CHAMPION FLIERS?

Research shows that Magnificent Frigatebirds are not only magnificent, they fly…endlessly.  Over 250 miles per day, non-stop, no resting on the water. They may fly that for days, weeks…they do land to lay eggs and incubate them.

Here are some pictures I took of frigatebirds around the Galapagos a few years back.  It was a trip organized by Partnership for International Birding.  Haven’t been there?  GO!  Enjoy these champion flyers:

A PACIFIC NORTHWEST GALLERY

Here are some images from the Partnership for International Birding that I (Harry Fuller) co-led in early June.  A pitcher plant reserve along the Oregon Coast:Pelagic Cormorant on rock offshore.  Below: Pigeon Guillemot.From the foggy coast we headed inland to the sunny Cascades:At Suttle Lake, a Dipper:At Calliope Crossing west of Sisters, OR, a Red-naped Sapsucker:

CHECK THAT BLUE!

Nan Perkins was one of the Texas birders on a recent trip we did across the Pacific Northwest.  It was a Partnership for International Birding trip.  When did you last get a good look at the bird gular pouch of a nesting Brandt’s Cormorant?  This is Nan’s great shot from along the Oregon Coast.

Here are two more of her shots, angry Osprey and a singing Pacific Wren:

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.

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.

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 #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: