Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!nmtsun!john
From: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Weird year
Message-ID: <3480@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 89 05:36:43 GMT
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 67

There hasn't been much time for red-hot birding trips lately, so
the birds have been coming to see us right in town.

In a normal year, Scrub Jays are pretty scarce in town.  I might
hear them for a week or two in the fall, then they move on.  This
year surely was different!  There have been numbers of Scrub Jays
moving down to the valley; I've been hearing and seeing them in
the yard pretty much all day, every day since September 19.

However, not in my wildest dreams did I expect THREE SPECIES of
jays.  The pair of Blue Jays have been here since October 16, and
my neighbor Phil and I have seen a Steller's Jay off and on since
the 25th.  Phil had seen a Blue Jay once in my backyard in a
previous year, and I'd seen a Steller's Jay down the street once,
but those were both isolated sightings during heavy snowstorms.
The Blue Jays are south and west from their usual range, and the
Steller's Jay is not usually out of the mountains.

Word is that the early summer drought caused a crash in the acorn
and berry crops.  This has impacted not only the birds but the
bears as well; Albuquerque had a serious invasion of bears this
year.  In one highly publicized incident, a bear up a phone pole
was darted and bounced off a transformer in a shower of sparks.
Some people called up the Game & Fish Department and complained
that the fire department should have caught her in one of their
nets.  Come on, people, use a little common sense!  What is that
wounded bear going to do when she hits the net, thank you and
shake your hand?  Despite her thirty-foot fall to the pavement,
she was not injured except for burns, and has recuperated and
been released.  These are tough animals!

There was a Lewis' Woodpecker across the street most of last
week, making a shuttle run from a pecan tree down the block to
his favorite nut-cracking station atop a phone pole.  They are
normally quite uncommon in the valley here.

And finally, Phil and I got a new state bird this week, in his
own backyard.  We've had Inca Doves in our yards sporadically for
years.  Then one of them struck Phil as a little odd.  Compared
with some nearby Inca Doves, it had more or less the same body
size and shape, but the tail was stubby, the back was a plain,
unmarked tan without the scalloped effect of the dark
feather-edgings of the Inca Dove, and it had some dark spots on
the folded wing; in binoculars, it looked like the dark wing
spots got a bit larger towards the rear.

We had the luxury of studying this bird with a 40x scope at a
range of about fifty feet.  At this range, you could tell that
the greater coverts were marked with a dark brown diagonal stripe
about midway along their length, and the reason the spots to the
rear looked larger was because the more posteriorly located
coverts were longer and less of the dark stripe was covered up by
a shorter covert.  There's nothing quite like being able to see
the pattern of individual feather markings to give your
descriptions that ring of authenticity that convinces the
authorities.  However, that doesn't mean we won't also try to get
pictures.

The irony was that Phil and I had looked several times for Common
Ground-Dove in the far corners of the state, without any luck,
and now here was one in the back yard!

Anyone else having a weird year?
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico
john@nmtsun.nmt.edu, ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john  
``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.'' [Dave Farber]