mjm@oliven.olivetti.com (Michael Mammoser) (02/17/89)
I am posting the following article from John Shipman, whose
site is having problems with postnews. Enjoy.
Mike
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When you mention birdwatching, most people think of the
woods. I prefer birding at a teeming mudflat, a reservoir,
or an oasis, because of my preference for shore and water
birds. But you haven't done it all until you have birded
scrub and grasslands. To me, the longspurs personify both
the agony and ecstasy of winter birding in the short grass.
I have a love-hate relationship with longspurs. They are
gorgeous, hard to see, and harder to identify. The first
time I saw them was near Sonoita, Arizona. A flock of a
couple dozen birds wheeled and suddenly dropped into the
grass right by the road.
I marked the location where one bird landed and went after
them. I didn't see how they could hide for long in the
overgrazed pasture with a few tiny weeds. But when I got
there they were all gone without a trace.
The trick to longspurs is to find their waterhole. Last
Feb. 4 we finally found the right waterhole, 12 miles south
of Datil (rhymes with cattle), NM, in the middle of nowhere.
The wind was blowing 30; we had almost decided not to go,
but as on so many previous days when I have gone out despite
unpromising weather, the birding was great.
This cattle tank is a small pond about 20' long and 15' wide
and located about 30' beyond the fence, hard by the road.
The birds came in six to thirty at a time, stayed for about
ten seconds and vamoosed. I had never seen Chestnut-
collareds with a real chestnut collar before, but most of
them had it. Out of over 100 birds that moved through in
the two hours we were there, there were also 2--3 Laplands.
The extent of black on the chest is so variable, it is not
much use as a field mark. In the longspurs, the black color
of the males is not a separate plumage; it is the ground
color of the chest, but the prebasic (fall) molt covers it
with pale brown feathers. As the brown wears away, the
black underneath is revealed.
The best flight mark is the tail. McCown's and Smiths
both have narrow white outer rectrices, but we didn't
see any like that. The other two look like this:
I * I +----+ I ** I
I *** I | | = white I ** I
I ***** I +----+ I ** I
I ******* I I ** I
I ********* I +----+ I ** I
I *********** I |****| = black I************I
I ************* I +----+ I**************I
Chestnut-collared McCown's
If you can get a good look at them on the ground, another
reliable mark is the position of rusty in the wing. The C-c
has no rusty in the wing. The McCown has a solid rusty
wrist (median coverts), but no rust below the upper wingbar.
The Lapland has no rust above the upper wingbar, but plenty
of rust between and below the wingbars.
If you want to see these birds, winter is the time in the
southwest. Find a cattle tank where there is some shallow
water, so the birds can drink and bathe without fear of
drowning, and wait; if you see a flock of birds wheeling
as if they can't make up their mind whether to land,
it's probably the dreaded longspurs.
----
Note for Gary Schiltz: [Apologies for posting this, but I
can't get through via e-mail.] I got your letter, but the
mail paths I tried bounced at site umix. Can you supply a
domain-type address? I would like to talk with you about
wildlife-related computing.
----
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico
USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu
``The wise duck keeps his mouth shut when he smells frogs.''
-- Ernest Bramah