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 Plumbeous 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)
Wildlife Intrigued 
I love the photos. Such a cute little bird!
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Thanks Anneli, glad you enjoyed the debut of this Vireo! Definitely cute, but a bit of a smartass not letting me get clean shots of it ha. Take care and appreciate you coming by.
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This is a Vireo-interesting post! If I’ve seen a Vireo around here, I probably thought it was a sparrow. I’m a bit simple when it comes to little birds. Until Merlin tells me otherwise, I think sparrow, flycatcher, or bushtit. Excellent photos. Seems worth the chase.
Enjoy your visit to the Seattle area sans maybe or maybe not having dealings with a certain software giant. You will like San Diego. If you can fit it in, make a side trip to the Salton Sea on your way to Arizona from San Diego. Lots of good weird stuff there, and a few birds as well.
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That is probably a good bet with those three choices. These Vireos are noisy – once you hear them your ears will constantly pick them up whenever you are out. Will definitely put Salton Sea on the list if we get anywhere close – thnx for the tip!! It will be nice to visit both Seattle and San Diego when I am not stressed about meetings and/or fixing whatever is broke there from times I may or may not have been there. Stopped in Council Bluffs, IA on way out – tornadoes warnings. Stopped at Ogallala overnight while they shut down I-80 due to massive snow storm and today spent 3 hours basically dead stopped on I-80 due to construction past Rawlings – not getting off to our best start.
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Have you ever seen David Byrne’s 1986 movie True Stories? Bruce has gone to Ogallala several times for their fall festival, and he said they have a parade that reminds him of the parade in True Stories.
As the French say. Les choses sont contre nous! (Things are against us!). Three hours really sucks. I remember being stuck for about the same amount of time on I-40 once. I had to pee badly, and finally peed in a fruit juice bottle I had on hand. I assume you have a bathroom in your RV.
I hope the road conditions and travel time improve.
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I have not seen that movie, I’ll look it up. Didn’t notice anything signage wise that indicated there was a festival there – better bring your own food as they didn’t really have anything beyond a McDonalds and a couple of Mexican establishments that looked pretty run down. We definitely lucked out having the bathroom and the recliners in the RV, just had to keep an eye on the truck ahead of us if it started moving. The rest stop at the end of the construction was PACKED! Things are looking up for tomorrow, snow is thinning out and as far as we can tell from Waze there isn’t a big construction zone we have to deal with. Hoping to do some birding in Utah tomorrow – first time for that state. Oh, and thanks for the translation, my French sucks.
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I think you will really like True Stories.
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Will give it a try if I see it come across my streams.
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You must really like driving. I have no idea the distances involved in your trip but looking at a map and it’s not just popping down to the shops! Nowadays I dread the 120 miles to the drag racing, the thought of going further leaves me cold. Have a good one.
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Looks like this trip is going to put us in the 5000 miles range roundtrip – I wouldn’t exactly say I “like” the driving part, but it takes a bit of work to get to the places we want to see. Luckily we live in the Midwest so only half as long to each of the coasts – having to come from New York would be daunting ugh. Thanks for dropping in B., always good to hear from you.
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That’s a complete circuit of the UK! And about as many miles I do in a whole year.
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It is a heap load, but we get to travel in style and the ability to get new lifers is definitely worth it. The best part is we don’t have to rush home to make it into work anymore ha.
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Congratulations on adding yet another lifer to that list.
(Wait, since I was birding in the Dark Ages when it was still called bird-watching, I actually saw a Solitary Vireo. Now that it’s three separate birdies can I add a plus-two to my Life List?? Oh. Wait again. I stopped counting new birds about the time I stopped counting birthdays. Sigh.)
Have a Great trip to the Great Northwest!
Now, I’ve got chores to do and errands to run so I better get the plumbeous out.
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Thanks Wally! well, the birding rules are a bit touchy on that, they actually want proof you saw the specific new species – usually this is easy if their regions don’t overlap, but you would need validation on the two that overlap here – the reason I have to keep a reference shot for every bird I see when in the field. As I always say, you definitely WANT the birthday to occur, you just don’t need to burden it with a number. You one upped me there on that plumbeous reference – kicking myself for not thinking of that when I was writing the post – well done!
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Thanks Brian. Now you are just making up words for LGJ’s. Safe travels, glad to see I’m not the only one Intrigued sends on far-flung adventures.
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Right with ya’ I had to look it up to make sure it wasn’t one of those fake birdy words like butterbutt. You have the record for longest distance in the Intrigued family, that’s for sure (brothers have you matched). I did make it to Singapore, but that wasn’t bird related and you still got me on the distance.
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That’s probably the farthest we’ll go, with one possible exception. Gotta get those trips done while we are “young” enough to take them.
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Linda is limited in her travel with her vertigo, but luckily we still have plenty to explore here in the US – and I need a lot more state checks of my ebird account ha.
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The Northeast is just waiting…there are puffins out there, just sayin’.
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Safe, happy travels and good luck Linda & Ruger! I hope your weather cooperates. Cute little plumbeous guy!
Have a joyful birthday celebration, Brad!
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So far the weather is NOT cooperating – tornado warnings in IA (spent significant amount of time in their laundry room that night) then they closed down I-80 on us last night due to the massive snow storm that came through – hopefully your well wishes will get things back on track! Appreciate you coming by Lisa and will definitely reach out when we make it back to Sedona.
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Oh no! Hopefully it’s smooth sailing from here on out. I look forward to meeting you two!☀️
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So far we are on a weather rollercoaster – eventually we will make our way south for the next legs of the trip and I am sure it will be blistering hot down there so I’m not going to complain too much about the cool temps we have up here in the Washington/Oregon region. Take care!
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As the norm, I’m always IDing a bird, seeing if I’m right; and you fooled me here! I instantly thought Blue-headed Vireo, because I have them in my backyard, looks spot-on to me. You just introduced me to a new bird here, I’ve never heard of it before. Fab sighting!!
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Gotcha Donna ha! I would have definitely gone Blue-Headed had I not been alerted to its sister species. Side by side the Blue-Headed are ..well.. bluer in the head, but without seeing them side by side, definitely hard to discern. Glad I could introduce you to a new species – now I am after the Cassin’s on our current trip to get the trifecta – fingers crossed. Take care and thanks for dropping in.
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What a weighty monniker for this little fellow! It could have been Ash or Silvered, or Slate or even Stone… but Plumbeous? Yikes! Heavens, there is even a Plumbeous Kite (in Peru) and the Plumbeous Hawk (in Central America). Glad you got to see it, even as it flitted about.
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Quite the houty toity monniker for sure – I bet it only eats at 5 star restaurants and pays with American Express. I was not aware there were other birds with this elitist name – There is a Gray Hawk so that would be an overlap, but no reason not to use Grey for the Kite..wait, quick check there is a Gray-Headed Kite but Ash is definitely open ha. It definitely lived up to its “secrecy/hidden” disposition – translated, a pain in the ass for big glass!! Take care Sam, glad you made it safely back from your AZ travels.
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