The Golden Guide

Looking up the Cave Swallow account in my Golden Guide brought back memories. The Golden Guide was my first field guide. At the time there weren’t many choices, and even fewer for me. I wasn’t in any birding loop; I didn’t even know there were other people who were interested in birds. I was lucky to even learn about the Golden Guide.

My earliest memories are of trying to catch birds. I could get just close enough to see they weren’t all alike. One morning when I was 6 or 7, living at Forbes Air Force Base in Pauline, Kansas, a bird I'd never seen flew over base housing. I’d grown up with big cargo planes and choppers flying over every day, but somehow this bird seemed really large. My brother Chris said it was a Great Blue Heron. I don’t know if I was more impressed by the bird or by the fact that Chris could identify it.

Between brothers, the “B” World Book, and a page of bird pictures in our massive home dictionary, I learned the names of some common species. Later, I found a great but unwieldy book of Audubon bird prints in the school library. My favorite childhood memories are of visiting the center of the universe, Kaplan, Louisiana. I could read my Uncle Julius’s copy of Lowery’s Louisiana Birds--still the best bird book ever in my mind--and walk the fields with my cousins to find birds to identify.

In 1973, when I was 9, we moved off base into a country neighborhood where all the kids were BB-gun naturalists. When anyone would shoot an unknown bird, we’d all go over to look at it. I was the kid that knew the birds. However, one day in 1976 on the bus to school one of my friends announced that he had something that was going to make him the group’s bird expert. In his hands was a small book. He wouldn’t let me look in it, but judging from the names he was pulling out of it, I knew I wanted to. In his hands the book was a dangerous tool of misidentification. I pointed that out but no one would listen because I didn’t have the book.

In 1977 my family went on vacation to Estes Park, Colorado. It was a great trip, lots of new birds. One day we went into a park gift shop and my parents asked if there was anything we wanted. My folks were pretty careful with money, so that was a rare offer. We looked around, but most of the stuff wasn’t worth spending money on. Then I saw the bookshelf, and on the bookshelf, the same small book my friend had, A Guide to Field Identification: Birds of North America. The Golden Guide. The price was $4.95, which was a lot, but I knew I’d get that much use out of it so I worked up the courage to ask. My parents were pleased that I was asking for a book, and agreed to part with their five-dollar bill.

The Golden Guide was great, full of birds I'd never dreamed of. The illustrations were like logos, clean and well-defined, and vivid in their colors. However, they had a subtlety that captured the essence of the species--rare in bird art. I read it constantly, with one notable interruption: In early '79 I came home from school one day and couldn't find it. I asked my mom if she'd seen it, and she told me she'd packed in preparation for our upcoming move to Louisiana. I wouldn't see it again until she bought our new house and we unpacked in August. It was a rough stretch without it.

That Golden Guide was heavy duty. I wore it as a hat in hailstorms and started a campfire with the copyright page. It stayed remarkably new-looking for years anyway, but eventually wear caught up to it. Newer field guides caught up to it, too, and passed it up in many ways. It still has some fine features, and I love the artwork. The ID aspects in my old copy seem basic now, but that’s not such a bad thing. I’m often equally amazed at the higher end skills and lack of fundamentals of some young birders. A thorough reading of an older Golden Guide or Peterson guide might not be such a bad idea for up-and-coming birders.

What's Next?

When I was a kid, there were certain birds I'd look at in my Golden Guide and dream of seeing someday. Some, like California Condor, had impossibly tiny dots on their range maps. Others, like White-tailed Kite, had slightly larger ranges marked on their maps, but their ranges were so far from my home that I figured I'd be lucky to ever see them. This didn't stop me from searching the countryside around my house for them; I held out hope that one would take a wrong turn someday and drift over my way. Hope is the thing with wings, after all. Then again, I also held out hope that a pirate ship would sail up the creek behind my house and take me away to live a life of adventure.

Anyway, some birds were especially intriguing. The Cave Swallow was so limited in its range that it didn't even get its own map. Even its account got short shrift. Here it is in its entirety:

Very local in spring and summer near Carlsbad Cavern, N. Mex., and in south-central Texas. Like Cliff Swallow except for buffy throat. Nests in limestone caves.

Clearly, Cave Swallow was a bird that took some doing to see.

The years went by and I moved a little closer to Cave Swallow range, but still far from the range as listed in the Golden Guide. But all that while, like the gargoyles in the old late night TV movie, Cave Swallows began to spread out of the desert. Unlike the gargoyles, however, nobody poured gasoline on the Cave Swallow eggs and nipped their future in the bud. The Cave Swallows just kept on coming.

Of course, Cave Swallows weren't even known as nesters within the United States before 1915, so their march has been steady for about a century at least. Other swallows have been spreading wildly during that time, too. Barn Swallows are some of our most common summer birds today, but as of the 1930s there were almost no summer records for the state. Cliff Swallows, very close relatives of Cave Swallows, have also recently invaded the state as nesters in a big way.

Louisiana got its first record of Cave Swallow in 1988, all the way over in Saint Tammany Parish. Within a few years, nesting Cave Swallows were being reported regularly on the Louisiana side of the bridge at Sabine Pass. Over the past few years Cave Swallows have been seen in the autumn as well, often heading directly northeast (not surprisingly, autumn numbers of Cave Swallows in the northeastern United States have skyrocketed recently).

The bird in the video above, filmed yesterday near Lake Arthur, appears to be a young bird. Its throat is whitish and there's a buffy band across the chest. On its right is a Barn Swallow. With the increasing number of reports of Cave Swallows across a widening zone, it seems clear that the once rare Cave Swallow will become common here before too long. Needless to say, Cave Swallows now have their own range maps in field guides.

To Have and Have Not

As I was out seeing the world one bird at a time today, this charming little bird surprised me on a quiet country road near Gueydan. I think it's some variety of Peach-faced Lovebird, but I won't swear to that. I do know it didn't fly all the way here from Africa. Polly was once somebody's pet, but my attempts to squeak her to my finger were in vain and she continued on her way.

Birds like this raise a debate in the birding community. Keep in mind that to many birders, bird lists are nearly sacred. If a bird escapes and perishes, it's not a big deal. However, if it finds a mate and starts a population, should it be counted as a part of Louisiana's birdlife? Or more accurately, can it be counted? Can the Monk Parakeets of New Orleans be added to our lists? The introduced Canada Geese at Rockefeller Refuge? And if so, where do we draw the line? Should birders count chickens and barnyard geese on their lists? There are differing opinions, different trails down that slippery slope.

In other life sciences, the rules are clear-cut. Introduced species that prove they can survive and spread on their own over time are regarded as naturalized and are added to the state list. Fig trees and corn, no. Chicken trees, yes. I love a good fig, but I wouldn't ask a botanist to put the fig tree on the state list. However, a botanist would be crazy not to add the chicken tree. Some birders agree with this cautious approach. Others feel it doesn't represent the reality of our current situation: if people are here to stay, then so are figs, so count them. Ditto for park ducks. I would agree with this approach for a plant survey of an area, but not for a scientific list of the naturally occurring species of an area.

Overall, I look at it like sports versus fantasy league sports. Birding is basically fantasy league ornithology. Fantasy leagues can make up whatever rules they like, but it's unrealistic for them to think that the big sport should change its rules to follow suit. I'll never forget seeing this cool little lovebird, but I don't think it's important for ornithology to remember it.

Anyway, that's my opinion, and it's just opinion. I hope I haven't ended up on the wrong end of your list.

Common Moorhen Family

I love driving down Fruge' Road, a north-south road that runs from Calcasieu into Cameron Parish southeast of Holmwood. Among its many attractions are the ditches that flank the roadside in some areas. These ditches are actually like little marsh ponds, and there are usually marsh birds like Purple Gallinule and Common Moorhen (a.k.a. Common Gallinule) literally right beside your window as you pass.

Yesterday, July 3, I was out shooting video and looked down to see this scene on my passenger side. I had to lean over to get some shots, but overall it turned out pretty well. The floating bed of plants the Common Moorhen family is swimming in is, I think, introduced Salvinia. Its looks like slow going for the chicks.

The chicks are pretty spectacular. The bare area on the crown is where the frontal shield--the red patch on the forehead of the adult-- will be when the birds get older. The feature that really caught my eye was the wingtip of the chicks. It almost looks like the chicks have tiny fingers waving in the air. The tiny extra "finger" is actually the alula, or "little wing"of the bird, which will be much less pronounced when the wing grows to full size. Moorhen chicks have spurs on the alula to help them grab on to objects as they travel. As adults, their long toes will allow them to walk on floating plants.

A member of the rail family, Common Moorhens are found on every continent but Australia and Antarctica. More information, including a sound file of their distinctive calls, can be found at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's page:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Moorhen/lifehistory

From Here to Eternity

Infamous beach scene with Burt Turnstone and Hardhead Kerr. Good stuff.