Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk on the California Prairie

We saw quite a few species on our short excursions through the California prairie last weekend. As we drove south from the Willms Ranch stock pond, we passed a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) on Crabtree Road. It didn't worry about us enough to fly off, but it certainly kept an eye on us.

I'm slowly getting better with my identifying of hawk species, but Red-tails can be especially challenging because their coloration is highly variable (in other words, I could be wrong and welcome corrections, as always). The hawk is one of the most visible raptors in North America with a range that extends from Panama and the Caribbean Sea to Alaska and the Arctic Circle.

A Secretive Sora at the Willms Ranch Pond on California's Prairie

California has some special landscapes that are not part of the usual tourist routes. One of those unheralded ecosystems is the prairie lands that form the edge of the Great Valley. The lowest part of the Sierra Nevada foothills have not yet been completely covered by almond orchards, and aside from the grazing of cows, the grasslands look much as they did hundreds of years ago. Much of the land is private, but parts can be seen from public roads, and a generous ranch owner provides some public access at a stock pond that is a local hot spot for birding. It's on Willms Road a couple of miles south of Knights Ferry on the Stanislaus River. I stopped by on the weekend while looking for Burrowing Owls (note the last two posts).

We saw the usual assortment of American Coots, Egrets, Pied-billed Grebes, Common Gallinule and Kestrels, but as we were preparing to leave, we got a little treat. I was looking back at the reeds and was surprised to see another bird lurking around the shadows. It turned out to be a Sora (Porzana Carolina). The birds, a type of rail, are said to be common but secretive, being heard more often than seen. The pictures show just how hard they were to photograph. This was only third time I've seen one (previous sightings were at Stone Lakes and the Merced National Wildlife Refuge).

The picture above provides an idea of the setting of the pond where we were exploring. We saw the Sora in the reeds to the left of Mrs. Geotripper.

What? Another Burrowing Owl?

I don't usually post about the same bird on successive days, but it turns out that Mrs. Geotripper was not with me yesterday when I sallied forth and discovered a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) in the prairies east of my town in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. The odd thing is, I've seen Burrowing Owls only three times, and the three sightings were within a hundred yards of each other, even while years apart. Mrs. Geotripper wanted to get pictures of her own so we headed back out to Willms Road near Knights Ferry.

The funny thing is, we saw a fourth owl in a different spot, on Crabtree Road. So the spell is broken. I'll probably finally start seeing them everywhere now. If it illustrates how hard they can be to detect in their home environment, see if you can locate the owl in the first picture. It's there, honest! Mrs. Geotripper got the clearest close-up, seen below.

Horned Lark on the California Prairie (what's left of it, anyway)

Although I no doubt had seen them, I didn't recognize Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) until early last year during my travels through the remaining prairies of Central California. At a distance I mistook them for Meadowlarks. I was on a work errand in the Sierra Nevada foothills a few days ago, helping to select rocks (well, really giant boulders) that will become part of our Outdoor Education Laboratory next to our Science Center. I was near Knights Ferry and Willms Road, so I took ten minutes to check out the prairie off to the south. It didn't take long to find a few of the Horned Larks (and some Meadowlarks too).

The birds have declined in the last few decades, to only about 30% of their former population. There are probably plenty of factors, but humans are behind most of them. The biggest factor is probably loss of habitat as more and more prairie is plowed under in service to nut orchards (in our area at least), and the essentially unrestrained use of pesticides that has caused the insect population on our planet to plummet drastically (recent reports suggest that 70-80% of bugs have disappeared in recent decades). There's the cliché of the canary in the coal mine to describe the harbinger of things to come, but a new version would be the disappearing Larks of the prairie.

I've been kind of depressed lately that we really have arrived at the Silent Spring that Rachel Carson wrote about half a century ago.

In case you were wondering why they are called "horned" larks...

Long-billed Curlews along Warnerville Road on the California Prairie

Sometimes you just see odd sights. We were visiting the California prairie a few miles south from where we saw and photographed the Horned Larks. We saw a flock of gray birds in the meadow, and from a distance I thought were maybe some doves, but as we drew closer we could see they had ridiculously long bills.

They were Long-billed Curlews (Numenius americanus)! I'm sure I've seen them before, but I can't find a single picture of one in my archives. It was a surprise to see so many of them out here, as I thought they were shorebirds. It turns out that they are, but they breed in grasslands, and will use their long bills to search for earthworms in the grass, as well as picking off larger insects like grasshoppers from the surface. They will migrate to coastal areas and wetlands and use their bills to dig for invertebrates in the tidal flats.

There were around sixty of them in the corner of the pasture. They didn't seem overly concerned about the traffic passing by (or the crazy couple in the car with the cameras).

We started down the road to look for the Great Horned Owls that we saw two weeks ago, and stopped a quarter mile away. By then something had spooked the flock and the entire group flew by, headed to places unknown.

Horned Larks Along Willms Road, Redux

It's the funniest thing. Once you've seen a thing, you'll always see a thing. Two weeks ago I noticed Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) during our drive along the prairie on Willms Road south of Knights Ferry in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I took a couple of poorly focused photographs, and posted them at the end of February. I promised to try and get better pictures next time.

So "next time" was today. We drove the road through the prairelands very slowly, and the Horned Larks weren't just "out there", they were next to the road, and they didn't flee when we pulled out the cameras.

There were males and females both. The males are the brightly colored ones. The "horns" are formed by upturned feathers behind their eyes.

The female decided to jump into the grass to show of some of the wildflowers that have started to bloom out here.

The vernal pools had been rejuvenated by the recent rains, and flowers are beginning to show up in abundance. There is such richness right now in this "normal" rain year after four bruising years of drought.

Horned Lark on Willms Road in the California Prairie

I saw a bird the other day for the first time. As usual, it's not because the bird is rare, but because I'm not the most observant birder out there, with only two years of careful watching. It was a Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris), a denizen of one of the most endangered of California habitats: the vernal pool prairie.

Better pictures will have to wait for another day. They were far out in the grasslands, and I was at extreme zoom. I thought we were seeing Meadowlarks, but realized that something was different about them. The Horned Larks consume mostly insects, which makes the grasslands an ideal place for them. They are found from sea level to 13,000 feet, and range across all of North America, from southernmost Mexico to the northernmost arctic barrens. Despite their adaptability, their numbers have been plummeting over the last fifty years.

The California prairie is an endangered habitat because it has been mostly converted to agricultural fields. 95% of the Great Valley is under the plow, for instance, and the less fertile lands of the Sierra Nevada foothills have been given over to grazing. The lands are for the most part are privately owned. The area we were exploring is currently being used for grazing, but tens of thousands of acres just to the west have been ripped up and planted with almond trees. The water used for irrigating the trees is coming from irreplaceable groundwater.

In these foothill environments, an impermeable clay layer prevents some rainwater from percolating underground, forming vernal pools that will persist for weeks at a time. Numerous endemic plants and animals have adapted to wet-dry environment. Animals hatch, grow and breed quickly, leaving eggs than can lie in the soil for years sometimes. Flowers have an equally quick life cycle. They were just beginning to bloom when we passed through.

Great Horned Owls on the California Prairie on Warnerville Road

It's been a rich week for birdwatching. I made it back to the Tuolumne River after a month long absence, I got out to the Beckwith Road viewing platform at the San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge, and then yesterday, Mrs. Geotripper and I headed out to the California prairie and vernal pool habitat, a unique landscape in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I've ended up with week's worth of posts, including some new birds. But this moment on Warnerville Road was pretty special.

There's a spot where an intermittent creek crosses road, and there is a high terrace of volcanic tuff (the Valley Springs formation) which many animals call home. Last March I got a picture of a raccoon in one of the holes dug out the cliff, and there are usually lots of swallows and finches near by. I always watch for Burrowing Owls, but I haven't been too lucky with them yet.

It looked like someone had put a log or something in the top hole along the cliff, but I was immediately sure it was something else. When I zoomed in with the camera, I saw this extraordinary sight...

There were two Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) in there! I seen Great Horned Owls on any number of occasions, but I've never had them completely disregard my presence. I didn't even have to get out of the car to get a series of nice shots.

Great Horned Owls have one of the widest ranges of any bird in the Americas, being found as far south as Argentina and Urugway and as far north as Canada and Alaska. I've featured them twice on this blog, but not with pictures as nice as these.

I'm assuming this is a mated pair, maybe even with their chosen nest site.

I know we aren't supposed to anthropomorphize birds, but owl expressions sure seem to cover the gamut of emotions, even if they don't. I see perturbed, surprised, bored, curious, and unconcerned in these pictures.

It was a privilege to spend a few moments with them, even if at a distance.

By the way, which photograph do you prefer? I couldn't choose my favorite.