European Starling Murmuration at the West Campus of MJC

Sometimes the unexpected happens. I was a little frustrated with daylight savings cutting into my evening walking time between classes, but I went walking anyway and was treated to a fascinating sight: a Starling murmuration. Several thousand birds were doing an acrobatic flyover near the Briggsmore Ave/Highway 99 overpass, and it was hypnotizing (which was probably the intended effect, but in regards to predators wanting to pick off an isolated bird). Despite the very poor light conditions, I was able to get two minutes of video (below).

It's amazing how the birds can fly in such coordination, creating strange patterns in the sky, looking almost like a single organism. At times I imagined single cells separating and coming together again, and a bird tornado. Studies suggest the birds maintain their coordination by concentrating on the activity of the nearest seven birds around them.

European Starlings are an anathema to many birders and ecologists. They are native to Europe (hence the name), but a few were introduced to Central Park in New York City more than a century ago as an effort to establish all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. The idea went awry and the birds spread across the continent by the tens of millions. They are often the most numerous birds I record on my birding explorations, and they have displaced native species in many habitats. All bad, but forgotten in a moment of pure natural art.

Say's Phoebe at Modesto Junior College

The college campus where I work is not the best environment to watch birds, but it's certainly not the worst. There is a sheep pasture with a heavily vegetated drainage pond, some open fields grazed by cows and horses, and lots and lots of diverse species of mature trees, both native and non-native. Overall the number of species I've seen there is about half what I've seen along the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail where I do most of my searches.

But there are still some neat species to be seen. One of the pretty little birds I occasionally run across on campus are Say's Phoebes (Sayornis saya). Say's Phoebes are members of the flycatcher family, and their behavior fits their name. They'll perch on a branch, sally forth when they see a bug, and return to their perch. I saw this one while walking between classes yesterday.

The Unsung Beauties of the West Campus: California Scrub Jay

I admit it. Sometimes when I'm out there looking for birds, I'm watching for the rare and unusual species. I have a tendency to ignore the birds that are always there, and yet are real beauties. I am, for instance, on the lookout for the first Blue Grosbeak and the first Lazuli Bunting of the spring, primarily because blue is pretty much my favorite color, especially with birds.

And so it is with the California Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica). I see them commonly on walks throughout the region, and I rarely lift the camera for a picture, and I dutifully count them on the bird list and walk on. But once in a great while, I stop and think about living in a place where one could never see one of these birds (and that actually includes everywhere except the Pacific Coast states). I'm then reminded how extraordinary this bird actually is. You would be missing out, never being able to see these birds.

They can certainly be obnoxious at times, carrying on continuous fights with the local Mockingbirds, and arguing among themselves. But they are extremely intelligent birds as well, and worthy of being enjoyed. And photographed too, when I finally think of it.

The Red-Tailed Hawk Babies are Born! The Newest Raptors at MJC...

The Red-tailed Hawk babies have hatched! I've been watching the activity around the nest since late February when I first noticed the parent hawks building the nest. I feared the eggs might have been lost at one point during a particularly violent windstorm a few weeks ago. I was comforted when the parents were cursing at me in hawk language when I walked by a few days later. Today I thought I saw something move that wasn't "hawk" colored. It was downy white instead. Out came the camera, and there is at least one chick. There may be more...I'll be watching and reporting as I see anything. The hawk baby  (or babies) will be in the nest for around six weeks before they start flying and getting trained in hunting skills.

ADDENDUM: There are TWO chicks (so far)

Cooper's Hawk on the West Campus

I was walking the perimeter of my workplace, the West Campus of Modesto Junior College, when I spotted the fourth hawk species of the new year, a Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii). It joins a list that includes the Red-tailed, the Red-shouldered, and the Swainson's. The campus is a good environment for hawks, as there are a lot of open fields full of ground squirrels, snakes, and other food sources.

I saw this Cooper's Hawk a few times last year in the grove of trees on the east end of the campus near Carpenter Road, but I usually wasn't able to get many good shots. I took twelve shots today, but ten of them focused on the branches in the foreground (yes, I know there is a manual focus on my camera, but I didn't have time). I liked how this one turned out, though. Cooper's Hawks are very similar to Sharp-shinned Hawks, but I don't think I've seen one of them yet (although I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if I've photographed a few and misidentified them).

The Stages of Birding: Yellow-rumped Warblers on the West Campus

I've been at this birding thing for about five years now, which marks me as a rank amateur, but by now I've started to recognize that there are "levels" of birding that for me run something like the following:

1) Total Ignorance: One is vaguely aware that birds are out there, but they're all pigeons, sparrows, crows, and mockingbirds. Birders are strange alien-like people with strange obsessions related to "life-lists" and "first-of-season". Colorful birds are interesting, but known to only live in other places.

2) First Stage Amateur: Somewhere along the way, one sees a very unusual bird, and has no good way of finding out what it was. They then take that tentative first step in birding by asking someone they know to be an expert what the species is, and are surprised to find that bird is actually common in the area, if one knows to watch for it. Experienced birders are still considered strange, but a little less so, in an eccentrically wise sort of way.

3) Second Stage Amateur: Having learned that there are many more birds in the region besides pigeons and sparrows and crows, one takes that ominous and tentative step of buying a bird book (by the time you've asked the expert about seven or eight times you realize you could try doing it yourself). Even though the book may be introductory in nature, one is shocked to find that bird species in the region number in the hundreds. This is a perilous moment, as some are overwhelmed by this complexity, give up, and fall away. Realizing the full breadth of the knowledge base of experienced birders, they are now considered demigods.

4) Tertiary Stage Amateur: One buys a camera with a good zoom lens. And binoculars. And a real bird book, like Sibleys or Audubon's. One starts altering the itinerary of vacations to include potential bird discoveries. But one isn't like those other birders with their life-lists and all. One just happens to like taking pictures of birds. Thousands of pictures of birds.

5) Quaternary Stage Amateur: One finds that he/she is keeping track of observed bird species, sometimes on a random sheet of paper, or perhaps even on a downloaded list of birds from the county or state. One day this person looks at the list and thinks "that's a lot of birds I've identified"...and they count them. They have passed into the realm of "life-list". This stage is completed when they start recording their finds on eBird or similar sites on the internet. Friends and family start asking them about the identity of some unusual bird they've observed. And the amateur knows many or most of the species...

6) First Stage Expert: I have no idea. I haven't reached that stage. And they're demigods anyway, something that we mere mortals cannot aspire to.

All in fun of course, but I started thinking about this amateur/beginning birder thing because of the Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) I saw today in the sheep compound on the West Campus of Modesto Junior College. I was remembering how rare they seemed to be when I was just beginning to pay close attention to bird species, and how shocked I was to find that they were living by the dozens in the Mulberry tree in my own backyard. I ultimately realized they were a very common bird in the region at the right time of year, and I started to pay a bit less attention to them as I searched for rarer species. They were so flighty and active that I had trouble getting good photographs of them anyway.

But this afternoon I was standing next to a fence watching an Oak Titmouse build a nest, and I was so motionless that the birds came out of hiding, and a couple of the warblers perched on branches only a few feet away. They were just begging to be photographed, so I did. The opening picture of this post is by far the closest I've ever been to these birds. They are mostly going to be gone in a few weeks, moving up into the mountains to breed, and I'm realizing how much I'll miss them.

What's Everyone Yelling About? Cedar Waxwings at the MJC West Campus

Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) always strike me as quiet unassuming birds. I've had flocks of dozens in my flowering pear tree that were so quiet that I almost missed them entirely (it doesn't help that their call is so high-pitched that I can't hear them).

I was wandering around the northwest corner of the west campus of Modesto Junior College yesterday, near the "mini-wilderness" of the sheep pasture. There's a watering tank that birds often utilize, and yesterday was no exception. There were several dozen Cedar Waxwings flitting about in the trees, and eight or nine at a time were getting water. I snapped a few pictures from a distance and didn't notice until later that they looked as if they were yelling at each other.

What was that all about?

Something New at MJC: A Nesting Pair of Red-tailed Hawks

Things have been afoot at MJC's West Campus over the last few weeks. A lot of birds have been agitated by the presence of some Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis). I've seen Red-tails there fairly often, but most of the time they've been soaring high above the campus and over the surrounding territory. Lately though, a pair has been loitering around the sheep pasture and pond on the northwest corner of the campus. The Yellow-billed Magpies and several other species have been rather unhappy about these unwelcome neighbors, and I've seen them trying to harass the Red-tails a couple of times.

I suspected that they might be nesting, but I was having a tricky time confirming it. There are two large nests in a Deodar and a Eucalyptus tree on the south side of the pond, but during the last two weeks I couldn't see any birds occupying either of the nests. Until this week. I spotted one of the hawks carrying nesting material, and it eventually alit in the Eucalyptus and seemed to be watching me.

I walked away towards the other end of the pond and eventually the bird hopped over to the empty nest and started to work on the lining. They are obviously getting ready for babies. That's a first for the campus, at least during the last three years that I've been paying attention to such matters. I'll keep an eye on things and see if I can get some pictures of the young ones....

Close Encounters with a "Rare" Bird: Yellow-billed Magpie on My Campus

I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm privileged here in California to see a rare bird on a regular basis. There are hundreds of thousands of birders across North America and the world who never get to see a Yellow-billed Magpie (Pica nuttalli). I sometimes see dozens of them on a given day, since there is a good-sized flock on my campus of Modesto Junior College. The reason of course is that they are found in only one small part of the world, the Great Valley and Coast Ranges of California. They are one of the very few truly endemic birds in California. There are probably not much more than 100,000 of them in existence due to a devastating population crash brought about by the West Nile Virus a decade ago.

I can't say that I ignore them. They have a raucous manner and one usually knows they are near by, due to their constant chattering and arguing. But they are pretty skittish around humans so they keep their distance. For that reason I was kind of surprised the other day when I walked past a Magpie on the baseball field fence. It just watched me until I was just a few feet away, so I pulled out the camera and snapped a few shots.

Familiarity can breed complacence (I could never hold these beautiful birds in contempt), so it was a nice reminder of what a treasure we have in these birds and what a pleasure it is to be able to observe them.

MJC's Resident Rare Bird: Cassin's Kingbird on West Campus

You just never know. It's been a heck of a weather day with heavy squalls and wind lashing at our campus while I've been teaching. I really wanted to go out and get some exercise and look for a few birds but it didn't seem to be in the cards. But somehow the students finished their lab a bit early, and...the sun came out for a few precious minutes. I wandered over to the "mini-wilderness", the drainage pond and sheep pasture that is the nearest thing to a wild area on our campus. I noticed an oddly colored bird on a fence, and when I focused in I realized I was up closer than ever before to our resident rarity: a Cassin's Kingbird (Tyrannus vociferans). I posted pictures of the Cassin's Kingbird only a month ago, but I was thrilled to get such clear close-ups today.

It is a real surprise to see this bird here. Western Kingbirds flood into the region in the spring and are a common sight during the summer months, but it is a tropical species that migrates south to Mexico for the winter. The Cassin's Kingbird is a related species, but it rarely gets this far north, so this individual is a real outlier, especially since it's been staying here through the winter (I've been observing it off and on since the summer of 2016). I do wonder if we can expect to see more of them as the climate warms up and conditions here become more to their liking.

A Surprise Discovery at MJC: A Red-breasted Sapsucker

There's something I've learned with fossil and mineral hunting. If you haven't seen the thing you are looking for, you won't recognize it when you see it. But if you've seen an example of the fossil or mineral, you'll pick it out right away. I'm still a newbie at bird identification, but a few weeks ago I saw a Red-breasted Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber) in Yosemite Valley. I got all excited and got pictures and posted on my discovery that night.

Then, only nine days later, I was wandering the campus of CSU Stanislaus and much to my surprise I saw another Red-breasted Sapsucker! So I posted on the species again. Having seen it once, I guess I was primed to recognize it right away when I saw it again.

So here we are eight days later. I was taking a break between classes and wandered out to the sheep compound, my MJC "mini-wilderness", and saw another woodpecker deep among the branches of a dead tree. I focused in with the camera, and wouldn't you know it, there was another Red-breasted Sapsucker! I've never encountered one here before. So once again, I am posting. It the pattern holds, we should be hearing of the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail Sapsucker discovery any day now...

A Rare Visitor to the Region Returns to West Campus: Cassin's Kingbird

You just never know. One of the joys of my new hobby (well, four years now) is the possibility that any day there can be something new and unexpected. I was roaming the west campus on my lunch break and it seemed like the birds had all left to have a siesta somewhere other than where I was at. But then I saw movement in the dead cottonwood tree in the sheep pasture and discovered a Say's Phoebe. It's not an overly rare bird, but it is the first time I've seen one on campus. But that's not what I'm talking about today!

While I was trying to catch a shot of the Phoebe, another bird fluttered into the branches above. I saw yellow and thought "warbler" but I zeroed in and discovered that it was actually a Kingbird. And it wasn't a Western Kingbird that floods into our region in the spring and summer. They're all gone now, having migrated south back into Central America. I could see the white tips on the tail feathers, the white "moustache", and the gray head and realized it was a Cassin's Kingbird (Tyrannus vociferans). This is remarkable because not only are we at the extreme northern edge of its range, but it should have migrated south by now along with the Western Kingbirds.

This may very well be the same bird that I discovered on campus last year. I haven't seen it in almost a year so it is kind of a mystery about why it is here.

Range of the Cassin's Kingbird, from Cornell's All About Birds

What's For Dinner? For the Red-tail, it's Something Reptilian...

Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) have a rather strained and tenuous relationship with the other birds on the West Campus of Modesto Junior College. As often as not I see them being mobbed by crows or magpies, and I'm sure they are guilty of consuming the occasional unsuspecting or careless bird. But tonight it was rather clear that they enjoy reptiles in their diet as well. I was standing by the sheep pond on the northwest corner of the campus, which is pretty much the most wilderness-like part of our campus. I sensed a large bird soar over me and the hawk landed in the tree in front of me with dinner hanging out of its mouth. It was a strange sight, to say the least. It gave me a few quizzical looks and took off for a tree a little farther away to finish dinner without the paparazzi snapping pictures...

Does anyone know what reptile the victim is?

The Yellow-billed Magpie, One of California's Truly Endemic Species

We have a particularly beautiful bird inhabiting our campus, but unless you live here in California, you don't get to see it except in pictures. It's one of the few true California endemic bird species, the Yellow-billed Magpie (Pica nuttalli). It is related to the Black-billed Magpie that is common across the country, but the two populations are isolated from one another by the Sierra Nevada and they've been separated since the Ice Ages. In general, the Yellow-billed Magpie is better adapted to hot temperatures like those in the Great Valley. Besides the yellow bill, the California birds have yellow around their eyes.

The Yellow-billed Magpies are gregarious, historically gathering in huge flocks and around 2008-2009 it was almost their undoing. The West Nile Virus reached the Great Valley and the magpies were particularly susceptible to infection, which was deadly much more than 90% of the time. Their populations crashed, from more than 200,000 to around 90,000. Even though I was not watching birds carefully at that time, the sudden quiet was disconcerting. It was a real tragedy. Instead of flocks of dozens or hundreds, one would see half a dozen birds at a time.

Luckily, the bird seems to be making something of a comeback. Some of the birds may have developed some immunity to the infection, and my impression is that there are more of them on our West Campus. The flock seems to be about 25 strong. I've been having problems getting close enough to them for photography, but today one landed just outside my classroom and I just happened to have my camera at that moment. I'm hopeful for their future; the world would be a dismal world without them.

A Bird Who Didn't Want to be Seen: Red-Breasted Nuthatch on the West Campus

I'm a little behind on bird updates, as these pictures are from April 17. I'm not happy with the them, but then again I was lucky to see this bird at all. It's a Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis), and it was deep in the foliage of a tree on the West Campus of my college. It was the last week of classes, and I was stretching my legs during a break from grading. It's the first time I've seen one so I'm looking forward to getting better shots some day.

The Red-breasted Nuthatchers usually search for insects in the summer and later in the year they may switch to nuts (kind of like their name). They are more of a conifer forest species and are typically found at higher elevations outside the Great Valley. They range across North America from the Mexican border to Alaska.

An Argument for Looking Closer at Little Birds: Western Bluebirds on the West Campus

Before I  became a geologist, all rocks were gray, and there were a few crystals, but all of them were quartz. Then, a small bit of education intervened and my eyes were opened to a vast and complicated world inhabited by a dizzying array of rocks and thousands of kinds of beautiful and colorful minerals. It was a revelation that changed my life and led me into the career I've enjoyed now for more than thirty years.

Jumping ahead a few decades, birds have become my new minerals. A decade ago, I pretty much figured the birds I saw in the neighborhood and at work fell into a few categories: sparrows, pigeons, and crows. And they were little gray things, just like the rocks once were. So imagine my surprise when I found I lived in one of the more critical bird habitats in the country. Nearly a thousand bird species have been identified in the lower 48 states, and almost a third of them have been sighted at one time or another in Stanislaus County where I live. There are plenty of reasons for the biological richness: mild winters, providing shelter for many migrant species; and a wide variety of habitats, including foothills, prairies, rivers and flood plains, and mountain slopes. Despite being a rank amateur at bird watching, I soon had identified more than a hundred species.

One of my favorites of my new world are the Western Bluebirds (Sialia Mexicana), as evidenced by the fact that this is the 14th time I've posted pictures of them. They're irresistibly colorful. I saw these during my recent wanderings on the West Campus of MJC, which turns out to be a pretty good habitat for bird watching, with more than 60 species seen so far. They'll probably be headed for the hills very soon as spring arrives. They are actually more of a woodland bird in their breeding choices, and move into the Sierra Nevada or the Coast Ranges.

I'm not an expert, and my blog has become just the 300th most-read bird blog, but I've enjoyed writing about my discoveries, and I've appreciated hearing from those who have been along for the journey!

Butterbutts: Yellow-rumped Warblers at MJC and the Tuolumne River show Evolution in Action

In the days of my ignorance (actually not a thing of the past), all small birds were sparrows of some kind. Imagine my surprise when I started paying attention and discovered the dozens of colorful and interesting birds that weren't sparrows (most of them). Among the most beautiful are the little Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata), apparently also known as...butterbutts.

These are pretty little birds right now, but in a few weeks they will take on even brighter plumage as the breeding season commences. I may not see them as often as they tend to move up into the forests at that time. Right now they are flitting about in the trees in great numbers on my campus (all the following pictures), and along the Tuolumne River below where I live in Waterford (the two pictures above).

There is an interesting story concerning these little birds. Until 1973, they weren't "Yellow-rumped Warblers". They were an eastern species called a Myrtle Warbler, and a western species called the Audubon's Warbler. There are color differences, and differences in their calls. But...in 1973 they were combined into a single species because of a narrow region where the range of the two species overlapped. In that narrow region the two species were observed interbreeding and producing young, a long-term definition of a biological species. So now they are officially considered to be subspecies along with two others, the Black-fronted Warbler in Mexico, and the Goldman's Warbler in an isolated part of Guatemala. They're all Butterbutts, for the time being.

But change is afoot. Genetic research is far more advanced than it was in the 1970s, and DNA evidence indeed suggests that the four butterbutts should be considered species rather than subspecies. Part of the argument involves that fact that while they hybridize in that small zone of range overlap, the area of interbreeding has not expanded over time, as if the hybrids were not really viable.

These birds are a great example of how natural selection and evolution works to change and develop new species. As with the Scrub Jays that I discussed the other day, isolation is the driving force leading to changes. During the ice ages, the original populations of the warblers were separated by glaciers, and they remained isolated in the aftermath. The populations were subjected to different environmental conditions and different food sources, and over time little differences developed. Some of the variations allowed particular individuals to survive and pass on their genes to subsequent generations, and over time, the differences accumulated to the extent that they could no longer successfully interbreed. In other words, they were new species.

Because of the new research results, the North American Classification Committee of the American Ornithologists' Union may very well declare the four subspecies to be species once more. It's arbitrary in one sense, but the fact that there are blurry lines between possible species actually supports the idea of evolutionary change. There are simply not always sharply defined boundaries as divergence takes place.

In any case, these beautiful birds may be right in your own backyard. In ours they stayed away from the feeder and hung out in the Mulberry trees around the corner of the house, so I never thought to search for them. Nowadays, knowing where to look, I see them all the time. Have I mentioned that they aren't sparrows?