WHATTA BIRTHDAY, CALL US FOR YOUR CONDOR VISIT

Here’s email I got from good friend and fellow birder:  “We went to Big Sur for my birthday this week.  While have a massage in the room, the masseuse told us that she saw 3 condors fly by our window.
“She mentioned it after we were finished….otherwise I would have grab[bed] the bins and started following them!  We generally walk to the hot tub which is
about two minutes away near the room after our massages.  So I say to R that we should go to the hot tub and soak for awhile…..as we are walking there and told her “I wish I could see a condor…..that is my birthday wish” (it has been around 8 yrs since I’ve seen one…I sent you those photos)……so I keep looking up at the sky hoping to spot one……so one minute later as we approach the hot tub…….I can’t believe what I see…..3 condors pecking at the thermostat for the pool….right by the pool…..I whisper to R that I’m going back to grab my camera and try to capture this moment……I looked like Usain Bolt running the 100 mm race at the Olympics going back to the room…..I dash back as fast as I can and started taking some photos…..now they are pulling the towels from a high stack of towels for the guests!  They were hilarious….as the towel in the middle was being pulled out….they jumped back to avoid having the whole stack fall on them….two of them had tags, while the young one was untagged….their wing span must have been 7 to 8 feet wide [adults are near 9 feet, longest in U.S.  White Pelicans #2]…..incredible! I could have got closer, but I didn’t want them to fly away. so I’m going to send you the pics for your enjoyment…….I mentioned what happened to the staff and there is a website called “condorspotter.com” which tells you information about the specific condor……wow, what a birthday gift!”

If the towel had been dirtyIf the towel and been dirty and smelly would it have held more interest for them?  Or are they simply curious?  Adults do collect shining objects and carry them back to the nest sometimes.I

HOW DRY I AM

The severe drought and almost tropical “winter” that is occurring along the Pacific Coast will speed up the breeding season for many resident species.  Difficult to find birds like Wrentit and California Gnatcatcher are easiest to locate during breeding before they become even more secretive.  In southern Oregon the Turkey Vultures have returned a month early and Scrub-Jays have been seen building nests.  In an area where snow should be likely until April I have seen not a single snowflake, just warm rains out of the south.  Frogs are singing in seasonal ponds.  A bat flew past my car window on January 25; they are supposed be asleep, with the bears and Belding’s ground squirrels.  Mushrooms are sprouting at 6000′ in the mountains where there should be snow on the ground.  Lakes at 5000′ are ice free and full of Canada Geese.  I wouldn’t be surprised to suddenly see a small flock of Tree Swallows up from California, or an Osprey fishing.  All this is unseasonally early.  So if you are planning a Pacific Coast trip, think of doing it earlier in the year than in a normal year which this will not be.

THE AMERICAN BABBLER

Once again today I heard, and didn’t see, a singing male Wrentit at Ashland Pond in southern Oregon.  The distribution of this unique American bird (only member of its family this side of the Bering Strait) is an example of both adaptation and inflexibility in this species.  Famously, the Wrentit is sedentary, rarely wanders far and eschews open water.  Thus the species’ northern range limit is now the south bank of the Columbia River.  Its ancestors must surely have come across the Siberian land bridge eons ago and moved south only to be isolated from all over babblers (widespread in Old World forests) and marooned south of the Columbia River when it was formed after gigantic ice sheets melted.  In Uganda once I saw a dark brown, skulking babbler with a big voice…larger than our Robin.  It looked and sounded much like an over-stuffed Wrentit.

Here in southern Oregon the Wrentit is found in scrub and heavy thickets, mostly at lower elevations. Most likely locations in Jackson County are along the Rogue River and then south along the Bear Creek riparian corridor.  Willows, cottonwoods and blackberry thickets often signal Wrentit presence.  It seems most likely that our Jackson County Wrentits arrived here by spreading from the coast up the Rogue River Canyon and then along the corridors of its major tributaries, like Bear Creek.  BIRDS OF OREGON (Marshall, Hunter & Contreras) points out the species is still expanding its range.  Not in weeks or months like the explosion of the Eurasian Collared-Dove, nor even over a few decades like the Starling or Red-shouldered Hawk, but one thicket to the next…ever so slowly.

EBird does show a record for the Klamath Falls area at slightly over 4000′.  Otherwise the bird is not seen east of the Sierra Nevada crest or the Cascades further north.  The species is also found in the Sierra Foothills and some higher plateaus in California.  It is most abundant along the California and Oregon coasts wherever brush dominates and forests are broken or absent altogether.  There hillsides often are alive with singing male Wrentits, each bouncing his only vocal rubber ball downhill at requent intervals. The habitats most likely to be home to the Wrentit are coastal scrub and inland chaparral.  They are not treetop singers, quite able to sing loudly while staying concealed in brush humans do not penetrate.  I have yet to meet anyone who gets Wrentit to come to a suet or seed feeder.  They are not a suburban adapter like the Mockingbird or House Finch.

The Audubon Society’s recent climate change report on North American birds gives no map for the Wrentit, but the American Dipper, also found on our low elevation streams here in southernmost Oregon does have a map.  The Audubon projections are very bleak for that species.  If the climate does get hotter and dryer and plants like blackberry disappear the Wrentit is not going to be able to nest in sagebrush and feed on open ground.

This Wrentit photo was taken at Ashland Pond some months ago by Majorie Palmer, a birder visiting Ashland from the Olympic Peninsula.  This is a bird she’s not going to see in her own backyard 200 miles north of the Columbia, the Wrentit demarcation line.  These birds are very hard to photograph because they do not often appear in public, preferring their seclusion and being undercover.  Their territory is year-round so I have heard one sing in January during a snowstorm.  “My thicket.  Stay out.”

PIB has numerous trips to Asia and Africa where you can see many and larger babblers.  If you want to see a Wrentit, sign up for one of trips in California or Oregon.

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:

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?

CAL-GAL #2

More fine work from the lens of Barbara Bens on our PIB trip along the California Coast earlier this month:
Brown Pelicans at ease around the ocean.


Pair of Condors high over the ridge at the top of Pfeiffer-Burns State Park, Big Sur.

Elephant seals scuffling at Piedras Blancas.

Not all elephant seals are warlike all the time:

Great Horned Owl in flight at Drake’s Beach, Pt. Reyes

Heermann’s Gull thinking deeply. Could be anywhere in coastal California this time of year.

California Quail at Pt. Reyes National Seashore visitors center.

Rockpipers: Surfbird on left, Black Turnstone on right. Asilomar State Beach.

Red-shouldered Hawk in fog east of Morro Bay.

Western Scrub-Jay:

Warerfall at Pfeiifer-Burns:

White-crowned Sparrow in flight:

Flying Willet

CAL-GAL #1

Here is the first gallery of California photos (hence Cal-Gal) from birder Barbara Bens, one of the folks on my recent California Coastal birding trip for Partnership for Interantional Birding.
Female California Gnatcatcher near Pt. Vicente, LA County:
Ruyfous-crowned Sparrow, also at Pt. Vincente:

Hiding Cal Towhee:

Curlew in the fog, Morro Bay.

Diving Brown Pelican, Morro Bay State Park.

Santa Cruz Island:
Above: the endemic Island Scrub-Jay.

Banded Song Sparrow on Santa Cruz Island off Ventura:

Willet and friend at Moss Landing:


Yeloow-billed Magpie up Pine Canyon near King City in southern Monterey County.

Two of three Great Horned Owls in Monterey cypress trees, Pt. Reyes.
On this trip we got both North American endemics: Island Scrub-Jay and Yellow-billed Magpie, the latter requiring us to drive far from the coast in search of dog in an outdoor location. When we inquired about the species locally one woman told us she can only feed her dog at night because the magpies onto the food instantly in the daytime. These are farm dogs not fed in the house. Neither, presumably are the magpies fed indoors, though if you left the door open…

CALIFORNIA COASTING

Can birding the California Coast be called “coasting?” That’s what I was doing last week with a group of clients from Partnership for International Birding.California Towhee…in California.

Curlew in the fog, Morro Bay.

Diving Elegant Tern, Morro Bay.

Pelicans on rock northof Gorda, where we also saw a passing California Condor pursued by Peregrine.

Thus is what a sleeping sausage would look like…these happen to be only young elephant seals on the beach near Piedras Blancas.

Pfeiffer-Burns waterfall into the sea.

White-crowned Sparrow adult.

The spouting whale off Pfeiffer-Burns State Park in Big Sur. It was a humpback whale surrounded by attending Heermann’s Gulls and Sooty Shearwaters.
Above the park we saw a pair of soaring condors, giving us three on the day.
California zebra, a rare breed…actually exotic livestock on the Hearst Corporation property at San Simeon.

TRULY ELEGANT

Our recently-completed PIB birding trip along the California Coast had many highlights…here are about five hundred in one single frame. Elegant Terns loafing on a sandbar at Moss Landing in Monterey County.

No far from the madding crowd with its squawks and boistrous shoving, there was this contemplative soul having a snooze on the incoming tide:

VAUX’S SWIRL SWIFTLY

The evening of September 19th I got the chance to show some PIB clients the Vaux’s Swift phenomenon at McNear’s Brickyard in San Rafael, CA. I think the count that night exceeded 19-thousand birds…plus one Kestrel who didn’t apparently catch a swift.

As the light drops the swirling swifts become literally a blur to my camera:

Rusty Scalf was tere doing his count and said the Kestrel is rarely a successful swiftp-hunter, unlike his bigger, faster cousin, the Merlin.

McNear Brick and Block, Marin, US-CA
Sep 19, 2014 6:15 PM – 7:45 PM. 6 species

White-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus) 1
Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius) 1
Vaux’s Swift (Chaetura vauxi) 15000
American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) 1
Brewer’s Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus) X
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) X