Dear Connie,
Congratulation on the great C-plus on you test being a Master birder.I think you done Great!!!!!!!And thank you for sharing the experience becoming a Master Birder.

Cheers Ruth Sullivan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Connie Sidles" <csidles at isomedia.com>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 6:37 PM
Subject: Bird master of Montlake


> 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
>
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