Hooded Orioles at Fox Grove

After my unsuccessful attempt at sighting Hooded Orioles in Hemet last week (I found Acorn Woodpeckers instead), I wanted about the closest thing to a sure thing as I could get. That would be Fox Grove on the Tuolumne River between Waterford and Modesto. They regularly nest in the palms around the Wildlife Center, and I've seen them there a few times in past years.

The Hooded Orioles (Icterus cucullatus) are a species of the southwest and Mexico, coming north in spring to breed. They build interesting hanging nests out of fibers of the palm fronds (of which I haven't yet captured images).

I was picking up dinner at the BBQ joint up the highway and stopped in and found a couple of the Orioles flitting from palm to palm. As usual, I have yet to capture a sharp shot, but these are among the best yet that I've gotten.

The females are not nearly as showy as the males, but I did manage to catch a shot of one of them.

Another Sign of Spring! Hooded Oriole at Fox Grove

The Hooded Orioles (Icterus cucullatus) are back. The birds spend the winter in southern Mexico and migrate north to breed. They prefer palms for nesting, so they tend to go no farther north than the Central Valley in California and the southern tier states of the Four Corners along with Texas.

The local birders report that some palm trees along the Tuolumne River at Fox Grove east of Modesto is a reliable nesting area, so I searched there last year and got two fuzzy pictures. I check out the grove again today, and saw lots of Starlings and doves in the palms. As I was about to leave, I saw one more dark silhouette that I thought was one more Starling, but it was moving a bit differently than the others. I zoomed in, and it was a Hooded Oriole!

Of course, the pictures are slightly fuzzy again, but that just means I'm going to work a bit harder to get good pictures next time...

First Sighting of Cedar Waxwings this Fall!

One if my favorite times of the birding year is the arrival of the Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) in our area. I saw a flock the other day on campus, but they were far away, as was my camera. This afternoon I took a short break at Fox Grove on the Tuolumne River between Modesto and Waterford.

I saw another flock of yellowish birds in the distance, and the telephoto confirmed it was a group of Cedar Waxwings. There were maybe two dozen of them in the dead cottonwood tree.

The birds come through the region while migrating between the tropics of Central America and Canada. They are year-round residents in the northern states. They feed primarily on fruits, which protects them from the nesting antics of cowbirds: the cowbird chicks can't live on the fruit diet and generally don't survive. The waxwings will supplement their diet with the occasional bug, however.

I'm hoping they'll return to the flowering pear in my front yard soon. They always surprise me when they arrive, because they are almost motionless and silent when they bed down for the night, and I therefore don't notice them except by chance. Then I feel a little creeped out as they stare at me...

Fox Grove is a 64 acre county park along the Tuolumne River between Modesto and Waterford. Some of the park is groomed (and ecologically barren) grass, and there is a large colony of feral cats. On the other hand, a lot of the park is recovering riparian habitat, and there are some good birding opportunities. I haven't spent a lot of time there, although I saw a Hooded Oriole there last spring.

Hooded Oriole at Fox Grove on the Tuolumne River

The Stanislaus Audubon Society publishes a guide called "The Birding Sites of Stanislaus and Merced Counties" (available through the website or from the store at the Great Valley Museum). It's a great resource for finding birding locations in our region, and it had one almost cryptic passage about Fox Grove, a fishing access park on the Tuolumne River between Modesto and Waterford. It mentioned only one kind of bird: the Hooded Oriole (Icterus cucullatus). I hadn't seen any yet in my birding adventures, so I stopped by the park for a few minutes this afternoon. I didn't really think I would see anything, but the sun was setting, the birds were chirping, and a hawk was screeching in the trees above. I saw a few other birds, but then I saw what looked like an oddly colored bird very high in the palm trees, and snapped a few shots. They are a bit fuzzy, but I realized a short time later that I had my first Hooded Oriole! I'll be working as I always do to get sharper pictures the next time around.

The brightly colored Hooded Oriole is more of a tropical species, spending much of the year in Mexico and Central America. During the summer they move north for breeding purposes, and we live pretty close to the northern margins of their range in California. They prefer desert oasis environments with their palm trees, but they have done well with the ornamental palms found in much of central and southern California. They build unique hanging nests among the palm fronds.