We got to see the documentary on Brown Pelicans at our local movie theatre.  It’s called “Pelican Dreams.”  Beautiful video of the big birds and told around the touching stories of two injured pelicans, one of whom has now flown back into the wild. 

This is worth seeing just for the great slo-mo of the pelicans diving in oceanic feeding frenzies.

It touches on conservation issues, climate change and the necessity of human awareness to allow these great birds to survive in our altered world.  It was shot mostly in California and Oregon with some video from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast.

PIB offers trips to Florida, Texas and California–all good venues for watching Brown Pelicans.

Here are a few of my own pictures of a feeding frenzy at Elkhorn Slough between Santa Cruz and Monterey on a PIB trip to California:

GALAPAGOS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

The latest Audubon magazine has three pieces on the future of the Galapagos’ unique habitat and birdlife…in the face of climate change.  You can click here to read those articles.

If you want to see the Galapagos as they are now, PIB has a variety of trips to both the islands and to the rich birding locales on the Ecuadoran mainland.  You can click here to read about the Ecuador/Galapagos trips we offer. Some photos from a recent PIB trip to the islands. The birds, from top to bottom: Lava Gull, Lava Heron, Wilson’s Plover. Blue-footed Booby, Brown Pelican with his outboard motor, Vermilion Flycatcher. Elliot’s Storm-Petrels. And a couple of endemics: Make that three endemics” Dove, Mockingbird and Penguin.  The latter loves to swim around with snorklers, even slow-moving hominids with plastic faces on.

RAPTOR RECORD OVER PANAMA

This fall’s migration saw a record number of raptors passing over Panama City in one day. Take a guess, then click on this link and read about the number of zeros in the new record.
PIB offers great trips to Panama, including a chance to see Harpy Eagle.
But Panama is much more than just raptors…below some images from my recent trip to Panama: Violaceous Trogon, white-faced monkey and White-necked Puffbird.

These two guys were just down the street from our arrival hotel in Panama City: Crimson-crested Woodpecker and Common Tody-flycatcher

PRETTY BIRD

ASHLAND, OREGON
I was face to face with beauty this morning. Overnight it had been drizzly, the sky was still mostly overcast so the light was dim and even. This often makes small birds feel less exposed, less skittish. Such was the case with one of the two (I suspect) White-throated Sparrows who’ve chosen to winter around Ashland Pond. The one who chose to pose for photos on the lichen-encrusted limb of a nearby oak is the brightly feathered one. The other sparrow I’ve photographed there may be a youngster and is much less brightly colored right now.WTS FRONT (1280×960)How much of this bird’s beauty is its relative rarity in our area? If he were as common as male Mallards or Robins or Scrub-Jay would we walk right past?

BTW, a fellow birder has found two White-throats around the feeders at North Mountain Park about a mile upstream from the pond. Ashland, Oregon, is clearly a White-throat hot spot on the Pacific Slope.

Brings to mind my favorite quote from Rich Stallcup, “Yes, but have you ever seen THAT Robin before?” This image below shows how the White-throated Sparrow is usually seen at Ashland Pond.This is at least the fourth straight year the species has wintered among the Golden-crowns, Fox and Song Sparrows there. Can we even still consider them vagrant? Aren’t the by now simply uncommon wintering birds like Hutton’s Vireo or Say’s Phoebe?

Last spring the two at Ashland Pond were singing by late April, dualing with their “peabody, peabody” tune. Definitely more dual than duet. One answering the other, or was it challenging?

My favorite White-throat story happened one autumn in New York’s Central Park. I had joined up with a local bird group looking for migrants. They simply walked past every White-throated Sparrow flock like we would Juncos out here. Not even worth a mention. Every brown ground thrush would get thoroughly vetted, one became my lifer Bicknell’s. I lagged at one point and scanned over the nearest sparrows, and in the back of the gang on the ground was a single White-crown. When I casually mentioned it so it would be added to our day list the whole group stampeded back for a long look at the “unusual” White-crowned Sparrow.

“What a beauty!” someone exclaimed. Rare beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

WHAT THE FLOCK IS HAPPENING AS WINTER APPROACHES?

ASHLAND, OREGON, US, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE, JUST ABOUT HALF-WAY FROM EQUATOR TO NORTH POLE

For some birds this is the season of togetherness. Parents and juveniles, families and cousins, unrelated birds of same species, even several species ganging together. What the flock?
Here is a small group of female Hooded Mergansers near a pair of sleepy female Bufflehead on Ashland Pond. A common winter sight that is not to be found during breeding season.

Above, Tundra Swans on Emigrant Lake (they are no longer there) showing three adults and four gray-headed juveniles. Parents and offspring? Here are Snow Geese (still at Emigrant Lake today). Two white adults, two grayish juveniles who may be their off-spring. Below, small flock of Green-winged Teal; they even fly in tight formation when they take off. Covey of California Quail. Historically these coveys included numerous family groups and would grow to the hundreds in food-rich habitats before gunners and feral cats came on the scene. Before Europeans arrived Native Americans could hunt quail with nets because the flocks were so dense.

This is a Solitaire in Harney County, OR. At the Sage Hen Rest Stop on US20 where I took this shot there were also Starlings, Cedar Waxwings, Robins, Mountain Bluebird and Varied Thrush all sharing the healthy juniper berry crop. Very mixed flock.

Above, a group of Elegant Terns loafing in Monterey after breeding season is over.
There are many working theories about why birds of a feather flock together. None are more together than some small shorebirds or Cedar Waxwings. The latter often be identified in flight at great distances simply by the cohesion of the flock. Mutual alert system? More eyes to find the food source? Safety in numbers? We should ask the birds…but maybe they have little self-awareness. Among Corvids there is “deliberate” or at least instinctive food-sharing rather than secretiveness. Again this may insure more survival for more individual birds. Fifty Ravens have a better chance of finding a fresh carcass than any single bird, then the croak goes out and the flock gathers to feed.

Certain families of birds in North America are almost always in flocks when not breeding: Acorn Woodpeckers (even putting all their eggs into one basket), Bushtits, most sparrows (except Song), finch family members from siskin to Evening Grosbeak, swallows, Robins, Icterids (blackbirds and meadowlarks), most Corvids (magpies to Crows), chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglet, pipits, starlings, swifts, Burrowing Owls, nightjars, waterfowl, shorebirds, cormorants, gulls and terns, pelicans, grebes.

Some other families of birds may join mixed species flocks but aren’t highly tolerant of their fellows from the same species: tyrant flycatchers#, nuthatches, most raptors*, hunting herons and egrets (though many nest in colonies), vireo, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, shrikes, cuckoos, many woodpeckers, most owls.

For some interesting musing on mixed-species flocks, check out this piece by Jack Connor in Cornell’s LIVING BIRD magazine.

* There are colonial members of the falcon family that flock together: caracaras, Little Kestrel in Europe, Eleanora’s Falcon. But DNA tells us falcon have more in common with woodpeckers than with a Red-tailed Hawk or Osprey.

# When was the last time you saw ten Black Phoebe sitting on a telephone wire lined up like Tree Swallows or blackbirds?

LEWIS’S WINTERING IN SOUTHERN OREGON

Each winter we get some Lewis’s Woodpeckers here in Jackson County, Oregon. Some years more than others. This has started off as a big year for Lewis’s in our open oak woodlands. They don’t breed in the county apparently, but there is a colony just fifteen miles south along the Klamath River north of Yreka, CA. Nobody here knows where these birds are coming from apparently.
This is a great species to watch on any day. This morning after a rain squall and then some break-up of clouds it was windless and partially sunny along OR Hwy 66, at about 2600′ elevation. In the oaks there was a group of Lewis’s. Like their Acorn cousins, this species is often seen fly-catching. They do the phoebe bit–sit upright, spot prey, fly out and grab, then fly back to the same perch. Today they were in Purple Martin mode. Something I’d never witnessed before. Up to eight were circling in the air at one time, some 200 yards or more above the earth. Circling, swooping, diving in shallow stoops. Not as fast nor elegant as swallows, unable to kite or hover like a Kestrel, the Lewis’s were still airborne for several minutes at a time. Many small insects including pale aphids were in the air and must have been their prey.

It’s fascinating to see the stiff and pointed plumes at the end of the tail feathers, useful for propping against a tree trunk when hammering

This location is at Milepost 10 on Hwy 66 southeast of Ashland, OR, in the Cascades. Two other good locations hereabouts for wintering Lewis’s are Sam’s Valley north of the Rogue River and Agate Lake northeast of Medford, OR, and south of OR Hwy 140.