders of the United States. When he was defending slavery, he was a rebel.
The NACC grabbed this branch, voting 11-0 to change the name. In their comments, nine of the eleven highlighted his treason. In the words of one, “McCown resigned his commission before secession, indicating he was “in on” the movement to retain slavery, and then spent the Civil War killing soldiers in the United States Army, in which he was trained, in order to maintain a slave state. That puts McCown, in my opinion, in a completely different zone from all the other eponymous ornithologists of the era who were largely cultural products of their era.”
That last line preemptively exonerates all the Indian killers, even though their behavior was considered abhorrent by all the Natives and half the whites of their era. In the weighing of apples and oranges, there will be no point deductions for ethnic cleansing, not even for McCown. Given the increasingly prominent role that Native nations are playing in wildlife conservation (motivating both the Long-tailed Duck and Kiwikiu proposals), this approach is insensitive and potentially reckless.
Another wrote: “My original NO vote was based on McCown’s rebuke of the Confederacy and the time-honored principle of not judging past people by current standards. But then we learned more about McCown, and I read a fair amount on the history of slavery… it was clear that slavery was NOT regarded as normal, but instead abhorrent, by the vast majority of Western Civilization…. Thus, it was clear that by official cultural standards at the time of the Civil War, the beyond-odious practice of slavery was not considered “normal” for the era. The USA was an outlier, despite widespread, strong abolitionist sentiment dating into the previous century.”
The white ethnocentrism here is thick. One would think that a civil war would be evidence enough that the “official cultural standards at the time” were hotly contested. Instead, this taxonomist did personal research to confirm that slavey was indeed abhorrent, using white sensibilities as a guide. They did not research the views of Black voices from the US to see if they considered slavery abhorrent. It is apparent that “official cultural standards” meant “what most white people thought,” or even, “what a white government allowed.”
Only two members did not mention McCown’s allegiance to the Confederacy. This is because they did not put McCown on trial. Instead, they took it as a given that the name was problematic and focused on a larger goal. One stated that “promoting anti-racism within AOS should be a top priority.” The other, who had also been sole Yes vote in 2019, said, “I see changing this name as promoting a more inclusive AOS and birding community.”
In changing the name to Thick-billed Longspur, the NACC put McCown on trial, found him guilty, but did it in a way that no one else could ever be guilty. In the future, the case-by-case approach, for the most part, would be a dead end.
In recent public statements, some members of the NACC have affirmed this, saying they could “defend” Scott and Townsend. Indeed, they explained exactly how above.
What happened next
Within a year, the NACC received similar proposals to change the names of Scott’s Oriole and Flesh-footed Shearwater. A research group was writing papers – published by the AOS in their journal, Ornithology – where they refused to use the English name, Townsend’s Warbler. In South America, eBird/Cornell/Clements refused to go along with the SACC regarding honorifics for two new antpittas. Bird Names for Birds formed and petitioned for more name changes. It seemed a flood of similar proposals was inevitable, which would inundate the NACC with non-taxonomic duties. It was in this context – and with that historical backstory – that the AOS put a freeze on such proposals and began the process which led to the creation of the Ad Hoc Committee.
The difference between the English and scientific names on eBird for two newly-split antpittas are another story in the ongoing saga over bird names.
One could argue that, while the NACC may not be the right body to embark on a case-by-case approach regarding English bird names, perhaps a separate, more diverse, more socially-focused committee, could. The AOS seemed to think along these lines as well. That’s why they created us, the Ad Hoc Committee. In terms of diversity, we were at the opposite end of the spectrum from the NACC. Of our 11 people, we had ornithologists, birders, government resource managers, people from Canada, the US, Chile, Colombia, and Trinidad & Tobago, men, women, Asian, Latino, Black, Native, as well as current members of the NACC, SACC, and the AOS Council.
We spent our first six months trying to figure out how a case-by-case approach might work. We eventually realized that a universally-accepted “moral standard” did not exist, that we are a land of many narratives. Clark “opened the land” for white pioneers, and was also among the first US officials to use the term “extermination” with respect to Native Americans. One person’s hero is another’s enemy. Combined with a host of other problems with eponyms – their dismissive use of first names for women, their lack of information about the bird, and the personal property implied by the possessive ‘s’ – it was no surprise that our committee ultimately recommended changing them all.
Actually, I was surprised at the time. I never expected us to reach that conclusion. Looking back, however, I’m now convinced that any committee, focused on diversity and inclusion, would end up in the same place. And that a case-by-case approach would go nowhere.
Before I get into this, here is a little bit about me. My pronouns are he/him. I am a citizen of Cherokee Nation and white-presenting (that is, I look like a white male).
1. Everyone likes birds.
Everyone. Regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, race, socio-economic status, political orientation, urban or rural background, if you asked them if they like birds, they’ll say yes. They may complain about a few problem birds that crap on their car, but in general, people will say they like birds. And they put their money into it. The public spends about as much on backyard bird feeding as it does on movies and television. Birds are beautiful. They fly. They evoke freedom and encourage us to dream.
2. Birding is a pathway to greater environmental knowledge and belief in science.
To get to know birds is to learn about migration, seasons, weather, ecology, habitats and threats to habitats. To watch birds is to see the human/nature interface in bright daylight – the dog that chases the endangered Snowy Plover, the development that removes the woods on the edge of town, the cat that kills the sparrows that migrated here from central Alaska. Birders overcome Nature Deficit Disorder. They become ecologically educated, understanding environmental issues.
3. Birders support environmental causes and the fight against climate change.
In general, birders are environmentalists. Cooper et al (2015) found that birders (and hunters) were “4 to 5 times more likely to engage in conservation behaviors,” such as supporting environmental causes. They concluded, “Strategies that include programs to encourage both hunting and birdwatching are likely to bring about long-term gains for conservation.”
4. There are far fewer birders than there should be.
There could be a lot more, but certain demographics are underrepresented in the birding community. This includes non-white ethno-racial groups, younger people, and less educated people.
Ethno-racial categories
In their 2021 paper, Racial, ethnic, and social patterns in the recreation specialization of birdwatchers: An analysis of United States eBird registrants, Jonathan Rutter et al (no relation to Jordan Rutter of Bird Names for Birds) analyzed a survey of 30,000 eBird users. That paper, especially Table 3, is the basis for the graphs presented here. Note that the eBird data comes from 2016-17 and the US population data comes from 2011-15. There has almost certainly been an increase in diversity in both datasets since then, especially the eBird data. In 2016, eBird was still fairly limited to certain social circles. The number of eBird users has nearly doubled since then. A new survey would show far more diversity.
Going back further, in 2005, John Robinson found that, while the majority of Blacks expressed a high level of interest in the environment, very few participated in birding (or other outdoor activities) and very few had ties to environmental organizations. He famously said that “the average bird watcher will meet no more than two or three African-American bird watchers over a 20-year period.” That has changed.
This underrepresentation has been correlated with other outdoor activities, as well as membership in conservation organizations – and especially in leadership – more on that below.
With respect to birders, are we talking about backyard feeder watchers or avid listers? Rutter et al dived into this, what is termed the degree of “specialization” – how avid and dedicated one is. They asked questions such as: How often to you travel from home to look for birds? How often do you use eBird? Do you own a scope? How many species can you identify by ear? They found no effect on specialization by race. In fact, race, age, gender, knowing a close friend or relative who is a birder, income, and education combined only “explained 6.7% of the variability in how central birdwatching was to respondents’ lives.” No matter what your background, once you start, you are equally likely to head down various paths of birding obsessiveness.
The huge racial divide then, occurs at step one, the decision to start looking at birds. After that, the birds do the rest. Rutter et al concluded, “Future efforts to diversify the birdwatching community, therefore, may be most effective if focused on increasing initial participation rates of underrepresented groups.”
Gender
Nearly every study shows there are slightly more female than male birders. This holds across all ethno-racial categories. (Note, this data, collected in 2016-17, makes no reference to non-binary or refuse-to-state responses. The total in the graph sums to 99.9%. I don’t know if this is rounding error or reflects alternative responses, or if alternative responses were removed from the analysis.)
Regarding degree of specialization – how avid and dedicated and experienced they were – men scored higher than women on these questions, but only by a small margin, just 1.7 points on a scale with a median score of 17 (e.g. perhaps men averaged 17.7 and women 16.0).
While there are lots of women birders, and they are nearly as specialized as men, they are far less likely to be in leadership. Most prominent birders – the ones who lead Christmas Bird Counts, serve as eBird reviewers, serve on state or national bird records committees, work as bird guides, speak at conferences, write field guides, etc. – are white men. (A notable historical exception: the first field guide that popularized birding for the public was written by Florence Merriam Bailey in 1889.)
Looking at the top 10 or 20 birders on eBird – in any state or region for any given year – women are typically only represented by a few individuals, whether looking at number of checklists submitted or – a decidedly more competitive and obsessive measure – number of species seen in a given year.
The dearth of women in leadership continues across environmental organizations in general. In 2015, Dorceta Taylor looked at 324 such groups, finding that “though females exceed males on the staff of environmental organizations, women are underrepresented in the top leadership echelons of the institutions.”
In academia, however, change is afoot. While ornithology professors are still mostly men, this varies across universities. The new generation is far more diverse. At the 2023 AOS annual convention, women won 19 of the 23 awards. Additionally, diversity, equity, and inclusion topics were prominent among the papers and presentations.
Age
For all ethno-racial categories, birders (in green) average older than the overall population (in blue), with the breakpoint generally in the upper 40s. Again, this data is dated, and more young birders now avidly embrace eBird. White birders skew older more than any others, and have, in proportion to their population, the fewest young birders and the most older birders. Asians are at the other end of the spectrum, with the most young birders as a proportion of their population. Asian young people are more than twice as likely to take up birding than their white counterparts. Latinx, Blacks, and Native Americans are between, in that order, with the Latinx closer to the Asian graph below.
The take home here is that there are many potential birders among those under 45 – and even more under 35 and yet more under 25. And young people of color are more likely to take up birding than white young people.
Education
Relative to the overall population, birders are extremely educated. One big caveat here: It could be that there are plenty of less-educated birders, but they just don’t use eBird as much. The survey showed that nearly half (48%) of the 30,000 eBird users surveyed had advanced degrees, compared to just 12% of the other whites (age 18+). This is even more true among birders of color. Latinx birders were 10x more likely than other Latinx to have advanced degrees. Blacks and Native Americans were 6x more likely. A person with an advanced degree is 13x more likely to be a birder than a person without a Bachelors.
The October 2021 issue of Birding magazine explored the least birded counties in the nation, based on the number of eBird checklists. Of the bottom 20, 18 were in Kentucky, Mississippi, or West Virginia, all small rural counties. Sure, they have fewer people than a major metropolitan county. King County (Seattle) generates many times more eBird checklists in a single day (about 700/day) than these counties have in the history of eBird (all with fewer than 100 checklists total). At the same time, I wonder if these low rural county birding rates are partly explained by the education graph above.
Hunting is popular in these areas. 60% of duck hunters are from small towns or rural areas. Surveys of duck hunters show some similarity to birders (e.g. predominantly white), but a different trend regarding education. While they still skew slightly toward more educated, their graph mimics the general population fairly closely.
As someone who learned to bird from my father’s duck hunting blind in a small rural county, I can also assure you that plenty of lesser educated hunters and anglers love the outdoors and know birds pretty well. An advanced degree is not required for bird identification, and certainly not to be an avid birder. Lesser educated rural people could become birders. The take home here is that there are millions of potential birders among those who are less educated, and certainly among hunters who support environmental causes.
Income
Despite their exceptionally higher education level, birders do not earn more money than the general public. This is pretty consistent across all ethno-racial categories. If anything, birders earn slightly less. For example, 24% of the general public earns between $100K and $200K per year. Only 21% of birders do.
To summarize where we are, there are three main demographic groups (which no doubt have some overlap with each other) that bird at lower rates: people of color, younger people (especially whites), and less educated people. While there have no doubt been significant increases in these groups since this survey was done, it is still clear that there is a lack of birders of color and women in leadership roles. This is where there are opportunities to grow birding and the environmental movement in general. And research suggests that knowing other birders is key to start birding.
5. Because underrepresented people are not included – and are actively excluded.
In recent years, there has been a rise in historically-marginalized identity-based birding clubs and ornithological organizations, a kind of alternative birding universe where people can experience birding in a closer-knit community with different social rules, expectations, and styles of communication than in larger white-male-dominated birding circles. Here are some of those groups (and a podcast):
In Color Birding Club – we strive to make the birding experience a positive one for BIPOC folks and their allies.
Anti-Racist Avid Birders – dedicated to making the outdoors—and birding in particular— accessible and safe for people who find themselves under-represented or unacknowledged in traditional birding communities.
Always Be Birdin’ podcast – aims to change the narrative of birding. How we bird, where we bird and who is birding. Join me as I go out into the field with BIPOC birding experts, novice baby birders like myself and nature enthusiasts.
Frontiers in Ornithology – to educate and inspire youth to take their passion for birds to a higher level.
(Please let me know of more groups I should add to this list.)
There are also many local groups like the ones above, as well as for young birders. And there is Black Birders Week, supported by a wide range of organizations.
Here are some important essays and books on the same themes:
Birding is a pseudo-academic hobby that can take on the vibe of a competitive academic department with a strict, though unwritten, code of behavior. As with any hobby, there is a whole lingo associated with certain activities, especially chasing and listing. Some of it sends subtle messages about how to be a birder, and what it takes to be an Alpha dog.
I drank the Kool-Aid for years. I thought these things were important to cultivate the right kind of birders. I was a gate-keeper. Now I realize enforcing a specific culture and birding etiquette can be a turnoff to new birders, especially those from different demographic backgrounds not comfortable navigating in white male spaces, much less a very specialized and potentially competitive environment. We are, after all, talking about enjoying nature here.
Let’s take one example. Among the cardinal sins for those seeking birding Alpha status is this: do not make an identification mistake in public. When I was a young birder, I loved public debates and discussions about golden-plovers and dowitchers, vireos and accipiters; that’s how I learned. They seem harder to find now – not the birds, the open discussions.
I was recently called “incredibly brave” by a teenage birder for publicly calling attention to a difficult id problem between a rare vagrant and a common species, positing that the bird may be the vagrant. The teen had already figured out the code. The bird, as the odds have it, turned out to be the common one. Later, people were thanking me for initiating the educational discussion online. I’m not brave, just jaded enough that I’m trying to care less about my reputation and am trying to model ‘learning in public,’ which is critical to learning about birds. If gulls and Empidonax flycatchers teach us anything, it’s that everyone must be allowed to make mistakes.
The concept of “slow birding” recently evolved as an even more radical counter to the competitive and obsessive aspects of birding. Slow birding is about bird/life balance, where birding can be an act of mindfulness. The key point is this: There is no one right way to enjoy birds.
Institutional structures
Across academia and many workplaces, we have seen increased diversity over the past four decades. The US Congress has gone from 3% women in 1980 to 28% today. The same probably could not be said for bird record committees, birding tour guides or birding conference speakers.
One way the birding community creates obstacles to diversity is thru various institutional structures and processes. Sometimes it’s just the name. Outside the affinity-based birding clubs described above, most local clubs are “Audubon societies.” In addition to stereotypes of older white people peering thru trees at warblers, both the words “Audubon” and “society” are turnoffs to youth and people of color. It’s a shame because many local groups do great outreach and local conservation. They can be key points of entry for new birders.
I know many who used to work for National Audubon who now boycott them on principle. Some organizational clarification: National Audubon and various state affiliates (e.g. Audubon California, etc.) are all part of a single 501c3. That is the entity that has refused to change its name. Local Audubon societies, however, are separate 501c3’s; they can change their name any time they want. Seattle, Golden Gate, and many others have done so. The challenge now – and what has caused so much delay – is how to do so in a coordinated way, now that National is failing to provide a model for change.
Sometimes the barriers to entry are more substantial than the name; sometimes it’s the actual bylaws. The most dramatic example involves the North American Checklist Committee (NACC) of the American Ornithologists Society. They oversee lumps and splits (and, until recently, English bird names as well as scientific names). The members have advanced degrees in ornithology and are expert taxonomists. That’s no surprise. What is astonishing is that the members of this committee serve unlimited terms and new members are chosen by pre-existing members. Thus, turnover is slower than the US Supreme Court. Some of the members have been on the committee for over 30 years. Five of the eight members who were on the NACC in the year 2000 are still on today. (It has 11 members today, plus two Latina members from Mexico and Central America.) Only one of the nine Supreme Court justices today was there in 2000. The aim, of course, is doctrinal stability, but it comes at a cost. Such policies limit opportunities for younger academics to even aspire to the committee, and certainly retard diversity on the committee.
In the birding world, many state record committees, which oversee state records and evaluate observations of rarities (declaring what is “countable” for listers), have only slightly less-restrictive policies, often resulting in a revolving door of white males. For many of these committees, vacancies are filled only through the nomination by and approval of the existing committee members, just like the NACC. Given that these committees have only a dozen members at most, and there are hundreds of expert birders in most regions, it seems hard to believe there are not women and people of color qualified to serve. Some committee members I’ve spoken to say they try to reach out to other demographics to nominate them, but their efforts have not succeeded.
I’m not questioning the qualifications or bird decisions of these committees. Their service is commendable. Regardless, the appearance is of an entrenched aristocracy that appears to exclude women and people of color.
Even Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs), usually terrific opportunities for outreach, are not immune to institutional barriers to entry. There are some CBCs that are run as private clubs, closed to outsiders and beginners. On others, beginners are shunted off to less exciting routes.
Public gate-keeping
While there are plenty of legitimate questions and alternative perspectives for any issue in birding, recent discussions about birding and diversity issues (e.g. regarding committee membership and the re-naming of certain birds) have often crossed a line, being particularly insensitive to women, younger birders, and birders of color.
Recently, a friend of mine, a younger person of color and a beginning birder, joined a local former-Audubon bird club field trip for the first time. As the group began to gather – all older white men and women – the leader initiated a group gripe session about the proposed bird name changes.
I don’t know exactly what words were said, what arguments were made. Just the big picture – that an initiative, motivated by diversity and inclusion concerns, is being most criticized by white men over 65, the exact demographic that is most included and overrepresented in leadership positions – is not a good look.
(I acknowledge there are many prominent white male birders who are supportive of the bird names proposal: Kenn Kaufmann, David Sibley, Nate Swick.)
Apparently it is too much to hope that birding’s enormous diversity problem would somehow frame the overall conversation. Instead, some of the common arguments are premised as if the only people in the room are white, using entire frames of reference that exclude marginalized people from the conversation. In a public forum, these arguments essentially declare birding as white space.
Three examples that my friend may have heard:
1) When society’s morals change, the present morals should not be applied to people of the past. ~ This is a white issue. By “society,” they mean white society. Blacks have always opposed slavery, Natives have always opposed ethnic cleansing. We can debate how much white society has changed. What has most obviously changed is that now there are other voices at the table. These voices have grown up with different narratives about history and about how their families were impacted.
2) This is “wokeness” and “virtue-signaling.” ~ These are accusations by whites of whites. One doesn’t say a Black person is virtue signaling when they talk about police brutality. And one doesn’t call a Native woke when they talk about tribal sovereignty. No, woke and virtue-signaling are modern variations on “n-lover” and “squ*w men.” The use of these terms presupposes that the new initiatives are coming from white liberals. In fact, there are lots of people of color involved.
3) Competency and quality (for example, as a committee member) should always come before diversity. ~ This is insulting to women and people of color. It echos claims that underqualified people are given positions as charity, as “diversity hires.” Women and people of color have their own narrative – that they work twice as hard to get half as far. That they are, in short, often over-qualified. Diversity strengthens organizations so they don’t make the kinds of mistakes we are witnessing today, and also serve as inspirations to attract new people from across the demographic spectrum.
Another version of this is to point out how accomplished and important the angry white men are – that the bear has been poked too much, and thus the pace of change should slow down. Such arguments are both circular and ironic. The whole point is that there should not even be a bear. And if the bear is so angry about a symbolic measure, what about more concrete measures? We should all be on the same team, building a better world for birds and birders.
My friend didn’t go into detail about what arguments he heard at that bird walk. All he told me was that he won’t be going back.
6. Making birding more inclusive requires structural change and specific actions.
If the online debates don’t offer concrete solutions to make birding more inclusive, all those affinity-based groups I listed above do. Those birders are already acting! Some of the books I highlighted above are filled with ideas. I’m going to do a separate blog post later on creative ideas to increase diversity in birding. In the meantime, here are a few:
Increase diversity in leadership positions. Both Robinson (2005) and Rutter et al (2021) found that a lack of role models is a significant barrier to entry. Robinson compares Black participation in birding to golf, noting that, after the rise of Tiger Woods, the number of Black golfers nearly doubled in four years.
Change the bylaws of committees to allow for greater turnover (thru meaningful term limits). Use external nominations and external appointments or voting to fill vacancies.
Local clubs should offer a range of birding opportunities, targeting different demographics (e.g. youth, women, underrepresented ethno-racial groups). In Robinson’s survey, one respondent said that “a change in advertising and possible programs scheduled in the right areas, along with support from Blacks who back this effort, can change everything.”
Along with trips to Ecuador, promote 1MR and 5MR birding (birding within a 1 or 5 mile radius of your home), which increases bird/life balance, knowledge of local birding patches and environmental issues, local community, and birdability for those unable to travel long distances. It’s also a great way to find rare vagrants, especially at feeders in winter. In a similar vein, promote county birding and environmental big days and big years (walking and/or biking).
Outreach to hunters, who have a lot of commonalities with birders. We can be allies.
Finally, if you comment on this blogpost, don’t just say why something won’t work; focus on solutions. Positive suggestions for edits are also welcome. We’re all on the same team, birds are for everyone, and they need more allies.
Dark morph Broad-winged Hawk, Port Townsend, WA. May 19, 2021.
Robinson, J.C., 2005. Relative prevalence of African Americans among bird watchers. In In: Ralph, C. John; Rich, Terrell D., editors 2005. Bird Conservation Implementation and Integration in the Americas: Proceedings of the Third International Partners in Flight Conference. 2002 March 20-24; Asilomar, California, Volume 2 Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-191. Albany, CA: US Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station: p. 1286-1296 (Vol. 191).
Whether you want to nerd out on gull molt or argue over Olympic vs Glaucous-winged Gull criteria, this is your one-stop shop. This is my primer on gull identification and frequency in Puget Sound, from the perspective of Port Townsend. Most of these pics are from Port Townsend or elsewhere on the Olympic Peninsula, though a few are from farther afield.
I present them roughly in order of abundance. I start with the forms I see in numbers at various times through the year: Olympic, California, Short-billed, Heermann’s, and Bonaparte’s.
Then I move onto others I see in small numbers: Glaucous-winged, Ring-billed, Thayer’s Iceland, and Herring.
These regularly-occurring forms can practically be identified by bill, head, and body shape. These are all first cycle birds here. A word of caution: there is some variability in bill shape – and it can really change from one still photo to another based on angle and lighting. Also, male gulls are 15-20% larger than females, so size can be a moving target.
Finally, I cover some I rarely see: Western, Cook Inlet, and Glaucous.
Gulls take several years to reach adulthood – three for the smaller gulls, four for the larger ones. During this time, they molt and fade and molt and fade. Season is everything. Gull identification in fall, when the birds are fresh and crisp, is completely different from spring and summer, when they are a faded, tattered mess. With each of these taxa, I’ll present the photos in order of age, so we’ll follow them as they age thru the months and thru the years.
Western x Glaucous-winged Gull (“Olympic Gull”)
Let’s start with the most common gull year-round – by far (with a few exceptions as noted below). When I’m birding, my default position is that all large gulls are Olympics until proven otherwise. (Personal shoutout to Shonn Morris for educating me about Olympic vs Glaucous-winged identification.) The nickname Olympic Gull was possibly first coined by Bob Boekelheide on a Tweeters post on January 13, 1997. Puget Sound Gull was another term batted about at the time.
Hybridization between these two species has been documented since 1908. A nice summary of the early observations, entirely on the outer coast from British Columbia to Oregon, can be found in Scott (1971). Bell’s thesis in 1992 described “a broad zone of introgression” from Haida Gwaii to Coos Bay. The colony at Protection Island, just around the corner from Port Townsend, has been described as the largest Olympic Gull colony in the world (Megna et al 2014). As described in that paper (see Figure 2 at right), the gulls in Puget Sound are decidedly toward the Glaucous-winged end of the spectrum, and “few individuals” appear to be pure Glaucous-winged. Note this is base on appearance, not DNA testing. This implies a hybrid swarm that has been going on for many generations. We are way past F1 hybrids. We’re more at F50 or more. In this context, Megna et al found evidence of assortative mating, meaning that paler birds were more likely to mate with paler birds, and darker birds with darker birds.
In my experience, and in keeping with Megna’s observations at Protection Island, most of the large gulls in Puget Sound (over 90%) appear to be hybrids at the Glaucous-winged end of the spectrum. That is my default assumption when using eBird. For those not comfortable with that, eBird also offers the option of “Western/Glaucous-winged Gull,” meaning the bird could be either parent species or a hybrid between the two; it’s the catch-all option. Simply calling dozens or even hundreds of birds “Glaucous-winged Gulls” is not correct, though that practice is widespread. That said, my limited observations in the San Juan Islands and Victoria, BC suggest less Western influence up there.
Aug 15 – Mid-August is when the first juveniles descend from the rooftops and appear on the beaches. They are crisp, with uniform brown-gray scaled scapulars and coverts. Their primaries are not jet black as in Western, Herring, California, and most other dark-winged gulls; they are dark gray. The color tone of the wing tips varies, as does the darkness of the entire bird. Like Western, the face has a uniform sooty auricular (cheek) patch, and the bill is black, large, and with a bulbous tip (see the head shots above).
Sept 18 – A month later and they haven’t changed much. This one is a bit paler and browner, which could be a function of sun exposure as well. The scapular pattern varies a bit. Note the overall robust and stocky structure, with short primary extension past the tail (i.e. short wings).
Sept 18 – Here’s another example from the same day. This one has a nearly pale greater covert panel. California Gulls in the background.
Sept 24 – A delightfully coffee-cream version, very Thayer’s-like in appearance. However, the heavy bill, stocky structure, tiny eye on a large head, and short primaries rule out the more sleek and dainty Thayer’s.
Oct 4 – Changes are afoot. It’s October and the juveniles are already molting. The telltale sign are the molting scapulars (the back). (These are actually 1st alternate scaps which they will keep a long time.) Note that the upper half of the brown checkered feathers have been replaced by rather messy patterned ones with some gray tones. Also the head and body are molting in paler feathers, though the sooty cheek remains.
On the right-hand edge of the pic, you’ll see a second cycle bird with a pure white primary sticking out (what’s left of it). This old feather is being replaced by a fresh dark (nearly black) primary. More on that as we move thru the calendar.
Oct 11 – The molting back and scapulars are obvious here as a pale gray-blue patch on the bird’s back. This bird has neat oak-leaf patterned scapulars (very Herring like, though these are rather pale), but they will be molting out soon. Some may be tempted to call this one Glaucous-winged, as it is paler, less sooty gray, overall, and the primaries are nearly concolorous to the body. Yet the overall darkness, the dark belly, and dark auriculars suggest Western influence. That’s a 3rd cycle bird in the back. Note the primaries are obviously darker than the mantle.
Nov 1 – This darker bird has completely molted its back and scapulars.
Nov 1 – This bird is more delayed in its molt cycle; it still has a lot of checkered juvenile scapulars. All the birds in this pic appear to be Olympics.
Nov 12 – Some more late fall examples with molted back and scapulars. How dark or light they appear can change with light and the angle of the bird. These birds are definitely reflecting some sunlight.
June 8 – And now we’re in June. Gull identification in spring and summer is a mess because the birds get quite faded and tattered. Exhibit A in this is the late 1st cycle bird on the right. This bird is now about 10 months old and desperately in need of molting to replace these primaries, which have now faded to nearly white. But that does not make it a Glaucous-winged Gull (same for the adult behind it). The rest of the bird, particularly the face and belly, are still rather dark.
June 23 – Another formerly sooty 1st cycle bird that looks like it’s gone through the wash.
June 23 – As summer wears on, many Olympics will have tertials and primaries that fade to white. This happens even in some dark-winged gulls (e.g. Short-billed). This bird has many Glaucous-winged features, though the dark below and large bulbous bill suggest some Western influence.
July 3 – With birds like this, it becomes impossible to use plumage to separate them from pure Glaucous-winged. The heavy bill with a rather sharp hook and gonydeal bulge are a better fit for Olympic.
July 6 – Here’s another summer bird that is a bit darker, and thus more obviously an Olympic. The exposed primary has a dark shadow on it where it was once covered by another feather.
July 8 – More examples of faded summery Olympics. Note the heavy dark bills and dark bellies.
July 12 – At last, molt has begun. They molt their secondaries and primaries from the inside out. The fresh feathers here are more gray; the old feathers more brown. The old primaries – the last three or four feathers on each wing – are also warn to pin points. Note, on the left wing, the new dark-tipped primary starting to grown in. This is P5 (the 5th one in from the tip, which is P10).
July 12 – A close-up look at P5 coming in.
July 14 – Another individual molting in fresh gray primaries to replace the tattered faded ones.
July 25 – And another individual. Even this rather dark-faced bird had its primaries fade to white. The new one is dark gray.
July 27 – Finding molting birds like this in late summer is fun. This bird is in the process of changing from a white-winged gull (which some might confused with Glaucous) to a nearly black-winged gull (approaching Western)!
July 27 – Taken on the same day as above, this bird is much slower in its molt cycle.
July 30 – Another bird molting from white-winged to dark-winged.
Sept 27 – September again. This bird is now a year and a few months old. It still has one long thin old faded white primary left. It’s new 2nd cycle primaries are dark enough to clearly put this bird in the Olympic camp.
Oct 4 – Another individual with a single white primary left, but new dark gray ones coming it. The other birds are juvenile Olympics, just a few months old.
Oct 11 – And voila, a fully molted fresh 2nd cycle Olympic Gull, ready for the winter.
June 8 – Now approaching it’s third birthday, this late 2nd cycle bird is ready for molt again. Note the bill had changed from black to incorporate the classic school bus yellow of Western.
Sept 20 – A juvenile begs from its parent. You can tell this adult is an Olympic because it’s child is an Olympic (with rather dark primaries). The adult has some faded primaries which are being replaced by a feather with a much darker gray band.
Oct 26 – A fully molted adult with dark gray in the primary pattern.
Jan 17 – Some more adult mid-winter. While the front right bird has rather medium gray primaries, only a little darker than the mantle, note the bill lacks any dark mark (as seen in the bird to the left), which Glaucous-winged should show in winter. The clean yellow bill is a Western feature.
Feb 17 – Thanks to David Estroff for this photo from Port Townsend. This is not a pure Western Gull because: 1) the underside of P10 (the folded wingtip in the back) is not black, but a silvery gray, especially on the inside of the white mirror. In a pure Western, this would be nearly black. 2) the orbital ring is reddish. In pure Western, it should be mustard yellow. Pure Western Gulls are rare in Puget Sound. I usually encounter them after strong west winds in winter. The clean white head is because it’s coming into breeding plumage.
Apr 19 – This adult is in full breeding plumage. When breeding, the bill and legs get brighter and more colorful. Note the primaries are too dark for Glaucous-winged, but too light for Western.
California Gull
California Gulls are abundant in Puget Sound June thru October, when a wave of post-breeding migrants pulse through the region. Especially in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, they can outnumber all other species combined in late summer. They can be found at other times of the year, though in much smaller numbers.
June 29 – I love it when the first juv Calis show up – little checkered gems on the kelp-covered cobble. They are typically rather skittish, so hard to get close pics. This June bird is my earliest record; usually they show up around July 11. Olympic in the foreground.
July 16 – Here’s another one among the Heermann’s, compared to which they are only slightly larger.
July 25 – Juvenile California Gulls can be confusing because many have all black bills. This one is already turning pale at the base. Compared to Olympic, note the long primary projection past the tail, the jet black primaries (blacker than any Olympic), and more horizontal and sleek posture.
July 27 – Two different juvenile California Gulls, now with the more characteristic dirty pink bill with black tip.
Aug 9 – These birds can look like juvenile Herring (which aren’t expected for another two months), but note the solid dark inner primaries, lacking a pale inner primary window.
Aug 27 – Though they vary from dark to light, this is a very typical juvenile California Gull.
Aug 27 – Taken on the same day as the previous pic, this is what is colloquially called a “cinnamon morph,” rather pale juvs with warm brown tones and whitish underparts. Given the all black bill, it must be quite young as well. These are more regular in California than in the Pacific Northwest.
Sept 18 – Another gorgeous juv. The feathers can often have a cinnamon brown tone.
Sept 29 – California on the left; Olympic on the right. Both of these birds have started molting scapulars. They both have pink legs in first cycle, though Calif Gull legs are paler pink.
Sept 29 – Two California’s on the left; two Olympics on the right. All juveniles. Note the left California Gull still has an all-black bill. The California Gulls stand out by their smaller size, more horizontal backs, and long, black wingtips.
June 26 – We’re now through spring into summer. This bird is approaching its first birthday and is showing the classic tri-color pattern of relatively fresh gray scapulars, faded white coverts, and tattered primaries, now faded from black to brown.
July 6 – A similar late 1st cycle California Gull. Note the legs can turn rather blueish.
July 11 – This fly-by bird reveals it has begun molting its inner primaries – the fresh gray ones.
Aug 2 – This bird is probably a year more ahead, molting from 2nd to 3rd cycle. The legs are still rather bluish gray.
Dec 9 – This bird is a full adult, with black and red near the tip of the yellow bill. The blue legs will turn yellow by spring. Olympic back left; Short-billed Gulls back right.
July 15 – Finally, a full adult California Gull with yellow legs. Note the dark eye with red orbital ring and red gape (where the bill meets the face). The adult in the background with the messed up head feathers especially shows the red gape. Heermann’s back right. The black mark on the bill is much reduced when breeding.
Short-billed Gull
These petite beauties arrive in the fall to spend the winter, departing by May to breed in Alaska and Canada.
Oct 4 – The fresh juvs look like miniature Thayer’s Gulls, but are as dainty as fairies. Note the tiny thin bill and dove-like head with a relatively large eye. Also bantam chicken-like chest and very long tapered wings.
Nov 12 – Because this is a three-year gull, the 1st cycle birds quickly resemble 2nd cycle in large gulls, in that they have “adult gray” back and scapulars. This contrasts with the brown coverts.
Jan 9 – In flight they have a rather solid tail (unlike Ring-billed Gull).
Apr 25 – Here we are in spring. The brown coverts have faded to white, and head and body molt has also created a paler appearance.
July 14 – Occasionally, some late 1st cycle birds will over-summer. These often bleach to a nearly completely white, baffling birders. The bill seems longer than usual because the head feathers are molting.
Sept 18 – This is an adult just arrived from the north. Note the tiny unmarked yellow bill, somewhat unique in the gull world. California, Olympic, and Heermann’s tower over this tiny gull.
Jan 8 – Winter adults are beautiful in flight, with considerable white in the primary pattern: mirrors on P10 and P9, and a white “string of pearls” between the gray and black in Ps 4-8 (the Slaty-backed pattern). The exact pattern is variable.
Mar 25 – The amount of head and neck smudging in variable. Note that some birds will show a yellow eye.
Apr 25 – As spring gets on, the head markings resolve to a clean white head and the bill brightens as the breeding season approaches. This means they’re about to head north.
Heermann’s Gull
A striking and unique gull, nearly the entire world’s population emanates from tiny Isla Rasa in the Gulf of Mexico. After breeding, they migrate north. About 400 typically spend the summer and early fall around Port Townsend.
July 27 – The fresh juveniles are brown with mostly dark bills. The pale feather edges wear off quickly.
Aug 15 – This is a four-year gull. This photo features two brown juveniles in the back (molting their scapulars), a 2nd cycle front left, and an adult front right. Heermann’s Gulls have black legs at all ages.
Aug 26 – This 2nd cycle bird looks a lot like 1st cycle. It has a more orange bill.
June 29 – Breeding plumage adults are remarkable for their bright red bills, clean white heads, and smoky gray bodies.
Aug 26 – Adults in the August conspicuously molt their flight feathers and tails.
Oct 5 – Adults in complete basic plumage, with mottled dark heads.
Oct 4 – A small percentage of adults show “jaeger-morph” wing patterns, with variable amounts of white in the primary coverts. This adds to their jaeger habits of chasing other gulls.
Bonaparte’s Gull
Even smaller and daintier than Short-billed, Bonaparte’s Gulls are easy to identify and a joy to watch. I’ll leave it to other sources to help you pick out a Black-headed or Little Gull among them. Suffice it to say, the former is more larger, and the latter slightly smaller, than Bonaparte’s. These northern breeders are present throughout much of the year – except summer – with pulses during spring and fall migration. Hundreds can be found at Point No Point, often harassed by jaegers in the fall.
Aug 3 – A gorgeous freshly-arrived juvenile with the characteristic black year patch.
Aug 3 – Newly arrived adults, one still with an all-black head.
Aug 3 – An adult in flight, molting its primaries.
Nov 29 – An adult in full basic (winter) plumage. It appears to have an injury in the shoulder area.
Glaucous-winged Gull
Pure Glaucous-winged Gulls are challenging for me to find among the crowd of Olympics. At best, they are uncommon in winter and rare in summer, largely limited to a few over-summering subadults. That said, an influx in winter can match Olympic numbers at some roosts between Sequim and Neah Bay.
Oct 5 – Given the dusky auriculars and rather bulbous bill, this bird probably has some Western in it. Nevertheless, note the even pale tones throughout.
Oct 28 – There’s no question about this bird. The primaries are as pale as they come, as is the tail. The auriculars have no indications of a sooty wash. The coverts are intricately patterned. Note the scapulars are fully molted.
Nov 1 – Olympic on the left; Glaucous-winged on the right. At this date, fading is not an issue.
Nov 6 – This bird shows no auricular patch. The primaries are almost patterned as in Glaucous and Iceland. Note the bill, while heavy, is less blob-ended than Western or Olympic, with a shallower gonydeal angle. The tomium (upper edge) often begins a gentle curve about 2/3 of the way out, rather than a strong hook ¾ of the way out, as is typical in Western and Olympic.
Nov 7 – This bird shows a hint of subterminal arrowhead patterns in the primaries. Note the straight bill without a contrasting blob ending.
Nov 12 – Note the whitish head on this fall bird. The primaries on this one are quite pale. Olympic in foreground.
May 7 – By spring, Glaucous-winged Gulls can fade to nearly all white. Note the bill is beginning to pale.
May 12 – Another spring adult, though this one seems less faded. Again, the bill is paling and more straight than Olympic.
June 29 – As they molt coverts, Glaucous-winged Gulls often produce this striking pattern due to fresh dark coverts.
July 6 – Over-summering late 1st cycle birds often stand out in Puget Sound. Feathers with less melanin (paler feathers) are more prone to wear and fading than darker feathers.
July 14 – This bird could be confused for Glaucous, but a Glaucous would never have dark in the middle of the bill. Given the time of year, this bird is typical of an over-summering one-year-old Glaucous-winged Gull.
July 27 – Another over-summering 1st cycle Glaucous-winged, in desperate need of molt.
June 8 – We’re now a year later. This bird is late 2nd cycle, with a bill that is already acquiring yellow tones.
Jan 17 – A presumed pure adult Glaucous-winged Gull in mid-winter. Note the icy gray mantle and nearly matching primaries (though they are more slate gray than blue-gray), the purplish legs, the rather straight bill, and the straw yellow bill with the dark mark thru the red spot.
Ring-billed Gull
Ring-billed Gulls are rather rare to uncommon around Port Townsend. I only see them in small numbers (usually three or less) in late summer and fall. Apparently they are more common in the South Sound.
Aug 25 – Compared to California Gulls, the juveniles are smaller, whiter, and with brighter pink in the bill.
Nov 15 – In flight, 1st cycle birds have a tail with a messy band. California and Short-billed Gulls have much more solid brownish/blackish tails. Also note the very contrasting wing pattern with very pale window in the inner primaries.
Aug 19 – Adult Ring-billed Gulls have very pale mantles. They can be told from Short-billed Gull at a hundred yards by the lack of a contrasting white tertial crescent between the gray mantle and black primaries. The pale gray just fades into the black with only a small white fringe.
Thayer’s Iceland Gull
Gulling is traditionally best in the winter, when Arctic breeders such as Thayer’s Iceland Gull arrive. This is difficult in Port Townsend, as there are few high tide roosts nearby. In winter, there are rarely low tides during limited daylight hours. Thus, I usually only see a few Thayer’s, if any, on any given day. They are much more regular at the Elwha River Mouth, which also has suitable high tide roosts for midday viewing.
Nov 7 – Of the large four-year gulls, Thayer’s is amongst the smallest. Fresh juveniles resemble fresh Olympics with their checkering and coffee with cream tones, but their structure is very different. Note the thin bill and long primaries, almost always darker than the body and with pale edges.
Jan 9 – Thayer’s on the left; Olympic (or possibly Glaucous-winged) on the right. The main differences: Thayer’s is smaller, longer winged, has a much tinier bill, and generally retains its scaled juvenile scapulars through the winter; the Olympic has already molted them.
Sept 22 – From left to right: Heermann’s, Thayer’s, California, and Olympic. On the Thayer’s, note the dark eye, bright pink legs, and primary pattern with the pale underside of the far primary. This is actually P9 we are looking at. P10 is missing due to molt.
Oct 11 – Thayer’s often appear petite and squat, though they are slightly larger than a California Gull. Note the small bill. Many individuals show a gold eye.
Oct 11 – This is the same bird as above, showing off their unique primary pattern. P10 has a large terminal mirror (all white tip). P9 has a mirror that swirls open toward the inside of the wing.
Nov 15 – Here’s another view of the primary pattern, which produces a striped effect.
Feb 26 – How to pic a Thayer’s out of a flock of Olympic Gulls. It’s the small one in front. Note the jet black in the primary pattern, the thin bill, and the overall petite structure (it probably weighs 30% less than the Olympics). Note also the underside of the far primary on the folded wing is pale — this rules out Herring. The dark eye also rules out Herring (though some adult Thayer’s have somewhat pale eyes). The back left bird is a 2nd cycle Thayer’s — note the thin bill.
Herring Gull
Sept 18 – I see even fewer Herrings than Thayer’s, usually just a few each winter, unless I go to Elwha. Compared to Thayer’s and Olympic, note the black primaries and very dark tertials. The coverts are usually very checkered and contrasting. The bill can vary from all black to dirty pink with a dark tip.
Dec 2 – Here’s another Herring. Note the black primaries and contrasting pale head, a common feature.
Jan 30 – An adult in flight. They always have a very pale straw-colored eye, producing a fierce look. The mantle is pale icy blue. The typical primary pattern has only a single mirror on P10.
Western Gull
Sept 16 – Pure Western Gulls are rare in Puget Sound. I usually only see them in fall or winter after strong west winds. This juvenile shows a dark sooty face (similar to many Olympics) but also jet black primaries. Note also the more contrasting coverts, not the uniform muddy tones of Olympics. That’s a juvenile Olympic back right.
Sept 29 – This 3rd cycle Western shows a fairly dark mantle and jet black primaries.
July 27 – This summer adult is a classic Western: a clean white head (which they keep year round), a thick bulbous school bus yellow bill, a darkish mantle, and jet black in the primaries. Note also the yellow orbital ring. The eye varies from yellow to dark.
Herring x Glaucous-winged Gull (“Cook Inlet Gull”)
I only report a few of these each winter, usually at Elwha or Neah Bay. They are probably regular but rare in Puget Sound, but they are really a pain to pick out amongst all the Olympics!
Nov 6 – This one is easy to separate from Olympic – it has a pale version of the Herring Gull bill, pale with a black tip. The dark gray primaries rule out black-primaried gulls and imply either a Thayer’s or Gl-W hybrid. The molted scapulars, structure, and gray color tones rule out Thayer’s. Olympic in the background.
Nov 12 – A likely Cook Inlet, with a straighter and more paling bill than found on Olympic. Cook Inlets often retain juvenile scapulars later in the winter, as this one has. Note also the longer-winged structure.
Jan 8 – Another potential Cook Inlet with unmolted scaps (in January!) and a longer-winged structure than Olympic. The more squared off and contrasting pale head also suggests Herring influence. 2nd cycle Olympic in the background.
Glaucous Gull
Large and white, these are rare winter visitors.
Nov 9 – Most Glaucous Gulls in Washington are 1st cycle birds, like this one. I took this on the beach at Ocean Park. It is accompanied by adult Ring-billed and Western Gulls. The bill is always pink with a well-demarcated black tip. Glaucous-winged never approaches this at any age. Note the bill is also straight and not blob-ended.
Rarities: These species, listed roughly in order of probability, occur less than annually: Franklin’s Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Black-legged Kittiwake, Black-headed Gull, Little Gull, Slaty-backed Gull, Black-tailed Gull, Ross’s Gull
Probability by season
It always helps to know which gull species are around at any one time during the year. eBird data for gulls in Puget Sound is of little use due to widespread misidentifications. This graph is based on my personal eBird data from Pt Wilson and Pt Hudson near Port Townsend. Frequency may vary around the Sound and at other gull roosts. For example, Ring-billed Gull is quite regular in the South Sound earlier in the year, and Thayer’s and Herring are regular at the Elwha River Mouth in winter.
The Caspian Tern colony, the one across the bay from the Port Townsend waterfront, was just wiped out by avian flu. Nearly. At the start of the summer, we estimated the colony at about 1,800 adults. So far, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) – in five trips to the island, roughly once a week – has picked up over 1,100 dead adults and 500 dead chicks.
This is painful on several levels.
First, this colony, on Rat Island just off the tip of the spit at Fort Flagler Campground, is a relatively new phenomenon. Analysis of satellite images suggest it began last year. Unfortunately, in 2022, in two attempts, about 500 to 1,000 adults produced maybe a dozen fledglings. The first attempt was wiped out by human disturbance. A minus-four tide on the Fourth of July enticed many campers to walk from the spit to the island. I personally watched through my scope as a couple with a dog (on a leash) walked right up to the colony, putting all the birds up in the air, and stood there, naively enjoying the birds and filming them with their phones. Unbeknownst to them, gulls were pouring in underneath the cacophonous mob of terns, no doubt devouring eggs and chicks. This is how human disturbance impacts seabird colonies. A month later, the gulls tried again. This time a coyote managed to swim across from Indian Island and had a feast. Coyotes previously wiped out a colony on the tip of Dungeness Spit.
This year we were prepared to at least address the human disturbance problem. As the Conservation Chair of Admiralty Audubon, I reached out to State Parks and WDFW. They contacted the Friends of Fort Flagler, who created a team of 25 volunteers to serve as docents during extreme low tides to intercept and educate beachgoers about the terns – and the harbor seal haul-out next to it. WDFW put up signs around the island to educate kayakers.
Everyone was trained and more birds than ever came to nest. They seemed to be doing great. Most were on eggs, and we estimated they were just about to hatch. Then, on July 10, Sam Kaviar, a naturalist guide who runs Olympic Kayak Tours, noticed a dead tern. Not a big deal, I told him, unless you start seeing more. Within two hours, he saw a dozen more. He called WDFW. They were nearby in a boat so came over to check it out. They collected 35 dead terns and suspected highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), also known as H5N1. They collected carcasses to run tests, which eventually came back positive.
The second painful thing is that Caspian Terns are a long-lived slow-reproducing species. The loss of chicks is one thing, but the loss of adults is a much bigger deal. Caspian Terns, the largest tern in the world, can live 26 years. Most adults live 10 to 15 years. This means they only need to reproduce themselves once every 15 years or so to sustain their population. It also means that, if you lose an adult, it might take 15 years to replace them.
The third painful thing is that Caspian Terns are already declining, both in the Pacific Northwest, up and down the entire West Coast, and across the whole continent. The Birds of the World species account for Caspian Tern, in the section on conservation concerns, highlights their need for disturbance-free nesting sites, “Human disturbance at colonies facilitates egg predation by gulls when more wary terns are flushed from nests.”
The fourth painful thing is that Caspian Terns were deliberately pushed off from most of their other breeding sites in the Pacific Northwest in the past 15 years. They do not nest scattered across the landscape like robins or even gulls. Like many seabirds, they nest in tight colonies, packed together, one nest every few feet. In the Pacific Northwest, enormous colonies were hazed off Sand Island in the Columbia River delta by government agencies because they were eating too many salmon smolts – which are endangered because of the dams. (Note, photos of prey items at Rat Island have shown the terns eating candlefish, herring, smelt, surf perch, and juvenile salmon – the latter only toward the end of their nesting period.) Many relocated to rooftops in Seattle or to empty lots in Bellingham. In recent years, they have been hazed off there too. That is exactly why the Rat Island colony near Port Townsend grew so suddenly. It is a colony of refugees. We have photographed birds there that were banded at Sand Island, in Bellingham, even from the Tri-Cities area. This spring, as the colony was forming, local experts concluded that this was the only Caspian Tern colony in the Salish Sea.
Now 80% of them are dead.
Like Covid, HPAI has recently become part of our world. The United Nations issued a concise report about it in July 2023. They open with this: “H5N1 high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) is currently causing unparalleled mortality of wild birds and mammals worldwide…” They describe it as unprecedented based on the scale of mortality (often approaching 90%) and geographic spread (nearly worldwide). In Washington, it was first detected last winter in waterfowl (mostly Snow Geese) in the Skagit Flats.
This summer’s outbreak at the tern colony is the first known incidence of HPAI in wild birds in the breeding season in Washington. A smaller outbreak is on-going among Caspian Terns at the Columbia River delta. Fears that it would spread to the harbor seals or dogs at the Fort Flagler campground have not materialized. Some dead gulls, especially chicks, have tested positive, though in general, the gulls have been much less affected. There are several hundred “Olympic Gulls” – Glaucous-winged x Western Gull hybrids that nest at Rat Island near the terns. Bald Eagles and Black Oystercatchers are also present near the colony and potentially vulnerable, though no dead birds of these species have been found. The largest seabird colony in the region is at Protection Island, with over 10,000 Rhinoceros Auklets. That is only nine miles away as the tern flies. While terns forage near Protection Island, and auklets forage near Rat Island, there has been no evidence of transmission to the auklets. In fact, HPAI is unknown in alcids so far.
Hope remains. On my last visit to the island, on August 11, there were still approximately 350 adults. Some were flying into the colony carrying fish. On the beach, I could see about a dozen chicks of varying ages, adults offering them fish, as well as a few dead adults and others that appeared sick. I am hopeful that over 10% of the adults will survive. That sounds pathetic, but it’s a start. Perhaps they will be immune to avian flu and so will their offspring. We don’t know yet. And, despite the carnage, it looks like this colony may actually produce more fledges than last year. So that’s another start. Chicks leave the colony about 45 days after hatching. That should be soon for some of them. They can’t get away fast enough.
When this field guide was published in 1966, it was clear from the range map that, if I wanted to see a Limpkin in the US, I had to go to Florida.
The Limpkin range map from this popular 1966 field guide.
Growing up as a kid birder in the 1970s, this was one of my first field guides. I did not see my first Limpkin until decades later, in 2005. At that time, this freshwater snail and mussel specialist was still largely a Florida bird, with only a scattering of records north of their usual range.
Extra-limital records up thru 2015 (on eBird).
Between 1956 and 2015, eBird shows only 18 Limpkin sightings north of Charleston, South Carolina, though presumably some historical records have not been entered. Suffice it to say, a Limpkin in this region was a rarity. There were no Gulf Coast records in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama, and only a few in the Florida panhandle west of the Tallahassee area.
Suddenly, all this changed. 2019 saw records from Illinois, Ohio, Virginia, and coastal Louisiana, in addition to dozens of records from Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. 2020 and 2021 added a scattering of records from Texas to Minnesota(!) to Maryland.
The remarkable Limpkin invasion so far.
In 2022, they simply exploded, with first state records across much of the continent. 2023 looks like it is picking up where last year left off.
This kind of rapid range expansion is typically seen in invasive species who are introduced into a new ecosystem. They either die out or explode. The Limpkin invasion, however, is not because they have just arrived in Florida — they are a native species — but because the ecosystem north of Florida has been transformed by a warming climate. It is as if they have landed on a new continent. They are following food — an invasive apple snail, as well as freshwater mussels.
This kind of poleward range expansion is predicted with climate change and has already been documented in hundreds of species. See, for example, my posts here:
Amano et al. 2020. Responses of global waterbird populations to climate change vary with latitude. 10: 959-964.Chen et al. 2011. Rapid range shifts of species associated with high levels of climate warming. Science 333 (6045): 1024-1026.
Devictor et al 2008. Birds are tracking climate warming, but not fast enough. Proc. R. Soc. B 275, 2743–2748.
Hitch and Leberg. 2007. Breeding distributions of North American bird species moving north as a result of climate change. Conservation Biology 21(2): 534-9.
Langham et al 2015. Conservation status of North American birds in the face of future climate change. PLoS ONE 10(9): e0135350.
La Sorte, F.A., and F.R. Thompson III. 2007. Poleward shifts in winter ranges of North American birds. Ecology 88(7):1803–1812.
La Sorte FA and Jetz W. 2012. Tracking of climatic niche boundaries under recent climate change. J Anim Ecol. 81(4): 914-25.
Prince, K. and B. Zuckerberg. 2015. Climate change in our backyards: the reshuffling of North America’s winter bird communities. Global Change Biology 21(2): 572-585.
Stephens et al 2016. Consistent response of bird populations to climate change on two continents. Science 352(6281): 84-7.
Virkkala, R. and A. Lehikoinen 2014. Patterns of climate-induced density shifts of species: poleward shifts faster in northern boreal birds than in southern birds. Global Change Biology 20: 2995–3003.
[A more complete list of academic papers about birds and climate change, with highlighted abstracts, is available in the Documents section of the Birds and Climate Change Facebook group.]
Like many birds with expanding ranges, Limpkins have been slowly recovering for decades from historic habitat impacts. There are historic records (from the 1800s) from Georgia, which they did not occupy again meaningfully until 1994. Likewise, expansion into the Florida panhandle was not until the late 1980s. This fits the typical climate change pattern, with ecosystem changes beginning in the mid to late 1980s. Range expansions, however, can be variable, with different species crossing ecological and climatological thresholds at different times.
The current eBird status map for Limpkins shows them as regular from Houston to North Carolina.
Like most of the species shifting their ranges, Limpkins are generally non-migratory, though may have some seasonal movements based on water levels and foraging conditions. Most the recent northern records have been in summer. It is not known if these birds return south in fall, or die, not being able to withstand the winter. That said, they are undoubtedly establishing year-round presence in southern Louisiana (where the first state record was in 2018), and likely from Texas to South Carolina. There are recent winter records from Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Virginia.
The Limpkin may be one of the few species expanding poleward in both directions.
The Limpkin also ranges south into Central and South America. Its scientific name is Aramus guaranauna, the latter part being the Tupí name for it. Until 2018, it did not occur south of Bahia Blanca, Argentina (at least not in eBird). Its core range ended closer to Buenos Aires. However, with a record in 2018 and four more in 2020 (based on eBird, which is used less in South America), it has spread up to 700 miles south, mimicking its poleward spread in North America. Northern Ohio is also about 700 miles from the Limpkin’s core range in Florida. The southernmost record, found dead at Puerto Deseado, Argentina, is at 47.8 degrees south latitude. The northernmost record, just north of Minneapolis, is at 45.2 north latitude. Like a true invasive species, one even crossed the Andes!
Limpkins are not the only waterbird associated with Southeast wetlands that are expanding north. Birders have noticed northward range expansions among the following:
White Ibis
Neotropic Cormorant
Black-bellied Whistling Duck
Purple Gallinule
Anhinga
Roseate Spoonbill
and even Snail Kite, Swallow-tailed Kite, and Mississippi Kite
Many of these are actually declining in Florida (or Louisiana) as they increase in the north.
Indigenous Americans relied on observations of nature to provide information about weather, or when certain plants could be planted or harvested, or when certain fish or game were available. An Anhinga in New York, a Purple Gallinule in Ohio, White Ibises nesting in New Jersey, all of which have happened in this year – would be portents of change – or doom.
Miners kept canaries in coal mines to monitor the atmosphere. A sick or dead canary meant dangerous conditions in the mine. But imagine their surprise if their mine was suddenly invaded by a hundred canaries. That would mean something was amiss outside. Limpkins are becoming those canaries.
BREAKING: One day after posting this, a first record for Ontario, Canada.
UPDATE IN JULY 2023: Limpkin has reached Pennsylvania.
Projections suggest the human population will fall 50% by the year 2300.
The boom: Life in the fast lane
The basic facts are clear. Homo sapiens cruised along for most of our 200,000 years with a small population, probably less than a hundred thousand. Then something happened. We expanded, emigrating out of Africa and across the globe. About 10,000 years ago, when our population was around four million, we developed agriculture. Cities and large organized societies – and money and writing – came along later. The human population really took off. This growth became exponential. Homo sapiens passed 1 billion around 1800, 2 billion in 1928, and 5 billion in 1987. Our impact on the earth has been so dramatic that geologists have coined a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. When I was a child, I was told there were more humans alive on the earth than had ever existed in the history of the species. If that’s not the definition of a population boom, I don’t know what is.
Today we’re just over 8 billion, but we’ve passed an inflection point. The rate of increase is decreasing, from 2% per year in the 1960s to less than 1% now. The S-curve is forming. The top of the curve is bending, ultimately to be replaced by a decline. Demographers predict that human population will peak in 2064 at about 9.7 billion. After that, the decrease may be equally precipitous.
In most “developed” nations, the fertility rate (the average number of children that a woman has in her lifetime) has fallen below 1.6. The fertility rate is 1.23 in Spain, 1.24 in Italy, 1.34 in Japan, 1.44 in Austria, 1.53 in Germany, 1.56 in the UK, and 1.64 in the United States. It takes a fertility rate of at least 2.0 to maintain a steady population (not counting immigration). The countries with the highest fertility rates, over 4.0, are in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan, though even those are declining sharply. Every nation in the world may have a shrinking population by 2100.
Without immigration, high-income nations with low fertility rates will see much more rapid population declines. Regardless, all nations may have shrinking populations by 2100. Source.
The bust: It’s the end of the world as we know it
The worldwide average fertility rate is predicted to be 1.7 by 2100. That implies a population decline of about 9% each generation (about 25 years). This, in turn, implies a 50% decline in total population within 200 years, and a 90% decline, back below one billion, in 600 years. That’s basic math. That’s a freefall, a massive shrinking of human society.
The implications of a worldwide average fertility rate of 1.7.
The bust – the fall, the decline, the collapse – is often driven by hitting the carrying capacity of the resources they depend on. Simply put, the species runs out of habitat or runs out of food. Life, literally, becomes too difficult. Animals may die or simply fail to reproduce.
When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around
What is it like to be an individual living during a bust cycle? Apart from a few perturbations in history (see Collapse by Jared Diamond), it’s a world that humans are unaccustomed to.
The economy will be shrinking, both supply and demand. The stock market will fall daily, for most businesses will be in decline. Stores will be closing, never to re-open.
The number of working age adults (assuming some migration between nations).
By definition, deaths will outnumber births, which means the demographic age mix will be decidedly older. By definition, many won’t have children to look after them. They will need to rely on paid caregivers, which will be in short supply.
We have a hint of that economic upheaval now, with supply shortages as we emerge from the Covid pandemic. Recent research suggests that half the lost workers in the US today are actually a result of Trump’s crackdowns on legal immigration. It is immigrants, after all, who make up the difference in the US’s low fertility rate. Those labor shortages, and the resulting supply chain problems and inflation, are caused by more people aging out of the labor force than aging in. This can only be mitigated by immigration.
When immigrants are no longer available, how does a nation manage a declining economy, a permanent recession? Public services – police, fire, water, electricity – will be difficult to provide everywhere. Service will be terminated in rural areas. Outlying areas and small towns will be abandoned as people seek services (primarily medical at first) in larger cities. Schools, healthcare clinics, stores, and homes will crumble as the population concentrates into remaining urban centers. All production, especially agriculture, will need to efficient, relying less and less on labor. With a lack of private investment, will government need to play a stronger role to guarantee the provision of goods and services?
What does this mean for culture? So many of the values, customs, and social rules of the past ordered growing societies, supporting the family, state, and nation. In a declining society, the center, the things we hold dear, does not hold. Things fall apart. Sure, one can strive for personal peace and meaning, but family lines will end. There are no “greatest” generations building infrastructure for the future.
Will there be a collective future to aspire to? Perhaps divisions of the past – gender, race, nationality – will lose meaning in the face of a shared human condition. On the other hand, we already see those tensions exacerbated as people glimpse the future, desperate to cling to the past.
Perhaps a shrinking economy can be managed. Perhaps there is a soft landing to societal collapse, to shrinking our footprint to a new steady-state in a sustainable harmony with nature.
We don’t know yet. We’re still on the crest of the wave, the top of the curve, enjoying the best of times. It’s our kids and grandkids and great grandkids who will come up against that carrying capacity. And that’s exactly why many are choosing not to have kids. Others don’t have kids because they have other economic or personal opportunities, thanks to our societal successes. But even in this decision, they feel no imperative to have kids. Indeed, the imperative is to reduce our impact on the earth. It looks as if that will happen. For the earth, a short-lived Anthropocene will no doubt be a good thing. For the people living during the collapse, perhaps not.
How do economies and societies function when it gets to the point that they are obviously shrinking?
Over a year ago, on a webinar hosted by the Washington Ornithological Society (WOS), John Fitzpatrick of Cornell Lab of Ornithology teased us with some screenshots of eBird Trends maps. I was mesmerized. Now, they have been released here atthe eBird Science tab. These remarkable maps illustrate population trends for each species across their range, showing exactly where they are increasing (blue dots) or decreasing (red dots).
They do more than that, actually. The color of the dot is correlated to the rate of change — the % change between 2007 and 2021. Dark blue means really increasing; dark red really declining. The size of each dot is correlated to the size of the population in that area (or “relative abundance” in eBird lingo). Big dots mean there’s a lot of birds there, regardless of whether they are increasing or decreasing. If you hover over a dot, the actual numbers pop up. White dots mean the data are inconclusive or show no trend. You can read more of the details at the site, and perhaps I’ll discuss methodology on a later post.
Here’s the amazing thing — each dot represents a 27 x 27 km (16.7 x 16.7 mile) grid square, so just a bit larger than a Christmas Bird Count circle, which are 15 miles in diameter. That’s a remarkable level of detail. I joke that there’s more information in these maps than in all the ornithological research in the last ten years. That’s an overstatement, of course, because professional ornithologists study things that eBirders don’t. Nevertheless, these maps take crowdsourced data collection and present it in ways that are instantly useful for understanding species population trends at a granular level. This has profound implications for targeting conservation.
So, on to my first of probably many posts looking at these maps. My first peruse suggests they strongly support what the climate change research has been saying — that resident and short-distance migrants are shifting their ranges north. Let’s start with some common eastern species.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
To examine each map in detail, go to eBird’s Trends page, type in the species name, and then click “Trends” to the right of the species’ name.
Until now, most of the published literature on northward range shifts have been meta-analyses with conclusions such as “non-migratory species are shifting north by so many km per year”, but no maps, nor even mention of species by name. Here, we get the details in bright colors, at the species and even county level. Wow.
A few observations. For many species, they are declining where they are still common (the red dots are large), and increasing where they are less common or even rare (the blue dots are small). This probably implies that their overall population is declining. It also suggests that climate change may be hurting them in the south faster than it is helping them in the north. It takes time to establish new populations, and/or the new regions may not be as suitable as their old home. Note also that each of these species have different transition isoclines (if that’s what one would call it). For example, Red-bellied Woodpecker and Carolina Wren are increasing in Tennessee, but Tufted Titmouse are declining there.
Here are some relevant papers regarding range shifts in eastern species, but again, these maps communicate their results in new and vibrant ways:
Prince, K. and B. Zuckerberg. 2016. Climate change in our backyards: the reshuffling of North America’s winter bird communities. Global Change Biology 21(2): 572-585. We conclude that a shifting winter climate has provided an opportunity for smaller, southerly distributed species to colonize new regions and promote the formation of unique winter bird assemblages throughout eastern North America.
Rushing, C.S. et al. 2020. Migratory behavior and winter geography drive differential range shifts of eastern birds in response to recent climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(23), pp.12897-12903. Since the early 1970s, species that remain in North America throughout the year, including both resident and migratory species, appear to have responded to climate change through both colonization of suitable area at the northern leading edge of their breeding distributions and adaption in place at the southern trailing edges.
Saunders et al. 2022. Unraveling a century of global change impacts on winter bird distributions in the eastern United States. Global Change Biology We conclude that climate has generally governed the winter occurrence of avifauna in space and time, while [habitat] change has played a pivotal role in driving distributional dynamics of species with limited and declining habitat availability.
In future posts, I’ll look at range shifts in resident birds of the West, the impact of California’s fires (many encompassing several of these Trends dots), long-distance migrants, nationwide species, waterbirds, and seabirds, among other things.
On August 1, 1785, a French expedition led by Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse (referred to as Lapérouse) set off with a goal to explore the world, both politically and scientifically. Specifically, they were to explore trading possibilities and the activities of foreign powers, both European and indigenous, map the world, and do science. On board their two vessels, L’Astrolabe and La Boussole, were experts in astronomy, geology, agriculture, botany, birds, medicine, and two illustrators.
The illustration of a “California Bee-eater”
They visited, in this order, South America, Easter Island, Hawaii, Alaska, California, various locations in East Asia, the South Pacific, and Australia. They departed Australia on March 10, 1788, bound for New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands and were never heard from again. The search for their vessels — and them — has been the subject of eight French investigations. Information gathered from 1826 to 2005 concluded that the vessels wrecked on the Solomon Island of Vanikoro and the survivors were killed by the local inhabitants.
The whole of their visit to California was a brief stay at the Spanish mission at Monterey from September 14 thru 22, 1786. As they were the first foreigners to visit the missions since they were founded in 1769, they provided a unique firsthand account. For the most part, they were appalled by the conditions of the Native “converts” and compared the mission to a slave plantation. It was because of this that I was reading Life in a California Mission, an excerpt from The Journals of Jean François de La Pérouse (Heyday Books, 1989).
This ludicrously colorized version is sold online as the “first known illustration of a California bee-eater”
There are three bird illustrations: one is a pair of California Quail, another is likely a Varied Thrush from Alaska, and the third is this one, identified as a “promerops” or bee-eater. Later publications attempt to identify it correctly, usually as a thrasher (both California and brown!). To me, it is clearly a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. The unique undertail pattern, the bill shape, and the head pattern all match well, and really match no other species. The way it is perched upright in a tree is better for cuckoo than thrasher. I can find no publication that identifies it as a cuckoo. (Nor can I find one that identifies the “Black Bird” below either.)
While eBird only shows a single record for Monterey County in September (Sept 21, 1998; Andrew Molera State Park; Don Roberson), there are a handful of other records for northern California in September. Of course, the species, virtually extirpated from the region now, would have been far more common then, presumably nesting in riparian corridors from the Carmel River to the Salinas Valley, all within the travels of the French expedition.
Here are the other two illustrations of birds.
This “Black Bird” is from Porte des Français, or Lituya Bay, Alaska, near Glacier Bay National Park. It appears to be a Varied Thrush (note Blackbird in Europe is a thrush). Thanks to Jeremy Gatten for the help on this one!
The Cottonwood Post 