Where will you go? (1 Viewer)

[Jos Stratford]

Yeah, give me a break. Half of Europe still keeps the stupid idea of wearing masks outdoors. I am not going anywhere where that stupidity continues, no thanks.

And let's see what actually will be the reality after July 1 before we praise it, shall we? Currently, it's far from that and the promises have been broken repeatedly.

Not to mention that that's the EU, incidentally a part of the world that's just not very appealing in summer to go to.

Don't need to wait till 1 July, can already travel to several EU countries freely if with Covid vaccination and to most of the others with a negative test.

However, with your definition of 'stupidity' and 'absurd', very good that you don't want to travel, there'll be many that don't want you.

Incidentally, for someone into other wildlife, such butterflies, amphibians, etc, as I thought you were, July is peak season in much of Europe.

 

[Andy Adcock]

And there is also not just the problem of travelling out - I have made a stupid mistake of moving to Czech Republic at the end of June. Currently the rules there are such, that return from any "dark red" country means five days of quarantine - and that list includes several EU countries, but more insanely, the UK, where there is almost no covid .... it's all idiotic politics, completely detached from any epidemiology. As a bonus, if you enter from ANY country, you must wear a N95 unvalved mask everywhere for two weeks after return, no exception. Yeah what an absolutely free travel!!!

Then there is stuff like Croatia, where you can go, but can only enter with a proof of accomodations booking. What freedom! That's what I meant by travel being a chore. I afraid many places will follow this Croatia model - look at what happened at Galapagos now, where you can enter only on a tout basically because you need a "certificate of sanitary travel". This was the lifetime opportunity for tour lobby to finally kill independent travel and they are gonna yake that everywhere they will be able to.

UK citizens have just been banned from entering Austria due to the outbreaks of the 'Indian variant'.

 

[Lerxst]

It is ironic that last fall and winter, long before any vaccines, it was easy to leave the USA to go to certain places (Mexico, Brazil) and return with no hassles whatsoever. So we did just that, and had great trips. Now we are vaccinated, but have zero travel plans outside of the USA, because of the requirement of a negative test result 72 hours prior to returning home. That was started in late January, a week after we got back from Brazil, and is still in effect. I have no interest in paying for an invasive nose swab, as a vaccinated person with negligible risk of having the virus, in order to return to a largely vaccinated country. So we are doing domestic onesy-twosy jaunts for now until they change the policy.

 

[opisska]

Yeah, I am absolutely green with jealousy for people for whom "domestic" means "the entirety of the USA", as that's an incredibly huge and varied area. In 6 weeks, "domestic" is going to mean 80000 sq. kms of land to me ....

 

[Lerxst]

Well if it makes you feel any better we have been birding here for decades or so and have only a handful of target species left. So we end up spending days in the car just to get one lifer, then several more days to get another, and the returns are always diminishing. It is a very inefficient way to add to one's life list.

 

[Lerxst]

People often talk about trips in terms of a "cost per bird" metric, but I tend to worry more about "time per bird" for two reasons. First, my wife gets very little vacation time to use, so we always want to spend those days where we will get the most new species per day. Second, I am already legally blind and my eyesight is not going to get any better, so I am making a concerted effort to see as many new birds as I can while I can. Actually I have a specific goal to get at least 50% of the Clement's taxonomy and then relax and stop the relentless lifer collecting at that point.

 

[opisska]

Oh that's you, I read you pages before and that eye condition sucks! I somewhat understand this "my health is not getting any better" angle for not being actually that healthy myself (with lovely prospects of getting worse) ... but we haven't birded for so long, so we have still not completely dried out the area, especially with twitching - and I also still quite enjoy seeing the birds again What we did though is that we branched into all sorts of other animals and that keeps us occupied quite well ... but many more of them are quite close but across some stupid border! In Poland it's still quite nice, because the country is bigger, but Czech Republic is a place where you can't drive for more than three hours in any direction without hitting a border. So the vastness of US is just something I romanticize .... oh, well, I thought this would be now basically the same in the EU before the pandemics and then I got shown how deeply wrong I had been all the time!

I mean I am diverting here a bit and ranting, but the situation is just frustrating - and I feel a lot of it is completely needless at this point, which is even more frustrating.

 

[Andy Adcock]

It is ironic that last fall and winter, long before any vaccines, it was easy to leave the USA to go to certain places (Mexico, Brazil) and return with no hassles whatsoever. So we did just that, and had great trips. Now we are vaccinated, but have zero travel plans outside of the USA, because of the requirement of a negative test result 72 hours prior to returning home. That was started in late January, a week after we got back from Brazil, and is still in effect. I have no interest in paying for an invasive nose swab, as a vaccinated person with negligible risk of having the virus, in order to return to a largely vaccinated country. So we are doing domestic onesy-twosy jaunts for now until they change the policy.

The problem with this for birders, is that on a typical birding trip, you'd now have to make sure that you were in a place where you could get a test, 72hrs before coming home. It's one thing for tourists on a package holiday who'll be in the same place for two weeks but on trips that are often quite complex, this really adds an unwelcome dimension to current and possibley, future, travel.

 

[Nightjar61]

The problem with this for birders, is that on a typical birding trip, you'd now have to make sure that you were in a place where you could get a test, 72hrs before coming home. It's one thing for tourists on a package holiday who'll be in the same place for two weeks but on trips that are often quite complex, this really adds an unwelcome dimension to current and possibley, future, travel.

I had a trip to the Dominican Republic planned just about the time when a negative test result within 72 hours of returning to the US was required. For the reasons pointed out by Andy, I cancelled the trip. Fortunately the local guide was willing to let me reschedule at a time when international travel becomes feasible again.

In the meantime, like Lerxst, I am traveling within the US. And like him, I have very few target species left. In March I did a mop-up trip to Texas, where the stars aligned and I got four very tough-to-get lifers.

And in a little over three weeks I’m heading to Idaho for a week where six potential lifers are my targets. (Two are owls so I have no real expectations of finding them). The main target, of course, is Cassia Crossbill, but I also hope to find Sharp-tailed Grouse, Pacific Wren, and Sagebrush Sparrow. Also, I hope to find Chukar, which I have seen in Central Asia, but need for my ABA Area list.

Dave

 

[Lerxst]

I had a trip to the Dominican Republic planned just about the time when a negative test result within 72 hours of returning to the US was required. For the reasons pointed out by Andy, I cancelled the trip. Fortunately the local guide was willing to let me reschedule at a time when international travel becomes feasible again.

In the meantime, like Lerxst, I am traveling within the US. And like him, I have very few target species left. In March I did a mop-up trip to Texas, where the stars aligned and I got four very tough-to-get lifers.

And in a little over three weeks I’m heading to Idaho for a week where six potential lifers are my targets. (Two are owls so I have no real expectations of finding them). The main target, of course, is Cassia Crossbill, but I also hope to find Sharp-tailed Grouse, Pacific Wren, and Sagebrush Sparrow. Also, I hope to find Chukar, which I have seen in Central Asia, but need for my ABA Area list.

Dave

We just did the Cassia Crossbill a couple weeks ago. Diamondfield Jack campground produced, but it was not easy for us. (Someone there the following day posted pics of them on the ground next to where we parked, though! $%^@&!!) And there was at least one Red Crossbill there to make it really challenging. Only by scrutinizing my recordings of the flight calls after we got home was I able to definitely say that we got a Cassia. Saw several silent crossbills but could not honestly make an ID.

A few years ago we picked up Chukars on Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake - not too far from there.

 

[opisska]

I have not heard of the Cassia Crossbill before - it looks like the Americans got jealous and wanted their own Scottish Crossbill

 

[Andy Adcock]

I have not heard of the Cassia Crossbill before - it looks like the Americans got jealous and wanted their own Scottish Crossbill

With nineteen, widely dispersed races, I think we can probably expect more splits from Red / Common Crossbill?

 

[Nightjar61]

We just did the Cassia Crossbill a couple weeks ago. Diamondfield Jack campground produced, but it was not easy for us. (Someone there the following day posted pics of them on the ground next to where we parked, though! $%^@&!!) And there was at least one Red Crossbill there to make it really challenging. Only by scrutinizing my recordings of the flight calls after we got home was I able to definitely say that we got a Cassia. Saw several silent crossbills but could not honestly make an ID.

A few years ago we picked up Chukars on Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake - not too far from there.

Diamondfield Jack Campground does seem to be the place to find them. eBird checklists indicate that people who go there generally find the crossbills without too much time and effort. I am a bit apprehensive, though, about identifying them from their call notes.

Dave

 

[Andy Adcock]

Diamondfield Jack Campground does seem to be the place to find them. eBird checklists indicate that people who go there generally find the crossbills without too much time and effort. I am a bit apprehensive, though, about identifying them from their call notes.

Dave

And how many people 'presume' the ID when Red Crossbill is there too?

 

[Lerxst]

When studying up before hand, listening to clear recordings of Cassia vs. types 2 and 5, the call notes sounded readily differentiable to my ears, BUT, of course, a distant bird against a sonic background of windy trees and nonstop chatter from finches and juncos and kinglets was another matter entirely. Which is why I had my digital recorder running almost the entire time we were there. I only paused it when playing various crossbill calls off my phone to try to get a live comparison to what I just heard - this approach did allow me to quickly ID a type 5 which was, of course, the one bird that was near and calling quite clearly. After I got home and parsed all the spectrograms I could see and hear the Cassia note in just one instance, while the type 5 was very obvious.

All in all, this is about my least favorite way to have to get an ID, but we were lucky we got this much. As we were wrapping up a lot of people showed up, including some with ATVs, and it got really noisy.

The thicker bill of the Cassia vs Red is something that I honestly don't see in the few photos that I found. It seems very subtle. Maybe if you are one of the lucky people that gets some birds on the ground it will be visible. I saw one crossbill, for about 10 seconds, the entire time we were there, at the top of a tree in poor light and I have no idea what it was, beyond being a female. My wife saw another one, but saw nothing definitive about the bill.

I can imagine that for someone that deals with these birds regularly, it isn't too difficult, but for us at least, this was a very challenging experience.

 

[Andy Adcock]

I can imagine that for someone that deals with these birds regularly, it isn't too difficult, but for us at least, this was a very challenging experience.

Are you familiar with the debate around Scottish Crossbill?

 

[MikeInPA]

Are you familiar with the debate around Scottish Crossbill?

Can you fill the rest of the world in on the current Scotbill situation please?

 

[jurek]

There should be an app for that.

Something which is permanently on a phone, and when the microphone picks the sounds of the right crossbill (or another rarity), it beeps.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Can you fill the rest of the world in on the current Scotbill situation please?

Not sure anyone can Mike, my British list is going backwards and this will probably be the next to go, lumped 😩 .

Debate as to if there is any such species as Scottish Crossbill, call is said to be different but significant overlap with Common Crossbill in bill size

 

[MikeInPA]

Not sure anyone can Mike, my British list is going backwards and this will probably be the next to go, lumped 😩 .

Same here, I've been goin backwards for years.