Another Fine Day for Phainopeplas!

It often seems to happen this way. I don't post for a long time, then I finally do, and like the next day I get far better pictures than the ones that I posted earlier. And that's what happened. On two different days this week, I had some beautiful moments with the Phainopeplas (Phainopepla nitens) that have temporarily taken up residence on the elderberry bushes along the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail. I got decent pictures of a male (the black one), and the female (gray).

The Phainopeplas are really a desert species, most at home in the arid regions of the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, especially Baja California. They have been seen more and more in California's Great Valley, presumably as drier and warmer climates begin to prevail as the average temperature of the Earth continues to rise. They are now breeding in the valley as far north as Redding.

Phainopeplas are in the family of the silky-flycatchers, but they are not closely related to other flycatchers found in the United States. According to Ebird, they are most closely related to the Cedar Waxwings.

From: Phainopepla Range Map, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

 

Finally a Few Phainopeplas on the Tuolumne River Parkway!

I really miss blogging. I miss the freedom and creativity that comes with writing these posts, but the COVID pandemic has affected my output in the worst way, for the sole reason that I have been spending all my time preparing classes for our online teaching environment. There is creativity sometimes involved with it, but not in a fun way.

In any case, they finally arrived! I have a lot of favorite bird species, and I see some of them every day, but some stand out because of their relative rarity or spectacular plumage: the Orioles, Grosbeaks, and Buntings come to mind. But for whatever reason, the birds I really look forward to sighting for the first time each year are the Phainopeplas (Phainopepla nitens). And they were a long time coming this year. In 2020, I saw the first Phainopepla on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail only three or four days ago. The first gave me fits, because the only picture I achieved that first day was the one above. Can you even see it?

I had better luck the next day, catching a male (the black ones) out in the open. I had trouble figuring out just how many there were, either two or three, including a female.

Today was the best, as a female broke away from the Elderberry thicket and landed on a Russian Olive only a few yards from me. The only difficulty was the blowing wind. The bird stuck around for at least five minutes in perfect range for photos, but was a moving target the whole time.

The Phainopeplas are actually a desert species more likely to be seen in the Southwest states. Apparently they have been expanding more to the north, perhaps related to the changing climate. In any case, a day with Phainopeplas in it is always a fine day!
 

A Panoply of Phainopeplas in Ash Meadows

We headed out to Death Valley National Park last weekend, but our real destination was the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge a little farther to the east in Nevada. Don't get me wrong, I love Death Valley, and we spent time there too, but this was my first chance to see Ash Meadows in a couple of years, and I've never been there in the early spring, and I was hoping to see some of the desert migrants that use the meadows as a stopping point.

Birders report 200-300 species of birds at Ash Meadows, so one can maybe forgive me for expecting to see dozens and dozens of species, but the birds sightings are strongly seasonal, and some, actually many, have only been seen a couple of times. In the end, I didn't see all that many species, just over a dozen, but some were pretty special.

If you follow this blog at all, you know that I love Phainopeplas (Phainopepla nitens), a member of the silky flycatcher family. They are a desert species that I sometimes see in my home territory, but they are more emblematic of places like Death Valley or Ash Meadows. I was watching for them, but didn't see any until we were leaving our last stop, at the Point of Rocks Trail. I saw a single male (the black ones), and we started driving towards the exit of the refuge, and we saw another, a female. And then another male a few yards down the road.

In the end we saw more than a dozen of them patrolling their territories along the road. It was a great way to finish our visit to this fascinating place.

Ash Meadows is a truly unique site in the desert of western Nevada. Faulting has forced groundwater to the surface in dozens of warm springs that put out millions of gallons of water a day, providing an island of verdant vegetation in the middle of a barren desert. It was severely altered by agricultural development in the 1960s, but overpumping of groundwater threatened the existence of what turned out to be the highest concentration of endemic species in the continental United States. There are more than two dozen of them, including the extremely endangered Desert Hole Pupfish (which live in the midst of Ash Meadows NWR in an outlier part of Death Valley National Park). Court action ended the agricultural pumping, but then the region was threatened by a proposed housing development for 30,000 people. The lands were finally purchased and given to the federal government, and Ash Meadows NWR was established in 1984. It's a fascinating place to visit.

Any Day that includes a Phainopepla is a Fine Day

So here's the story about this bird, a Phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens). They are one of my favorite birds, in part because I don't see them all that often. They are really birds of the desert southwest, a bird of arid regions. They don't even drink water, instead drawing their liquid needs from the berries that they eat. They are found in Northern California, but are not all that common. Months will sometimes go by between sightings on my favorite birding trail along the Tuolumne River in the lower Sierra Nevada foothills. That pattern was holding this year, as I hadn't seen one since December (except for this one on January 5 a dozen miles upstream).

The other day I was walking with a few friends, and on the spur of the moment I asked them if they had ever seen a Phainopepla. They hadn't, so I was describing them, their black color, their red eye, their crest, and so on, and we turned a bend on the trail. And there, for the first time in months, was a Phainopepla! Right next to the trail. I was just stunned. But also delighted, so I started snapping pictures.

And then, much later in the day, I was five miles downstream at Fox Grove on the Tuolumne River near Geer Road (actually I was supposed to be picking up dinner at the Fruityard). I was watching for birds of course, and what do you think I saw? Of course, it was the second Phainopepla in one day.

For National Bird Day, a Phainopepla on the Tuolumne River

It's hard to choose a favorite bird to post on National Bird Day. I have lots of favorites and they change from day to day. So I'm going with the bird I was the most pleased to find during the first days of 2019. I was on the Tuolumne River at Old Basso Bridge when I spotted a black bird in a treetop. I assumed it was a blackbird (it was black, after all), but the crest became visible and I knew right away I was looking at a Phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens).

Phainopeplas are birds of the southwest deserts and they are not abundant in our area, as we are at the northern limits of their range. There have been a couple of them living along the Parkway Trail, but they may have moved on when the elderberries gave out last month.

I love them for the challenge they give me in spotting them, and for their intense red eyes. This last shot shows them pretty well. The challenge in this case was getting the camera to focus on the bird through all of the intervening branches.

Happy National Bird Day! What's your favorite bird at the moment?

Phinally a Phine Photo of a Phemale Phainopepla on the Tuolumne River!

Yes, I've used that joke before, in 2015, but memories are short, right? And I blogged about Phainopeplas just a month ago when I saw them again for the first time in almost a year on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail. But darn if they don't keep beckoning me to try and get that perfect photograph. I've seen them a couple of times now in the elderberry bower along the west part of the Parkway Trail, but today's female (the males are nearly pure black) wasn't too concerned that I was snapping pictures. They are members of the silky flycatcher family and that's exactly what this one was doing, sallying forth from her perch to snag a bug out of the air before returning to the branch.

I hope they'll be sticking around for the winter. They are one of my local favorites.

A Great Moment on the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail: Phainopeplas!

It has been a couple of extraordinary days walking along the Tuolumne River. Two days in a row I saw new species of warbler for the first time, a Nashville Warbler, and a Black-throated Gray Warbler. I went out again this morning and spotted the Gray Warbler again, but as I was watching it I became aware of an odd looking bird in the elderberry thicket a short distance farther along the trail. It was very thin with a long tail, and a closer look in the zoom revealed a crest. It was a Phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens).

I've enjoyed seeing this unusual bird. It's actually a denizen of the tropical deserts and I see them rarely because the Tuolumne River lies close to the northern range of the species (although with global warming the range is expanding northward). I read a note just a day or two ago that birders in Washington state were thrilled to see a single Phainopepla at the north end of the Olympic Peninsula, the first such sighting in 24 years. Only a few have ever been seen even in Oregon (three sightings over the years).

Anyway, with the bird this morning...do you remember the scene in Top Gun where everyone is watching the radar at two bogeys, but then they turn to three, and then six (this was disconcerting to the two fighter pilots sent to intercept them). It was like that this morning. I was snapping one picture after another of the first bird I noticed and then I saw there was another perched just below. Then I looked again and there were two more! Some hikers came over the rise and startled the birds and they took off...all six of them! That's more Phainopeplas than I've seen total in three years of searching along the river.

It was a fine morning.

Female Phainopepla on the Tuolumne River

I've only seen them a few times on the Tuolumne, but it is always a delight to see a Phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens). When you walk a trail every other day or so, you may get familiar with the habits of individual birds, and you find yourself watching particular bushes very carefully. That was the case the other day, although I wasn't specifically looking for the Phainopepla. The native elderberry bush has been a good spot over the last few years for a variety of species who feed off the ripe berries. The Phainopepla usually consumes mistletoe berries, but I've seen both a female and a male in this particular shrub (really almost a tree, it's 12 feet high). I also have seen a male in the nearby cottonwood tree (where there is plenty of mistletoe).

Of course it was late in the day and there was no sunlight so I only got a silhouette in my photos, and I couldn't even tell whether it was a male or female at first. The prominent crest is the giveaway that it was a Phainopepla, but the males are a silky black color while the females are gray. I slowly walked past the bush until I could look back and see the gray color of the female. I used the photo-editing program to extremes to bring out the features of the bird in the picture below. I still couldn't bring out the striking red eye of the bird, but you can see that in some of my earlier posts.