Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

On Christmas 1974, I got the two most perfect gifts of my entire life thanks to Russ, who had asked his parents to give me a pair of binoculars and a field guide to birds. In the next few days, I read the Peterson guide cover to cover. How could there possibly be so many birds? One little bird was slate-colored on its head, upper breast, back, and tail, but had a white tummy—that would be easy to remember! But with all the strange new names and ornithological vocabulary sloshing around in my brain like alphabet soup, the name didn’t stick in my head.

After I finished reading the Peterson guide, I bought and read the Golden Guide cover to cover, and somewhere in the middle, I came across that slate gray bird with the white tummy. Yes! It was a Black Phoebe. I was sure I could remember that.

But when I got close to the back of the Golden Guide, oops—there it was again, but now they were calling what looked like the exact same bird a Slate-colored Junco! How on earth was I ever going to master this birding stuff?

The Golden Guide had range maps, and when I went back to the Black Phoebe entry, I saw that it could be found only in the Southwest and up the California coast—places I couldn’t imagine ever getting to. That explained why it wasn’t in the Peterson guide, which included only Eastern species. So I knew if I ever saw a slate-gray bird with a white tummy, it would be a junco.

Sure enough, on March 21, 1975, when we were visiting Russ’s parents over spring break, I saw my first junco in their backyard—# 13 on my life list. I saw several more that spring, and by autumn, juncos were easy. But I still felt unsure about whether I’d ever be able to tell a junco from a Black Phoebe if I ever did make it to the Southwest, so I carefully studied a lot of juncos. Every one of them had a pale, pinkish bill which was also quite thick. The illustrations of the Black Phoebe showed it with a slender, black bill.

It took a year or more for me to feel confident about recognizing flycatchers by their bill shape and somewhat vertical stance, often sallying forth to snatch insects in mid-air, and never hopping or scratching on the ground.

Eastern Phoebes nested at the Kellogg Biological Station where I took a field ornithology class in summer 1975—the very first species I added to my life list during that class. I had plenty of opportunities to observe them wagging their tail, a habit shared with the Black Phoebe but not the junco. Maybe I’d get the hang of birding yet!

Seven years later, in April 1982, when our first baby was six months old, Russ had a meeting in Las Vegas and enough vacation time saved up that we made it into a family trip, heading to the Grand Canyon and Southeast Arizona after his meeting. A wonderful birder from Las Vegas, Marian Cressman, took me birding for two full days while Russ was at his sessions even though I warned her that I’d have the baby along—she was fine with that.

Marian got me several treasured lifers, including Burrowing Owl, Lewis’s Woodpecker, and Phainopepla, and also my very first Black Phoebe. I was thrilled, and very proud of myself for figuring that one out on my own, thanks to its black bill, tail-wagging, and fluttering out to capture insects on the wing. I saw Black Phoebes a few times in Arizona on that trip, too. Since then, I’ve seen them many times in five states in the Southwest, and also in Costa Rica and Mexico.

Obviously I’ve never ever seen a Black Phoebe in the Midwest—there are absolutely no records ever of one showing up anywhere near here. Well, there weren’t any records in Minnesota until just this Saturday afternoon, when a birder named Ben Stubbs found one in the Agate Bay parking lot at Gooseberry Falls State Park. The bird moved to the lagoon where a lot more birders saw it. I didn’t notice the message about it until later in the afternoon; Frank Nicoletti and I decided to try for it Sunday morning.

It was a perfect day for a drive up the shore. Most of the leaves had fallen but the fall colors were still pretty. When we got to the place where the bird was supposed to be, it was like a fun reunion—Jan and Larry Kramer were there looking, my birding friend and my daughter’s neighbor Bruce Munson, and a host of others. The bird had been seen a few minutes before we got there, but some people besides us hadn’t seen it yet, so even as people chatted and caught up, everyone kept their binoculars trained to the areas where it was last seen. And suddenly, Frank spotted it! It was tiny and all the way across the lagoon, tricky for my old eyes to spot, but I grabbed a few marginal photos. And just like that, I had a new Minnesota bird for the second weekend in a row!

What brought the little thing so far from home? Black Phoebes aren’t particularly migratory—indeed, many pairs remain on and near their breeding territories year-round. Since I started birding, they’ve extended their range further north along the Pacific Coast and into northern Arizona and New Mexico and even into much of Utah and western Colorado. Although this range expansion is almost certainly due in part to climate change, their adapting to urban parks, beaches, and waterfronts must also be a factor.

But even as they’ve moved northward, Black Phoebes are not known for wandering. There are some Florida records, but this is a first anywhere in the Midwest. Oddly enough, by Sunday night one “cool fact” in Cornell’s All About Birds entry read:

Black Phoebes don’t usually venture outside their breeding and wintering areas, but on rare occasions they are seen as far east as Florida. One misplaced bird showed up in Minnesota in the fall.

Someone at Cornell must have been hard at work this weekend.

This little bird was seen Again on Monday. Birders will keep looking every day till the little guy lights out for the territory, and I’ll feel bad for the birders that miss it, but I’m still hoping against hope that it works its way back to where it belongs. Godspeed, little bird.