{"id":4852,"date":"2014-12-01T23:00:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=4852"},"modified":"2014-12-01T23:01:44","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T05:01:44","slug":"the-toughest-birds-to-record-in-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/4852","title":{"rendered":"The Toughest Birds to Record in North America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"White-winged<\/a>
White-winged Scoter, June 2014, Dempster Highway, Northwest Territories, Canada. Copyright Andrew Spencer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you asked most people to list the toughest birds in the ABA area, the list would be a who’s who of hard to find, difficult to access, and shy species. \u00a0It might be a list peppered with species requiring a trip to some remote Bering Sea island, or those calling for standing in the bitter cold on a high mountain pass in the middle of the night. \u00a0But ask a recordist about the toughest birds in the ABA area and you’ll get a very different list. \u00a0Most of the species that I talk about below aren’t really “hard” birds to see. \u00a0Some of them can be downright common in the right areas. \u00a0But what makes a bird hard to record can be quite different than what makes it hard to find. \u00a0True, some of the species below are considered “tough” because of where they’re located – if you could get yourself to the right remote arctic island and you’d get all the recordings you want within a few hours. \u00a0It’s the getting there that’s tricky. \u00a0But most of the others are “tough” because they just don’t like to make noise. \u00a0Or because they only make noise in situations that are hard for the average sound recordist to capture.<\/p>\n

For the purposes of this list I decided not to include pelagic species. \u00a0Otherwise most of the list would be filled with tubenoses, alcids, and other birds that most of us only see while puking our guts out on the open seas. \u00a0I also don’t include any vagrants – to be included on the list the bird must be regular in the ABA. \u00a0Finally I didn’t include Gray-headed Chickadee just because, well, I figure that species is a given. \u00a0So below I’ve listed, in a (very) rough taxonomic order, 11 species that I would place on the “toughest to record” ranking for North America:<\/p>\n

White-winged Scoter. \u00a0<\/strong>Clearly this isn’t a rare or tough bird. \u00a0So what gives?! \u00a0Well, ocean ducks in general aren’t the easiest species to record. \u00a0But with most of them, get yourself in the right spot and you can usually get something. \u00a0That something may only be a quack or two, or it could be a bizarre and cool-sounding display. \u00a0But with White-winged Scoter that right spot seems to be especially hard to find. \u00a0I personally have never heard one vocalize on the wintering grounds. \u00a0And this past summer I spent quite a bit of time trying to record them on the breeding grounds, and even then only heard them on one occasion! \u00a0Luckily I was able to record said occasion. \u00a0In general, though, White-winged Scoter seems be one of the toughest “common” species to come to grips with, aurally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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