And she’s off! I’m headed to Costa Rica tonight, to meet my friend Andrew and to go look for a few tasty birds. I need to make drawings and get reference photos for a certain project, and he is co-authoring what looks to be a phenomenal new book… so be assured that this is a very serious work trip (insert a winky here, I hate how emoticons look in print so I will refrain). I’ll try to post photos and sketches as I go along; no promises on internet access as I get massages and eat myself stupid at lodges I mean spend 16 hours a day scouring the rain forest. These trips are usually pretty grueling, in reality. More winks, and smiley faces.

Happily ensconced with family on the high plains of Colorado, I am also happily thinking of warmer climes and further travels. I decorated the endpapers of my next sketchbook in preparation for a trip to Costa Rica this January. It seems my (Not a) Big Year has turned into a strange new Big Life. The illustrations here were a little challenging: the endpapers on a Moleskine sketchbook are not an easy match for water-based media!

Sketchbook 2012, endpaper. From left to right: Green Violetear, Keel-billed Toucan, and Turquoise-browed Motmot (with separated tail). Watercolor, 3.5 x 11″ open.

Adult White-crowned Sparrow studies (Zonotrichia leucophrys leucophrys). Watercolor, gouache, and ink on tan paper, 11 x 7.5″, 2011.

Top image: Four studies of an immature White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys, probably subspecies gambelii). Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on tan paper, 11 x 7.5″, 2011.
Bottom image: detail of same drawing.

My “fiscal” year has come to a close, and the Big Year I was not doing is done. I will keep traveling through the end of the calendar year, however, and perhaps even after that. I have a lot of work to do: drawings to make, stories to pen, 4 sparrow species to find before 2012. I will begin by posting drawings and by making thanks to all of the wonderful people that showed me any form of support this year (even an answered email would often make my day).

This drawing – my apologies for the low-res phone photo of it – traveled with me for a good portion of the year. I was trying to get it to its new home in Rhode Island, but until now I couldn’t stop in the state due to scheduling and whatnot. Today I finally dropped it off and said goodbye. I had come to think of it as a good luck charm of sorts, carefully wrapped and hidden in the back of my car on multiple trips across the country. It is a largish drawing, and was a significant commission for me, so it was also a reminder to take care of myself and the car to try and ensure nothing happened to it. In other words, it was ridiculous that I kept it with me instead of crating, insuring, and shipping it, though I loved that it was always there in the back of my beater Subaru, a remembrance of a beautiful place and people I cared about very much.

For my first round, then, I send gratitude to the Ahearns for their patience and for (inadvertently) helping to finance an amazing experience.

Image: Little Compton, RI. approx. 30 x 18″, pen on paper

A quick update: through car repairs in four states, and another long haul across the country, I am now in Connecticut! I surpassed my mini goal of seeing 500 species in the lower 48, and am now on the final stretch of the year. My year list stands at 907, 525 for ABA North America. Much more importantly – the numbers were not my goals – the knowledge I have gained from spending 11 months (not done yet!) in the field, and the people I have met from all facets of the avian/human world, have truly inspired me beyond expectation. Thanks to Towny Dickinson for the portrait photo.

Once I settle down, I will start telling stories… please be patient with me! I keep my facebook page updated with photos on the fly, so to speak, so have a meander over there: www.facebook.com/Birdspot in the interim. Drawings soon, I promise.

With some (amazing) support and a little bit of luck, in a week I will begin my last big push across the country and back. From mid-September through to November 1, I will transect as much of the fall bird migration as I can, making a beeline across the middle of our country to maximize a few previously missed opportunities (e.g. the Rocky Mountains), then hopefully experience some of my first-ever Midwest shorebird migration, and then lastly wind my way up the East Coast: Cape May, then onto NYC and New England. I forewent (is that a legitimate word?) Spring migration in order to bird Belize and Costa Rica (tiny fiddles of sympathy, I know), and this hurt my year totals for the ABA Lower 48 from a Big Year standpoint. However, as I repeat over and over, I am doing a different sort of Big Year: one with fewer borders, one in which I am trying to learn about birds on a deeper level, one in which I am trying to make drawings as I go along. My goals have been pretty steady this year: I have seen 492 species in the lower 48 states, and 875 in the “world”; I would like to blow past 500 ABA for the year. I suppose this proves that I have not entirely succeeded in killing off my inner obsessive lister!

Image: Snowy Plover sketches

On a serious note, I need to scrape up some change to get my rear back to the East Coast for fall migration, so for a limited time I will be offering T-shirts and mugs of selected drawings. CHECK IT OUT HERE.

This looks a little like how I feel after a weekend of birding the Salton Sea, CA, in 100ºF+ temps.

There were family groups of Burrowing Owls everywhere, and there were shore and sea birds aplenty along the south coast of the “sea”. It was fantastic birding, though I only saw one new bird for the year. That, however, was a really good bird, and a lifer for me – Yellow-footed Gull:

The sea level can be pretty far away from access points in places, and there were a few frustrating moments of watching flocks of thousands of peeps light up far off in the distance – a beautiful sight indeed, but not one conducive to picking out a Baird’s Sandpiper!

Nota bene on the photos: the owls were shot with a telephoto and also heavily cropped – I was pretty far away for the crouched one with the dilated pupils. It’s one of those compositions that “tells” a different story from the actual circumstances!

My list for the two days is below:

Mallard
Blue-winged Teal
Cinnamon Teal
Green-winged Teal
Gambel’s Quail
Pied-billed Grebe
Clark’s Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
American White Pelican
Brown Pelican
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Cattle Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
White-faced Ibis
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
White-tailed Kite
Red-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
Peregrine Falcon
American Coot
Black-bellied Plover
Snowy Plover
Semipalmated Plover
Killdeer
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Spotted Sandpiper
Greater Yellowlegs
Willet
Lesser Yellowlegs
Whimbrel
Long-billed Curlew
Marbled Godwit
Western Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Short-billed Dowitcher
Long-billed Dowitcher
Dowitcher sp.
Wilson’s Phalarope
Red-necked Phalarope
Bonaparte’s Gull
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Yellow-footed Gull
California Gull
Herring Gull
Gull-billed Tern
Caspian Tern
Black Tern
Common Tern
Forster’s Tern
Black Skimmer
Rock Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
White-winged Dove
Mourning Dove
Common Ground-Dove
Greater Roadrunner
Burrowing Owl
Lesser Nighthawk
Gila Woodpecker
Black Phoebe
Ash-throated Flycatcher
Western Kingbird
Loggerhead Shrike
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Tree Swallow
Barn Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Verdin
Marsh Wren
Black-tailed Gnatcatcher
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Abert’s Towhee
Savannah Sparrow
Red-winged Blackbird
Western Meadowlark
Yellow-headed Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
Bullock’s Oriole
House Finch
House Sparrow

This particular boat was the Condor Express out of Santa Barbara, and the trip was great for diversity, if not for Pterodroma species (no puling from me, however, I saw over 20 year birds over the course of 14 hours). Did you know that “petrel” is probably derived from “St. Peter”? We like to think about the fine points of flight differences between shearwaters and gadfly petrels (and very much enjoy the ensuing heart murmur/attack when a bird has arced up over the waves in a gadfly fashion), but somehow I had not connected the general word petrel with the idea of walking on water. Sort of like how I had not connected Kanga and Roo until about the age of 25: we all have our moments of brilliance, I guess.

The bird of the day (after the more legitimate excitements of a Laysan Albatross, 2 Red-billed Tropicbirds, a Manx Shearwater, etc.) ended up being this stupid tern. It should have been a simple matter, but this first year bird confounded me. My first thought was Common Tern, but then I have more experience with those than with Arctic, and not a depth of knowledge in either, so when it was called as Arctic (and almost as quickly debated), I evaluated again. This left me confused. The bird was obliging, however, and sat as we neared it, and provided for perfectly fine photo opportunities. I thought this should then clear everything up – surely this one could be solved? I have no qualms about “letting it go”, but in this case, both in the field and in the photos, I observed features that could argue for either Common or Arctic. My photos are *not* perfectly fine, for the record, because my exposure was stopped down for some previous shots, and because of many other excuses I’ll leave out. They do point out some of the ID arguments, however, so here they are:

Anyone wish to discuss? Also, more photos from the day are at my BirdspotUS Flickr page here, if you are interested.

Edited Aug 19: I have added two more photos. They’re crap, but one gives a view of the bird in a less foreshortened profile, the other possibly more info as to the wing plumage: