First, let me say that birders, like humans in any walk of life, typically place more value on the rare, but I don’t think a “bucket list” bird never yet seen or a species rarely encountered should qualify as the answer to this question. Secondly, let me point out I am not a proficient ear birder, but I am a very visual person, so you’d have to guess my favorites would be ones with smashing colors rather than beautiful songs. A complicating factor, though, is that I’ve always said my favorite families of birds are those wearing camouflage and cryptic colors, owls, grouse, and maybe the woodies.
If you’re still following all this and eagerly awaiting my favorite bird right now today, I’m going with a rather uncommon species, the male of course, that has subtly beautiful plumage seldom seen and appreciated unless observed in just the right light. So . . . let’s say smashing color(s) hidden in plain sight, which ties in perfectly with the first two paragraphs. Favoritism is complicated, right?
How often have you seen a smallish bird in deep shade on a bright day and wondered what the heck it was because you’re getting no color? All you have is the size of the bird and the shape of the bill. Or here’s another one. There’s a smallish bird fully exposed in beautiful light just before sundown, but you’re glassing it from the east with that light behind it in the west? That’s right. It looks totally black but it’s too small and plumpish for a blackbird. Yeah, those are the ways I usually see my right now favorite bird.
For years one of my priority photographic goals was to encounter “my favorite bird” in perfect light, really in any light at all, and be able to pop the fantastic panoply of smashing colors that even the best guide books fail to portray well. Panoply? Well, truth be told, it really has only two colors, but you can be sure the first time I saw it front lit in early morning light with the sun behind me, it took my breath away.
The blending of those two colors, the nuances of their shading, and their placement on the bird’s body are mind-boggling given that typically the bird looks, well . . . just black. I finally decided the first time I had a good photo op with this bird I was going to grossly over expose the shots, just hoping to really illuminate those two contrasting colors. It happened in southern Arizona (there’s a clue for you) one June, the month typically our hottest and driest, as my favorite bird dropped into a creek bed below me to drink. I overexposed by two full stops, looked at the back of the camera, and felt my head exploding.
Hues of neon blue (got it yet?) I had never seen on any bird let alone this species, detonated against the dark mud and rocks of the creek bed. For sure not a good photo, the water blown out bright and the background busy and ugly, but the bird itself was amazeballs! And only then did I finally realize this species was actually a blue bird (but not a bluebird species), but even as overexposed as the photo was, the darker blues still shaded into dark purples, grays, and blacks in some areas.
Have I mentioned the second color was red? On that overexposure the red was only on the crown and, stunningly, on the bare skin of the orbital ring. In the years since that “enlightening” overexposure I have gotten several great photos of male Varied Buntings, my right now favorite bird, and my favorite photo of it to date appears at the end of the column. Who knew this drab little blackish bird was so good at hiding his array of beauty in plain sight? Females of the species presumably, but certainly not the so-called artists who paint for the field guides.
If you’re wondering why blue is the least common “bright” color in birds’ plumage, google “structural color versus pigmented color.” Good luck with the science, but it partially explains why the visual bounty of our male Varied Bunting is so infrequently enjoyed. Always glass this bird carefully. Sooner or later, if the light is just right, you’ll see something most casual birders miss. It’s worth the wait.