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.

Mountain Quail at Columns of the Giants

We took a short trip up the Stanislaus River this afternoon, taking a short hike to the Columns of the Giants. The columns are volcanic in nature, similar to Devil's Postpile, or the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Along the way, we spotted a new bird (to me). It was fairly large, moving through the underbrush. I thought immediately of California Quail, but I thought maybe we were a bit high for them (a check of the e-bird map confirmed this).

It was only a moment before I realized that I had encountered a covey of at least a dozen of them. Later, I was able to identify them as Mountain Quail (Oreortyx pictus). Like the California Quail, it is a bird of the far western United States, with a range from northern Baja to the Canadian border and only barely extending into Idaho. Their habitat includes shrubby vegetation in mountainous areas. It has not been reported in my home area in the Great Valley.

They crept slowly up the granite boulders above the trail, and several kept an eye on us from the top of the small ridge. Then they disappeared into the trees, but called out for a while longer. We moved on up the trail.

White-breasted Nuthatch at Twin Lakes, Sierra Nevada

We're going back to the beginning of the summer, as I have a big backlog of pictures from six weeks on the road. In early June, we were on our way home from Death Valley and Grand Canyon, and after some very hot days in the desert, we wanted to be someplace cooler. We ended up at Mammoth Lakes, and in the morning we wandered about the shores of Twin Lakes above the town. Several birds were out and about, including a little White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis).

It was fast moving, but I was lucky to get a few clear shots in. They are very acrobatic, walking upside-down, right-side up, and everything in between. It was presumably searching for some spring grubs and insects (we were at 9,000 feet, but there had been so little snow that spring had come early).

Twin Lakes are two only slightly separated glacial basins. There is a marvelous view of Crystal Crag and Twin Falls at the upper end of the lakes. Mammoth Mountain, a huge composite volcano is on the northern edge of the lake. It's a fascinating place to visit.

Bird of the Day: Western Tanager along Clark Fork in the Sierra

I have been photographing birds seriously for a year now, so I will be occasionally digging into the archives for some interesting shots. Since we've reached the gloomy days of early winter, I thought a splash of color might be just the thing for today. This post appeared in Geotripper last May:

Seasoned birders won't be surprised at the excitement a rank amateur like myself feels the first time he or she sees an interesting bird up close. Western Tanagers (Piranga ludoviciana) are relatively common forest and woodland birds across the western United States and Mexico and I'm sure they are seen often by the experts.  I've only been seriously seeking out new species for the last five months (*12 months now*), so I still get to experience the joy of seeing something new and different on a fairly regular basis as I add to the list of observed species.

I've known about Western Tanagers for a long time, but I've never been close enough with an adequate camera to actually get decent photographs of one, but that changed today (*last May*). We were exploring the upper reaches of the Stanislaus River in the Sierra Nevada of California, and as I was driving down the Clark Fork Road at the end of the day, I saw a flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye. I hit the brakes, hoping against hope that I wouldn't spook the brightly colored male.

He didn't spook. I snapped a few distant shots, and then backed up the car hoping to get closer (I know that sounds like an odd way to do it, but from only forty or so feet away, getting out of the car would have spooked it more, I think). He hung around, as if he was observing me (a large rival in his territory?).

The tanagers are a large and diverse group of passerine birds centered mostly in the American tropics, but the Western Tanager ranges farther north than any other species, as far southern Alaska. For being so brightly colored, they are not often seen, as they tend to hang out in the upper canopy of the forest. I felt privileged to spend a few minutes observing this one, from basically all angles. Was he sending me a message with this last shot?

Brightly colored birds often carry the seeds of their own destruction because their feathers may be in high demand for one reason or another. Looking at the tanager reminded me of the large number of species of Honeycreepers that once existed in the Hawaiian Islands. A few of them are still hanging in there (two out of the original 51 species), but most of the others are extinct or nearly so, in part because Hawaiian royalty centuries ago demanded robes made out of their brightly colored feathers (habitat loss, malaria, and competition with invasive species and predators were major factors as well). The tanagers, with their wide range across all the western states avoided such a fate, but they were for a time considered agricultural pests and were poisoned or shot. They are protected today, and their numbers have grown to where they are a "species of least concern".

It was a privilege to see one up close and personal today.

PS: Mrs. Geotripper took a short video of the same bird...

Bird of the Day: Western Bluebird at the Kennedy Tailings Wheels in Jackson, CA

By my own self-imposed rules, I'm trying not to repeat a species on my "Bird of the Day" posts until I've run out of new ones. I've decided I can make exceptions for vastly better pictures of a species, and also those of a different gender. Thus, since the pictures I posted a few days ago of a Western Bluebird were fuzzy and indistinct, and also males of the species, we are seeing Western Bluebirds today, the females. Like many bird species, they are less vividly colored than the males.

Is this one of the Angry Birds?

These Western Bluebirds (Sialia mexicana) were at the Kennedy Mine Tailings Wheels Park in Jackson up in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. We were on a geology field studies trip, but had a few moments of spare time as the students explored the full length of the park.

The bluebirds eat insects and sometimes berries, living for most of the year in the mid-elevations of the mountains, up to 5,000 feet or so. Some will move to lower elevations in the winter, and indeed they have been showing up in the pasture back home, and on our west campus.

The site, the Kennedy Tailings Wheels in Jackson, is part of the history of the Gold Rush in California. The Kennedy Mine was one of the largest of the Gold Rush, ultimately producing 1.7 million ounces of gold from around 150 miles of tunnels reaching a depth of nearly 6,000 feet beneath the surface. The mine produced a great deal of waste material, and when a mishap occurred that sent poisonous waste through town and into the water supply (hey, accidents happen you know), they were compelled to send their wastes elsewhere. The giant wheels were designed with buckets that lifted the material to a flume at a higher level, and eventually over two ridges to a newly constructed reservoir. What was once a barren hillside in a mining/industrial complex is today a quiet corner of mature oak trees and ponderosa pines, with a nice collection of birds to watch for.

Bird of the Day: Sage Thrasher at Mono Lake

The fun thing about being a rank amateur is that you still get the thrill of discovery on a regular basis. I was out visiting the tufa towers along the south shore of Mono Lake when I saw this bird running down flies near the lake shoreline. It turned out to be a Sage Thrasher (Oreoscoptes montanus), and it's the first one I've ever seen (that doesn't mean rare, it's just I haven't been at this long).

If sagebrush is a good environment for Sage Thrashers, Mono Lake is an excellent place to be finding them. The Mono Lake basin has hundreds of square miles of sagebrush, as well as Mono Lake itself, a huge salty lake filled with fairy shrimp and brine flies. It is an important stop on the migratory routes of millions of birds. The lake environment was threatened by the diversion of its feeder streams into the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the 1940, but a 1994 legal agreement means that the situation has stabilized, with a new goal of establishing a lake level 25 feet higher than its 1982 low point.