Two Uncommon Birds on the Tuolumne River Parkway Today

It was a delightful day on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail. I was on the trail early, so it was cool, and the river is still running at flood stage (a controlled flood, given the presence of a giant dam a few miles upstream), so there was more river noise than traffic. I've always had trouble hearing birds, but with hearing aids and the Merlin bird app, I've been making headway in learning some of the calls. I was at the western end of the trail when the app said there was a Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea) calling. I get false alarms on the app quite often so I started it again, and the Blue Grosbeak popped up, again and again. I finally realized I was hearing it on my own too (not used to those hearing aids yet).

But I couldn't see it. It had to be close by, but aids boost sound, but don't necessarily provide directional capability. I finally caught it at the very top of a nearby oak tree, and caught a few pictures like the one above.

Why was this special? They are at the top of my list of favorite birds, but I don't see the Blue Grosbeaks very often. There've only been six or seven of them seen in the entire county so far this year, and I've only seen them on the Tuolumne Trail once before, in 2020. So that made for a fine moment.

But it wasn't the only one. There was another rare visitor on the trail today. It's also uncommon because we are on the migratory path between their wintering areas in Central America, and their breeding areas in the Artic and northern tier US states (although a few seem to breed locally). It was an Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi). Unlike the Blue Grosbeak, it is a dependable visitor, having shown up along the Tuolumne Trail at least once in each of the last six years. But I will typically see it no more than a few times in a season, so it was kind of neat to see both birds on the same day. And to have them both pose for a few pictures (especially the flycatcher with the nice tuxedo vest)!

The Olive-sided Flycatcher has suffered a huge drop in population since 1970, nearly 80%. Habitat loss seems to be the heart of the problem, as forests have disappeared in the bird's wintering grounds. I'm glad that parts of the Tuolumne River corridor remain for them to hopefully thrive into the future.
 

A Bit of a Rare One: Olive-sided Flycatcher on the Tuolumne River

Sometimes I feel like such an amateur (that would be because I am). I've gotten to where I can recognize a lot of the common birds to be seen along my favorite haunts, but I am still finding it necessary to try and get a picture of the more obscure species so I can use the guidebooks to nail down an ID of an unknown bird. I'm learning the flycatchers, having found Black Phoebes (all over the place), and the somewhat less common Ash-throated Flycatcher, the Western Wood Pewee, and Say's Phoebe. But yesterday I was photographing what I thought might be the Western Wood-Pewee, but later I had doubts. The breast colors were wrong, the wing bars weren't as prominent, and so on. But what was it? I finally settled on an Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi).

But there was a problem with that. A quick bit of research on eBird revealed that the Olive-sided Flycatchers aren't seen on the valley floor all that often (only in three spots in our county in the last month or so). They are more common in the hills and conifer forests in the mountains that surround the valley. And I don't feel comfortable claiming rarer birds even with pictures. So I started asking around and got some encouragement with the ID, and today I found that one of the county experts saw one on the same trail today, so I'm feeling a bit better with my discovery.

The Olive-sided Flycatchers have an extremely large range, spending winters in the Amazon Basin of South America, and migrating north to the Western United States and across a wide swath of Canada and Alaska. They like forest settings where they can find a good perch and sally forth to, um, catch flies (and presumably lots of other kinds of bugs, including bees). They've undergone a steep decline in population over the last fifty years (losing about 80% of their total numbers). According to eBird, the problem has a lot to do with habitat loss in their wintering grounds.