The Most Colorful of Ducks: Wood Ducks on the Kern River

As usual life gets hectic in fits and starts, and blogging is always somewhere way down the list, so these pictures aren't exactly current. I was on a field studies class to Death Valley National Park in the middle of February, and while we didn't see all that many birds, there were certainly a few, and one of the species was just spectacular. It was a pair of Wood Ducks (Aix sponsa) in our camp on the Kern River at the south end of the Sierra Nevada.

Wood Ducks are one of the few duck species with sharp enough claws that they can perch in trees, and that's where I've seen a fair number of them in my travels along the Tuolumne. They nest in cavities in trees (or bird boxes), and when the ducklings are ready, they'll jump out of the nest, falling as much as 50 feet to the ground without injury.

The Kern River drains a huge region of the southern Sierra Nevada, flowing into the Central Valley near Bakersfield. Historically the river ended in a huge lake (Buena Vista Lake) and the waters never reached the sea, evaporating in the desert environment instead. Diversions of river water for agriculture caused the lake to dry up as well. The lake had provided habitat for vast numbers of migratory birds, who have few alternatives today for winter shelter aside from a few wildlife refuges. The Kern River (and nearby Ming Lake) provides a little bit more.

Rock Wren at Kern River County Park near Bakersfield

I spent last week in Death Valley National Park, and although logic would seem to dictate that there would be few birds about in the driest place in North America, but there are in fact a few. In fact, in the right circumstance, there are a great many species, many of whom are passing through on their migrations elsewhere. But I didn't see all that many of them.

Before we reached Death Valley, we made a stop at Kern River County Park to look for a few fossils. While I was scouring the hillside, I noticed that there was a bird doing some "people-watching". It turned out to be a Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus). I've seen them a few times back home around Turlock Lake, but that's about it.

The Rock Wrens range across the west from the Canadian border to deep into Mexico and Central America. They eat mostly insects that they glean from spider webs or catch on the fly. They are declining in number because of habitat loss.