Grab Your Dictionary

By the time you are reading this we should be well on our way to the Pacific Northwest. Ruger (and Linda) qualified for the Canine Performance Event (CPE) Agility Nationals which are being held outside Seattle, Washington. This is our first time to that region outside of work – there is a certain software giant near there that I may or may not have been responsible for managing our corporate partnership and thus may or may not of had reason to travel there. From there we head south eventually making a quick run into San Diego for a family wedding before heading back through southeastern Arizona. All in providing 6 never before birded states and the chance to visit some of our favorite “staples” as we say to fill up the tins and push to hopefully a new Average Year record (link here). In case you are keeping score at home, I am now sitting at 302 species for the year including 3 provisionals. Last year I hit the 400 threshold (link here) and with the new states sitting in a good position to reach new heights. Meanwhile, absolutely chaos here trying to Tetris everything in place we need to haul out there. I promise to get caught up on the comments and responding to all your posts once on the road and have time to think ha. Note, I will likely be sparse(r) on my posts, but just received a whole batch of new adventures from Brad so you will be in excellent hands while I am traveling. Oh, and happy birthday Brad!

Okay, let’s get to the next edition of “May I have another chance”. This particular entry is not entirely my fault as our featured feathered friend here has mastered the ability to keep some annoying obstacle between my glass and its body. By the time it ran out of interference my arms were so tired the shots were softened – ugh.

Grab your dictionary and hit the jump as it is time to test your Latin word origins.

Confession – before we encountered this bird on our trip through southeast Arizona last year, I didn’t even know it existed. More shocking is I wasn’t even aware of one of the other species that used to make up what they called the Solitary Vireo. I don’t feel like a slouch in the North American birding world, but clearly I still have a LOT to learn!

In 1997, the Solitary Vireo was separated into three distinct species. The Blue-Headed Vireo is the one I was very familiar with due to our many visits to south Texas and Florida which sits in their non-breeding range – basically the southeastern states and down into Central America. We even have sightings from time to time around the Midwest as they migrate through to their breeding grounds in New England (technically it does push a bit south of that) and Canada.

Another offshoot species was the Cassin’s Vireo. In my opinion Cassin’s looks exactly like the Blue-Headed, but fortunately for us birders, very little region overlap. Cassin’s hangs out further west and pushes up into the Pacific Northwest and just a bit into Canada for the frisky season. As mentioned, I wasn’t aware of this species either – I have heard it once or twice now, but unable to get eyes, much less glass on it. That leaves us the third species in the split and our featured specimen – the Plumbeous Vireo.

Now would be a good time to pull out that dictionary. I’ve made some less than flattering comments about my early education, but with that said, I am still shocked when I come up on a word I have never used..well or even seen referenced. I read a LOT, pride myself on my pop culture knowledge and compete on a daily basis with my much smarter brothers in Wordle – not once have I come upon the word P-L-U-M-B-E-O-U-S until it popped up on my Merlin display. Linda and I were exploring the back woods of the Paton Center for Hummingbirds when the app signaled a hit. Now that’s odd (note, same thing happened with the Lucy Warbler sighting in the previous post). Saved it, reset and kept the ears open while watching the screen – there it is again, and again and again. The ears were properly trained now, time to go on the hunt. Eventually located it in a clump of nearby trees – located meaning the ears were convinced it was in there, the eyes were busy hurling insults and secondary taunts in defiance. Eventually it popped out enough to give me a view – bill looks right for a vireo, the googles are similar to other Vireos I’ve seen (link here) and the coloring is clearly “plumbeous” – gotta be it.

Yeah, I lied a bit there, as I had zero clue what color it was supposed to be and until I found a dictionary, didn’t know plumbeous was a descriptive color indicator. If you haven’t already fanned through your dictionary:

Plumbeous – plum-be-ous – adjective
1: consisting of or resembling lead
2: a) having a dull gray color like that of lead b) of the color lead

Per the Cornell description, the Pumbeous Vireo is uniform gray on the upperparts with white underparts. Suspect some of yellow hues you are seeing in the shots are residuals from the leaves surrounding it. The reference shots on their site do show some yellowing on a couple of their shots so some of it may be real. The next 20 minutes was a nightmare trying to follow it through the brush and limbs before it would pop out, give me just enough time to twitch my shudder finger and then the cycle began again. There are countless images on the digital darkroom floor that look like this..and far worse.

There isn’t a lot with regards to interesting facts to leave you with on this particular Vireo. They prefer Ponderosa Pine forests which I don’t remember being in abundance at the Paton Hummingbird Center. They have some overlap with the Cassin’s, with their non-breeding region being primarily in Central America with a small patch in south Arizona. They do push up further into Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico to strut their stuff in front of the chickees. Recommend hunting for them in the spring while the males are singing. Once the eggs arrive, they tend to quiet down and that is bad news when trying to locate them in the dense limbs.

Need to get going, finish up some packing and take a final look at the travel route. Take it easy everyone and hope you enjoyed a new species to Intrigued. For now on I am always going to refer to grey as plumbeous – “Always play with their minds” (link here – #2 on my all time favorite movies)