Subject: Re: Black-throated grey warbler
Date: Mar 7 12:24:27 1998
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Some context to Rob Saecker's reply to my post to him:

>>No second-guessing you here, but how the heck do you separate
Black-throated Grey from Townsend's on voice alone? Do you have a variant
TOWA song there that makes it easy (the TOWA in NE BC sound nothing like
coastal birds)? Our best ear birders in Vancouver BC tell the two apart with
difficulty as a) the songs are almost identical here and b) they'll borrow
each other's songs even when they are distinguishable.
>>
>>It was situations like this when I was running the Vancouver RBA that
caused me to establish a policy of visual confirmations for
first-arrivals--not to be a tough guy, but just to be sure for the records.

Rob Saecker writes:

>Well, I've proven myself to be quite second-guessable, haven't I Michael?
>And done it again, it looks like. So, having had BTGW breeding in the
>neighborhood last year (seen and heard), and having not yet seen TOWA here,
>and not realizing that it's too early for BTGW to be here, I assumed I was
>hearing BTGW without checking it out. Lousy excuses for sloppy birding, for
>which I apologize, and *promise* to do better. (It sure is easy to screw up
>in this bird business. Sigh).

It's a hard road sometimes, isn't it? Relax, Rob: I speak from personal
experience that you'll never know so much that you can't reduce yourself to
absurdity at any given point in your birding career. '-) Still the light
that's given off by burning assumptions often shows the facts.

About the warblers, it's hard to say; in an El Nino year, nothing may be too
early--certainly Rufous Hummingbird Selasphorus rufus is *way* early this
year, though the Violet-green Swallows Tachycineta thalassina were about at
the average early end of their usual arrival range of Week 2-Week 3 Feb for
a warm winter (Feb 08 at Duncan BC). Average Vancouver BC northbound arrival
for Black-throated Gray Warbler Dendrica nigrescens is Apr 18.

But this might have nothing to do with migrational timing for you folks in
WA. Already you have had singing male Ruby-crowned Kinglets Regulus
calendula and Townsend's Warblers D. townsendi winter there--and in any
voice-only contact at this time of year, I'd suspect Townsend's before
Black-throated Gray-- while those male kinglets won't make any migrational
appearance here for a couple of weeks, and the Townsend's don't make their
northbound migrational appearance until Apr 10 on average. Go figure. I'm
really curious why there's such an interval and if such intervals are
consistent, species to species, year to year.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)