Welcome to the Vinalhaven sightings report – august 28, 2022
Brought to you with the support of VLT and MCHT – thanks to them &
you!
Highlights – otter scene, Ferry Rides, Common Terns, a few mushrooms
Preamble - We
start with a video of an otter taken by a game camera on Clark Island
(mainland. To the west and south a bit). And here is what Kristen Lindquist
wrote about a video like this, but I don't think specifically this one…
live stream
the otter's briefest
sideways glance
- Kristen
Lindquist
And here’s a little ditty from BAJ.
(Based on a true story)
Spraint
Sweet Spraint
How have I missed you so
- ‘Big
Al’ Jones
Business – Contact us! – Send in photos and
reports and whatnot nature stuff to vinalhavensightings@gmail.com . We are kind to most people who
send in stuff.
Tiit Trick –
click on photos and have them fill up you screen! Really! Try it!
Sightings – some
bird lists from recent VLT Bird Walks.
Good stuff and still more to come! Thursdays
at 8am at Skoog Park. Mixed in with some Common Tern photos from Winter
Harbor in early August.
August 11 -American goldfinch, cedar waxwing, red
breasted nuthatch, double crested cormorant, common eider, common tern, herring
gull, osprey, semi-palmated plover,
semi-palmated sandpiper, lesser yellowlegs
August 18 - black-capped chickadee, red breasted
nuthatch, bald eagle (2 immature), golden-crowned kinglet, red crossbill,
herring gull, cormorant, great blue heron, osprey, common tern, semi-palmated
sandpiper, semi-palmated plover, common
loon, common eider, Catbird, goldfinch, song sparrow, cedar waxwing, yellow
warbler, herring gull, downy woodpecker
Ferry Rides –
bunch of loons. Some looking like this….
Lots of Harbor Porpoise these days.
Calm day specialty.
Speaking of fins – (8/24) take a look
at this set of three photos I took from the 9:45am North Haven Ferry
One clue can’t truly be seen here,
but the dorsal fin – while ridged and stiff – was flopping from side to side –
‘loose at the hinge’ one might say. And you might also say that that ‘one’ was
not a marine biologist probably. Anyway, I wish I could have taken a video of
the fin’s movements but I was too far away.
Anyway, you can see the angles the
fin flops take, making it an Ocean Sunfish
(Mola mola). Not the best photos of one for sure, but the first time I have
seen from the ferry, and leave it to be the North Haven ride!
what you looking at?
Speaking of fins continued – click on this
photo and then zoom in on the fin
shown here. And then tell me what you think. If you get the chance
Bonaparte’s gull
Herring Gull –
showing synchronized molt – check the trailing edge of the wing starting from
the body. All a little ‘short’, but all the same length. Man I love molt.
Flock of Least Sandpipers flying North.
That’s why they are called ‘Least’.
Few Mushrooms
– saw a few of the Velvet Pax on the
Animal Tracking walk (no photos) , but beyond that things are dry mushroom wise in the woods
these days. Decomposers are responding, here’s a few from the woods.
Things have gotten a little wetter
recently and hopefully this Wednesday will be wet as well.
 |
| been chewed |
Here’s a couple of shots of ‘Bleeding Tooth’ (Hydnellum peckii) from somewhere on Vinalhaven. Last year was the craziest year I’ve ever seen of them. Handful so far this year. We’ll see.
And some more Dye-maker’s polypore
(Phaeolus schweinitzii).
Vibrant yellow these days.
How about a few limited editions ?
Never a bad time for them!
And one of the kid on drums. Getting ready for 8th grade. Nutty.
And then we’ll wrap it up with this
something I wrote for the MCHT website. MCHT is patient enough with me to
support a more, shall we say, ‘structured’ nature column called ‘Nature Bummin
with Kirk Gentalen’. They are fun and fall more into the ‘appear well groomed’
category than the VSR. It okay, I love them both for different reasons.
june 20 2022
Anyway, this is the latest column I
sent in about Red Crossbills. It has two ‘PS’ es and then an addendum as the
Crossbill scene continued to evolve this summer. Still continues. This is a
long column, and this is the version I sent, pre-edits but I had edited it a
million times! Enjoy.
.jpg)
red crossbill working a cone
One other thing - If you are
interested in previous Nature Bummin columns please go to
(mcht.org/story-tag/nature-bummin).
There is even a way to sign up to receive ‘announcements’ (‘declarations’?)
whenever a new column is posted. What a world.
 |
| juvenile Red Crossbill august 21 2022 |
Nature Bummin with Kirk Gentalen
The Curious Case of the Red Crossbill
I mean, they’re Red Crossbills. Loxia
curvirostra. Where do we begin? Better yet, when do we begin?
Full disclosure here (and I think
we’ve had this conversation before, but…) but when it comes to nature observing
birds are (often/usually/always/tend to be) the ‘first hook’ of a new
(place/day/section of trail) for me. Unless, of course, I am at a place that
humbles - like the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, or North Perry Creek.
Eventually that ‘humbling charm’ dies down (always does), and the next
(humbling/beautiful observation) for me is usually connected with birds. They
are early in the flow, whatever gets you out there.
Got a lot of great memories with
birds, but there are a handful of ‘tweeter moments’ that really, really
(really) stick out – and even a couple that were actually ‘early’ (pre-college)
landmarks and epiphanies for me. As a kid I always appreciated leaving my
natural habitat (New Jersey suburban sprawl) to check out the birds visiting my
Aunt and Uncle’s feeders in upstate New York (good times while eating grapes).
During the summer before my last year of high school I participated in the
Hardwood Island program off MDI and saw Bald Eagles for the first time. Totally
and completely humbling. That same week I was introduced to a bird called the
‘Black-throated Blue Warbler’ and pretty much thought that was the coolest name
ever. Still do.
If we’re going back down memory lane,
I would be remiss if I didn’t give some ‘nature bumming props’ to the professor
from Gilligan’s Island! Seriously, he wasn’t just the ‘coolest’ guy on the
show, he was the only ‘cool’ guy on the show (no one ever wanted to be
Gilligan, the Skipper, or the dreaded Thurston Howell III). One of the ‘coolest’ things about the
professor was that he knew everything about nature (or at least seemed to) and
could invent anything out of coconuts. He was ‘real’ though, with a limitation
and everything – he couldn’t fix a boat. The professor set me up at an ‘early
age’ to observe nature. Eyes wide open.
Fightin’ Banana Slugs, class of 1993!
I had two major bird watching
epiphanies towards the end of my college years at the University of California
at Santa Cruz. The first one was that I could take my binoculars with me
wherever and whenever I went anywhere. At the time I had a cheap-o, micro pairs
of binos – so why not stuff them in a pannier or backpack? Why not have them live
there? Those are lovely, handy homes for observation tools and resources. Why
is it that some of my favorite epiphanies are so, so obvious?
The second epiphany was just as
obvious and just as huge as the bino thing. It was the realization that I
didn’t have to wait for organized Saturday morning bird walks to look at birds!
Heck, you never have to wait at all - birds are pretty much everywhere
(especially in Santa Cruz), you just had to look around, listen around. So you
might as well have your ‘binos’ with you so you could ‘slap some glass’ on
whatever feathered creature you crossed paths with. At any and all times! That
was when ‘tweeter watching’ went from hobby status to an important form of
entertainment for me. Eyes wide open.
Bird watching as entertainment was/is
cheap (cheapo-binos, bird book, and a bike), diverse (birds are like that – so
many niches, so many adaptations) and relatively easy. It’s even easier if you
aren’t in a hurry (which I certainly wasn’t at the time). And so an hour or two
bike ride on West Cliff drive along Monterey Bay, through Natural Bridges State
Park and to the UCSC Marine building complex could turn up dozens of avian
species and a handful or more of marine and terrestrial mammals. And a ton of
Monarch butterflies. (Now who wouldn’t be entertained by that?). And it could
be done by bicycle. And all there for ‘free’! ‘Birding by bike’ was huge for me
then, and remains huge still. Whatever gets you out there.
‘You can observe just by watching’ –
Yogi Berra
During my last trimester of college
(Spring ’93) I took an Ornithology class and the timing was perfect (eyes and
ears wide open). I was already ‘into it’, so the learning was smooth and it
felt great to be ‘forced’ to learn stuff
and get tested on things. Even better was to have friends in the class, a
wonderful graduate assistant named Dawn, and a visiting professor named Craig
Benkman at every turn to help, assist, correct and keep me in my lane during
those early bird watching years.
Professor Benkman was cool in that
while being a total dork about birds (which was cool) he also had a passion and
he would talk about that passion whenever he got the chance. His passion was
Crossbills, and at the time Crossbills came in two easily recognized flavors –
Red and White-winged. Not all ‘Red’ Crossbills are red, but all ‘White-wingeds’
have white on their wings. And all Crossbills, except the youngest of
fledglings (who eventually ‘go crossed’), have ‘misaligned’ bills. When closed,
a Crossbill’s top and bottom mandible literally cross each other. It’s an
amazing adaptation that allows Crossbills access to their favorite food – seeds
from cones, or ‘cone-seeds’.
To pry a cone open, Crossbills wedge
their ‘unclosed’ bills in between scales of a cone (largely spruce cones in
mid-coast Maine). They then close their bills, and it’s this ‘crossing of the
bills’ which separates the scales and allows a Crossbill to use their ‘sticky
tongues’ to pull exposed seeds out and
the feast is on. I remember Professor Benkman talking about a study he had done
on Crossbill efficiency, and how many cones/with how many seeds were required
for a crossbill to spend time on a tree. That kind of esoteric passion is fun
to be around and with no effort a special fondness for Crossbills and their
super bill adaptation developed early on in my bird watching ‘career’. That
doesn’t seem like the right word. Anyway….
Back then I would see Crossbills so
infrequently, there could be years between sightings. That made for memorable
moments when I actually did cross paths with them in the Sierras or Santa Cruz
Mountains, always special, noteworthy. My Crossbill luck started to change with
a summer in Homer Alaska (2004). It was a summer filled with showing people
epic tide pools and loads of scope-views of White-winged Crossbills! This was a
time to learn WW Crossbill bubbly in-flight chip calls, which is key (in my
experience) to seeing them. Very seldom is a Crossbill seen before heard.
Irruption - a sudden sharp increase
in the relative numbers of a natural population usually associated with
favorable alteration of the environment
We moved to Vinalhaven that fall
(2004), and little did we know that the table was set for regular path
crossings with both kinds (‘flavors”) of Crossbills. For perspective, ‘we’ note
that White-winged and Red Crossbills are lovingly lumped into/with a group of
birds referred to as ‘winter finches’. Beyond Crossbills this group includes
Redpolls, Pine Siskins, Pine and Evening Grosbeaks, Purple Finch and
Goldfinches. These ‘winter finches’ are ‘irruptive’ species, along with Snowy
Owls Bohemian and Cedar Waxwings, in that their numbers can increase
dramatically in southern North American during winter depending on the status
of their food in northern North American. Bad cone year to the north can mean
lots of Crossbills along the Maine Coast and beyond. And they’ll stay as long
as there are cones. A concrete pattern to this ‘irruptive’ behavior can be
tricky to pinpoint, but ‘rule of thumb’ calls for a large irruptive event every
ten years or so, with smaller irruptive happenings in-between. Never know what
finches you might find in the maritime spruce forest in winter. But this goes
beyond winter!
female adult and juvenile
august 21
Those first few winters in Maine
(05-08) weren’t necessarily ‘big irruptive’ years for ‘winter finches’ in
mid-coast Maine per se, but there was enough regular movement to make
White-winged Crossbills, Pine Grosbeaks and Redpoll sightings ‘uncommon’ depending on where you went on Vinalhaven.
You learned to go to the Huber Preserve to see Pine Grosbeaks, and that the
Basin Preserve was reliable for sizable groups (15+) of White-winged
Crossbills. That was good enough for me.
Amongst the dozens of sightings of these species, only (maybe) twice in
those years did I see Red Crossbills, and both times the flocks were handful
sized (if lucky). Slim pickings, definitely the lesser observed of the two
‘accepted’ Crossbill species during those years.
Things changed (they always are
changing!) during the summer of 2008, which goes down as the summer of the
White-winged Crossbills on Vinalhaven and beyond. My friend ‘Big Al’ Jones was
living with us, and when I told him in late June I had seen some Crossbills
‘Big Al’ mentioned that he had never seen one before. Well, he went from zero
to a gagillion in a matter of weeks – big flocks (25-75) descended onto the
island and roamed freely all summer. They were the first bird I would see every
day that summer, and always the most numerous. Sweet, sweet white winged
crossbill summer of 2008.
But still, Red Crossbills were few
and far between on Vinalhaven. Absent from my records/awareness/memories of
that summer, but they may have been around in small numbers and undetected. The
white-wingeds stayed strong thru the fall and winter (‘09) and when they
finally headed off in early spring what was left behind was a sprinkling of Red
Crossbills in select locations. Their bubbly flight chip calls, however, had
been replaced by singing. With songbirds, singing means mating, and this was a
welcome Red Crossbill development.
Anytime, anywhere
Crossbills tend to nest in late
winter/early spring which is on the ‘early’ side of all things ‘North American
songbird mating wise’. In reality they can breed any time of the year as long
as there is enough food (cones) to support such activity, and of course a
willing mate. Red Crossbill singing/courtship
behavior on Vinalhaven began in early March (09). This mating pattern would be
repeated yearly through 2021 and resulted in large flocks of ‘freshly fledged’
young Red Crossbills (and adults) each May. There would be a week or so where
chatty (and sizable) Red Crossbill flocks would gather and scour the island,
decimating cone crops with their ‘funky mandibles’. And then they’d be gone
(snap of a finger emoji here)! Poof! Before any wave of neo-tropical migratory
songbirds could reach Maine. Ain’t nobody gunna tell Crossbills how or when to
raise their young. Nobody puts Crossbills in a corner. Nobody.
Each winter the Red Crossbills would
return to start the process over. They would be ‘joined’ by White-wingeds most
winters – some years a lot of white-wingeds, others ‘not-so-many’ – and bubbly
Crossbill chatter was appreciated on almost all winter work days and any random
walks through spruce woods along the mid-coast. Those were nice times.
Times they are (always) a-changin’
This last winter – 2022 – was
different (of course) with no Crossbills showing up on my radar even though I
was in the spruce as much as ever. It got me thinking about Professor Benkman
and his crossbill efficiency studies. Had the mid-coast Maine spruce cone crops
dropped to such levels as to leave Crossbills saying ‘such small portions!’ as
they flew to ‘conier-pastures’? Or maybe they struck it rich somewhere else –
north, south, west, who knows (probably not east) – and stayed to raise young
somewhere else. What was clear was that there were few (if any) Crossbills
around, making me appreciate the stretch of years they were here. Didn’t ruin
any days though, never ran out of stuff to see.
Solstice party ‘22
By late June most local songbirds
have settled down a bit on the singing front. I’m not saying they are
‘completely silent’ by any means, but the cacophony of bird song that marks
late May and early June ‘courtship season’ dwindles a bit as energy shifts from
mating to stuffing insects in nestling’s mouths. No way to avoid it – happens
every year.
With that in mind, it was even more
noticeable when the bubbly call of Red Crossbills returned to mid-coast Maine
on June 20th. In the backyard (Tenants Harbor), while changing out trail
cameras in the ‘back woods’, I could hear them coming – bubbly flight chip
calls - and saw the classic undulating
flight of a finch (flap-flap-glide, flap-flap-glide). A flock of 6 or 7 landed
on the tops of a clump of spruce trees next to me – chatty silhouettes in
marginal, afternoon light which ended up emphasizing the ‘crossing of bills’ that much more.
‘Cool’, I think is what I said.
Continual crossbills
There were more in the neighborhood
the next day, allowing for wonderful scope views from the front yard picnic
table. All week I saw Red Crossbills wherever I went, and as June rolled into
and through July the mid-coast Maine Red Crossbill scene was kinda getting
silly.
On Vinalhaven Red Crossbills were at
the Huber, the Basin, and the Barney Point preserves, as well as Lane’s Island,
in town, at the shed, and a handful even flew over the docked ferry while I was
on it! Red Crossbills were on Calderwood island, at the Bamford, Clark Island
and Weskeag preserves on the mainland and were the auditory accompaniment for
any bike ride I went on. The only day I didn’t see/hear Red Crossbills was the
day I mostly spent in line at the Rockland Ferry Terminal! And looking back I am
sure some flew over, but just missed out on timing. Along with Cedar Waxwings,
Red Crossbills became the most numerous bird species I would hear any day in
July. As the song goes - ‘It’s a Red Crossbill Summer’. A song I made up in my
head. Anyway.
I reached out to my ‘birder’ friend
(some would even say ‘Bestie’) Kristen Lindquist to see if she had been seeing
any ‘up Camden way’. Not only had she not seen any Crossbills, she hadn’t seen
any reports of them in the mid-coast (she’s one of ‘those’ birders, that pays
attention to what other people see which makes her not only a great friend but
also a great resource). The lack of reports was surprising because not only was
I seeing them every day, Red Crossbills were becoming the most numerous bird I
would cross paths with.
juvenile Red Crossbill - August 21
Kristen gently tossed out the idea
that maybe I was mistaking ‘goldfinch for crossbills’. Now, I’m always up for
doubting (hey, I am from Jersey remember), and goldfinch flight calls are
somewhat similar to Crossbills, but Goldfinch calls often/usually have a
‘po-ta-toe chip’ pattern. Crossbill calls are way bubbly (have I mentioned that
yet) and after hearing them for over a decade I dare say they sound pretty
different than Goldfinch to me. Plus I wasn’t just hearing them, I was seeing them,
photographing them. So after a few moments I wrote back ‘maybe you are
confusing Crossbills for Goldfinch’. ‘Ha ha’ was her response. That’s the way
we roll.
As far as I knew, I was the only
person on Vinalhaven seeing them for the first few weeks. Then my friend Janet
Ghores, who basically lives in the spruce on Vinalhaven (but really, who
doesn’t?) reported hearing them often and seeing them infrequently. Another
‘bird-aware’ friend on island, Patience Chamberlin, was reporting them from
most walks she was taking. I finally reached out to Trevor Persons (bird and
herp freak, amongst other passions) to see if he had been seeing any in
Crossbills in central Maine (or wherever he lives). And while he hadn’t been
seeing any Crossbills himself, Trevor did mention seeing scattered reports on a
‘bird listserv’ for mid-coast Maine. This all made me feel better about things
– not because I was doubting my sightings (already been through that) – it just
didn’t make sense that others weren’t enjoying this summertime Red Crossbill
event, that literally started about the first day of Summer! Crossbills can be
so under the radar.
This all got me thinking, Crossbills
live that nomadic, irruptive lifestyle, I wonder if there is a way to tell
where these summer visitors might have started from. This is where the fun
began….
The Research/Dangerous Kitchen
adult female Red Crossbill
A little simple Red Crossbill
research turns up info on 10 or so ‘call types’ of the species. These are not
subspecies, but rather groupings within the larger ‘Red Crossbills umbrella’
based on differences/similarities of their calls. The differences in calls
correlate to differences in preferred food/cone types, and the differences in
cone correlates to differences in bill size and structure. Take ‘type 5’ Red
Crossbill for instance, which lives mainly in the western United States and
Canada accessing seeds from Lodgepole Pine and Engelmann Spruce. This
particular type has adapted a ‘large bill’ to open up such hardy cones. It also
sounds unique.
On the other hand, Red Crossbill
‘Type 3’ feeds largely on Western Hemlock in western North America. Hemlock
trees generally have smaller cones with ‘easier’ access than Lodgepole Pines
and thus ‘type 3’ has adapted, over time, a ‘smaller bill’ required to access
such seeds. Both types have distinctive calls to match their distinctive bills.
And while these two types are largely found out west, both types (3 & 5)
have been recorded (identified by call) as far east as New York (type 5) and
through north eastern Maritime forest (type 3)! Bottom line is when the food
runs short in their regular turf they could show up just about anywhere! Begs
the question - what type showed up in mid-coast Maine this summer?
So are they subspecies or something?
Much is still to be learned about Red
Crossbill diversity, and I have certainly not kept up with the knowledge gained
over the years. One type – type 9 - is now officially recognized as its own
species! It’s called the Cassia Crossbill (Loxia sinesciurus) , and is actually
a non-wondering species of crossbill only found in Idaho. It turns out the
Cassia Crossbill is endemic (only found there) to Idaho and live in a handful
of specific Lodgepole Pine forests in Southern part of the state (Twin Falls
and Cassia counties), never straying too far from the habitat (total range of
roughly 67 square kilometers).
male adult Red Crossbill with juvenile
What’s makes these Lodgepole Pine
forests ‘special’ is a complete absence of squirrels (dream world, huh?).With
no squirrel pressure, the Lodgepole Pine cones in these forests have grown
larger and tougher to access, and in response the Cassia Crossbill’s bill is
larger to open up such cones. While other Red Crossbill types may irrupt and
visit these forests they cannot efficiently access the cone seeds and thus
don’t stick around for too long, where the Cassia is right at home. And who
‘discovered’/recognized/described this
as a unique species in 2009? Professor Craig Benkman of course! How cool it
must feel to ‘identify’ a ‘new’ species of Crossbill that has been around (in
Idaho of all places!), but no one has noticed! How has this happened in the
relatively heavily birded United States of America?
In the end, each of the Red Crossbill ‘types’ may very well end up being recognized (eventually) as distinct species
(or subspecies) as more is learned and understood. The variety of Red Crossbill
bill structure adaptations can’t help but remind me of Darwin’s Finches of the
Galapagos. You know, the group of ‘finches’ (not really finches) Darwin
‘collected’ that turned out to be different species on different isolated
islands as the birds adapted their bills and behaviors depending on different
food on said different isolated islands. Legendary breakthrough observations,
(about to totally lead the witness) on adaptive bill radiation, that shares
many aspects/traits with what’s being learned about Red Crossbills. What we have is a Red Crossbill scene that
can be described as ‘potentially multiple (double digits!) speciations of a not
uncommonly seen ‘mother’ species that have not yet been formerly recognized
individually (by humans) just yet’? Not an exact match, but similarities make
them feel similar.
A difference from Darwin’s Finches is
that each Red Crossbill type (minus type 9, which isn’t a type anymore anyway)
may mix with other types thru the magic of irruption. From my understanding
Darwin’s Finches stayed on their island to promote ‘island biogeography’ and
thus split and speciated. Apparently the different Red Crossbill types will
hang, but don’t breed with other types (type-ist solidarity?). In a way, each type has their own ‘islands’
of breeding habitat, and many of those ‘islands’ are amorphous and fluid. Man, I love thinking
about this stuff.
So uh,….now what?
Now it’s August and the Red
Crossbills are still around. Their numbers and sightings have stayed steady
(and daily), but their groups seem to have become more ‘pair based’. Chip calls
have blended into song, giving this bald observer the hope that mating has
happened and that fledglings will be unavoidable sometime soon. I recognized
that it’s a strong possibility that this a false hope, but it’s fun to dream.
Having Red Crossbills around in the summer is beyond any dreams I had before.
It’s okay to dream.
juvenile Red Crossbill
As for me, I am hoping I can start
adding to the knowledge and understanding of Red Crossbills and all their
types. Apparently it’s not all that hard to help. In fact, it’s as simple as
recording Crossbills in the yard, in the travels, and then sending the
recordings to Finch Research Network (FiRN). Never recorded audio wildlife
before, just got to do it I guess.
And in conclusion (I guess)
Didn’t see it coming, but Red
Crossbills have really been the story for me this summer. A consistent (and
constant) layer on top everything else that’s been going on. Only once before
have I felt that I knew something that others didn’t (weird feeling) and that
was when the coyote showed up on Vinalhaven back in 2010. But this has been
different, and I’m so glad others have been able to share in this happening,
this Red Crossbill event. As far as I am concerned (and from my experience) Red
Crossbills in summer (before this summer) was rarer than Stellar Sea Eagles in
Maine. Leave it to nature and the solstice to change that narrative.
I’ll let you know what else we learn,
so far it/s been impressive. And it ends up that I’m still learning from
Professor Benkman, albeit thousands of miles away.
PS – as of this writing Kristen has
still not seen a Red Crossbill this summer in mid-coast Maine!
Pps -
Kristen did see red crossbills at Clark Island (8/11/22). Way to go
Kristen!
Addendum –
(8/21/22) Headed to Clark Island
early in hopes of seeing River Otter that I have been tracking for years. It
was the first time I had ever, actively tried to see River Otters ‘in the
flesh’, as they say, and sure enough I had a session to remember with a group
of 5 of them. While sitting/waiting for the otters to re-emerge (they were
taking ‘minute +’ long dives), and with a huge stroke of luck a flock of chatty
Red Crossbills landed low in the tree I was using as a blind. They were so low
- if I was standing, they would have been eye-level – and maybe only 10 feet
away.
Okay and there you have it – see you
out there!
