The Art of Deception

This year seems to be accelerating as we get closer to the end. I probably sound like a broken record by now – although technically more like that annoying scratch in the licorice pizza that keeps skipping the needle back about three grooves. I am sure that analogy is lost on today’s generation along with the whole “concept” album where you need to keep focus for 40 minutes to take in the progression of songs. Getting way off track here “kaachuuuuunnnk” (see what I did there, threw in a throwback to the 8-track ha). Back on needle point, I can’t believe it is the last day of November. Less than a month to get through family gatherings, Intrigued staff performance reviews and pack for the trip south. The good news is, I am finally digging into all the captures during our January trip to Texas. Filling up the queues for upcoming posts (including topic fodder during our travels). Between Brad and I, we have plenty of adventures to keep you entertained well into next year and we will be constantly adding from all the new field work in the plans.

To help set the mood, thought I would feature one of those birds found back in January, New Year’s Day to be exact.

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

Hit the jump to read about one of the masters in the Art of Deception!

For those of you in the Information Technology arena, I’m not talking about Kevin Mitnik (link here – note this is not an endorsement of his book). I am not a fan of his, but if you want to get around any technical security, go after the people. I will give him credit for the clever title as it does perfectly fit the clever American Bittern.

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

Granted I cheated a bit for you and tried to position myself to limit its natural ability to blend into its preferred habitat. Without that, these long necked shorebirds can be very hard to pick out among the brown reeds and weeds. When alerted to danger, this large Bittern will straighten out its long neck and point their bill skyward. The brown coloring with strategic placed white lines down the neck enable it to blend in with its surroundings. There it will sit motionless or even sway ever so slightly to mirror the reeds until a predator loses interest and moves along. If you recall, the last time I featured the American version I didn’t get a chance to witness this clever behavior (link here).

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

I probably posed less of a threat in that first encounter as we were up on a boardwalk at Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center in Port Aransas, TX. This first day of the new year encounter took place at eye-level while visiting Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas. To no fault of the subject, it was spotted completely by accident. There was easy pickings for +1s now that a new Average Year had begun (link here). My shutter finger was on full throttle while standing on the bank taking sweeping bursts across the target rich lake. With The Beast, I was shooting well beyond the foreground and completely forgot about the reeds on the bank I was standing in front of until the arms succumbed to the glass weight. That is when the extra hues of yellow on the bill were noticed.

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

Well, well, well, what do we have here. Humans are gifted with exceptional eyesight so its clever ruse was up. We also have very good edge detection which made the eye circle more distinguishable. I say that a bit in jest as I obviously didn’t notice it on first pass ha. Regardless, now I was on it and this Bittern apparently knew it. “If I can’t fool him with the reed trick, I’ll make it a pain in that ass for this biped to get a picture!” This is when I immediately realized they may be even better camouflaged when they are more horizontal to the reeds. The feather coloring and textures are absolutely perfect for this particular habitat.

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

To its credit, it didn’t seemed too startled and proceeded to calmly stroll in this small boat dock area intent on any movement in the water. Of course, it kept reeds and other obstacles between him/her and The Beast resulting in a shocking number of images hitting the circular file cabinet in the digital darkroom.

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

How about some interesting tidbits on our stealthy shorebird. The good news is just about anyone in North American and down into Central American has a chance to experience this bird in the field at some point in the season (sorry Alaska, you are right out). Following the traditional bird movements, they tend to breed northerly which includes the upper half of the States and well into Canada. From there they will migrate through the middle states until reaching their wintering grounds along the southern border and all of Central America. Austin is a bit north of where Cornell indicated for their nonbreeding home. I didn’t realize it until I went to put in the eBird sighting last week that this was considered a rare sighting for that lake. Ooops! I try to be timely on my reports, but when you are birding every single day of the month from sunup to sundown a few drop off from time to time.

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

The calls of the American Bittern will never be mistaken for a song bird. I am going to quote Cornell’s description as it is better than what I can come up with for their guttural vocalizations – “booming, clacking, gulping”. They also referenced their quirky nicknames “Thunder-pumper, water-belcher and mire-drum”. Who’s with me from here on out always revering to them as Thunder-pumpers!?! You want to change bird names… that is one I can actually get behind. Something new for me is their yellow eyes supposedly turn orange during the frisky months. I am definitely going to add that to my list of “Target Shots”.

American Bittern found at Walter E. Long Lake in Austin Texas, January 2023

I should point out that they have a much more diminutive kin named the Least Bittern (link here). You will never mistake the two as the American is over 23 inches long, weighing in around 14oz with an impressive 36 inch wingspan. Contrast that with the Least’s maximum length of 14 inches, only weighing ~2.5oz with a meager 17 inch wingspan. For the record, I have NEVER seen a Bittern actually fly so taking Cornell’s word on that.

The needle has come to the end of the record now and time to gently lever it back to the storage position. Hope you enjoyed this tasty tune from Texas. Take care everyone, see you in December as we start wrapping up 2023. Now the rest of the Intrigued staff need to start submitting their self-assessments!

116 thoughts on “The Art of Deception”

  2. Interesting, 99% of Bitterns (European) I’ve seen here have been in flight. They are still very rare in the UK but my area, the Norfolk Broads, is considered a hotspot especially in hard winters when migrants come from the Continent. Their flight is like that of a giant owl.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. How intriguing, you definitely have had a different experience than I have or your species are a bit more skittish than ours. I am constantly being startled by Owls launching off the roadside trees while driving out here in the country after dark. They basically drop right toward you until they get enough air under their wings – country road death guanlets – one eye on the dumbass deer, another on the rest of the wildlife that can’t figure out those two bright lights coming right at them are dangerous ha. Thanks for dropping in B. and take care this holiday season.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    1. Hahaha – necks or butts, we all have a collection of those from the field. You have had the same experience that B. commented on above. Now I am really intrigued if I’m special or the ones we experience down in Texas are just more docile – will definitely investigate this further. At this point I’d just like to see them put their wings out so I can compare them with the Whooping Cranes we see down there. As always, appreciate you stopping in.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

            2. We were “only” able to see 56 species in that area last February. Hoping for a few more by heading a but further South this February.

              Liked by 1 person

  5. A master of deception, Indeed. Great photos. I love “that annoying scratch in the licorice pizza that keeps skipping the needle back about three grooves.” I know the feeling and remember the old scratch in the L-pizza days. Not groovy if you get my groove. That is when people actually to time to listen to music.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Ah, someone that can relate to my analogies. It is hard enough to try and explain a rotary phone to my great nieces and nephews much less something with tiny vinyl bumps that emit sound through a diamond tipped needle. I definitely get your groove – the first album I ever bought myself was Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Played those two disks end to end about every day. Then I bought Bob Seger’s Nine to Tonight live album which I still put as one of the best all-time live double albums alongside the Eagles’ Live double album. Probably saved me going into a mental breakdown/depression from those dark Wall tunes ha.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. I’m surprised how much of a resurgence vinyl is making. Places like Best Buy quit selling CDs, but sell vinyl. Our local Walmart has two long rows of bins filled with vinyl. The Economist had a piece about how the indie artist started the vinyl surge, but now all the top artists are rushing into vinyl, pushing the indie artists out. The demand for pressing vinyl is like 10 times what the few companies that press vinyl can keep up with. The big orders from the stars put the indie artists on a long wait list. It really sucks if you want to release and real album.

        If the younger generation haven’t ruined their hearing from listening to music 24/7 with iPods and headphones, I assume they can hear the superior sound quality of vinyl. My daughter has my vinyl collection and turntables. I stored hundreds of CDs after I ripped them to my computer over the years. My old ears and laziness is fine with the convenience of digital music.

        I don’t remember the first album I bought. I inherited a lot of albums from my brother when he went into the Navy. I’m thinking it was Alice Cooper or Iron Butterfly. I cleaned a lot of dog and horse crap to earn money to buy albums in my preteen and early teen years. I started a real job when I was 15, so that made buying albums a lot easier.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

        1. I think some of the quality of the music on vinyl was the process we had to go through to listen to it. We made more of an effort to enjoy it then, pops and crackles included. Sort of like grinding coffee beans to make that first cup of the day; it somehow tastes better.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

          1. Vinyl does have much better fidelity than CDs and streamed music. I did a parody of The Sound Of Silence called the Sound Of Coffee Grinding. Teagan sang the traditional version of the music. I also made a hyper metal version of the parody. Thanks, Brad.

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply

            2. There are so many limitations with vinyl. We got CDs when they came available in the early 80s. One of Laurie’s sisters said CDs were a fad. I told her they would replace vinyl one day. I had no idea at the time it would only take two years for vinyl to face extinction after I said that. Now CDs face extinction, and there is also a resurgence cassette tapes if you can imagine that. Ugh.

              Liked by 2 people

            4. CDs were great when they came out because I didn’t have to isolate the turntable any longer. We have a sprung would dance floor and dancing would make the tone arm skip on the turntable. Now I play music from the computer or phone.

              Liked by 2 people

            6. It’s weird how CDs would skip when they were not supposed to. Did you ever have 8-track tapes? Those were the worse. They were always getting eaten by the tape players. Cassette tapes were almost as bad. I have hundreds of cassette tapes stored away in the infinite shed of doom. I don’t have a cassette tape player. I had to get and external CD drive for the laptop. I didn’t have a CD player other that one in an older laptop for years.

              Liked by 1 person

            7. I did have a few 8-tracks. I have dozens of cassettes, and still have my TEAC cassette player from 40+ years ago. I’m sure the drive belts are gone by now.

              Liked by 2 people

            8. I had my brothers’ 8-Track hand-me-downs. Why my early years were all classic rock. I finally threw out all my copied cassettes. We used to have a place called Rentertainment at my school. Rent a CD for a for two days – come home and copy with my Pioneer dual cassette system (and CD player) and have it whenever I wanted to listen to it again. A great way to learn about new bands as well. Note, that place was later shut down by the FBI.

              Liked by 2 people

            10. Yep..apparently some fine print that they were not authorized to distribute media they didn’t own….truth is I don’t think they were paying the local music union fees.

              Liked by 1 person

            13. My first car had two 8-tracks in it, wired to two different sets of speakers, one was a combo 8-track and cassette. It wasn’t until I graduated high school that I could “upgrade” to a in-dash cassette player in my gently used 1977 Cutlass Supreme.

              Liked by 1 person

            15. All depended on how sturdy they made the optical reader – I remember my car CD player skipping a lot, but I really blame that on the mega bass my speakers were blasting out.

              Liked by 1 person

            18. YouTube compresses audio in the videos. Laurie noticed a huge difference is sound quality between the same some played on Apple Music and YouTube.

              Liked by 1 person

            20. I CANNOT imagine a resurgence in cassette tapes. I had probably a thousand blank cassettes that I burned all my music too – my reasoning…we wouldn’t have CDs if tapes were the nirvana. I still remember getting the cassette tape adapter for my 8-track player.

              Liked by 1 person

            21. My programmer has a cassette player in his old truck with an adapter that looks like a cassette tape for his phone. MP3 compression affects sound quality, my my old ears don’t care these days.

              Liked by 2 people

            22. Thankfully I’m able to still hear the differences between my analog vinyl and the crisp/sterile sounding CD’s of the same recordings . . . most of the time. That’s only when I can sit still and use my home speakers. Earbuds have taken all of the nuance out of the recordings.

              Liked by 2 people

            24. I don’t think youth of today care that much about sound quality and thus nobody to market good speakers to these days thus no interest in putting quality product out in the market.

              Liked by 2 people

            25. Seems to be the case. I had friends whose parents had elaborate listening rooms with high end everything. The cables to the speakers were 3/4 inch thick. There were recliner chairs placed at an optimum distance from the speakers. The sound was incredible.

              When I worked in a music store in 1977-78, the Bose rep gave us great deals on speakers and components. I had built a pair of speakers using 12-inch full-range, super efficient speakers that sounded so good as guitar or stereo speakers. One watt or 500 watts would give you great sound through those speakers. I lent them with a 200 watt head to a fellow guitarist for a gig and the band’s van was broken into and all the instruments and amps, PA and speaker cabinets were stolen. I was really bummed to lose those speakers.

              Liked by 2 people

            26. I had the fortune of hearing some B&W 8000 series monitors through a soundproof window. The stereo guy had inline 800-watt (or so) amps on each speaker. He started Money for Nothing on a delay, then ran out of the room and closed the door. Once the song started the windows were vibrating and we could hear it plainly OUTSIDE the soundproof room.

              Liked by 2 people

            29. And people cared about the quality of the music that reached their ears. We used to listen to music. Now we mostly watch music. An excellent music video with detract from not so good song behind it.

              Liked by 1 person

            30. Amen – To be honest a lot of the produced videos are unwatchable because they are lipsinking so bad in them. I tend to stick with the live video recordings as that has less of the production in it and at least they singing and playing.

              Liked by 1 person

            46. To my ears, I can’t tell a lot of different between the two and not having to deal with the cleaning, the needles, the scratches (and warping thanks to leaving one in a hot car), I’d just rather stick with the CD and since I ripped my entire CD collection to MP3 I guess I also like the digital version although there is definitely a loss there in my opinion.

              Liked by 1 person

        2. Had not thought of the idies getting pushed to the back of to queue. Linda and I like listening to a guy named Eddie Trunk on Sirius who talks about all things rock. I like his take on the vinyl surge – hype that up, get everyone to buy another copy of the music they already have on CD and then in a couple of years push the CDs again so everyone will rebuy them AGAIN. I can’t say much about the loud headphones etc. I used to absolutely crank my stereos at home (when parents not around) and in the car. Have Tinnitus from it now, but what is done is done. Can never go wrong with Alice – we used to cruise the one-ways at home in high school and they kid who usually drove (in one absolutely bad as Gran Torino) wold always play his Welcome to My Nightmare cassette. Maybe that is why I have such an affinity for Halloween ha.

          Liked by 2 people

          Reply

            2. I still like physical music because I’m not sure I trust the T&Cs on all the digital stuff. Plus the album art is sometimes worth a copy. Ah, remember the days with good album art . . .

              Liked by 2 people

            3. You have to keep media players around and it’s a gamble if they work after years of sitting. At least turntables are available still.

              Liked by 2 people

            12. Yep. MP3s, PDFs and JPEGs have had good always readable staying power. Unlike raw files. Raw should be raw, but every camera maker has their own format for raw files, and they constantly change, which means none of them are truly raw files.

              Liked by 1 person

            13. That is actually the one reason I have stuck with Adobe as they have been keeping up with my Nikon camera RAW formats. We have multiple bodies between Linda and I and so far one set of software has been able to handle them all. If that changes I’m gonna get really upset.

              Liked by 1 person

            15. That sucks. Pretty much defeats the whole purpose of shooting in RAW if the readers are not fully backwards compatible. I do convert all my pics from the RAWs down to TIF when I am finished processing them all just in case that does happen to me. If I can’t use the RAW, I at least could use the extra bits during processing and then have the lossless TIF version if there are issues in the future. Only do this for the pictures that are worth it though, A RAW copy, a TIF copy and then the JPG for the blog start to eat up space at the volume we shoot here at Intrigued. Thank god we are not in the film age anymore.

              Liked by 1 person

            1. Posi-tracked with blue crushed velvet bucket seats in the front. Can’t remember the exact year – bored out engine – luckily didn’t have the same gas prices as of today.

              Liked by 1 person

  6. The fantastic moments and the photos you were able to capture of Bittern. I love that you showed its natural habitat, its liveliness and its beauty. Just excellent!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you Kaya, glad you enjoyed the post! They are a magnificent shorebird and really enjoyed watching their stealthy behavior. Someday I hope to be able to bring my readers of shots with their wings out – so far the ones I’ve had the pleasure of encountering have just been lallygagging around ha. Appreciate you coming by, take care.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  7. I see what you did there, he was “practiced in the art of deception” (pardon my bad accent). You can’t always get what you want. I remember vinyl records, still have quite a few. Probably not as many as Tim, but I have my fair share. Annual review document is in the mail, I expect “Exceeded Expectations” as usual.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Hahahah, you caught me. Could you tell by her blood-stained hands? Did you see where our former employee no longer has you do a self assessment on your ranking – coming to realization it was all a charade anyway ha.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  9. Great shots of this bittern, and loved your inclusion of the grassy bits. The position of their eyes is remarkable – with their bill straight up, their eyes protrude enough from the sides of their head that they can still be hunting for prey directly at their feet. Never a wasted moment in the bird world!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you Sam! They definitely have a unique and purposeful eye placement, although it does make me laugh whenever I see a shot of them doing that – a bit goofy, but as you stated, it’s a busy world for birds ha. Thanks for dropping in and enjoying your tins from Texas.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  11. Congratulations on getting ANY photographs of this handsome bittern! We only see them during migration. Strike that. We very occasionally think we see one or two when they hang around during migration. They have definitely perfected the art of blending in.

    Very nice photo series!

    Don’t forget to lock down that tone arm so it isn’t accidentally knocked and skitters across the vinyl adding an ugly – huge – scratch on Mama’s favorite Christmas album.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you Wally. It is quite possible there are more there than you think. I found one at Sweetwater in Gainesville hanging out in the reeds near their boardwalk. Watched photographer after photographer walk right past it until I alerted them to the stealthy bird. Ah, forgot about the lock down process, you are absolutely right. That’s when you sneak the scratched album back into the sleeve and deny everything hehehe. Appreciate you dropping in.

      Like

      Reply

    1. They can definitely blend into their preferred habitat, that’s for sure. Luckily our eyes can detect the subtle differences and non-linear movement or it probably would have walked right past me completely unnoticed. I do like those profile shots, but must admit, their head on shots look pretty goofy hehehe. Take care!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  14. Pingback: Fast Dogs and Weird Geese – Life Intrigued
  15. Pingback: Fast Dogs and Weird Geese – Wildlife Intrigued
  16. Pingback: The Art of Concealment – Life Intrigued
  17. Pingback: The Art of Concealment – Wildlife Intrigued
  18. Pingback: Can you see me now?…by Brad Marks – Life Intrigued
  19. Pingback: Can you see me now?…by Brad Marks – Wildlife Intrigued

Leave a comment