{"id":1001040,"date":"2008-03-23T17:48:26","date_gmt":"2008-03-23T22:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2008\/03\/23\/400-cassins-kingbird\/"},"modified":"2008-09-03T10:47:45","modified_gmt":"2008-09-03T15:47:45","slug":"400-cassins-kingbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2008\/03\/23\/400-cassins-kingbird\/","title":{"rendered":"#400 Cassin&#8217;s Kingbird"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While updating my life list, I discovered that the Red-naped Sapsucker seen on this month&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2008\/03\/02\/what-kind-of-duck-climbs-a-tree\/\">Sea &amp; Sage Audubon trip to Santiago Oaks<\/a> was in fact a life bird. That makes the Cassin&#8217;s Kingbird we found a little later #400! (I had previously seen this one on my own at San Joaquin Wildlife Refuge but misidentified it there as a Western Kingbird.)<\/p>\n<p>However, that number is a little &#8220;soft&#8221;. It includes several exotics that don&#8217;t officially &#8220;count&#8221; including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Muscovy Duck (in my opinion, this one should count. These are feral populations, but very well established.)<\/li>\n<li>Common Peafowl<\/li>\n<li>Yellow-chevroned Parakeet<\/li>\n<li>Greylag Goose: I know I&#8217;ve seen Greylag Geese in multiple countries. I just don&#8217;t know if any of them were wild.<\/li>\n<li>Black Swan: this one really shouldn&#8217;t count, but it was very early in my list keeping.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If I remove those, I&#8217;m only at 395. <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nIn fact, we had another &#8220;doesn&#8217;t count&#8221; bird on this very trip: Nutmeg Mannikin, Bird #401 if I count them all. <\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re also a few species I&#8217;m hesitant about, usually because I&#8217;ve only seen them once and imperfectly. Often the first time you see a bird, is a brief look through someone else&#8217;s scope or a quick glance through a tree with binoculars while the trip leader is shouting, &#8220;There&#8217;s the bird!&#8221;. If it&#8217;s a locally common bird, this is usually followed up with much better looks, and a growing comfort level with the species.  For instance, the first time I saw Cassin&#8217;s Kingbirds, I completely blew the ID, and called them Western Kingbirds. The second time I saw Cassin&#8217;s Kingbirds, they were far off but I had a local leader to help and at least I got the ID right. The third time I saw it on my own, and knew immediately what field marks to look for to conclusively call it. At that point, I feel like I really know the bird; and have no compunctions about counting it for my life list. However sometimes, you never get beyond that first quick look. For me, these birds include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wrentit: heard once, never seen; never identified on my own<\/li>\n<li>Whooper Swan: seen once from a distance at Jamaica Bay without a scope<\/li>\n<li>Mottled Duck: one view in flight from a moving car<\/li>\n<li>Common Buzzard: a Buteo soaring over Venice, but was it this Buteo?<\/li>\n<li>Philadelphia Vireo<\/li>\n<li>Acadian Flycatcher<\/li>\n<li>Vaux&#8217;s Swift<\/li>\n<li>Iceland Gull<\/li>\n<li>Wilson&#8217;s Snipe<\/li>\n<li>Wilson&#8217;s Phalarope<\/li>\n<li>Broad-winged Hawk<\/li>\n<li>Northern Goshawk<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of these I&#8217;m more sure of than others. For instance, I know I saw Wilson&#8217;s Snipe and Northern Goshawk, because I trust the trip leader who found both of them; but I don&#8217;t feel like <em>I<\/em> really have those birds. I&#8217;d just like to firm them all up if I could. (There are also many species I&#8217;ve seen only once, but that I was able to see much better; in some cases even photograph. I&#8217;m fully confident in counting my recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2008\/02\/18\/398-greater-roadrunner-on-the-great-backyard-birdcount\/\">Greater Roadrunner<\/a>, for example.)<\/p>\n<p>There are a few more species that I have very poor records of, or just didn&#8217;t see all that well, and would like to see again, including pretty much all my Storm-petrels and Shearwaters, the Upland Sandpiper, and Black-billed Cuckoo. However these birds are so hard to find, that I should probably just be happy that I&#8217;ve managed to find them at all. <\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, there are some I&#8217;ve almost certainly seen, but just couldn&#8217;t conclusively ID, including Long-billed Dowitcher. <\/p>\n<p>My life list also includes several dozen species from Europe so my ABA area list is only around 350 or so. Next month I hope to add a few dozen from China, and that should push me over 400 with no questions asked, even if the exact number is still a little fuzzy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While updating my life list, I discovered that the Red-naped Sapsucker seen on this month&#8217;s Sea &amp; Sage Audubon trip to Santiago Oaks was in fact a life bird. That makes the Cassin&#8217;s Kingbird we found a little later #400! (I had previously seen this one on my own at San Joaquin Wildlife Refuge but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[410],"class_list":["post-1001040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding","tag-flash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001040\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}