Hunting Digital Plumes in the US and Beyond: A Fine Finch: the Pine Siskin plus Hermit Thrush, Ruby-crowned Kinglet and White-breasted Nuthatch

Sunday, October 26, 2014

A Fine Finch: the Pine Siskin plus Hermit Thrush, Ruby-crowned Kinglet and White-breasted Nuthatch

[Wetzel SRA and Lake St. Clair Metropark. MI. October 2014]

The family of American finches boasts a wide array of finches, grosbeaks and crossbills. Some are truly spectacular -- such as this blogger's personal favorite: the Rosy Finches. However, there's more to finches than the rather small-ranging and hard-to-see iconic rosy finches of the West. And, a prime example of a finch that is both delightful and yet fairly common across all of the US is the Pine Siskin.

Famous for its periodic irruption, Pine Siskin numbers can spike unpredictably year over year; but, the best chance of seeing one is definitely going to be in Winter -- a time when they can range as far down as Texas (eg., in Hueco Tanks) but rarely as far as in Southern Florida.

A quick tour of a couple of choice birding locales -- Wetzel State Recreation Area and Lake St. Clair Metropark -- yielded the Siskin as well as some other species:

Pine Siskin
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
White-breasted Nuthatch
Hermit Thrush
Red-winged Blackbird
European Starling

We start with the Pine Siskin observed at Wetzel SRA:

Pine Siskin observed at Wetzel SRA

Wetzel SRA is open to hunting starting September 1st and during this blogger's brief visit, more hunters than siskins were observed. While the identification characteristics of the former are somewhat more obvious (it's hard to ignore shotguns, orange vests and hunting dogs-in-tow); the latter may be identified by heavy streaking, a thin, pointed bill, a strongly notched tail and a conspicuous patch of yellow in the wings.

Pine Siskin observed at Wetzel SRA

Pine Siskins are both gregarious and noisy; their chattering, buzzing chips are often the first sign of their presence.

Pine Siskin observed at Wetzel SRA

With the Siskin "in the (photographic) bag" (so to speak), this blogger beat an urgent retreat from Wetzel as a result of stern and repeated admonishment administered by the hunters present -- the reason being, and rightly so, for the lack of bright safety-clothing on my person.

Conditioned, as any birder is, by years of trying to blend into the surroundings, sartorial inconspicuousness is, regrettably, a virtue that can prove fatal in the hunting season.

Clearly, "hunting plumes digitally" and "hunting plumes with lead" are vocations that require some important differences in approach.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

Unlike the dozen-odd species of finch, there are only two kinglets in the US -- the Golden-crowned and the Ruby-crowned.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

A tiny, olive-drab songster with a prominent white eye-ring and wingbar, this neckless, small-billed feathered wonder, unlike the seed favoring Siskin, is an insectivore.

Other birds observed included the resident White-breasted Nuthatch:


White-breasted Nuthatch seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

This nuthatch is ripe for a split with studies suggesting 3 (even possibly 4) species.

White-breasted Nuthatch seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

The bird shown here would belong to the "Carolina" species if the split were to go ahead -- with a broad, black crown, pale grey back and buffy flanks. Unlike the finch and the kinglet, the Nuthatch is a year-round resident throughout its range.

White-breasted Nuthatch seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

Next, a thrush, hiding in the thickets blending in perfectly:

Hermit Thrush seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

A view of its rusty tail, confirms that this is a Hermit Thrush:

Hermit Thrush seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

Red-winged Blackbirds, which have been silent for a couple of months, have started to display and vocalize again:

Red-winged Blackbird seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

And seen here with an autumnal background:

Red-winged Blackbird seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

Derisively termed as a "trash bird", the European Starling is here for no fault of its own:

European Starling seen at Lake St. Clair Metropark

.. .and it has done in its adopted home what Nature demands of it -- adapt and survive.

Winter threatens a slower recreational season with colder temperatures and shorter days but delightful arrivals such as the unique Pine Siskin keep the fires of birding aflame.

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What is Plume Hunting?

Plume hunting was big business in the late 1800's. Unfortunately, the dark side to the beauty of plumes led to the slaughter of millions of birds so women could wear fancy hats (Read about Plume Hunting).

Thankfully, in this age of digitization, we can capture most anything we want -- books, music, video, etc. -- digitally. And, with the advent of digital photography at the turn of the millennium, we can once again hunt for plumes -- but digitally; with none of the accompanying destruction. This blog is dedicated to capturing the beauty of nature reflected through the incredible diversity of our avifauna.

Reproduced below is ecofeminist Celia Thaxter's, "Woman’s Heartlessness" (Boston 1886; reproduced from Google Books) which was published at the time when plumes were worth their weight in gold and many species of birds were fast headed toward extinction:

WOMAN’S HEARTLESSNESS
By Celia Laighton Thaxter

When the Audubon Society was first organized, it seemed a comparatively simple thing to awaken in the minds of all bird-wearing women a sense of what their “decoration” involved. We flattered ourselves that the tender and compassionate heart of woman would at once respond to the appeal for mercy, but after many months of effort we are obliged to acknowledge ourselves mistaken in our estimate of that universal compassion, that tender heart in which we believed. Not among the ignorant and uncultivated so much as the educated and enlightened do we find the indifference and hardness that baffles and perplexes us. Not always, heaven be praised! But too often,--I think I may say in two-thirds of the cases to which we appeal. One lady said to me, “I think there is a great deal of sentiment wasted on the birds. There are so many of them, they will never be missed any more than mosquitoes. I shall put birds on my new bonnet.” This was a fond and devoted mother, a cultivated and accomplished woman. It seemed a desperate case, indeed, but still I strove with it. “Why do you give yourself so much trouble?” she asked. “They will soon go out of fashion, and there will be an end of it.” That may be,” I replied, “but fashion next year may order them back again, and how many women will have human feeling enough to refuse to wear them? It was merely waste of breath, however, and she went her way, a charnel-house of beaks and claws and bones and feathers and glass eyes upon her fatuous head.

Another, mockingly, says, “Why don’t you try to save the little fishes in the sea?” and continues to walk the world with dozens of warblers’ wings making her headgear hideous. Not one in fifty is found willing to remove at once the birds from her head, even if, languidly, she does acquiesce in the assertion that it is a cruel sin against nature to destroy them. “When these are worn out I am willing to promise not to buy any more,” is what we hear, and we are thankful, indeed, for even so much grace; but alas! birds never “wear out.” And as their wearer does not carry a placard stating their history, that they were bought last year, or perhaps given to her, and she does not intend to buy any more, her economy goes on setting the bad example, or it may be her indolence is to blame, one is as fatal as the other. Occasionally, but too rarely, we meet with a fine spirit, the fire of whose generous impulse consumes at once all selfish considerations, who recognizes the importance of her own responsibility, and whose action is swift as her thought to pluck our the murderous sign, and go forth free of its dishonor. And how refreshing is the sight of the birdless bonnet! The face beneath, no matter how plain it may be, seems to possess a gentle charm. She might have had birds, this woman, for they are cheap and plentiful enough, heaven knows! But she has them not, therefore she must wear within things infinitely precious,--namely, good sense, good taste, good feeling. Heaven bless every woman who dares turn her back on Fashion and go about thus beautifully adorned!

In one of the most widely circulated newspapers the fashionable news from Paris begins: “Birds are worn more than ever.” Birds “are worn!” Pitiful phrase! Sentence of deadly significance! “Birds are worn,”—as if that were final, as if all women must follow one another like a flock of sheep over a wall, and forget reason, forget the human heart within, forget everything but the empty pride of being “in the fashion.” Ah me, my fire-flecked oriole, watching your airy cradle from the friendly swinging elm bough, go get yourself an inky coat. Your beauty makes you but a target for the accursed gun that shatters your lovely life, quenches your delicious voice, destroys your love, your bliss, your dutiful cares, your whole beautiful being, that your dead body may disfigure some woman’s head and call all eyes to gaze at her! But no,--that will not save you. Blackbirds are not safe, they “are worn.” Carrion crows “are worn,” unsavory scavengers though they be. No matter on what they may have fed,--they “are worn.” Soar, swift sea-swallow,--I would it could be millions of miles away from the haunts of men; to the uttermost parts of the earth and the ocean carry your grace, your slender loveliness of shape, your matchless delicacy of tint and tone of color, soft, wondrous like gray cloud and silvery snow,--fly! dear and beautiful creature; seek the centre of the storm, the heart of the Arctic cold, the winter blast, they are not so unkind as—woman’s vanity. Do I not see you every day, your mocking semblance writhing as if in agony round female heads,--still and stark, sharp wings and tail pointing in stiff distress to heaven, your dried and ghastly head and beak dragged down to point to the face below, as if saying, “She did it.” The albatross of the Ancient Mariner is not more dreadful. Yesterday I saw three of you on one hat! Three terns at once, a horrible confusion of death and dismay.

Does any woman imagine these withered corpses (cured with arsenic) which she loves to carry about, are beautiful? Not so; the birds lost their beauty with their lives. Today I saw a mat woven of warblers' heads, spiked all over its surface with sharp beaks, set up on a bonnet and borne aloft by its possessor in pride! Twenty murders on one! and the face beneath bland and satisfied, for are not "Birds to be worn more than ever?" Flit, sandpiper, from the sea's margin to some loneliness remote and safe from the noble race of man! No longer in the soft May twilight call from cove to cove along the shore in notes that seem to breathe the very spirit of tender joy, of happy love, of sweet content; tones that mingle so divinely with the warm waves' murmur, with the south wind's balm, and sound in music through the dusk, long after the last crimson flash of sunset has faded from the sky year after year you come back to make your nest in the place you know and love, but you shall not live your humble, blissful, dutiful life, you shall not guard your treasured home, nor rejoice when your little ones break the silence with their first cry to you for food. You shall not shelter and protect and care for them with the same divine instinct you share with human mothers. No, some woman wants your corpse to carry on her head. You shall die that vanity, that "Fashion" may live.

I fear we no longer deserve these golden gifts of God. I would the birds could all emigrate to some friendlier planet peopled by a nobler race than ours, where they might live their sweet lives unmolested, and be treated with the respect, the consideration, and the grateful love which are their due. For we have almost forfeited our right to the blessing of their presence.

But still we venture to hope for a better future, still the Audubon and other societies work with heart and soul, to protect and save them, and we trust yet to see the day when women, one and all, will look upon the wearing of birds in its proper light,--namely, as a sign of heartlessness and a mark of ignominy and reproach.

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Sunday, October 26, 2014

A Fine Finch: the Pine Siskin plus Hermit Thrush, Ruby-crowned Kinglet and White-breasted Nuthatch

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