Overthinking it

On Saturday, I took part in an exciting discovery at Placerita Canyon. My fellow-birder and I were able to ID, based on its unique cat-like mewing call, a California Gnatcatcher. The bird list I got from the nature center there indicates it as a rare winter visitor to that park, recorded before only in 1972 and 1999. 

         

This morning, I am going over a photo that I took yesterday. Because the photo is taken from directly below it, all I can really make out was the plain underside, and a little bit of the head, showing a light supercilium. Very little is visible of the wings, and its back is completely hidden.

I can tell it is a sparrow, but which one? I sift and scan through pictures and drawings of various native species in books and websites. White-crowned sparrow? Chipping sparrow? Clearly not, no indication of the stripes on the crown, plus, wrong beak coloration. Song sparrow? Lincoln sparrow? No, no streaking on the chest. Savannah sparrow? No, no yellow visible. Brewer's sparrow? Possibly, but the facial markings would be different ... I groan and complain loudly to no one in particular how hard this bird is to identify. I even go so far as to send out the photos to some birder friends asking for help.

Hearing my vexation, my six-year old strolls up from behind, takes one look at the picture on the computer screen, and says, "Dad, isn't that just a regular [house] sparrow?"

Oh.

He's right, of course.

Augury

Image from http://birdsandclimate.audubon.org/

The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria. His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds: whether they are flying in groups or alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind of birds they are. This was known as "taking the auspices." The ceremony and function of the augur was central to any major undertaking in Roman society—public or private—including matters of war, commerce, and religion.   (from Wikipedia)

The NYTimes today carries an excellent op-ed piece by Brian Kimberling that advocates paying serious attention to todays augurs. He points at the following finding by Audubon about the connection between bird movements and climate change, based on a review of its annual Christmas Bird Counts over the last forty years (see also the image above for a visual illustration of this fact):

Nearly 60% of the 305 species found in North America in winter are on the move, shifting their ranges northward by an average of 35 miles. Audubon scientists analyzed 40 years of citizen-science Christmas Bird Count data — and their findings provide new and powerful evidence that global warming is having a serious impact on natural systems. Northward movement was detected among species of every type, including more than 70 percent of highly adaptable forest and feeder birds.

The Wikipedia article on "Augur" notes that an augur "does not predict what course of action should be taken, but through his augury he finds signs on whether or not a course already decided upon meets with divine sanction and should proceed." The signs we are getting from the birds adds weight to the growing consensus that the course we humans have been following must be changed.

(The author of that NYTimes piece Brian Kimberling has a new book out called "Snapper", apparently a collection of fictional stories about an ornithologist who studies the connection between bird migration and climate change. I look forward to reading it.)