Hey tweets, Many of you expressed good wishes to me and to the other master
birder candidates as our big final exam loomed a couple of weeks ago, so I
thought you might like to hear the results.

You'll be pleased to know that karma does exist and did descend upon us -
all 24 of us passed. Not necessarily with flying colors (pun intended), at
least regarding yours truly.

As a matter of fact, I was afraid to open my sealed test results for a week
or more after I got them back. I was still smarting over the slide part of
the exam - 25 pictures showing birds in bad light, impossible postures,
fuzzy focus and general all-round nasty conditions. Dennis Paulson, our evil
genius, said later that he thought that fledgling master birders should be
able to handle hard-to-identify birds, not just breeding males in full
sunlight with little tags taped to their breasts saying, "Hello, my name
is..."

Okay, I guess if you twisted my arm, I would have to agree, but the net
effect of Dennis's philosophy wasn't pretty. Well, you'll understand what I
mean when I say that 22 out of 24 of us missed identifying a European
starling! This was a backlit bird photographed from underneath in flight
with tail spread widely, wings cocked and head and bill outstretched. I put
down Wilson's snipe (with head turned to one side, which was why the beak
looked so short, you see; lack of markings was obviously due to the
fuzziness of the photo). I followed this howler by misidentifying another
slide of a bird that I knew I had never seen before. It looked just like a
purple martin, except that it had long spindly legs. So I said it was a
purple martin (on stilts, you know). Okay, before you look at the real
answer below, can you identify it? Think all-black bird, no indication of
absolute size, beady black eyes, wide flattish bill that came to a point,
black legs, standing in a parking lot.

Turned out it was a juvenile gray jay.

Everyone did get the first slide right, a Williamson's sapsucker - easy,
right? except the slide was put in upside-down. And so it went.

The written part of the test was even harder. My personal favorite question
was, how do woodpeckers molt their tails, and what songbird molts the tail
in the same pattern? You know how sometimes in literature an author
describes a sensation that you have never actually felt but because of the
wording you can imagine what it must feel like? Well, that question caused
me to give a weak laugh. Never knew what that was before, but when I came
across that question, a weak laugh was absolutely the best that the old
brain could come up with: haha. Other than that, my mind was a complete
blank.

When I finished my test, I managed to stagger out to my car, just glad that
it was over. I've had similar feelings when leaving the dentist's chair
after finishing a root canal. I figured I'd be lucky to get a D minus. But,
dear tweeters, that's when your karma kicked in because when I finally
nerved myself to look at my score, I had got a solid C plus. I still can't
believe it. So thanks from all of us newly hatched master birders (or as my
Micronesian sponsoree says, bird masters).

FYI at the Fill today:
pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant (some were grunting in the dead snag)
great blue heron
Canada goose
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern pintail
northern shoveler
ruddy duck
canvasback
ring-necked duck
greater scaup
lesser scaup
bufflehead
common merganser
hooded merganser (at least a dozen)
American coot
killdeer
glaucous-winged gull
red-tailed hawk
rock pigeon
Anna's hummingbird
downy woodpecker
northern flicker
tree swallow
Steller's jay
American crow
black-capped chickadee
bushtit
Bewick's wren
marsh wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
American robin
European starling (not snipe)
yellow-rumped warbler (both myrtle and Audubon's; both singing!)
spotted towhee
song sparrow
savannah sparrow (several singing males)
golden-crowned sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
red-winged blackbird
house sparrow
American goldfinch
house finch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com