Living Life Upside Down: White-breasted Nuthatch on the Merced River

This best picture of the day is courtesy of Mrs. Geotripper

Some birds are a real challenge to photograph, for all kinds of reasons. In the case of the White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis), its a case of a bird in constant motion. Mrs. Geotripper and I were out and about this morning, exploring the lower reaches of the Merced River where it flows into the Great Valley. We stopped at Merced Falls and Henderson Park near Snelling, a section of river that was devastated by gold dredging activity in the first half of the 1900s. Most of the riparian habitat was ripped out in the search for the elusive metal.

Luckily, seventy years has brought about a return of some of the native vegetation, and a few areas along the river could even be called scenic. The birds were a bit scarce, but when we were leaving Henderson Park, I spotted a small whitish bird in the corner of my eye. We stopped and realized there were two White-breasted Nuthatches chasing about in the trees. I took the one on the left, and Mrs. Geotripper sought out the one on the right. She was closer and got the better shot.

I'm amazed how little time these birds spend right side up. They walk up and down tree trunks looking for small insects, and breaking open nuts of various kinds (an action from which they derive their name). The birds are found all over North America, including Mexico and southern Canada. Good luck catching them not moving though!

American Dipper in Yosemite Valley

John Muir said it well:

"He is the mountain streams’ own darling, the humming-bird of blooming waters, loving rocky ripple-slopes and sheets of foam as a bee loves flowers, as a lark loves sunshine and meadows. Among all the mountain birds, none has cheered me so much in my lonely wanderings, —none so unfailingly. For both in winter and summer he sings, sweetly, cheerily, independent alike of sunshine and of love, requiring no other inspiration than the stream on which he dwells. While water sings, so must he, in heat or cold, calm or storm, ever attuning his voice in sure accord; low in the drought of summer and the drought of winter, but never silent." The Mountains of California, 1894

I've seen Water Ouzels, known officially today as American Dippers (Cinclus mexicanus) on a few rare occasions, but not recently, and none that I've been able photograph. Only one has made an appearance in my county (Stanislaus), which caused a stir in the birding community in the winter of 2017-18. I never got a chance to look for that individual, but I finally got to see one this last weekend up in Yosemite Valley. I was walking along the Merced River near the Curry Village tent cabins when I saw some strange movements of a bird. It was, well, dipping.

The dippers are one of the most aquatic of birds, spending most of their time swimming, walking underwater, and dipping in mountain streams of unpolluted water. They don't migrate, staying in the same general area winter and summer, but they range over an immense region, from northern Alaska to Central America. They mostly eat aquatic insects and their larvae.

I only got two half-decent pictures, but the video came out a bit better. Enjoy!

The

One More Duck, a Scaup...or is it???

It's another duck for my duck week. This time the picture is not at all very good, but it is a first of sorts. Greater and Lesser Scaups (Aythya marila and Aythya affinis) are occasionally seen in the area, especially at the wildlife refuges, but I haven't identified them for myself until last week. Strangely enough, once I identified one individual on the Merced River, I saw another on the Tuolumne River only a day or two later. The male that I saw on the Tuolumne was in the groundwater recharge basin across the river from the water treatment center. I was a good quarter mile away, which explains the fuzziness of the shot. It looked vaguely familiar, and then I remembered a somewhat famous picture of a creature from Scotland or somewhere like that...

So maybe the Loch Ness Monster is a really long-necked duck, or our recharge basin has a large plesiosaur swimming around inside. In any case, the other Scaup that I saw was a female. I figured it to be a Lesser Scaup because of the rounder head, and because others had reported Lesser Scaups at the same location a few days earlier (and no Greater Scaups at all).

Duck week continues, with just one more (I think).

Ospreys Nesting on the Merced River

We made a quick afternoon trip a few weeks ago up the Merced River. We hadn't planned to, but we ultimately reached Yosemite Valley as the sun sank below the horizon. Along the way we stopped at Merced Falls, a Gold Rush era settlement built at the point where the Merced River flows from the Sierra into the Great Valley. It was nearly spring and we wanted to see if the Ospreys were doing okay.

Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) nest high in sturdy trees or on telephone poles. In many areas, platforms on poles have been built just for these birds, and there is one near Merced Falls. We didn't see any birds on the platform, but an old telephone pole near the bridge serves as a second nesting site in the area. Much to our delight, a pair of Ospreys were there. One was guarding the nest and the other was soaring over the area, keeping an eye on things.

Ospreys feed almost exclusively on fish, so the Merced Falls site makes sense. There is a forebay (a shallow reservoir) that provides some excellent fishing opportunities for the birds. We've seen them do their graceful dive into the water and they usually come up with a meal.

Ospreys are a recovering species. They were almost done in by DDT back in the 60s and 70s, but once the pesticide was banned, they started returning to their old habitats. It would have been a shame to lose them. They're a beautiful sight soaring over our local lakes and rivers.

The Other Bird in the Bush: Ash-throated Flycatcher at Merced Falls

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I saw and got pictures of two new birds for my life list in a matter of a few moments from the same bush out by Merced Falls on the Merced River in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The first was hard to miss, being a bright orange-yellow Bullock's Oriole. After it flew off, I noticed another bird had landed, a little less brightly colored, but unfamiliar. I saw a slight crest so I guessed it might be a Say's Phoebe, but the wing color was all wrong.

It was difficult to tell at first because the bird was being bashful. The pictures here are out of order, with the first picture being the last one I actually took. The first pictures I got were of a bird well-hidden among the branches, as you can see above and below.

It finally popped out into the open, and a little research quickly showed it to be an Ash-throated Flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens). It's a common species of the southwestern United States, but you wouldn't know it from my observational powers. They winter far to the south, in southernmost California and Mexico. I noticed in the pictures that this individual is banded.

Lots of birds coming up! There were the nesting Ospreys near the river, and some Flickers competing for the ladies on campus yesterday.

Surprise! Two birds in the Bush are Worth More Than One in the Hand: Bullock's Oriole at Merced Falls

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

I'm new enough at birding that this kind of thing can still happen. Mrs. Geotripper and I were in the car at Merced Falls trying to get a better look at the Osprey nest on the south side of the Merced River. I happened to look next to me for some reason and to my intense surprise there was a flaming orange bird right next to me, just across the street. I was trying to get a photograph, but the camera kept focusing in the branches in front (yeah, I know, manual focus, but I was fumbling too much). I signaled quietly to Mrs. Geotripper, who was at a better angle, and she got the best set of photos.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

It turned out to be a Bullock's Oriole (Icterus bullockii), and it was only the second time I've ever seen one, and the first time we got any kind of decent pictures. The Bullock's Oriole is a close relative to the Baltimore Oriole, but the Baltimore is a pretty much eastern species, while the Bullock's is a denizen of the western states. In the summer anyway. In the winter, the Bullock's lives in Mexico while the Baltimore winters in Central America and the northernmost part of South America. The birds were once thought to be the same species (they sometimes interbreed where their ranges overlap a bit), but they are genetically distinct. 

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

The Orioles are said to be common, which shows how observant I am in the wild, having seen so few. But I'll be ready for the next one! But the funny thing about the moment was that the Oriole flew away after a few moments, so I watched the Ospreys again, and then I saw movement in the same bush, and it was another bird, and it was another species, and a first sighting for me. And thus the strange title for today's post. More on the other bird in the next post.

And here are my two fuzzy shots through the branches

In the meantime, enjoy these photos of one of the most intensely colored birds I've ever seen around here!

Bird of the Day: Ospreys at Merced Falls

Ospreys are great hunters of fish. There is a pretty good spot in our area to see them at work. It's along the Merced River near the village of Merced Falls. This is the place where the Merced emerges from the foothills onto the floor of the San Joaquin Valley. There are four reservoirs along this stretch, huge New Exchequer Dam, forming McClure Lake, and three much smaller dams, McSwain, Merced Falls, and Crocker-Huffman. The smaller lakes are wide and shallow, offering some good fishing possibilities for the Osprey population. We saw them at work yesterday, not so much fishing, but enjoying the fruits of their labor. Every Osprey we saw had a fish (there were at least three of them). To judge from the picture above, they saw us too.

It was easy to see why the fishing was good. Merced Falls lake was way down so the water was shallow, and the resident fish had much less shelter to hide in. In the picture below all the rocks in the background are usually submerged.

The Merced River is currently the southernmost Sierra Nevada River that supports salmon, but as of 2007, they were not able to get past Crocker-Huffman dam about three miles downstream of our location. There was a feasibility study in 2007 that explored the possibility extending their range, but I don't know if anything was done about it. I'm sure the Ospreys would be in favor of it!

Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) are well-adapted to fishing, able to dive as much as three feet into the water to capture their prey (fish makes up 99% of their diet). They have barbs on their feet that allow them to grip their slippery targets.

The widespread use of DDT in the 1950s and 1960s nearly did in the Osprey. Their population crashed, and it was only after the use of the pesticide was banned that their numbers began to climb again. According to the Cornell Bird site, there are about 500,000 across North and South America.

There is a huge Osprey nest on a post near the reservoir. We'll be keeping an eye on developments there during the spring!