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:

JUNCO YES, ‘JUNK BIRD’ NO

Nature has seen fit to populate North America with more Dark-eyed Juncos than humans. An admirable choice to my mind.
Around here the Junco breeds in both the Siskiyous and Cascades, in conifer forests mostly above 4000 feet. In San Francisco they breed beneath the transplanted pine and cypress, just above sea level.
Click here to find a nice article on what we know about Juncos and what they may tell us about our fellow primates.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ FOR NEXT SEPTEMBER

I will be leading a trip along the California Coast next September. It will be at the height of shorebird migration: Black Turnstone, Wandering Tattler, Red-necked Phalarope, Surfbird, Marbled Godwit, various sandpipers and plovers. Click here for itinerary.
Of course, we will cruise along Big Sur, a magnificent coastal highway, in search of North America’s largest bird (by wingspan).

These Condor pictures were taken on the same route a couple years ago. There are now more condors flying free than are in captivity. A remarkable story of saving an endangered species that once got down to less than 20 individuals.

Click here to see what’s up on the Ventana Wilderness Society’s CONDOR CAM.

The trip will also take us in pursuit of California’s two endemic Corvids (no other American state has even a single endemic): Island Scrub-Jay and Yellow-billed Magpie. Other hard-to-find birds we will seek: California Gnatcatcher, Oak Titmouse, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, California Thrasher, Hermit Warbler, Hutton’s Vireo, Heermann’s Gull and Cassin’s Auklet. Come enjoy some California sun and birding.

CALIFORNIA GALLERY #1

Some more images from our PIB birding trip in northern California.
Red-shouldered Hawk, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. This modest sized buteo is well-adapted to urban hunting where rats can be caught from a perch, not requiring a lot of soaring around. This bird’s frequent loud screams are a commonplace sound in California city parks.

The large dark bird on the right is a first-year Western Gull. The medium-sized dark bird on the left is an adult Heermann’s Gull. The crowd consists of basic plumage Elegant Terns. Ocean Beach San Francisco.

This is America’s only member of the babbler family, a Wrentit, in the Marin Headlands just off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Brown Pelicans in flight. The young birds have pale bellies, the adults have pale faces. It takes three or four years for this species to reach maturity and breeding plumage.

A snowdrift of sleeping White Pelicans in Marin County. In some marshes we saw both Brown Pelicans fishing with dives, and the larger White Pelicans seining the same water while afloat.

CALIFORNIA BIRDING

I just got back from leading a six-day birding trip across Central California. We hit San Francisco, Pt. Reyes, Livermore, Sierra Foothills, Monterey and Big Sur. We had 149 species before six of our birders took the extension pelagic trip with Debbie Shearwater out of Monterey Harbor.
Biggest bird, of course, was a pair of California Condors about sixty feet overhead. They turned out to be father and son. Each free-flying condor carries a wing number.


Some other highlights included such California specialties as Oak Titmouse, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, the endemic Yellow-billed Magpie, California Thrasher on Mines Road south of Livermore, Townsend’s Warbler (a wintering species), Tricolored Blackbird on Pt. Reyes Peninsula and California Towhee.
Uncommon migrants included 2 Harlequins at Pt. Reyes, a Pectoral Sandpiper at Asilomar State Beach in Pacific Grove and a Chestnut-sided Warbler at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.
Birds that are generally not found east of the Sierra Nevada included: White-headed Woodpecker, Hermit Warbler, Sooty Shearwater, Black Turnstone, Surfbird, Black Oystercatcher, Heermann’s Gull.
Other birds of limited range included Elegant Tern, Marbled Godwit and Snowy Plover.
We saw hundreds of Red-necked Phalarope:

Altogether we had two dozen shorebird species on this trip.

BEACH BIRDS AND MORE

“Wish they all could be California birds….”                  –Beach Birds

Some general information: Whenever we are within ten miles of the coast, a cool wind and/or fog is possible. The northern Pacific Ocean does NOT warm up each summer as do the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico or southern Pacific. Due to currents and upwelling the surface of the Pacific along the Northern California Coast stays very close to 55 degres year round. Clearly that moderates the weather nearby. The cold water and upwelling make for very rich fishing waters which in turn makes for very rich coastal birding. It will make for very cold birders if you come dressed for a day on the beach in Florida.
We will try to be at dinner by 630PM each night. At dinner we will go over the day’s bird sightings and update our checklist(s).

We’re putting together a trip around Northern California for some folks who live east of the Rockies.  Here’s what we’re up to:  Birders arrive at SFO on the morning of September 9.  By noon we will be birding along Ocean Beach in San Francisco.  There’ll be Brandt’s Cormorant, Surf Scoter, Common Murre, Heermann’s Gull, Black Oystercatcher, Marbled Godwit, Black Turnstone, Surfbird, Wandering Tattler.  A little uphill from the ocean: California Towhee (see picture below), Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Black Phoebe.
SEPT. 10 We will be at Pt. Reyes, one of the finest birding venues on the Pacific Coast. We will be there for the height of fall migration. Vagrants always possible. In addition we will find some of the local specialties: Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Pelagic Cormorant, Western Gull, Glaucous-winged Gull, Hutton’s Vireo, California Quail, White-tailed Kite (see picture). Western Sandpiper is also likely. se wil lbird at Pt. Reyes and nearby Bolinas Lagoon.
SEPT. 11 We will move inland from the coast. Along the way we should find Oak Titmouse, Yellow-billed Magpie (a California endemic, see picture below) and maybe even a California Thrasher. We stay this night and next in the Central Valley.
SEPT. 12 We will bird in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. This is our day to find White-headed Woodpecker, Hermit Warbler, and some fall migrants that stick to higher elevation. Perhaps a Green-tailed Towhee or Western Tanager. This will be our best chance for a Dipper as well.
SEPT. 13. We head back to the coast at Monterey. In addition to the irresistible sea otters we should find plenty of migrating shorebirds including Red-necked Phalarope, any gulls or loons we may have missed further north, and a chance for wandering sea birds like Black-legged Kittiwake and Parasitic Jaeger that sometimes come near shore. The gull is an adult Western in bright plumage.
SEPT. 14 We will bird Highway 1 along the scenic Big Sur Coast. Our target of the day: California Condor, the largest, self-powered flying animal in North America. The Condor’s return to living and breeding in the wild is a major conservation success story of our generation. We may also find Dipper, Pileated Woodpecker, Rufous-crowned Sparrow and Wrentit (America’s only member of the Babbler family).
SEPT. 15 Departure day or optional pelagic birding with Shearwater journeys out of Monterey. Those on the pelagic trip should see Ashy Storm-petrel, Sooty and Buller’s Shearwater, Black0tailed and Laysan Albatross, all three jaegers, Arctic Tern, Sabine’s Gull, Cassin’s and Rhino Auklet, Red Phalarope. Whales and dolphins are also likely on this trip.
If this sounds interesting, contact us at Partnership for International Birding.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

If you’ve been birding east of Sierra most of your life, you’re missing something.  Definitely you’re missing a list of birds that are awaiting your visit to the Pacific Slope.  The Pacific-slope Flycatcher would be one.

Here is one of the Pacific-slope Flycatchers I watched carrying insects to a nest in July.  And there’s the nest on the ledge of a park service building at Pt. Reyes National Seashore.  The large object next to it is my wallet for a size comparison.

Note this bird’s broken eye-ring, short wing extension, moderately heavy beak.  Also a bit of a crest showing.

To see this bird, let PIB plan your spring visit.  At that time of year you’ll also see Allen’s Hummingbird, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Brandt’s Cormorant, Hooded Oriole, Hermit Warbler, California Thrasher.  With some luck, we may find Lawrence’s Goldfinch.

If autumn is a better time for you to travel, try this:  Wandering Tattler, Surfbird and Black Turnstone sharing the same seaside boulders.  Hundreds of Red-throated and Pacific Loons on migration.  All three scoters.  Check out the southbound raptors with Golden Gate Raptor Observatory on Hawk Hill with a stunning view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Heermann’s Gull and Elegant Tern.

Here’s a Heermann’s landing on the beach.

Here’s a Surfbird on his beloved coastal rock.

This is a seaside scene you can find any time of year:  Western Gull loafing, Pelagic Cormorant clearing debris from its water-soaked plumage before the next dive.  Other year round birds in Northern California include White-tailed Kite, western Red-shouldered Hawk, Hutton’s Vireo, Anna’s Hummingbird, California Towhee, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Oak Titmouse and Wrentit:

The Wrentit, on the berry branch here, is the only American species in the large, Old World family of babblers.  They’re all brownish, secretive, forest birds.  Only Wrentit made it across the Siberian land bridge to Oregon and California. It is one of the most sedentary birds in North America.  It will NOT show up at a feeder in Colorado or Minnesota.

And there’s this guy, a California endemic.  Not many states in the U.S. even have an endemic species, right?  This Yellow-billed Magpie is 50% of the endemic species of California.  The other is also a Corvid, the Island Scrub-jay.  An extension to our regular California birding trip can get you BOTH of these endemics.

SO JOIN THE PIB CALIFORNIA BIRDING TRIP IN 2012. 

The tour leader is Harry Fuller who has over two decades of California field trip experience.  In less than 5o0 square miles of San Francisco’s urban habitat he has well over 300 lifetime species.