Chasing the "improbable"

Jay Carlisle called me early yesterday right after finding the young (male...female?), sixth state record Blackburnian Warbler at the Idaho Bird Observatory Lucky Peak site... but I didn't get the message until about 7:30 PM.

Photo by Jay Carlisle

Now be aware that, even though I've not seen a Blackburnian in Idaho, I've seen many, many of this species in both spring and fall while living on the East Coast for a number of years. In fact, during a late April visit to the Dry Tortugas, FL with my wife Teresa in the late 80's (who is a sometime, usually incognito birder with a personal Life List tucked away somewhere), there were literally scores of this little gem in a small tree near the ship loading dock... so many eye-poppers that we called it the "Christmas Tree." (If you've seen a male Blackburnian Warbler in spring, you'll definitely understand our descriptive christening.) But understand that yesterday's bird doesn't even resemble the ostentatious gaudiness of a spring male. Fall birds of the year are one of those "under the radar" pieces of complexity and comparative drabness that give "fall warbler identification" a widespread, but undeserved, bad reputation (and Garrett and Dunn a good residual income from the writing of the indispensable milestone tome, Warblers.)

Regardless of familiarity though, as soon as I could get away this AM (I fortuitously didn't have a class to teach today until noon), I was bumping, jolting and shaking my way up to the Lucky Peak site in my trusty 1990 Jeep Cherokee.

Maybe...just maybe, there was a slim, outside chance that this eastern visiting, western rarity spent the night. But by his message to me, I had already figured that Jay wasn't going to be there to help me look. And I clearly understood that the available habitat, even had it stayed, was immense and impossible for one person (or even an "army of birders") to adequately cover. And additionally, it took no genius to presume that this vagrant had randomly landed at the IBO station when the sun came up this morning, after spending a long night of internally driven, fat-burning, migration mis-direction... and was by now most reasonably somewhere many miles distant (but probably no more on track) by now.

So.... why drive about twenty miles at a slim notch under $4 a gallon, risk the inevitable "He's probably out with his binoculars birding again" comment by my long-suffering vocational partners, miss lunch, and look worse than a misplaced REI salesperson in the wilderness to the IBO research and grad students there with my binocular adorned sport coat, dress shirt and tie?

Here are seven very good reasons for you (and myself):

1. I have an incurable illness that can only be temporarily assuaged by regular, short intervaled, periodic high doses of wild winged encounters, e.g. "birding."

2. Although I hate to admit it, I'm a "Lister" at heart.... So I wanted this one for my Idaho Life List and Year List, my North American Annual List... even my Ada County List.

3. I love the puzzle of "fall warblers" (and confirm my insanity by equal doses of fascination with - even prolonged study of- gulls, shorebirds, empid flycatchers, sparrows, and eclipse ducks... among others.)

4. Even if unfruitful in the quest for the target bird, there are always other "interesting" birds to see. (In this case, five other species of warbler were identified, plus numerous other migrants and residents... including my Idaho year-bird Clark's Nutcracker, and my Ada County year-bird Lewis's Woodpecker... all on a "very birdy" morning, when something was always moving around in the trees and bushes.

5. If I wait to see only the "sure thing," stake-out birds, I'd never see anything of value.... even if I should be so lucky as to see the thing valued. (Take a moment to figure this one out, OK?)

6. There is never a "bird outing" where I cannot learn something new (although I wish I always did so)... if I keep my attention focused, my ears open, my eyes searching, and my "hard drive" mind processing. I don't believe that I've "arrived" as a birder/field ornithologist... or that in this life, I ever will do so.

7. I'm a "passionate teacher" at heart, and without new avian experiences and discoveries to draw upon to add to my mental "note cards" of field identification, there would be no later enlightening tid-bits of understanding and knowledge for myself and others to draw upon.... All would be repetitive and excruciatingly boring.

Seven is the ancient number symbol connotating completeness... and in this very present case, my justification for the "Blackburnian Warbler Weekday AM Expedition" is fulfilled.

By the way, my wife just e-mailed me from work: "I hope you saw your wittle birdie. How did that work out?" Somehow a short "No, I didn't see it, but I'm not in the least bit sorry I went" isn't worthy of what took place this morning.... But then, can the "unwashed masses" of non-birding hoi polloi even understand? [If you should happen to read this, I still love you anyway, Sweetie.]

Oh, and I also just received a call from Cliff Weisse who was on the way back from American Falls.... where he and Darren Clark found three gull-chasing Parasitic Jaegers and a Glossy Ibis....

Hmmm.... I can't get there tomorrow, but....