First Tundra Swans for the Season

For me, anyway. But we had to travel to see them...

Tundra swans visit our home region occasionally, and we'll typically see a couple of them if we travel south to the Merced National Wildlife Refuge during the winter season. But there are never all that many. It was a bit different during our Christmas traveling. We were headed north in the Great Valley past Sacramento and the tiny town of Williams. We then turned west towards Clear Lake and started looking for Snow or Ross's Geese, as we have seen them often in the flooded rice fields in that vicinity. Indeed, we soon saw geese filling the sky by the thousands, and more white birds in the rice ponds.

The white birds were interspersed with Greater White-fronted Geese, and I realized with a start that these birds were huge. They weren't geese at all, they were Tundra Swans, and there were more than a hundred of them!

There were apparently families, as juveniles were dispersed among the adult birds. Tundra Swans are notable in that they mate for life. They breed in the far north Arctic and migrate south for the winter as do so many others. They find winter shelter in the relatively warm climate of the Great Valley. Flooded rice fields provide much of their food needs.

Seeing these majestic birds was a nice beginning to our journey. We saw a number of other beautiful birds along the way, but there have been few posts these last few weeks because we also, ahem, spent a great deal of time with treasured family members for the holidays. I'll try to get caught up before the new semester starts!

Let the Sleeping Owl Lie: Western Screech Owl in an Unusual Place

The local birding community is like those anywhere else in the sense that a new and rare bird will cause a lot of excitement, and people will drop everything to try and catch a glimpse. I've had a little bit of experience with the concept, having gone to Dawson Lake to try and glimpse a Vermilion Flycatcher that wandered into our county late last year.

Then there is a second category, birds that are relatively rare, but have established a territory or home over a period of time where the bird can be observed fairly easily. Today's bird, the Western Screech Owl (Megascops kennicottii), falls into that category. This one lives in Enslen Park in the town of Modesto. The birders mentioned stopping by the park to check on the owl, but provided little idea of where to look. I walked around the park a few weeks back and didn't see anything. But more recently I found a couple of pictures that birders had posted, and I could see the owl was perching in a hollow of a maple or ash tree, so I knew not to waste time on the numerous redwoods and oak trees in the park. I was on an errand this afternoon and parked at the southeast corner of the park, and very much to my surprise, I spotted the owl in less than a minute. Can you see it in the picture above?

The Western Screech Owl ranges all across the west (there's a surprise), but they prefer wooded areas and are thus not often seen in the Great Valley. Modesto loves her trees, and the parks and neighborhoods are full of good habitat for owls. This owl has been reported in the park since 2015, no doubt helping with rodent control around the trash cans.

The owl wasn't doing much, just sort of dozing. As I observed it seemed to take no notice of my presence. Only later when I was looking at the pictures I had taken did I notice that it was indeed keeping an eye on me (below).

Moments of Beauty: Sandhill Cranes at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge

(Yes, this is the same post as the one I just did at Geotripper. For all I know, I may different readers of my two blogs!)

It's no secret to my friends and family that I have followed the political scene closely, as bizarre as it has been. The many discussions and worries lead to all kinds of stress. In times like that, it never hurts to step back a bit and see what is happening at the nearest national wildlife refuge. With that in mind, Mrs. Geotripper and I set out to explore the Merced National Wildlife Refuge today. It's situated darn near the geographical center of the state just south of the town of Merced. 

In the winter months the refuge plays host to tens of thousands of Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, Greater White-fronted Geese, and Sandhill Cranes, all of whom spend their summers in the Arctic. The birds that arrive here have traveled thousands of miles. Not many geese were in attendance today at the refuge, but we were treated with the spectacle of thousands of Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis).

The birds gather thousands strong in several relatively small wildlife refuges in the Central Valley of California. 95% of our valley has been altered for agriculture and urban development, but these islands of wetlands and prairies allow the survival of several million migratory geese and cranes. It's probably a fraction of the number of birds that once filled the pre-western civilization skies, but it is a dramatic sight nonetheless. As we watched, a flock of what must have been close to a thousand birds landed in the fields before us.

The birds in general are doing okay with stable or slowly increasing populations in most areas. They mate for life, and usually raise a single chick each year. They would be vulnerable to the destruction of the wetland habitats that they prefer.

One more marvelous aspect of the Sandhill Cranes is their intriguing call. It's hard to describe, but it reminds me of the purring of a cat, amplified hundreds of times. Because of the bass tones, individual birds can be easily heard from a good half mile away. When thousands of birds are together, the sound is riotous. Check out my video from this afternoon below...

Sandhill Cranes in the Great Valley! A Visit at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge

The Great Valley has never been overly kind to immigrants. One can interpret that in several ways, but since humans expropriated 95% of the natural environment of the valley for agriculture and urban development, the birds who migrate here for the winter have had a difficult life. Harassed and shot for invading agricultural fields, the birds were herded into wildlife refuges where there wasn't enough space and resources to maintain their health needs. Thousands could die from cholera and other diseases.

The managers of the wildlife refuges scattered up and down the valley have done what they could with the limited space and water they've been given, so the birds are able to survive, but certainly not in the numbers of a century or two ago.

Year after year, they return, and despite the stresses most make it through the winter and get enough nutrition to make it back to their Arctic breeding grounds. And when they are present, one can see a hint of the incredible spectacle of America's Serengeti plains that once existed here. That's what I got to see today at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

A few weeks ago I wrote of seeing some of the Sandhill Cranes at the Tulelake National Wildlife Refuge. Tulelake is one of their resting spots on their trip south (a few may breed there as well). That was in late September, but I understand that some were already arriving at Merced NWR. Today we saw thousands (the ranger said there are presently 9,000 of them in residence!).

They were reasonably close to the auto-tour route, so I managed to get a lot of shots I was happy with.

The Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) is highly distinctive in its coloration and in flight (unlike the other cranes) it holds its neck straight instead of curved. They feed on grains and plants, along with the occasional bug. They roost at night in wetlands where they get cover from predators.

The drought has wreaked havoc on the environments where the Sandhill Cranes winter. Water is at a premium, and refuges are often at the bottom of allotment priorities. The managers have hard decisions to make this winter about what fields to flood, and how much space they can make available for the cranes and the tens of thousands of geese that are on their way as well. These are choices I wouldn't want to be making. I'm hoping that the current El Nino climate regime will give us a reprieve this year from the drought, but the long-term trends are not favorable. The choices we make about these animals will reverberate for decades to come.

They deserve our consideration. They travel thousands of miles, and now depend on us for survival.

Let's do the right thing. The refuges need our help, because they can't do it alone, and not without public support.

Bird of the Day: Geese. Lots and Lots of Geese at the San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge

You drive west of town, through the seemingly endless agricultural fields. The road gets more corrupted and full of potholes, and soon there is a sign saying "no outlet". Another mile brings you to a small dirt parking lot with a kiosk and a wooden viewing platform. You climb the short path to the top of the viewing area, and there it is: a field! The field seems empty except for a constant noise in the distance, and you finally realize that the sky is in motion, like white glitter, like a gigantic snow globe.

This is the Beckwith Road access point of the San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge just west of Modesto, only about eight miles from the Vintage Faire Shopping Mall. The contrast between the parking lots crowded with shoppers and this empty field could hardly be bigger.

The Great Valley of central California was once the destination of millions, maybe billions of migrating geese, ducks, and other birds. Snow rarely falls on the valley floor and the temperature rarely reaches below freezing. Once the rains begin, the grass will grow all through the winter, providing a basic food chain with seeds, bugs, fish, amphibians and other creatures that feed the multitudes of birds when food is scarce elsewhere. The valley was a haven.

The value of the valley was apparent to humans. For thousands of years, people have lived in the valley alongside the birds and other animals, and drew sustenance from them. But in the last century and a half, the humans have changed the landscape, drying up the wetlands, and breaking up the prairie soils in favor of crops. Eventually only about 5% of the original landscape remained, and the birds no longer had many safe places to wait out the winter.

Over the decades, there were those who came to recognize the value of the birds, and eventually a series of wildlife refuges were established that allowed the health of the bird populations to be a priority. A visit to these refuges at the right time of year is a stunning introduction to the way the Great Valley used to be. There are birds here. Tens of thousands of Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, Aleutian Cackling Geese, and many others. In the evening, they start to settle in large groups, but occasionally something will startle them, a predator perhaps, and tens of thousands of birds will take to the air simultaneously. The sound of their wings is almost like a jet engine.

I still am in awe that I lived here for twenty years before I realized the treasure in my backyard. It is a wondrous experience to watch these huge beautiful birds flying so chaotically and yet with perfect timing and direction. Eventually they come drifting back to the ground, but the cackling never seems to stop.

How many birds are in this one picture alone? The flock we were watching was estimated at 30,000 individuals.

YouTube compression does awful things to my videos, but the short example below gives some hint to what it is like to see these birds in motion.

Bird of the Day: Sandhill Cranes at the Merced Unit

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) were my bird of the day only a few weeks ago, but these extraordinary birds will no doubt show up often on these pages. They are intriguing residents at the Merced Unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. There will be 20,000 of them here in a few weeks, and thousands have already arrived.

The Great Valley for the most part little resembles the valley that existed here prior to agricultural development, but the ancestral environment is being reconstructed in a few places to provide and maintain wintering grounds for the rich variety of migratory birds who come here each year. The Merced Unit is a marvelous introduction to the birds with a five mile long auto loop providing excellent access. We'll be visiting often through the winter and coming spring, so expect more updates!

I'm going to keep trying to get some quality shots of the Sandhill Cranes. They keep their distance from the road and trails and are fairly skittish when tall humans like me are around (no, I don't go chasing them; these shots are from the viewing areas or from the inside of the car). All of today's shots are at an extreme zoom (60x), so they continue to be a bit fuzzy.

The cranes are an ancient line of birds, with a fossil record extending back at least fifty million years. Thirteen species are known today, with seven others that have gone extinct. The Sandhill has features that suggest that it most closely resembles the ancestors to all the cranes. There are six distinct subspecies, including the Lesser Sandhill Crane, which was the type we were seeing yesterday at the Merced Unit.

Birds are generally recognized as a subset of the dinosaurs, the only group of dinosaurs that survived the great extinction event of 65 million years ago. Many of the dinosaurs even supported feathers (but they didn't fly; the flying pterosaurs were not closely related to dinosaurs or birds).

I look at these avian dinosaurs in the meadows of the Merced Unit and can't help imagining their much larger forebears. We've come to understand that dinosaurs traveled in large herds or flocks, and that they cared for their young the way present day birds do. I'm just glad there aren't Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurs running around after them!

In the waning hours of the day, more and more of the cranes were taking flight and disappearing somewhere. I didn't give a whole lot of thought about where they were headed, but as we drove up the road we heard a lot of noise coming from the other side of the Cottonwood wind break. We stopped and looked over to see a truly stunning sight, thousands upon thousands of Sandhill Cranes grazing in a large field.

This is not the finest video I've ever taken, so I suggest keeping it small so you won't get dizzy. The mechanical noise is coming from a groundwater pump we needed to stand behind. It shows the full extent of the flock of grazing cranes at the Merced Unit. It is an astounding sight, especially for those of us (me) who took our Great Valley for granted while exploring other flashier places. This is one of those places that can be called America's Serengeti...

Bird of the Day: A Different Canada Goose, the Cackling Kind. Evolution on the Continent

If you've ever been accosted by a Canada Goose at the local park, pictures like these might give you the shivers. If one of them can deliver a nasty bite, just imagine what a few thousand of them can do. But take heart, these scenes are no nightmare. They aren't even Canada Geese. The birds occupying this field in the San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge west of Modesto are Aleutian Cackling Geese (Branta hutchinsii). It's true, though, that before 2005 they were Canada Geese. Allow me to explain.

The Canada Goose lives in many environments, and in some cases particular flocks broke away and colonized different islands or territories (see yesterday's post for an extreme example). The presence or lack of food sources or differences in the nature of predators favored certain traits (size and behavior, for instance) in the young. The geese who summered on the Aleutian Islands were long recognized as a smaller subspecies of the Canada Goose, but recent DNA analysis has led researchers to consider these birds an entirely different species. And so these birds are not Canada Geese, they are the much smaller Aleutian Cackling Geese, which are genetically distinct from the Canada Goose.

The Cackling Geese winter by the tens of thousands in the wildlife refuge a few miles west of my home. It is a stunning sight to see so many of the birds in one place. From the observation deck on Beckwith Road, one can see and hear thousands of birds taking off and landing, and in general making a racket (cackling, as it were). They have been encouraged to stay here instead of nearby agricultural fields through the planting of corn and other food plants. In April they will pick up and leave, headed north to breed in the Arctic.

The refuge is also home to thousands of lesser Sandhill Cranes. We could just make out a flock of them in the far distance. Snow Geese also winter in the area. There were five of them among the thousands of Cackling Geese yesterday, looking mildly confused. They usually arrive in large numbers in late November or early December.

"George, are you SURE this is the right place? Shouldn't you have asked directions in Oregon?"

As we were standing and watching the flocks there was a tremendous BOOM, and thousands of the geese immediately took flight. A huge dust plume over to the west revealed where the explosion had come from. And why.

It was a huge net. Several dozen of the birds had been trapped and for the next few minutes we could see Fish and Wildlife employees tagging them.

As usual, the picture quality from YouTube sucks (the compression process I suppose), but you can get a sense of the cacophony of sound from the flying geese from the short video below.

Bird of the Day: Great Blue Heron at San Luis Wildlife Refuge

How can a bird look graceful and ungainly at the same time?  Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) are beautiful birds, and I'm always delighted to see them when we are out and about. A few weeks back we traveled down to the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos in the Great Valley to see if there were any early migratory arrivals. We had a delightful time, but ironically we didn't see the Heron in the bird refuge. This one was hanging out in a plowed field just outside the refuge boundary.

They tend to be a little skittish when I'm around, but this one didn't seem too bothered by the head and camera hanging out of the car window. It waited patiently for us to take our pictures and continued watching for whatever was tasty in the field.

The herons are found all over North America, especially around wetlands. I've even seen them in my small backyard, but for an unwelcome reason. I looked out one day and saw one in our little fishpond. Before I realized what was going on, most of my goldfish had been consumed. There is a reason I fill the pond with 25 cent feeder goldfish instead of expensive Koi! Thankfully the fishapocalypse has only happened twice over the years.

One of their most amazing abilities is the flexibility of their necks. They can pretty much "coil" them up and strike like a snake, catching fish, frogs, gophers, and practically anything else in range.

We are looking forward to visiting the refuge again during the winter and spring seasons. It's a time when our "boring" valley is at its finest.