Congrats, Stats and Warbling

The month is young and already incredibly busy. I thought things would calm down a bit with the Halloween event passed and the ultra-race completed, but definitely not the case. Most of the time consumption has been tedious busy work, putting the Halloween props back into storage, getting the Christmas decorations out of storage (need to decorate before Linda’s upcoming knee surgery), picture processing and stat updating – we will get to those latter ones in a bit, but first I want to congratulate Team Raven.

This was a big weekend for the two of them as Linda and Raven earned their 5th CPE Agility Championship Title (CT-ATCH 5). Nothing better for the little guy than winning an award (bar/ribbon) that is 5 times your size. We had to take it away from him afterwards as he was continually going around taunting his brother Ruger saying “Who’s got for paws and a prestigious title” and then whacking him with the bar – There is a lot of attitude that comes with a 4.75 pound Poodle. More importantly, Raven is going out on top as he is retiring from competition. He has been competing for 11 years and he has earned the opportunity to kick back and give his brother some of the limelight. Way to go Ravi-man (and Linda of course).

Next up, a few stats. Now that the “Tetris packfest” is mostly over I had a chance to get back to processing some of my picture backlog. As of yesterday, I now have our March (looks sheepishly down..) 2025 Arizona trip completely processed. 532Gs worth now trimmed down to 187G. The January 2025 trip to Texas was 727G pared down to 243G. That probably seems like a lot, but keep in mind, that is 6 or so weeks shooting from sunup to sundown (and past for the nocturnal birds) every single day. Trust me, there is a reason for the ridiculous backlog ha. With that work, I updated my life list counts. 530 species lifetime and 521 recorded in eBird since January 1st, 2022 from 882 checklists and 2,264 ticks across 26 US states (unique species by state). Current annual count for 2026 is 450! To put things in perspective, I have only blogged on 332 of those lifetime species ticks – let’s just say I still have plenty of fodder for upcoming posts ha! Oh, and since we are talking numbers, the 11th Blue Chew commercial just came on in the YouTube screen that is running on my second monitor at the moment. Please god make it stop!

Guessing you are thinking that same thing about my ramblings, so let’s get to today’s Featured Feathered Friend.

To be honest, my birding life list count rose at least two notches while I was just sitting in my den. The bird you are looking at is the catalyst for one of the increases – hit the jump to read more about this specimen that gave me quite a struggle.

Truth be told, there is more than one reason for my horrendous backlog. Sure, processing the spoils from a long trip is the primary reason, but the others can be summed up by the accompanying self-conversations “What the hell is THAT!“, “Could it be“, “Crap, they all look alike” and the “Are you 4imprint sure“. We try our best, but we’ve certainly been wrong over the nearly 20 years we’ve been at this blog thingy. There are some we find ourselves just giving up on (ie, when it comes to the Tropical or Couch’s Kingbird without accompanying audio) and others we continually keep coming back to as we learn more and more (a hat tip to all you fellow bird bloggers out there). Today’s feature fits into this latter category. I was in Patagonia Lake State Park back in March of 2025 (these early ones were actually processed some time ago). When I captured this series in the field I noted the clear audio clues and put in Bell’s Vireo in my field notes. Processed the decent shots and named them according to those notes.

Something was bothering me though and I moved them to my review folder and there they sat for a looong time. Come back, take a look, do some follow-up, get frustrated and set them aside again. I am very familiar with the Bell’s call – think Windex cloth on a pane of glass (link here). Clearly that was what I was tracking and shooting or I wouldn’t have put that in my notes being a familiar call and all. Except….if you look at that first shot, although it reads Vireo from overall shape, it doesn’t present as a Bell’s. This week I went back and examined that set of shots and found this few frames before the one above.

Now that IS a Bell’s Vireo. A fairly nondescript bird, double white wingbars, yellow hues, white eyering. The lighting caused a wash of their yellowish flanks. Comparing that image with today’s featured series immediately confirmed my suspicions, our feature was NOT a Bell’s. Of course, that just moved me from the 4imprint perspective to the “What the hell is THAT” line of reasoning.

It still had that Vireo vibe to it and likely why I was still clinging to the Bell’s option, but that heavy white eyebrow, darker through line and the matching “underbrow” or lores. There was also that hint of yellow on the shoulders and blush as it transitions from the chest/belly.

Went back and reviewed all the members in the Vireo family – there are 14 of them in the North America and to pair with the stats theme earlier, 13 of them are checked on my life list (currently missing only the Black-Capped although been on the hunt for that three times already). Whoops, got out over my snowboard on that…need to take a step back. Prior to October 2025, there were only 13 members of the Vireonidae (Vireo) family – the notable difference was the recognition of a single Warbling Vireo.

This, however, was changed by the American Birding Association during the October review where the Warbling Vireo was split into two – the Eastern Warbling Vireo and the Western Warbling Vireo (link here). Visually different, easily distinguished in the field via sight..yeah right – they basically look identical – I can already hear the Tropical/Couch’s (visual only) field proclamations which illicit eye-rolls to Linda whenever I encounter them. I can confirm that Merlin is able to distinguish between the two calls, but in my opinion, one of the best ways is to let your feet tell the difference.

Go far enough west and you get yourself out of the Eastern’s preferred range. The dividing line pretty much cuts through the eastern 2/3rds of Texas up to Canada for the frisky season (maybe a 5-10 degree lean northwestward). The Westerns will also winter in Central America, but their migration takes them through the western flyways of the western edge of Texas and then up. Look down at your feet, if you are in Arizona and hear the Warbling Vireo singing out…WESTERN WARBLING VIREO. Feet in Illinois…EASTERN WARBLING VIREO – life is simple.

So, sometime after hearing the Bell’s Vireo window scraping and taking the first picture…this Warbling Vireo snuck in and stole the show. Based on this next rather smug shot, I am thinking it knew EXACTLY what it was doing and was enjoying messing with my mind – “Always play with their minds” from #2 on my favorite movies of all time list (link here).

To tie everything back together, these shots were taken in March of 2025. The ABA name split occurred in October 2025. Are you wondering how this impacts a birder’s life list? The answer…we jump for joy!…assuming a couple of caveats. First you is to have a sighting in their well defined distinct region – as in where there populations do not overlap. In this case, eBird will automatically switch your generic Warbling Vireo submission using the foot principle. For example, a submission in say Patagonia, Arizona gets automatically switched to Western Warbling Vireo. If you have a submission in say..Brimfield IL, that gets moved to Eastern Warbling Vireo. Net effect in this case is your count magically goes up by one!

Now, if your sighting lands in the overlap regions, you have to work a bit for the additional tick. We always stress here at Intrigued to always get at least one reference shot for every spotting of a winged creature. Primary reason is to be able to counter any “challenge” from those evil..sorry, regional eBird reviewers. Secondarily to give you a chance to verify back in the digital darkroom and lastly…for just this split reason. Going to be a little harder in this case as the birds look so similar, but if you had a Merlin recording you could easily replay and classify appropriately to get your bonus check!

Actually, to also get your check back if it was taken from you. There is a condition where your count is decremented and that results from only having sightings in “overlapping” regions. eBird needs to resolve this for their reporting structure and in overlapping regions it changes the entry to a generic Eastern/Western Warbling Vireo species sighting – those generic entries are not included in your eBird life count so wham, you now have one less on our lifer count of which you had nothing to do with. The struggle is real people hehehe.

Apologies for the extra naming detail, but it did help my count get to 450 this year along with the recent split of the Marsh Wren …that is for another time.

Take care everyone, if you are a citizen of the US, please get out and vote today if you have not already (that is vote ONCE – looking at you Chicago). Let your voices be heard.