Birding Victoria, BC

For my birthday, my wife Amy surprised me with a week-long trip to Vancouver Island, including a three-night stay in Victoria and three more nights at a little cabin overlooking the majestic Pacific Ocean and the Olympic Peninsula across the Salish Sea (or Strait of Juan de Fuca). Amy’s surprising plans delighted me, especially since this was where we honeymooned a couple of decades before, and we’d always wanted to return. I was puzzled, however, when she said, “It’s supposed to be a good place to go birding.” What? Birding? On Vancouver Island? In January? After doing a little research on eBird, however, I concluded that she might just be right. For winter, the area seemed to have a good variety of songbirds, but I got even more excited about the possibility of ocean birds.

While at McMicking Point, this American Crow kindly kept a close watch on my backpack—I’m sure with purely altruistic motives!

Our first morning there, I awoke before dawn, walked to a nearby convenience store to grab nourishment, and then drove our rental car out to McMicking Point just as light seeped across the sky. I was super excited about this spot because someone had reported sixty species there only days before, including several birds that would be lifers pour moi. I had even dragged my large, awkward spotting scope and tripod out from Montana specifically for such opportunities. Alas, I later learned that the “mega lists” I had found on eBird had been compiled by one of the region’s top birders—a guy who apparently could ID a bird miles away just by the way it flew. My experience would prove far different.

Though the bird action seemed at first a bit slow, McMicking Point offered the most scenic vistas you could imagine.

As I set up my scope, my first thought was, “Where are all the birds?” A couple of cormorants—too far away to identify—skimmed the water, along with a few Glaucous-winged Gulls, and I could hear a raven in the neighborhood behind me, but that was it. In such situations, I have learned that it’s important to calm down and be patient—something I am horrible at (just ask Amy), but nonetheless have learned to do. Sure enough, as I trained the scope on some nearby surge channels, I spotted a few Buffleheads and then, to my delight, the trip’s first Harlequin Ducks! In Montana, we have only a narrow window to find HADUs as they breed mainly in a handful of whitewater streams in Glacier and Yellowstone (see our post “In Glacier National Park, When It Rains, It Pours—Animals.”). Because of this, I took extra time to enjoy them.

This trip could be dubbed the “Harlequin Duck Adventure” as I would see far more HADUs this week than in the entire rest of my life!

Through my brand new binoculars (more about these in the next post), I also could see interesting action stirring out on the Trial Islands about a quarter mile offshore. I trained my scope out there and immediately picked up Black Turnstones, Black Oystercatchers, and Dunlins working the rocky shore. Then, I got even more excited as I noted several larger, pale, medium-sized shorebirds. Yay! Black-bellied Plovers! This especially reinforced the value of preparing for any birding trip—especially with birds that are far away. The Dunlins, for instance, would have been more difficult for me to pin down if I had not learned that they were the most likely small shorebirds in the area this time of year. I also had noted Black-bellied Plovers on recent eBird lists for the site, and so was primed to recognize them.

I almost always undercount shorebirds. When I first trained the scope on the Trial Islands, I counted about six Black-bellied Plovers. When they flew, the number exploded to forty! Once again, the black armpits in flight give these away (see our post “Chasing Migrants, Part I: Swifts, Peeps, and Plovers”). For bonus points, can you ID the flying birds on the far left?

After picking up a few more species, I departed McMicking Point with, I should emphasize, a grand total of sixteen species—not the sixty-plus I had been dreaming about. Still, my next stop, Clover Point, would add a few more good ones for the day. Unlike McMicking Point, where I birded alone, Clover Point was well-trodden by walkers, dog owners and, it turns out, a few other birders. Here, I got closer looks at Dunlins, Harlequin Ducks, and oystercatchers, but also picked up both Red-necked and Horned Grebes and Surf Scoters. A friendly birder named John also joined me and pointed out a group of White-winged Scoters in the distance along with what he said was a Red-throated Loon, which Braden and I had seen recently on Cape Cod (see our post “Birding Race Point: Cape Cod’s Pelagic Playground“). I couldn’t convince myself of that ID, but we did spot a Pigeon Guillemot about a quarter mile distant.

Clover Point offered a great chance to watch Dunlins probe the rocky shore for invertebrate morsels.

“Is there anything special you’re looking for?” John asked me.

“I’d love to find some murrelets,” I told him with a sigh.

“Oh, we should be able to find you more alcids,” he told me, scanning the water with his binoculars. Alas, our efforts proved to no avail, and I admit that I wrapped up the morning feeling a bit of a failure. In fact, I mentioned to John the list with sixty birds on it, and he said, “Oh, that birder is a local legend. You look at his lists and you think he’s just making it up, but I’ve birded with him, and he’s the real deal. He can recognize almost anything.”

Love, love, love Black Oystercatchers. Can’t get enough—even though I got to hang out with a couple of dozen on the trip!

That did make me feel better, but even if I had not learned this, it’s important not to fall into the “failure trap.” After all, you can only see what you can see—and the whole point is to enjoy every bird you are lucky enough to encounter. Also, I reminded myself, my Victoria birding was far from over. I brought Amy back to Clover Point the next day, and while she walked along the cliffs, I enjoyed another nice session, including my only encounter with Surfbirds the entire week. These are some of Braden’s and my favorite rocky shore birds, and it was awesome to watch them foraging along with a larger group of Black Turnstones.

Watching Surfbirds (right) foraging with Black Turnstones (left) was one of the highlights of my second visit to Clover Point.

That afternoon, while Amy rested at the hotel, I decided to make the most of the season’s abbreviated daylight hours and take a stroll through Beacon Hill Park, a large park stretching almost from downtown out toward the sea near Clover Point. I intentionally left my camera in the room so I could just appreciate whatever I happened to see—which turned out to be a lot. On the grass right outside of our hotel, I was astonished to see a dozen Yellow-rumped Warblers—birds that I figured ought to be wintering much farther south (Sibley, though, shows them as all-year-round here after all). Once I reached Beacon Park, I began seeing Pine Siskins, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and a bird that, because of my crummy ears, always proves a challenge: Golden-crowned Kinglet.

Beacon Hill offered my best experience with land birds of the trip—including a bona fide Victoria vagrant, a Green-tailed Towhee!

After strolling for about half an hour, I stood watching a Ruby-crowned Kinglet flycatching, something I had never seen one do, when another birder approached. In a wonderfully British accent, he asked, “Do you know that within a quarter-mile of here is a great rarity?” I knew immediately what he was talking about. From looking at eBird lists, I had learned that a vagrant Green-tailed Towhee had showed up in Victoria and had set off a frenzy in the local birding community. John at Clover Point had also mentioned it, but I hadn’t realized I had wandered so close.

Victoria birders enthralled with a “rare” Green-tailed Towhee!

“I tried to see it,” my newest birding friend confided, “but you know what I heard—‘Oh, you should have been here five minutes ago.’” Nonetheless, he gave me directions in case I wanted to check it out, and with an hour or so of daylight left, I figured I might as well. I crossed the road and followed a little path up and over a hill until I came to a tall flagpole flying the maple leaf. Sure enough, in the field below, a group of four or five birders had gathered around a small thicket. I quietly approached from behind and spotted movement in a darkened space between two bushes. After a few moments, the familiar shape of the Green-tailed Towhee took the stage.

Although fairly common in Montana in summer, the Green-tailed Towhee that showed up in Victoria recently rocked local birders’ worlds! Full-disclosure: this is not THAT bird, but one I photographed in Bear Canyon several years ago.

It was weird seeing a bird that is relatively common in Montana being such a focus of attention here in Canada, but it was cool, too. It helped me appreciate the enthusiasm of birders no matter where you go in this amazing world. What’s funny, though, is that I got much more excited by the Fox Sparrow foraging a few feet away from the towhee. That is always a tough bird for me to find in Montana, so it was great to have one put in an appearance for me here. With that, I made my way back to our hotel so that Amy and I could go find a fun restaurant to dine at. What I didn’t realize is how much good Canadian birding still lay ahead of me.

The lovely mastermind behind our surprise Victoria trip, my wife Amy, enjoying high tea at the Fairmont Empress Hotel.

(To be continued.)

Plenty of Partridges: Braden & I Kick Off Another Year of Birding!

Braden and I kicked off our 2025 at one of our favorite western Montana birding spots: Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. While mainly envisioned as a duck factory, the surrounding farms and grasslands provide plenty of grassland bird habitat and raptor hunting grounds, so in winter that’s what we mainly search for. We began the day by looking for Short-eared Owls at a “vole-opolis” our neighbor Tim, a game bird hunter, told us about last year (see our post “Lost in Owls”). Sure enough, we got distant looks at three of these mesmerizing, long-winged raptors as they cruised low over a tapestry of grass and cattails. They were joined by a trio of Northern Harriers, birds that are so similar to Short-eared Owls in appearance and habits that they offer an almost perfect lesson in convergent evolution—the incidence of two unrelated species being shaped in similar ways by natural selection.

After our time with the owls and harriers, we set out on a leisurely cruise northward on dirt roads with the spectacular snow-capped Mission Mountains majestically gazing down on us. The raptors continued to please, with great close-up looks at our first Golden Eagle of the year, three or four Rough-legged Hawks, a couple of American Kestrels, two Merlins, plenty of Red-tailed Hawks, and no fewer than a dozen Bald Eagles.

This Northern Harrier is seriously eye-balling a group of Gray Partridges below, but decided not to go for it.

I’ve been worried about a dearth of small song birds all year, and that continued today. Usually, we at least see some waxwings or American Tree Sparrows at Ninepipe, but not today. I’m hoping the warmer winter somehow explains it, but I am especially concerned about the pervasive use of neonicotinoid pesticides and their deadly effects on birds. A future blog post, perhaps.

While songbirds were few and far between, we encountered a veritable population explosion of a bird we usually see only once or thrice a year: Gray Partridges! In the space of an hour or two, we saw these birds at least half a dozen times in groups ranging from four to more than a dozen. “I think I’ve seen more Gray Partridges today than in the rest of my life,” I told Braden, and it might have been true, as we totaled almost seventy of these birds. As with the rest of the day, I managed only lousy photos, but we delighted in watching these introduced, but charming, orange-faced critters.

We finished the day scouring the southern shore of Flathead Lake near Polson. We had to look pretty hard, but finally found good numbers of waterfowl and gulls at Ducharme fishing access. Here we were rewarded by more than five hundred Common Mergansers, and much smaller numbers of wigeons, Mallards, Buffleheads, Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintails—and a lone Redhead. Braden also picked out several Tundra Swans from the more numerous Trumpeters.

Tundra Swans on Flathead Lake. These birds can be hard to distinguish from Trumpeter Swans, but they have small yellow patches forward of their eyes, and often have overall whiter heads and necks than Trumpeters.

Perhaps my favorite part of this last big session was focusing in on a group of seventy or eighty gulls out on a frozen edge of the lake. Part of my enthusiasm was having just received a review copy of Amar Ayyash’s epic new book, The Gull Guide: North America. I plan to write a full review of this remarkable book soon, but my first perusals have gotten me super excited to learn more about gulls. Even better, as Braden and I studied the group in front of us through our scope, we picked out both Ring-billed and Herring Gulls. Then, I paused on a gull that looked unlike any others. It had pink legs, medium gray wings, dark eyes, light head streaking, and a single red spot on the bill. It also was noticeably smaller than the Herring Gull next to it. Braden suggested a Thayer’s Iceland Gull and I have to say that I agree with him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get decent photos and gulls are notoriously hard to ID, so we didn’t record it. Still, I’m thinking Thayer’s is what we saw.

Ring-billed and Herring Gulls on Flathead Lake. It’s easy to pick out the Herring Gulls by their large sizes. Maybe I’ll even find some other species after studying The Gull Guide in depth!

And so it begins . . . a great new year of birding! I hope you’ve all been able to get out and enjoy the remarkable avian wildlife our planet is blessed with. In fact, if you haven’t already done so, I urge you to support one or more of the terrific conservation groups working to make sure birds are always with us. For more info, see our post “Saving Birds. It’s Time.” Thanks for reading and I hope to see some of you out there birding soon!

Our 2024 Recap: Spain, Costa Rica, Japan (again!) and More

2024 has been a record-breaking year for FatherSonBirding—and in more ways than one. Let’s start with the stats. Number of views to our site increased by almost 50% over last year to almost 14,000, while the number of visitors increased 65% to about 10,000. Much of what is driving these increases is interest in our posts about foreign birding destinations including Japan, Costa Rica, and Spain. In fact, viewers from 104 different countries visited our site this past year. Top views from countries other than the US were:

Japan: 445

United Kingdom: 384

Canada: 352

Australia: 244

Singapore: 208

Despite being published in 2023, our birding posts from Japan dominated views this year, especially with FSB visitors from foreign countries! Here, Tessa and I visit The Great Buddha, or Daibutsu, of Kamakura—apparently the second largest Buddha in Japan, one that harkens back to about 1252.

So which of our posts received the most views? Here is our Top 10 for 2024 (plus/minus 10 views each, given the quirks of the statistics-accumulating program):

1. Birding Japan, Kyoto: 811

2. Birding Japan, Tokyo Part I: 573

3. Birding San Antonio’s Riverwalk, Are You Nuts?: 568

4. Birding Barcelona Part I, The Urban Core: 463

5. Birding Japan, Kanazawa: 332

6. Birding Glacier National Park in the “Hot Dry Winter” of 2024: 289

7. Getting Serious About State Birds: 284

8. Braden’s Costa Rica Report #3, El Copal: 249

9. Turning Useless Lawn into Vital Habitat: 196

10. Monotypic Birds, Evolution’s Survivors: 195

A couple of things become evident from this list. One is that many birders are travelers. Even though they are from 2023, our Kyoto and Tokyo posts (links above) continue to get hits every day, often from people outside the United States. Despite this stiff competition, our post about San Antonio’s Riverwalk still wears the crown of our all-time most viewed site. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that all of this is because of how many birders are out traveling the world!

If you remember this Red-shouldered Hawk, you’ve been reading FSB almost from the beginning! Our post on birding San Antonio’s River Walk still holds the title of our most viewed post ever, with almost 2,000 views.

Our top posts, though, also reveal that readers of FSB have a major interest in environmental issues, as is revealed by our Glacier National Park post and our post “Turning Useless Lawn into Vital Habitat.” We take great satisfaction in that because one of the main reasons we write FSB is to help increase awareness of the environmental plight of our planet—and birds in particular—and what we can all do to improve the situation. Planting native plants in our yards is an especially simple, effective approach to increasing vital habitat that birds and their prey depend on. We’re happy that so many people took time to read our post on this topic.

Enthusiasm for our post on the dry hot winter of 2024 revealed a strong interest in the environment among FSB readers. Good job, readers!

But the year is only a little about statistics. Braden and I both had wonderful birding adventures in 2024. Thanks to his semester abroad in Costa Rica, Braden saw a remarkable 736 species of birds in 2024. More important, he got dozens of other young people into birding by starting the wildly successful UMaine Birding Club. The club did all kinds of fun activities, from leading dozens of birding outings to hosting movie nights and launching a project to reduce bird strikes on the UMaine campus building windows. Braden and I also finally got to take the eastern Montana birding safari of our dreams, spending two weeks exploring corners of the state we’d never before visited.

Braden’s adventure-packed semester in Costa Rica led him to see a remarkable 736 species of birds for 2024.

I had my own birding adventures including my wife’s and my trip to Barcelona last February, where I picked up a dozen species for my life list and had a whole lot of fun with Amy. I had two great trips to California: one to show my youngest, Tessa, a couple of potential colleges for next year; the second a great Bay Area trip to visit family and friends, including four fab days of birding with my childhood buddy, Scott. Work travel gave me additional opportunities to bird in Oregon, Washington, and throughout Montana. The highlight of the end of my year was getting to bird Cape Cod with Braden during Thanksgiving Week. I am also elated that my newest book, Birding for Boomers, is off to such a great start, reaching #8 the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association bestseller’s list for nonfiction paperback books!

Thanks to the year’s second trip to California, I got to spend more time than usual with friends—and coastal birds such as this Black Turnstone.

As usual, Braden and I have only vague ideas where 2025 will take us and what we will be moved to write about. A few destinations in the mix: Indonesia, Vancouver Island, Texas. Whatever adventures we have and end up writing about, we deeply appreciate all of you for checking in and taking an interest in the coolest group of critters on earth. We also appreciate you supporting our work by buying our books and sharing FSB with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Until next year, Happy New Year, and may 2025 bring you joy, satisfaction, closer connections and, of course, a whole lotta birds!

Sneed & Braden

Birding Race Point: Cape Cod’s Pelagic Playground

The week before Thanksgiving, my family had the opportunity to visit a place that featured prominently in my childhood—Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We headed to Boston so that I could accept a big award for my picture book, Border Crossings, but the trip provided many piggybacking opportunities. These included a chance to look at colleges for Braden’s sister, Tessa, and to meet up with Braden for Thanksgiving. After Amy, Tessa, and I spent a few days in Boston, in fact, Braden drove down from the University of Maine and whisked us off to the Cape.

I spent parts of many summers in Woods Hole on the Cape. My father did his post-doc at WHOI—the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. My step-father spent dozens of summers in Woods Hole doing research and teaching classes at the MBL—the Marine Biological Laboratories. I have many fond (and some not-so-fond) memories of those summers, but had not been back for (gasp) 45 years! I looked forward to revisiting old haunts and showing my family some of the places that had shaped my childhood. Naturally, Braden and I also considered the birding possibilities.

Race Point Lighthouse.

When Braden first mentioned going to Race Point near Provincetown, I hesitated. I recalled driving up there as a ten-year-old and didn’t relish spending an extra four hours of our vacation in a car. When Braden started telling me what we might find there, however, I quickly changed my mind.

Race Point, it turns out, is one of the nation’s premiere places for spotting seabirds from land. A map reveals an obvious reason: Cape Cod juts miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, and the tip—Race Point itself—is surrounded on three sides by the sea. This means that birders have an opportunity to see both regular beach-type birds and many species that only rarely show up near land. Braden and I especially hoped to see jaegers, “tube noses” such as shearwaters, and any interesting gulls or ducks that happened to be around.

After a delicious breakfast at Liz’s Café in Provincetown, Braden and I left Amy and Tessa to explore while we headed off to the parking lot near Race Point lighthouse. As soon as we approached the beach, we spotted Northern Gannets soaring above wild, wind-raked seas. I’d only ever gotten a brief look at a NOGA before, when Braden and I had visited Acadia National Park three years before, so right away the drive up to Provincetown redeemed itself!

However, the excitement was just beginning.

One of perhaps 150 Northern Gannets we saw at Race Point. Like Blue-footed Boobies, these birds torpedo straight down into schools of fish.

As wind and sand pelted us, groups of White-winged and Black Scoters, Common Eiders, and Long-tailed Ducks skimmed the waves just offshore. Some occasionally landed, but most seemed hell-bent for destinations only they knew about. All were birds I had scant experience with, so I soaked up every sighting.

This was only my second time seeing Common Eiders, and I was uber impressed by the coloration of both females and males.

“There’s a Red-throated Loon!” Braden said, pointing to a bird with an exceedingly pale, long neck reaching up from the surface. It wouldn’t be long before we saw several Common Loons, differentiated by blockier heads, chunkier bills, and more black on their faces.

Only my second Red-throated Loon ever. Note the smooth, rounded head and white “winter” face.

At the top of our To Find list were Great Shearwaters, a potential Lifer for both of us. These birds belong to the “tube noses,” the same group of birds that includes albatrosses, fulmars, and storm-petrels. These birds are truly seafarers, rarely approaching shore. Only a few weeks ago, I had caught a glimpse of Sooty Shearwaters while visiting California’s Point Reyes National Park with my friend Scott. Great Shearwaters had been sighted regularly at Race Point for the past couple of weeks, but alas, we arrived too late to see them today.

Braden fruitlessly searching the seas for Great Shearwaters and jaegers.

We still had plenty of thrilling birds to look at, however. As we trudged the mile and a half through the soft sand toward the very tip of the Cape, flocks of Dunlin and Sanderlings in their winter plumages worked the drifts of foam left on the beach by each encroaching wave. We even saw a group of six Horned Larks, birds we were used to seeing on the backroads of Montana—not here at the end of the world.

It had been years since I’d gotten to hang with Dunlins, and it was a real treat.

Not to be outdone, gulls also put on a show. This was the first time I’d ever gotten to see Great Black-backed Gulls in a natural setting. They are the world’s largest gulls, and I gotta say they looked like they belonged in this rugged, challenging environment.

“Look!” Braden suddenly shouted. “Iceland Gull!” Two of them, in fact. These gulls had until recently been split into Iceland and Thayer’s Gull, and Braden and I had seen the latter at the Helena landfill in Montana. This look was much more memorable as both a juvenile and adult landed near us. Both were gorgeous birds with subtle markings, and they quickly jumped into contention for Bird of the Day honors. Not long after seeing the Iceland Gulls, Braden also spotted a Black-legged Kittiwake. I was grateful he’d gained experience with all of these birds while on the East Coast, because I certainly would have missed a lot of them.

I don’t even want to know what this Great Black-backed Gull is eating, as our two Iceland Gulls look on.

I picked up two Lifers for the day. One was Razorbill, a kind of black-and-white alcid I had dreamed about seeing for years (see our post “All About Alcids”). During our hike to the lighthouse and back, we saw about eighty of these birds in groups, flying low or bobbing up and down in the jagged waves. My second Lifer was a pair of Purple Sandpipers that landed in front of us and shouldn’t have been anywhere near a wide sandy beach. Like its closely-related West Coast cousin the Rock Sandpiper, these are rocky shore birds.

I was especially thrilled to see my Lifer Razorbills, but it’s a tossup whether these or the Iceland Gulls grabbed Bird of the Day honors.

“They must be migrating,” I said, and Braden agreed, though we were well within their wintering latitudes.

As we trudged back toward the car, Braden spotted a fin jutting out of the water. At first we thought it might be the dorsal fin of a shark or orca, but after watching it for a few minutes, we concluded that we were looking at the tail flukes of a larger whale. I’d seen quite a few humpback whales before, and these didn’t look anything like it. “I think it’s a Right Whale,” I said. Later, we learned that Right Whales had been regularly spotted in the area. It was one more unforgettable discovery for a memorable day.

Race Point eBird Checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S203601766

Race Point selfie!

Robin Smackdown: Old World versus New

At any time of year, but during the holidays especially, new birders are likely to become confused by some of the birds they see on cards, calendars—even in animations. Don’t beat yourself up. The reason for your confusion is simple: many creative types (including those who aren’t birders) often pay scant attention to what a bird is or where it actually comes from. Artists especially, when they decide to make a bird painting or land a contract for bird art, cruise the internet for photos of birds. “Hey, I like that one!” they may say, not realizing that the bird has no relation to their intended audiences.

Just recently, in fact, Amy and I were wandering around a wonderful art walk night in Billings and stopped in at one place to admire the work of a new artist. Amy noticed some bird cards, and we bought a few. What was on them? A European species! I asked the artist if she knew she had painted a European bird, and she said, “No. I just liked how it looked.”

Can you name this bird? It’s not a North American species—but you will find it on plenty of cards, calendars—even in some popular movies.

In my experience, the most common occurrence of this kind of thing happens with Old World and New World robins. Look at the bird above. What do you see? If you answer “robin”, you are correct—but it’s not the robin we see here in North America. The bird above is a European Robin—in other words, the original robin. The robin we have here is the American Robin. What’s more, the two are only distantly related. European Robins belong to the family Muscicapidae, a group consisting primarily of Old World Flycatchers. American Robins belong to the family—don’t laugh—Turdidae, or thrushes. So how did these birds come to share the name “robin”?

How else? Colonial imperialism.

According to a 2011 segment of BirdNote, early English birders once dubbed the Baltimore Oriole the Golden Robin, though it has little relation to either the European or American Robin.

I won’t try to prove this, but it seems that the English were the original birdwatchers, and they carried their passion with them to the vast territories that they subjugated, usually without their owners’ permissions. In fact, the English pretty much disregarded the original occupants of a place along with any native knowledge of animals these occupants might possess. As a result, Brits gleefully conferred new names on most of the strange and interesting animals they encountered. Often these new names were actually old names that the English were already familiar with—including the name Robin, aka Robin Redbreast.

According to the delightful BirdNote episode titled, “How the Robin Got Its Name,” the English went a little buck wild with the name Robin. They called towhees Ground Robins. They dubbed the Baltimore Oriole the Golden Robin. If you compare the photo of the European Robin at the top with the photo below, it’s not hard to figure out how the American Robin got its name, either. But while chances are good that most American birders have come to appreciate American Robins, I’m guessing many of us haven’t encountered its etymological ancestor.

We can thank early British twitchers for bestowing the name “robin” on perhaps our most colorful THRUSH, the American Robin.

Both Braden and I have had the good fortune to see European Robins several times in the past few years, and I must tell you, they are delightful—if somewhat shy—birds. The first time was in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, which we birded during a long layover on our way to Israel. Sure enough, in Israel we also saw “EUROs” several times. Most recently, Amy and I enjoyed seeing European Robins in Barcelona (see our post “Birding Barcelona, Part 1: The Urban Core.”).

A European Robin scraping for invertebrates in Barcelona’s most central urban park, Parc Ciutadella.

I always take special delight in seeing this bird, perhaps because of its name, but also because it is every bit as beautiful as our American Robin. As mentioned above, the European Robin belongs to the Old World Flycatcher family, and I have seen them perched—presumably waiting to snag an insect out of the air. Like many other birds in its family, however, the European Robin seems more of a ground forager. Most recently, in Barcelona’s Ciutadella Park, I watched them scraping through dead leaves for invertebrates. Only a few days later, we watched one boldly perched above a pond in the botanical gardens.

Even though they aren’t closely related, AMROs and EUROs share a lot in common. Both live exclusively in the northern hemisphere, and are one of the most common land birds on their respective continents. And while they are year-round residents in large parts of their ranges, they also have distinctly migratory populations. They also both love to gorge themselves on insects, worms, and other hapless, creatures without backbones—but neither turns down fruit and seeds when the right opportunities arise.

Our defiantly anti-imperial bent may lead some American birders to proclaim that our robin is the superior bird. After all, it’s bigger and has a bolder red breast, but making such a claim is downright silly. Both birds are worthy of admiration and provide a terrific opportunity to further our birding educations. Best of all, as we travel North America, Europe, the Middle East, or north Africa, it is likely that we will always have one of these lovely creatures to greet us!