Good Birds, Bad Pics

Hey all. Sometimes birding is hard out there. When you've been doing it for as long as I have, and trying to blog about once a week, for the last, like, 6 years, sometimes you come up short of really great pictures of birds you've never written about before. More and more I'll come back from a walk with a camera full of birds and find that they're mostly ones I've already done. Being truly 'out of birds' is not something that I have to worry about for a while, but there's also the pictures to think about. I know I don't need to tell you, reader, that sometimes the quality of the pictures varies a lot. Of course, I do try to keep some kind of standard, or at least only flex that standard for a bird I'm really excited about. Sometimes a bird pic is just not good enough to run as a 'portraiture' entry. I just know I haven't captured the 'essence of the bird', so to speak, so I don't count it.

All that is to say that after looking through the last few months of bird photos, and a couple of misstarts to the ol' blog, this is what I've decided to go with. A trio of birds I was quite excited to get, but that don't really warrant a full blog on their own. Just on a, like, quality level. This way I get to show off these cool birds, but still reserve the right to do a full entry on them later, if I ever get a great picture. Let me know if you hate this blog entry, cause it's a little different. Love you lots. -A

Savannah Sparrow
Salinas River State Beach, Moss Landing, California, USA
January 2018
Member of the American Sparrows and Towhees Family
§A Flutter of Sparrows§

Quickly dismisses others' concerns



Hooded Merganser (male, non-breeding)
Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California, USA
February 2018
Member of the Ducks, Geese, and Swans Family
§A Brace of Ducks§

Feels persecuted for his taste in music

Hermit Thrush (probably..)
Point Molate Beach Park, Richmond, California, USA
February 2018
Member of the Thrush Family
§A Hermitage of Thrushes§

Spaces out

Allen's Hummingbird

Allen's Hummingbird
Point Molate Beach Park, Richmond, California, USA 
February 2018 
Member of the Hummingbird Family 
§A Tune of Hummingbirds§

~true bird facts~ Truly a feisty little guy, he gets very particular about his territory. He has been observed to chase much larger predators, up to and including hawks and kestrels, out of his area. Not only that, but male and female Allen's Hummingbirds live in completely different environments- men go to more open and visible areas, with the women coming and visiting to check out the mating dance of the males, before returning to the denser, more protected woodlands where they make their nests. We all need a little space sometimes. That mating dance, by the way, is an arcing pendulum motion followed by a 100 foot dive that is so fast that it actually allows him to make a chirping noise with his tail feathers. It's pretty cool (here's the Anna's version of it, couldn't find any good Allen's videos).

So, as all long-time readers will know, Hummingbirds are not actually birds, but rather bugs, robots, or bio-robotic organisms. Some research indicates that they might actually be arcane (magical) relics that have been activated by wizards or something. As such, we'll skip the personality section, as Hummingbirds don't have em'. But still, you might be wondering, who is Allen's Hummingbird named after- that's right, it's time for another Naturalist Profile!

Tim Allen

1953-202?

Tim Allen is a human actor, well known for his television shows and movies. The Allen's Hummingbird was actually created for an episode of his most famous and popular show, Tim Allen's Tool Time. In episode 07_18, Tim tinkers with nano-machines, electro-fields, and dark, ancient illustrations that his neighbor Wilson buys at an Illuminati auction to create the 'living' 'bird'. However, it is only after his son, Jonathan Taylor Thomas Allen, sneaks into his laboratory late at night, and properly aligns the crystal matrix, that the creature comes to life. Therefor, you could argue, that the naming convention applies to either or both Allens. The rest of the episode is spent in the zany antics of trying to prevent the hummingbird from reaching a source of argon gas, which it of course needs to reproduce. Obviously Allen was unsuccessful, and I'm thankful for it, since otherwise we wouldn't have these great hummingbirds today.

I know this is a lot of information that might be surprising (I never watched the show much, so I didn't know), but I got it directly from the Tim Allen wiki, which is very well-sourced.

Ok, so let's say that you don't want to know the #Truth about Hummingbirds, and instead want the mainstream media's alternative facts. Here's the guy they say discovered this alleged bird-

Charles Andrew Allen

1841 - 1930

There is virtually no information about Charles Allen on the internet- only this one picture (which is from a pdf of his obituary) and no wikipedia article, which is sad for someone who named this great hummingbird. He was born in Massachusetts, and his interest in birds started early, with a childhood friendship with a taxidermist, which isn't a weird thing to have at all. He held a variety of odd jobs- carpentry, fishing, civil war soldier-ing. Eventually the conditions in the furniture mill in which he worked caused him so many respiratory problems that he decided to move out to California. There he worked as kind of an early park ranger, and it was during this period of time that he collected bird and mammal specimens, which he sent to a colleague or friend for collection and classification. No information on whether or not he 'discovered' other birds, but it was his observation that led to the understanding that Rufous Hummingbirds were a different species from the above bird. He had 3 kids.