Since Anna and I met Betsy Baker in the Fitchery (Old Fish Hatchery Area) in February, we've been exchanging emails. Betsy's letters are so replete with fascinating information about local birds, I've been wanting to share them. I got her permission, so here they are. — J R Compton

My comments or answers are interspersed in context in smaller yellow type.

April 11 2007

The Black-bellied Whistling Ducks ..... Dunno why you think they'd be migrating _south_ in spring, tho! ;>)

I thought they'd be migrating south because I've seen them 500 miles south of here.

Ah — well, it's true they live in the Valley year-round, but generally speaking birds migrate north in spring and south in fall. These are no exception. Have a look at the Sibley range map, btw — north of the Valley there are nothing but a few green dots for this species! (In the complete book, that is — the maps were arranged a bit differently in the Eastern & Western pocket-size guides.) That shows you what a rarity they are around here.

Your LBB with the grub (or caterpillar, or even flowering bit from a tree, which a number of birds are finding to be appetizing these days) is a female House Sparrow — they tend to hang out at Sunset Bay.

It's a grub. I saw it better than I photographed it.

Oh — OK — hard to tell from the photo.

Curious poultry bird you found over there. Looks like a domestic hen chicken to my eye until I get to the erect tail — chickens usually have tail feathers that curl over in roosters or are much shorter in hens. Would take a good deal of searching to find out what it is, I expect, for which I don't have the time at the moment. If I did, I'd probably start by googling chicken breeds and either finding it amongst or ruling out domestic chickens first, considering where you found it.

I looked, reported what I learned.

Well, the straight tail would suggest that, as well as the lack of a lot of feathering dangling from the belly. But Sibley doesn't show all that red skin on the face, nor the fancy long neck feathers. I just googled images of hen turkeys trying to find a red-faced one, but none of the ones in the images I looked at appeared to be embarrassed to me. They didn't have those fancy neck feathers, either. The 4th photo down on this page is fairly typical of what I found: http://www.davidcortner.com/regions/america/carolinas/index_foothills.htm
They also seem to be more inclined to have red legs rather than yellow legs.

Domestic chickens are believed to have been bred from the Red Junglefowl. I notice (by reading) that the female of that species has an erect tail. In shape, if not in overall color, your bird resembles this junglefowl, I think. See account of Red Junglefowl here: http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_541_2004-12-24.html . Could be a close relative. The neck feathers seem to fit in shape, if not in color.

There's something I just discovered by googling jungle fowl that might be relevant -- a Saipan "Jungle Fowl" that's used for cock fighting. This might be a hen of some species like that. Despite the fact that cock fighting is illegal around here, I've heard that there are folks who come from places where it's legal and traditional who do engage in the practice here.
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/Games/Saipan/BRKSaipan.html

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The Black-bellied Whistling Ducks on April 10th were a good find — Jim Peterson's WRL checklist says there's only one previous record of their appearing on the lake (which might merely mean that nobody told him about some possible earlier sightings), so now there are two. Dunno why you think they'd be migrating south in spring, tho!  ;>)   They might be on their way to Village Creek in Arlington (http://nctexasbirding.com/hotspots.htm#villagecreek ) — a pair or two have been breeding there in recent years.

Your LBB with the grub (or caterpillar, or even flowering bit from a tree, which a number of birds are finding appetizing these days) is a female House Sparrow — they tend to hang out at Sunset Bay.

Curious poultry bird you found over there. Looks like a domestic hen chicken to my eye until I get to the erect tail — chickens usually have tail feathers that curl over in roosters or are much shorter in hens. Would take a good deal of searching to find out what it is, I expect, for which I don't have the time at the moment. If I did, I'd probably start by googling chicken breeds and either finding it amongst or ruling out domestic chickens first, considering where you found it.

The duck with the pompadour is a Crested Rouen — one of the many varieties of what I call mongrel mallards, since most domestic duck breeds started with mallards. There have been some of those hanging about over there for years. www.birdersworld.com/brd/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4558

Great to have you documenting the rarities that show up!

Amazing that I keep finding them.

April 8 2007

Visited the SWMC rookery this afternoon and saw a Tri-colored Heron (kinda like a Little Blue with a white belly and two white head plumes), so you have a chance to add one of those to your life list. It was on the Inwood side of the rookery, about midway in the section between the blooming azaleas and the drive that meets Inwood at the traffic light (which I call Campus Drive). Maybe a little closer to the azaleas. It was probably staking out a nesting spot, so it's likely it will be found in that same area most of the time. It was some way into the inside, up highish on a bare section of branch, just standing there posing for a portrait (and me with no camera!).

If you haven't got any Eared Grebe photos, now's the time to get them, while they're in breeding plumage and before they leave. Enter E. Lawther from Garland Rd, make the right turn around the point and park in the 1st parking section on the right after that turn. There were two of them there late this afternoon, really close to shore, like your friends the Coots. One is fully into breeding plumage and the other still has white on the breast -- seems to have started its molt a bit later. They've both got the fan of yellow feathers aft of the eyes that give 'em their name, tho. They don't seem to have any great fear of people -- two people were already standing there watching one of them when I arrived and we didn't appear to bother them in the least. The other one hove into view after a bit. There was one off Dreyfuss Pt, too, but it was considerably farther out.

Amazing lot of swallows flitting about all over the lake this late afternoon. I stopped at several places to scan them with binocs, but could identify only Purple Martins, Barns, and Northern Roughwings. Couldn't find a Tree Swallow to save my soul, hang it all! You're right, they're fast! And very graceful. I see you posted a nice collection of male and female Purple Martin photos today. (Bluebirds have rusty & white undersides and wouldn't be caught dead flitting all over the lake like that!. They're birds of the fields and meadows.)

April 8 2007

Happy Easter Bunny, JR!

Regarding your April 6th entry, I see you braved the cold and got out there and even took photos. Good for you! You wrote in that entry, "Betsy insists I study distribution maps so, much as it resembles tree swallows it's probably not." But it is! You're right on the money on that ID, and congratulations on seeing some — they're just passing through.

On the range map bit, you must have been looking at the map in your fave Smithsonian Handbooks Birds of Texas guide, which shows the US part of the winter range, down on the coast, and the summer range, north of us, with a sort of no man's land in between where it appears they don't exist. But you know, birds don't teleport from their winter to summer quarters! They have to fly over the space in between. They might even stop to eat and sleep here and there on their journey! The Sibley range map colors that no man's land yellow, meaning the birds appear in that part of the country (including our part) during migration. I suggest using that book's range maps so you don't get led astray by those gaps in the Alsop book. (Some of the major flyways for migrating birds occur over Texas -- it's really quite irresponsible of a book that purports to give you an accounting of Texas birds not to show you that they migrate through Texas.)

There's some additional help on the likelihood that you might see a particular species in Dallas, and even around White Rock Lake, which has been compiled over the years from reports by local birders and supplied in the checklists for North-Central Texas and for White Rock Lake on Jim Peterson's website for North-Central Texas birds at http://www.nctexasbirds.com/.

The link to the WRL checklist is just below the map of the counties covered by the study area. You might even want to post that link in your supplemental info area. For each species the checklist gives the likelihood that it will be seen in the area in each season, but the seasons aren't defined in the usual way by the equinoxes and solstices. Click on the link on the upper left of the nctexasbirds home page to "About the Seasons" to get a definition of the meaning of the seasons in this checklist. You'll also find a few birds listed before the checklist grid, along with the number of times they've been reported at all. The occasional bird gets the wanderlust more than others, or apparently has defective directional instincts or something, and appears where its compatriots normally don't. And there are the times when birds that aren't usually seen in this area suddenly show up because they're blown here by storms, or driven here to find food that's become unavailable in the usual places because of weather anomalies.

btw, on this WRL checklist you'll note that Tree Swallows are fairly common (FC) at WRL in spring and fall — the migration seasons.

The early stages of migration are upon us — good time to be looking for early migrants.

Nat'l Geo has the same empty here chart. Only the Sibley Guide to Birds gets the geography right.

Barn Swallow - April 5 2005

April 6 2007

JR, what a fantastic photo of a Barn Swallow that first one is! I've never seen those white sections in the tail feathers before. From that photo alone I would have had trouble identifying the bird, since the underside of the head looks so black rather than cinnamon and the wing angle is not the one shown in field guides. Of course, when the next photo comes into view, it becomes clear. Handsome bird, isn't it!

I clicked on your "simple grackle" link to see what you'd written, and I must admit, the bill looks substantial enough to be a crow's bill in some of those photos. A crow could show some brown if it's feathers were somewhat leucistic, I think. In the bottom two photos the eye looks black, which could confuse you. But a tell-tale differentiating sign appears in the last of the three photos. An American Crow's wingtips (on a perched bird in profile) extend past the undertail coverts, but the tail doesn't extend all that much beyond the wingtips. On the great-tailed Grackle, on the other hand, the wingtips don't extend past the undertail coverts and the tail extends well beyond the wingtips. (These are among the kinds of things to look for when you're trying to decide if a bird is one species or another.)

Size estimates are notoriously prone to error. Even the best birders acknowledge this. I notice myself that I'm surprised at how small a bird looks with the naked eye after I've been looking at that species through binoculars. Many times we rely on relative size — an "unsub" (I do enjoy your appropriation of that term for unidentified birds!) next to a known species is larger or smaller. An unsub next to anything of known size is larger or smaller or the same size. But if there's no reference object nearby (or if you don't know the size of nearby objects either) and especially if the bird is up in the sky, any estimate of its size and distance from you is no more than that — an estimate — and it could be wildly off. Add to that that individuals of any species of bird occur in a range of sizes, just as we do, and the difficulty of making a size estimate is merely compounded. Be wary of relying too heavily on size estimates. They can lead you astray.

Cheers, & thanks for the soper, spread-tail Barn Swallow photo!
Betsy

Cute Baby Mallard - April 3

April 3 2007

Cute baby mallards, JR! I wonder how many of them she'll manage to keep alive? Apparently not only turtles grab them from below, but the larger fish do as well!!!

As for your fan-tailed large brown unsub — yes, you have met her before, and even identified her correctly (if rather tentatively) — in your Rio Grande Valley blog, if I recall correctly. If you want an exercise to help you learn her better, go looking for her there. If I misremembered where you showed her and you don't find her there (and if the gender didn't give it away immediately), then I'll give you another clue — you've got a photo of a potential hubby of hers, looking rather fierce, in your March 22 blog entry. Actually, I'm quite sure you meet her every day you're out photographing. It's hard to avoid her. Especially at Sunset
Bay.

White-eyed Vireos singing around the hatchery ponds. Hard to see 'em, tho. They're skulkers. They typically sing chick per-rrreee-o chick!

March 24 2007

Say, JR, you didn't happen to notice the day the gulls first were conspicuous by their absence, did you? I went by the lake yesterday evening and was startled to discover that they were almost all gone, although they were there Monday evening. Maybe they were just elsewhere yesterday — it's a bit early for them all to have left for good already.

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and White-eyed Vireos have arrived in the hatchery — saw two of the gnatcatchers and heard one of the vireos. (Took me an hour last year to track that songster down so I could find out who was singing that song!)

Have been enjoying your blog — some great behavioral observations and shots. Have never seen some of that Mallard duking-it-out behavior myself. Neat that you found out who introduced the gooses to the lake.

Have noticed the blackbird roosts myself, not to mention large flocks of females nibbling the emerging catkins or whatever at the tops of the trees in the hatchery. We may have some stopping over as they migrate through — they travel a couple of weeks after the males. Great flared epaulette shot you got of that male!

I'm with you — I love those hubris-filled G-t Grackles! I don't understand why some people hate 'em so. I think I've heard that some folks don't like the sounds they make, but I find their sounds to be quite entertaining. Of course, I enjoy hearing a mocker singing at any time of day or night, and there are folks who would strangle a night-singing mocker if they could, so it seems to be a matter of taste or something.

It's most refreshing the way you are intrigued by the behavior of common birds like the pigeons, which is, in fact, quite fascinating. I get really tired of the snobbery of birders who are interested only in the rarities or migrants.

Glad to have met you that day — do keep up the journal! Best to you and Anna....

Little Brown Bird  -  March 16

March 17

Happy St. Paddy's Day, JR....

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.

Guess what your LBB is? A male House Sparrow (HOSP) in mostly non-breeding plumage. Two things to note:

1. The bills of some birds change color for breeding season. Male HOSPs have yellowish bills in winter and black bills in breeding season — just the opposite of starlings. I looked this up once — there's a keratin sheath that overlays the bony structure of the bill. That's what changes color — it grows over the bony part like a fingernail grows over the end of a finger. In fact, if you look at your Noble Starling photo, you'll notice that the bird's bill has a dark tip, but the part near the face, where the keratin layer grows from, is already yellow. The keratin apparently wears off at the tip and keeps getting replaced. (Don't ask me how it shrinks to fit at the tip — I didn't see anything about that. Call it the original shrink wrap!) Something different in the day length might trigger this color change.

In any event, although the HOSP hasn't got its full breeding plumage yet, it does have the black bill already.

2. Some birds acquire their breeding plumage by feather wear rather than by molting new feathers in the spring. Starlings and HOSPs are two such species. When they molt in the fall, the male HOSPs black bib feathers have pale tips that overlay the black of the feathers just below, obscuring it. So do the rusty head feathers. Starlings' feathers have pale tips that give them spots in the winter. As winter wears on, the pale tips start to wear off, gradually revealing the black bibs of the HOSPs and turning the spots on the Starlings into inverted chevrons before removing them altogether in many of the birds. Any Starling that doesn't lose all its spots has taken exceptionally good care of its clothes.

The little pale spots at the tip of his tail on the underside are decorations I wasn't aware of before now — intriguing!

I really appreciated your reportage on the coots and the fish since I've never seen them do that myself and bird behavior always interests me. Provoked me into looking up their diet in Ehrlich, Dobkin and Wheye's The Birder's Handbook, and since part of that book is online (the part that relates to the 125 species of birds that appear at Stanford U in CA, as well as the essays) I'll let you read it for yourself — just look up American Coot in the alphabetic species list and click on it: www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/SUFRAME.html

Heard a Barred Owl barking and hoo hoo hu hooing at 6:32 yesterday evening but didn't see him. Went hunting for likely-looking cavities in the general vicinity of where the sounds had come from and found three or four possibilities, some of which were also in sycamores. Now at least I know what area of the fitchery/hatchery hatchery/fitchery (sounds like part of a nursery rhyme! ) to look in — east of the old cavity, in the direction of the spillway. Is that the direction you heard/saw it/them?

Anon....Betsy

 

Sure, JR — that (or those) is/are the Red-shouldered Hawks I was telling you about. If you can find their nest when they build it, you'll eventually be able to get shots of the youngsters (provided you don't bother 'em too much until the youngsters are big enough to see out of the nest and be seen). They're just courting right now.

I'm heading out to look for the owls myself! Wish me luck.
Betsy

Luck.

Hi, JR,

Nope — you didn't make up the bit about the YR Warbler scratching its chin with its foot — that's exactly what you're seeing there — even the nail on the lower toe. Probably doesn't have to lean to one side much to balance itself because it's so light and its legs and feet are strong enough to support its negligible weight. But in fact I think it is canted somewhat to the left side of the photo, because in the photo above it looks canted to the right! That's what vertical apparently is in the angle of these photos from the ground.

As for the apparent odd location of the scratching leg — another odd thing about birds is that they look as though their knees bend backwards, but they don't, any more than horses' hind knees do. They walk on their toes. Their foot bones are fused into one bone, the tarsometatarsus, and the shin bones are fused into one bone, the tibiotarsus. What looks like a backwards-bending knee is actually the ankle. The thigh is normally hidden under the breast and wing feathers. So, that's not an elbow or knee you're seeing in that photo, it's an ankle, and the bird is as agile and flexible as an acrobat or a dancer!

If I figure out what your LBB is I'll let you know. It looks like some kind of a sparrow, judging by the bill shape, but I haven't gone thru the sparrows in my field guide looking for one that matches yet. Feel free to do that yourself if you like. Has to be a black-billed sparrow, mind. I don't believe there are very many of those.

Cheers,
Betsy

Barred Owl  -  March 14

March 15 2007

Wow! Really nice Barred Owl shots, JR! I'm tickled pink that they are still in the hatchery — I posted a note on our forum about your seeing, hearing and photographing them, with a link to your journal. Thanks so much for telling me you'd seen them. I'm also tickled that you went to an Audubon meeting! Too bad it's not still being held in the hospital's auditorium with the comfy seats, but they're renovating that or something — it won't be available for about a year, I think.

Yup, that black bird in the one shot definitely looks like a pestering crow. One time I was in the hatchery and heard crows carrying on — hunted them down and there was this poor old Barred Owl just trying to take a nap in a tree. Three crows were lined up on the same branch and it was clearly a game with them to sidle up to the owl and nip its shoulder and dart back. The owl endured it with dignity for awhile but finally flew off for a more peaceful perch.

Now we just have to hunt about trying to find if the owls have found a new cavity to use for nesting!

 

JR, that's great! Especially because last I heard (which was a couple of weeks after I told you where the owl nest cavity was), a raccoon had taken over that cavity. I'm really excited to hear that there are owls still in the hatchery. Crows tend to harass them, so the large black bird was quite likely to be a crow giving them grief. I'll be checking your journal to see the photos.

There is also a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks in the hatchery — I've heard two of them cry their kee-yer, kee-yer cry lately and seen the female (she's the larger, paler one). The hawks have nested there for years. They build a nest of sticks in a tree, so it isn't always in the same place. They aren't nesting yet.

You're welcome and I'm delighted that you found them, 'cause I haven't seen them this year yet myself.

February 5

Hiyar, Jayar,

Just discovered you had made an entry for yesterday already (and I'm in it!). Your unsubs for Feb 4 are American Robins. Their breasts can show varying shades of red, rust, orange,and mottled white and orange and black for young ones. The shape (longish tail, fat tummy), yellow bill (and its shape), and white markings around the eye are all distinctive field marks. So is the stance of the bird — on the ground you often see it standing more upright than horizontal, bill tilted up, looking around. It's a hopper, not a walker.

For some of the variations in color, see Martin Reid's page on them: www.martinreid.com/Main%20website/amro.html

(Field guides can give us only the avarage appearance of birds — the little buggers feel no compunction to wear average clothes all the time!)

I discovered a flock of them rustling around in the leaf litter near the owl nest yesterday, along with one Brown Thrasher flipping leaves looking for insects to munch(look them up so you recognize one if you run across it. Cinnamon with long tail, longish bill, and white breast streaked with brown.) He (or she) found 'em, too. You never see thrashers in flocks, but they're big enough to photograph.

Your Feb 2 unsub is a butter-butt from the side. Better shot than Feb 4, actually, although it doesn't show the feature it's named for. This is the primary winter warbler around here. On rare occasions you might find a Black & White Warbler, but mostly it's butter-butts. That yellow side patch and the streaky breast/belly edges, along with the thin little warbler bill, the white eye ring and the two white wing bars are your main id clues on this photo.


btw, the Sibley is my fave field guide nowadays — more illustrations of juveniles and variants, I think.

'Nuff exploring for now — gotta learn some more bird calls and then get out there with 'em!

Cheers,
Betsy

February5 2007

Goood Mawnin',
Explorin' again while I drink coffee.

Small Mystery Bird  -  July 17 2007

The small mystery bird from the July 17th Rio Grande collection is a juvenile Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Check out the face pattern & the light edges to the primary feathers of the wings. Closest other possibility is a juvenile or female Vermilion Flycatcher, but she has a dark cap and more dark patches on the face and doesn't have such pronounced pale edges to her primaries.

I was lucky enough to get to watch the progress of a Scissor-tail's nest one year when I worked in Plano. It was in a small tree in my office's parking lot. The tree had one slender bare branch which was a good lookout post from their point of view. The nest was so low that if I got on tiptoe I could look into it. I watched it from 2 eggs to 3 eggs to hatchlings to fledglings. All three were raised successfully. They left the nest over the 4th of July weekend. The youngsters don't have the extra long tails when they first leave the nest — they don't grow them until the following spring, so far as I can tell. I love those little birds — their musical chirps, their incredible aerial abilities, their neat (tidy-looking) plumage with the apricot wingpits. Someday I hope to get to see a male doing his courtship flight displays.

Owl territory

A Barred Owl couple nests in the old fish hatchery. First time I accidentally discovered one of them, it was standing on a large branch. While I watched it, it took three steps to the right, leaned forward and upchecked a pellet! I've never seen that behavior any other time in my life, although I've seen plenty of owl pellets.

They should be starting courtship behavior round about now, with nesting in a month or so. Later on, you should be able to see fluffy owlets peeking out. When nesting commences, the male can generally be found standing guard in a tree that gives him a good view of the nest. He could be on the same side of the cross path as the sycamore, or on the opposite side, so you'll need to crane your head and turn about to find him. He's become more wary than he used to be after somebody killed an earlier mate of his, and of course you can't hear him when he flies away, but sometimes you can luck out and find him perched, or catch him visually when he flies.

Good birding!
Betsy

February 5 2007

Thought I'd give you directions to the rookeries so you don't have to wait for me to post them on the Audubon website.

SWMC Rookery

I just drive south on Inwood. After going under the Harry Hines overpass, I turn left at the first traffic light, onto the Southwestern Medical Center campus. On this Mapquest map, the rookery is right under the words Southwestern Medical Center.

http://tinyurl.com/3d3ghs

I recommend visiting on weekends — parking is a real problem there on weekdays but it's free on weekends. The rookery is the large copse of trees on the left side of the drive, between the first two left turns off of the drive. You can walk all around it, and you can get up on top of the parking garages on either side of it and look down onto it. Try this:

Park on the drive itself if you like. Walk along the drive until you get to the parking garage on the right, opposite the covered basketball court which is on the left side of the drive. Take the elevator to the top floor of the parking garage. You can look out over the rookery from there.

Now go back down and walk around the rookery in either direction. The left (Inwood) side of it is more productive for photographs when the birds are nesting. When you get to the side of the rookery that's opposite the drive you parked on, there are two parking garages. The one nearest to Inwood has a staircase to the top facing the rookery which provides another good overlook vantage point for photographers (and people with binoculars, too!).

The Great Egrets arrive first and take the nesting spots at the tops of the trees. Sometime in late Feb or early March you should start to see them. Other large birds that nest in the rookery are Snowy Egrets, Black-crowned Night-Herons, Little Blue Herons, Cattle Egrets, Anhingas (only a few), White Ibis (again, only a few), and Tri-colored Herons (few). Birds that sometimes roost in the rookery for a couple of hours, a night or week or so are Great Blue Herons (I saw one once), Yellow-Crowned Night Herons, White-faced Ibis.

Along about April it's really worth getting on top of the first parking garage I mentioned about 30 minutes before dawn, so you can catch the morning liftoff. Slews of birds will take off for their fishing grounds, going left, right and directly overhead. Evening near sunset is also a great time, of course. But even midday is good for getting those big birds.

You get lots of opportunity there to take photos of egrets ferrying sticks to their nests, etc. Later on, you can get photos of the youngsters being fed, squabbling, etc. You'll hear the youngsters before you ever see them — when you hear a repeated kek KEK, kek KEK, kek KEK sound, that's the youngsters saying feed ME, feed ME, feed ME!

I'll bet you end up creating a page just for this rookery this year! The photo ops will be that good, despite the drought, which has reduced the numbers of birds nesting there.

Betsy

February 5 2007

Hi, JR and Anna,

Really enjoyed meeting both of you this (that is, Sunday) afternoon. Would be happy to run into you again.

Since I didn't have anything to write it down on for you (and I probably said .com instead of .org), here's the link to the Dallas Audubon website — click the BirdTalk link to get to the forum:

http://audubondallas.org/

I just noticed on the scrolling window on our site that the Great Backyard Bird Count is Feb 16th.

I've started exploring your birding website and am enjoying it greatly. That action shot of the crow and the hawk on the first page is a doozie! Bird behavior is one of my favorite birding interests, so I'm enjoying your penchant for documenting it. I'm also really tickled by your sense of humor — Addlepated Birder's Journal indeed!

Since I took my first LRGV trip so recently, I decided to start exploring with that section. Got a couple of notes and a question for you on this page (so far — haven't read it all in detail yet — might come up with more after I do).

1. You mention that Common Nighthawk isn't in Birds of Texas. Which Birds of Texas would that be? I have at least two books by that title — the John Tveten one and the Smithsonian Handbooks one by Fred Alsop and they both do have Common Nighthawk, so yours must be a different book.

Maybe I should ask you which field guide(s) you use while I'm at it.

I changed that comment to read I could not find it. I use several guides but never in the field. Carrying camera equipment is enough.

2. You write that the Boat-tailed Grackle is the bird we have in North Central Texas. Actually, that is a bird of the Gulf and east coasts only. Up here we have mostly the delightfully hubristic (males) Great-tailed Grackle, just as they do down in the valley — with the occasional Common Grackle thrown in. I had to verify that by listening to their sounds when I first moved to Texas (the old 1962 Peterson's guide to the Birds of Texas wasn't helpful on this particular species — that guide is way too out-of-date to be worth using anymore), but nowadays the more recent field guides have range maps that show this. A few bird guide websites on the internet have range maps as well — here are a couple in case you want to check that out:

www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/

www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/framlst.html

The Patuxent site often has two range maps per species. The CBC map is a winter map constructed from the Christmas Bird Count data. The BBS map is a summer map constructed from the breeding Bird Survey data.

3. Ok, here is an eye-training lesson for you. You need to give the last bird photo on the page (live bird, not the roadrunner sign) a more careful look. I want you to compare the face pattern of the bird in the photo with the face pattern of Ladder-backed Woodpeckers. Also, I want you to notice where the red is on the bird in the photo, and where it is on a male Ladder-backed's head. (I could just tell you what I think this bird is, but I don't want to deny you an Aha! experience. Also, training one's eye to look at all the relevant details on a bird takes some work and practice, and we all benefit from getting some guidance on this. I would expect you to wonder about the id of this bird, given its head color and where you photographed it, which I'll be happy to discuss after you get to that point.)

Now I get to look at some more of your photos — and there are some really grand photos in there!

Anon....
Betsy Baker