Avian Ecologist

Kubota Garden

As we walked some of the trails we heard the harsh calls of Steller’s Jays and got our best looks yet of the trip! Then, as we were leaving we saw what we’re identifying from its display as a rufous hummingbird; it was not a lifer for either of us but cool to see again […]

Discovery Park

Today, my parents joined us for a day of hiking and sightseeing. We got great looks at lifer chestnut-backed chickadees and Steller’s jays. As for “not lifers but neat west coast birds,” we got really nice looks and listens of Bewick’s wren and some good glimpses and a few calls from a spotted towhee. We […]

Swallow-Tailed Gull!

When we first arrived in Seattle and picked up our rental car, we went to Alki beach for lunch. I saw my lifer Glaucous-winged gulls, insofar as we could tell. There were many “Olympic type” gulls but several that looked like pure glaucous-winged gulls to the eye. We chased an ABA code 5 that showed […]

Planning for Birding in Seattle this Fall!

My boyfriend and I will be joining my parents on vacation to Seattle in Sept! (Species in bold are things we may have a good chance of seeing given the timing of our visit.) As it turns out, my parents are interested in birding with us too! I’m not sure how far they’ll want to go, […]

Why Reputation Matters in Birding

Now we’re getting into a little bit of a sticky topic: how and why your reputation as a birder matters, and what it has engendered in birding! Birding is an “honor-based” hobby. That means that no one else can tell you you didn’t see something if you say you did. However, this is where the […]

Why Am I Procrastinating?

I’m happy to get back to work, but there’s some sort of a fear too, that is heavily associated with procrastination. Heck, I’m procrastinating by writing this post, but I’m rationalizing it by at least trying to better understand my urge and do something about it. I haven’t always been like this, and I have […]

The Element of Discovery in Birding

I’m not much of a lister beyond keeping a life list, but admittedly adding “lifers” is my favorite part of birding. Maybe the main part of what drives me in birding is what also drives me in being a naturalist: there’s so much to see in the natural world! You couldn’t see it all in […]

Psychological Theories & Bird Identification

Here’s a cross-disciplinary thought about how we identify birds: we seem to wrestle between bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up processing of visual information is what we imagine to be our “raw perception”: we sense light with our eyes which we eventually translate into what our brains interpret. It’s the most intuitive and direct model of […]

Total Eclipse at Blue Sky Vineyard

Our completely serendipitous journey to totality was amazing in every respect. Our last minute plans to drive to southern IL, the closest spot to us within the totality path, earned us a hotel no closer than Decatur Sunday night, which left about 3 hours of driving to get to the middle of the totality swath […]

Why is Color Our 1st Instinct for ID?

One of my first “slap on the wrists” as a birder was to look at color last, whereas it seems we want to look at it first. Why is that? Our processing of color begins in the retina, whereas we don’t process form of what we’re looking at until the visual cortex! “Many cells in V1 […]