GET YOURSELF TO ECUADOR

PIB has great trips to various habitat zones in Ecuador. And there’s a book you want to take with you. It’s the first-ever, one volume nature guide for anyone headed to Ecuador’s wondrous mountains and rain forest and arid western slopes:
Wildlife of Ecuador:
A Photographic Field Guide to Birds, Mammals, Reptiles, and Amphibians
Andrés Vásquez Noboa. Photography by Pablo Cervantes Daza. Princeton Press. 2017. $29.95.
I wish I’d had a book like this when I was in Ecuador…or even Panama where I got far too close to a pit viper without recognizing it. The bird section is fine but the real value is in all those other critters: face-to-face shots with snakes. It’s the head that matters…look for the heat-sensing pits. You may want to keep your birding guide nearby or back at the ecolodge because only breeding plumage shots are given for most avian species.
Now I know there are two species of agouti in Ecuador and I saw the black in Coca. Not sure even my bird guide knew there were two, certainly didn’t tell us.
Superbly clear range maps. Both English and Latin indices.
My favorite Ecuadoran bird is at the top of page 140…the Collared Inca.
ECUADOR GALLERY FROM MY VISITS:
Yellow-tufted Woodpecker:
Great Ani:Hoatzin at Sani Lodge:Squirrel monkey:
Swallow-tailed Kite over Napo River in Amazon Basin:

BIKING ACCOPANIED BY BIRDSONG

The well-known, often published birdsong expert, Dr. Donald Kroodsma and his son biked across the nation, starting on the East Coast and ending in Oregon where Kroodsma first studied ornithology in graduate school.  The resulting book is an exciting and useful introduction to birdsong, where and when and how to listen.Here’s a sample page, and publishers have now graduated from CDs to on page links to websites with all the relevant birgsongs, accessible for free:

Listening to a Continent Sing:
Birdsong by Bicycle from the Atlantic to the Pacific
By Donald Kroodsma

Princeton Press.  Hardcover | 2016 | $29.95 | £22.95 | ISBN: 9780691166810
336 pp. | 6 x 9 | 125 line illus.

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?

THE CULINARY CONCEPTS OF GULLS

This incident of gull vs. tourists took place at Limantour Beach, Pt. Reyes, a few days ago.

Today I was leading a group of birders and we stopped for dinner at an outdoor seafood cafe in Ventura. Some other diners left their table and a first-year Western Gull quickly swooped down to empty the small container of tartar sauce left on the table. That very same gull also proved adept at catching French fries with his beak.

Why Ventura? Tomorrow we take the Island Packers boat out to Santa Cruz Island for the endemic Island Scrub-Jay, an example of evolutionary giantism, like the Komodo monitor lizards, but not as dangerous.

If you;re interested in seeing some California specialties, PIB will work with you on a custom trip or you can join one of our standard ones. Just on this first day we’ve gotten California Gnatcatcher, Common Murre, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Royal and Elegant Tern, Black Oystercatcher and Turnstone, Marbled Godwit, Red-necked Phalarope, Heermann’s Gull, Black-bellied Plover and California Towhee.

BIGGEST WEEK, DAY #1

Today was the opening of the Biggest Week in American Birding festival here inn northwest IowaOhio. The four of us from Partnership for International Birding and Neblina Tours of Ecuador have already seen 110 species. Some samples:Evenb here the increasingly scarce Upland Sandpiper is considered a good fine. These two were walking in the grass along the road margin today. Winter here has lingered and the birds could find grass tall enough to hide in.

Blue-headed Vireo, the eastern counterpart of our western Cassin’s Vireo.

Chestnut-sided Warbler gives me the eye.

Eastern Kingbird

You know how much I love owls if you read my blogs. Eastern version of Screech-Owl.

Ovenbird feeding on the forest floor.

Purple Martin atop martin housing development at Ottawa NWR. They are big and aggressive e enough to drive off the real estate greedy House Sparrows.

Swainson’s Thrush along the Magee Marsh boardwalk. All these birds are within a mile of the south shore of Lake Erie where the winds comes whipping off the waves.

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.