Bird of the Day: Acorn Woodpeckers at Chaw'se

Sitting for two hours at Chaw'se (Indian Grinding Rock State Park) in the Sierra Nevada near Jackson is to watch a soap opera. Dozens and dozens of birds were flitting about in the trees, but the main cast of the day were the Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus). They were raucous and very busy storing acorns in the trees and on wooden poles in the park.

I love watching these birds. We tend to improperly anthropomorphize animals, but how can you not think of clowns when you see their colorful faces?

The woodpeckers are a western species, with a range that extends from Central America all the way to southern Oregon. They prefer oak woodlands, which is not too much of a surprise, given that acorns are one of their main food sources. They'll also eat insects, but insects won't be around during the winter. So they store acorns.

No, this picture isn't upside down, the bird was.

They'll drill thousands of holes into any available wood surfaces, including trees, telephone poles, or buildings.They'll stuff acorns in the holes, and then jealously guard their food stores from squirrels and the like.

Their storehouse trees are called granaries, and may contain tens of thousands of holes. The picture below was just one post in the picnic structure at Chaw'se.

We had a delightful afternoon watching these colorful birds at work in the nearly deserted park. Next time I will catch them all in the sun and in focus. It drove me nuts (acorns?) craning my neck, waiting for them to sit still long enough for a perfect pose. It will happen sometime!

Bird of the Day: Northern Flicker at Chaw'se Grinding Rock State Park

Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) at Chaw'se

I've had four of the last five weekends taken up with field trip commitments. I would never complain about a job that sends me on the road with students, but it felt a bit hectic. So what did I do with my first free weekend in more than a month? I hit the road of course!

There was a difference this time. Mrs. Geotripper and I took a couple of folding chairs and set them up in the middle of the meadow at Chaw'se, the Indian Grinding Rock State Park in the Sierra Nevada above the Gold Rush town of Jackson. And we sat for two hours. We were at the park last week as one of the stops on our study of the geology of the Mother Lode, but the stop was short. This time we just wanted to sit and listen and watch for birds and whatever else might wander by.

I was rewarded with two new species, and a lot of other sightings. New species isn't much of a surprise, as I haven't been at this for long, but it's always fun, even if the bird is relatively common. I just haven't seen them for myself yet.

Today's bird is the Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus), a member of the woodpecker family that wasn't spending much time pecking at wood. It was foraging on the ground, looking for ants or beetles. The colors and patterns of the bird are striking and unmistakable!

I had seen the bird once before, fleetingly and fuzzy in the picture, in my neighborhood. This was the first opportunity I've had to actually frame and try to focus on the bird. I'm not quite satisfied yet, as it stayed in the shadows and at the extreme distance and high zoom it was hard to get the feather patterns as well as I wanted. And that will be my perfectly good excuse for heading up there again as soon as possible!

Chaw'se, the Indian Grinding Stones State Park, was featured last week in this blog. There will be a few more birds featured here from today's expedition in future posts, I'm pretty sure.

Bird of the Day: Yellow-rumped Warbler at Chaw'se State Park

To the surprise of perhaps no one, I was on the road again, this week with a field class studying the geology of the California Mother Lode. We made a stop at Chaw'se (Indian Grinding Rock) State Park near the town of Volcano to have a look at a gigantic slab of marble covered by more than a thousand grinding mortars.

It had rained a little in the last few days, so there were lots of small birds out and about, playing in what they must have assumed were little personal birdbaths. I identified eight or nine bird species, but these little Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) did the best before the camera today.

The species is quite common, although I am chagrined to say that I had not noticed them prior to the start of my neighborhood odyssey of birding last November. I've now seen them up in the Sierra Nevada foothills, on the west campus of my college (see the last picture below), and one morning last winter, on my back porch, catching bugs around the porch light like a little bat.

They have a more intense coloration during the breeding season, as evidenced by this shot (below) of a visitor to my third floor corridor on the west campus. It held still long enough for three or four shots.