The Worst Birds of 2023

 

Picking out the best birds of any given year is all well and good, but when reminiscing there are inevitably the bad birding memories that surface along with the good ones. As birders we love our nice little platitudes about how "everyone has different tastes in birds" and "all birds are good birds". On the other hand, I posit that any bird can be a bad bird too in the right context, and some birds are obviously worse than others. Some might still protest that there's no such thing as a bad bird. To which I say, let me be a hater on my blog and go look at House Sparrows or something.  

More charitably, I don't really dislike any of the birds involved in this (okay, except maybe Ashy-breasted Flycatcher), and I actually considered a couple of them for my "best birds" list. Does going through hell to see a bird make it a very good one or a very bad one? That's a deep philosophical question I don't have an answer to, and since I like complaining I'll go with the latter for now. 

1. Selayar Leaf Warbler

As I've mentioned elsewhere, my tastes in birds are decidedly shallow. Give me something bold and flashy any day over a skulking LBJ. In my ranking of birds, most Phylloscopus lleaf warblers fall very close to the bottom- a mix of being small, brown, and often difficult or impossible to ID. Why, then, did I spend several days going out of my way with the express purpose of seeing a leaf warbler? Specifically, a leaf warbler that's mainly noteworthy for being so boring that no-one has even bothered to describe it to science as its own species? Well, your guess is as good of mine. 

What I do know is that I managed to scratch my cornea, crash a motorcycle and break my finger in order to see what is possibly Indonesia's drabbest bird. What do I have to show for it? Well, pictures and recordings of a bird so obscure that it doesn't even count as a lifer on eBird. Of course, once it is formally described my birding buddy Angus and I will be two of exactly 5 birders who have ever seen it, so I do have that claim to fame. That's mostly because most people's eyes glaze over when they read "undescribed leaf warbler" but I'll take what I can get. 

2. Common Green Magpie

There are fewer highs in life more pure than discovering a rare bird. When that bird is not just rare, but a nearly-extinct endemic with virtually no recent sightings and no photos in the wild? That's simply sublime. This is exactly what happened for Bayu and me when we discovered a green magpie on the slopes of Gunung Ciremai in West Java. A green magpie in Java? The only option is the critically endangered Javan Green Magpie. An absolute mega bird, or so we thought. 

Of course, the higher the climb, the farther the fall. As difficult as it is to describe the excitement of the moment when we spotted the magpie, it's also hard to overstate the feeling of creeping dread when I looked at my photos a few days later and began to suspect that it didn't look quite right. A bit more research and expert opinions and it was confirmed: it was an escapee Common Green Magpie. As if Javan Green Magpie's disappearance from the Javan forests wasn't enough proof of the devastations of Indonesia's sordid wildlife trade, the fact that Common Green Magpies are being imported from Sumatra and then let loose in the wild just cements it. Combine the crushing realization of a mis-ID with a reminder of the dire situation of local wildlife and that's a shoo-in for the Bottom Five. Thankfully Ciremai was replete with enough other good birds (including one of my Top Ten) that it's still a mostly pleasant memory, but still... oof.

3. Lompobattang Flycatcher

Illustration shamelessly stolen from Birds of the World

Unlike certain other species on this list, Lompobattang Flycatcher is objectively a pretty cool bird: a smart-looking little flycatcher found only in the high-elevation forests of the isolated Mount Lompobattang in South Sulawesi. If I'd managed to get good looks at it it probably would be among my favorites of the year. While I did see it, which was nice, getting to the damn thing was... less nice. Between getting sideswiped on the drive up the mountain, getting lost on the way to the right habitat and spending most of the best birding hours crashing through bramble thickets, scrambling up the remains of a fresh landslide while listening to another one rumble down the mountain in the distance, and then only getting distant, barely tickable views of the bird, it was among the more frustrating days of birding this year. The only thing preventing it from being the nadir of that particular birding trip was that the other target bird of the expedition was, well, Selayar Leaf Warbler. 

In all honesty, I actually didn't hate my time up on Mount Lompobattang–the scenery was beautiful, Sulawesi's mountain endemic birds are among the best of any island in the world, and Angus was an excellent travel partner. To the extent that there were mishaps they were almost entirely my fault. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. Also not sure what it says about me that I'm already looking forward to returning to look for it again...

4. Visayan Miniature Babbler

Also stolen from Birds of the World because lord knows I don't have a picture of it despite days of effort

They say the definition of insanity is trying the same thing twice and expecting different results. By that metric birders probably rank fairly high on the insanity scale (actually by several different metrics now that I think about it, but I digress). After my first trip to Samar in 2022 I knew very well what I was getting into when I returned last year with Doug and Andrew. Did that stop me from hopping right back on the boat to crash through whitewater and then spend days trudging up and down a muddy path and stare at backlit foliage while listening to chainsaws? No, no it did not. 

In my defense, I had been tempted back after several others visited after I did and reported having a much better time of it, with some truly world-class birds beyond the miniature babbler. Perhaps, I thought, my experience had been atypical. By about the sixth hour of walking the same stretch of increasingly slippery path, it became clear that that was not the case. In fact my experience was nearly identical to the first, with the exception that the second time had more rain, more injuries, and none of the good bonus birds I'd seen the first time (although the pitta was nice). I did see the miniature babbler in the end- in fact, in precisely the same tree at the same time of day as my first sighting a year before. The main difference was that my views the second time were, of course, much worse. 

Anyway, surely my third visit to Samar will be much better!

5. Ashy-breasted Flycatcher

I have to admit that this list is, for the most part, tongue in cheek. All the above birds were seen on some of my favorite birding trips of the year, and even if there were some unpleasant experiences involved it just serves to make the reminiscing more fun. On top of that, all of the birds are pretty great in their own right- Selayar Leaf Warbler has some extremely cool feeding behavior and a nice song, Common Green Magpie is objectively gorgeous, Lompobattang Flycatcher is adorable, and the miniature babbler is a fun bird with its tiny size and silly side plumes. All of which brings me to the Ashy-breasted Flycatcher.

Is the Ashy-breasted Flycatcher a good-looking bird? No. Is it a distinctive one? No. Does it have cool behavior or occupy an interesting ecological niche? Well, also no. Despite the utter lack of any redeeming features, is it at least easy to find? Absolutely not. Did any of that preventing me from renting a car and doing a mad dash from the airport to try and find one in possibly one of my most ill-advised birding forays ever? Of course it didn't. Oh, and did I see it? Nope! I did, however, get to spend about 6 hours in Manila traffic, [redacted] to get out of a traffic ticket, get in a fight with the car rental company, and nearly miss my flight home. The cherry on top was watching every single birder in Manila visit over the following days and post their pictures of the bird I'd dipped on. It was quite possibly the nadir of my birding year, and I'm just glad I had some better birds after that to finish it on a better note. 

Now that we're almost four weeks into 2024 (yikes!), I suppose I can finally stop with the retrospective posts. Lest this particular one seem like it's on the negative side, I will again admit that I think these are all actually good birds in their own way (except Ashy-breasted Flycatcher), and that I'll look forward to looking for all of them again (except Selayar Leaf Warbler). Now to go back to processing pictures of birds in the snow...