Summer this year started on June 20 and ended, well, it hasn’t ended yet. Not until this coming Saturday, the 23rd, which my wall calendar says is the First Day of Autumn. But, this is close enough for now.
Since the first day of summer this year I have added six new species to my life list, which I didn’t actually start keeping in written form until 2021 but it goes back to 2016 when I got my first true camera for bird photography. Fortunately my photo records are intact from that first camera (and my second, and my third) so I could confidently create the list. It stands at 159 species as of this writing.
The six new species for this summer, in chronological order:
Orange-crowned Warbler, July 6
Pileated Woodpecker, July 13
Wow. As I’m making this diary, I realize my four below are comprised of two “two-fers”; two new species each day of two different days. Howzzat fer gettin’ lucky, or what?
Western Kingbird, July 18
Barn Swallow, July 18
Cassin’s Vireo, August 12 (photographed at same location as Lazuli Bunting, same day)
Lazuli Bunting (complete series) August 12
I got to wondering, just how many outings did I make this summer? My photo filing system tells me that, with just a slight bit of keyboarding and mousing. Between June 23 and September 16, sixty-six outings with file folder created. Each day I go out, the photos from that day go into a file just for that day. Each file folder has a unique date code, the Julian Date, so this keeps my files in very neat chronological order for display in my file manager window. The Julian Date is the three-digit number leading each file folder name. Julian Dates correspond exactly to the normal calendar dates. For example “172” corresponds to the 21st of June, “175” to the 24th of June, “190” to the 9th of July:
172 21Jun23 _Spanish Creek _Spotted Towhee _Anna's Hummingbird
175 24Jun23 _Dellinger's Pond _Common Whitetail _seasonal change and overgrowth
176 25Jun23 _Dellinger's Pond _Trail clearing
177 26Jun23 _Oakland Camp bridge _butterflies
178 27Jun23 _Dellinger's Pond _Bullock's and Bullfrog
…
185 04July23 _Leonhardt Ranch _Downy Woodpecker
187 06Jul23 _Spanish Creek _Gansner Park _BlkHdGrosbeak and Orange-crowned Warbler
190 09Jul23 _Leonhardt Ranch _Brewer's Blackbird
You get the idea.
But…
I’ve just realized there’s a deficiency in the way I’ve been filing. There’s no way I can search all my files by bird species, or rather Common Name, such as “Belted Kingfisher” or “Black-billed Magpie”. There’s nothing in the individual file names for each photo that contains that information, since my file names are just the alpha-numeric as assigned by my camera itself, i.e. “DSCN1234”.
I’ve come up with a plan to remedy this, but it’s going to take quite awhile. What I can do, since my bird and nature files have all been through my photo editing program, is use that program to append the Four-letter (English Name)... Alpha Code…in accordance with the 64th AOS Supplement (2023) …
to each and every one of my finished photos. For 2023. Yeah, this means thousands. Thousands? Sounds a bit high. But, if you only averaged three photos daily for the entire year, that’s 1,095 already. Or…
just for the ones I take from now on.
Yeah.
Way better idea.
Now, rather than search through the entire list (as in the sample screenshot above) what I’ll do is just put the four-letter code into the life list of my birds that I’ve already generated. This will only take maybe thirty minutes, or less, as I’ve only got 158 entries to do.
1. Acorn Woodpecker ACWO
2. Allen’s Hummingbird ALHU
3. American Avocet AMAV
4. American Coot AMCO
5. American Dipper AMDI
6. American Goldfinch AGOL
7. American Kestrel AMKE
8. American Robin AMRO
9. American White Pelican AWPE
10. American Wigeon AMWI
11. Anna’s Hummingbird ANHU
12. Ash-throated Flycatcher
13. Bald Eagle
14. Barn Swallow
15. Belted Kingfisher
16. Bewick’s Wren
17. Black Phoebe
18. Black-bellied Plover
19. Black-billed Magpie
20. Black-crowned Night Heron
(and so on and so forth...)
I guess I’d better go do that. I’ll be back.
Oh no. You didn’t actually play that, did you? Did you? Oh, sheesh.
I’VE DECIDED SCRATCH ALL THAT. Way too much work, way tedious, and not worth it.
Never mind.
I’ve got a couple of other ways to find my photos by animal name. I’m going to be satisfied with that.
🦨 🦔 🦖 🦞 🦚 🦇 🦠 🧠
All right, I gotta get back on track with the birds here at Dawn Chorus, this is serious, dammit, and no place for funnin’ around.
Bird. On track.
Oh yeah. You actually did watch this one, didn’t you? If not, go back and watch it now. There’s a Roadrunner [bird] in it.
🦆 🦃 🦅 🦉 🐦 🐤
Other than new species, here’s a selection of some of my favorite bird photos from this summer. I give the Western Tanager and the young Red-tailed Hawk extra mention because they’re very special to me; otherwise there’s only one species each. I’ve left several very common species out, like American Robin, House Wren, Black Phoebe, and Song Sparrow. I do take photos of them, but mainly because I don’t want to miss a shot just in case the bird happens to be something else.
Update, Sep. 9. Five Red-tailed Hawks, within just over one-hour envelope and two mile radius.
Final update, Sep. 16, 2023. Three “first-of-season” for me. A video to go with the Loggerhead Shrike.
I’ll close this diary with the Loggerhead video. Keith Hansen’s Birds of the Sierra Nevada says of the bird:
Not vocally gifted. Monotonous chur-chur, meadowlark or thrasher-like rolling chtttttttr. High, thin chee-verr, first note level, second down. Alarm, rasping down-slurred aannnnngh!
I heard and counted at least five separate distinguishable calls/songs (you can’t hardly call any of these vocalizations a “song”, IMHO). Here’s how I hear them (with first-times noted):
- chirip-chirip; 0:01, 0:04
- pul-leep; 0:07
- bee-dee-bee; 0:16
- trzzz; 0:42, 0:47
- heeezzzz; 0:58
- and then a final, barely audible ahh; 1:54
Maybe y’all can translate Shrike better than me.
😁
That fairly well shows my summer.
What’s been happening in your bird/birding/birdie world?