Another Tropical Migrant Arrives: Western Tanager on the Tuolumne Trail

These weeks of spring are when my personal favorite treasures arrive in the vicinity of the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail, and every walk is a little adventure when one of those treasures might be seen for the first time this year. This week the treasures included my first Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana). For all their fiery color, they can be hard to spot because they prefer to hang about in the top of the canopy of the oak trees lining the trail. This one was no exception. You can't really tell from the camera perspective, but this male was almost directly overhead, craning his neck to look down at me.

The Western Tanager winters in Central America and Mexico, and in summer migrates farther north than any other tanager species. Very few other tanager species are ever even seen in my part of California. There are a lot of them that I am looking forward to seeing one day: Summer Tanager, Hepatic Tanager, maybe even a Scarlet Tanager. I'll have to spend time in Southern California or Arizona to even have a chance.

Meanwhile, the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail has finally been "discovered". The pandemic has of course (with great justification) severely limited people's ability to travel, and recreation opportunities have been highly restricted. Day by day I've noticed more and more people along the trail to the point that the parking lot that I thought was laughably large is almost full on weekends. The nice thing about the trail is that there are four or five different spots where people can go off the main trail and go down to the riverbank and spread out. Most people have been decent about maintaining the physical distancing. The only discouraging part is the increase in trash and garbage (come on people, you carried it in, you can carry it out), and the couple of airheads who think the trail is a motorcycle track, and that the river is appropriate for motorboats and jet-skis. It's so jarring to have one of those mechanical monsters go flying by (and not to mention extremely dangerous; I'm surprised no one has been hurt yet).

The Babies of Spring: Great Horned Owls and Red-tailed Hawks

One of the wonderful pleasures of spring bird-watching is the possibilities of catching sight of the new chicks. The birds of course go to great lengths to keep their children hidden from predators, but once in awhile one gets lucky and gets a peek at some of the young ones. Today I stopped by the covered bridge a few miles up the Tuolumne River and found that the Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) had hatched and there were at least two chicks in the nest. No matter what stage of life they are in, I find the stare of an owl unsettling.

I haven't been allowed back to work at my campus, but there are no rules against walking around the grounds, so I stopped there last week to see if the Red-tailed Hawks had laid eggs or not. The pair have been around for weeks, but I didn't see them on the nest they used last year, but as I looked carefully I saw something move up there.

Zooming in, one can see there is at least one baby present. I couldn't tell if there were others. They fledged two young ones last year.

Spring rolls on! I'll be watching for the Ospry babies next. There are at least four active nests up the river.

More Color for Drab Days: The Bullock's Orioles on the Tuolumne River

I admit it. I can't resist the Orioles. They are one of the flashiest colorful birds out there right now, and I'm seeing them a tiny bit more often these days. There are at least three individuals on the trail at the moment, and I am getting used to where they like to feed. The picture above shows that they might be getting tired of me taking their picture, though...

The black eye strip and black crown identifies this one as a male Bullock's Oriole (icterus bullockii). I'm on the lookout now for some sign of their unique nests. They build a hanging affair out of palm fibers, and there are several promising palms along the trail.

The females are not as flashy as the males, but I have seen one or two so far. These birds are tropical migrants with a winter home in Mexico or Central America. I always enjoy their summer sojourn on the river, and I look forward to more sightings in the weeks to come.

Another Migrant Passing Through: Nashville Warbler on the Tuolumne River

Sometimes it just boils down to sheer luck. I am not very good at spying and/or identifying Warblers. Somewhere around sixty of them are listed in Sibley's Guide West, referring to the American western states. Of these, I've seen eight, but I only find one or two in any regular fashion, the Orange-crowned Warbler, and the wonderfully named Yellow-rumped Warbler, otherwise known as Yellow-butt. The Yellow-butts are so common that I get sort of impatient about identifying little yellow birds high above me in the oak canopy. I'll try and try to get a clear shot of these very active birds and finally find after craning my neck for thirty minutes that it's yet another Yellow-butt.

But yesterday something strange happened. The bird I was tracking turned out not to be a Yellow-rumped Warbler. The breast was bright yellow, it had a grayish-olive colored back, and it had a complete eye-ring. It took me a moment before I realized it was a Nashville Warbler (Oreothlypis ruficapilla), only the second one I've ever seen. The pictures are not great, although the first shows the reddish color sometimes seen on the head of the males (I didn't even see that until the pics were loaded onto the computer). But these three pictures were the only usable ones out of the forty pictures that I took. This was a challenging individual.

As I've noted before, this warbler clan shows the effect of isolation on the evolution. The western population of the Nashville Warbler is a brighter yellow than those found in the eastern United States, and it was once considered a separate species called the Calaveras Warbler, a name I find much more interesting. We can still call it by that name, since it is officially a subspecies called Oreothlypis ruficapilla ridgwayi. Oh, and by the way, the bird has little to do with Nashville. It breeds in Canada and the Pacific Northwest and migrates in winter to the tropics. The ones seen in Nashville that gave the species its name were simply migrants passing through.

There's No Place Like Home: The Rufous Hummingbirds Arrive on the Tuolumne

So here's the thing. I've been on a quest to find a Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus). At this time they are in the middle of a truly epic migration. They are traveling from Mexico and Central America all the way to Canada and Alaska. They travel farther north than any other hummingbird, and for their size compared to miles traveled, they have the greatest migration of any bird (others travel farther, but they are bigger and are able to store more fat reserves for the long journey). What that means to us here in Stanislaus County is that we have a window of just a few weeks to see them as they pass through during the spring.

I have been scouring the Wild Tobacco shrubs that have proliferated along the Tuolumne River Parkway Trail for a couple of weeks now, and was thrilled to read that fellow nature blogger Siera Nystrom spied one on the trail on March 27 (check out her great blog here). It was only the second sighting in the entire county this year. On April first my quest continued and I was walking past one of the shrubs they love so much. I saw movement, and thought I saw a flash of gold, so I got the camera ready and got off a single shot before the bird flew off. I got home and downloaded the picture, enlarged it, played around with Photoshop, and finally decided that I might have seen the elusive bird.

Then Mrs. Geotripper called me off the computer, letting me know I promised to work in the garden in the backyard. And of course you know what happened...

The bird buzzed right past my ear, took a drink at the hummingbird feeder, buzzed past my ear again, and landed in the Crepe Myrtle tree not ten feet from where I was standing. And it sat there for another five or ten minutes while I went indoors for the camera and came back to start snapping pictures. Of course it was a female Rufous Hummingbird. The only limitation was that the sun had set and it was a bit dark for photography.

Like most birds, the female is the least-adorned. I was still hoping to catch a male somewhere, so the search continued at home and along the river. And today it happened.

Somehow Mrs. Geotripper has been my good luck bird charm. She called me while I was hiking so I stopped and was staring off in the distance while talking, and my attention was drawn to movement in the tobacco plant across from me. And there it was, a male feeding in the flowers. Even better, it was slowly hovering enough to get some pleasing shots, including the one at the top of the post.

The Rufous Hummingbirds can live for as long as a decade, and they have an excellent memory for the locations of the kinds of shrubs and flowers they prefer. Even though they are not overly common in our area, they have shown in up in the same area in the four years that I've been watching.

The Natural World Goes On: The Bullock's Orioles Arrive!

These are interesting weeks in the bird world. As spring ramps up many of our winter "snowbirds" have left, on their way to Arctic regions to breed for the summer. It would feel like a real loss, but at the same time we are starting to see the arrival of some colorful migrants out of the tropics. I saw the first Western Kingbirds earlier this week, and yesterday I had a pleasant surprise of coming upon a Bullock's Oriole (Icterus bullockii) feeding in the wild tobacco plants by the Tuolumne River. They're among my favorites (although I'm really partial to blue; I am really hoping to run across a Blue Grosbeak or Lazuli Bunting soon).

Shades of yellow and orange are breaking out all over. Golden Poppies are blooming right now along the river.

The Natural World Goes On: Western Kingbirds arrive on the Tuolumne River

Life is uncertain right now, and things are chaotic, but it is sometimes nice to know in the midst of sadness and troubles that the natural world continues, and beauty is still all around us. I've been trying to keep some balance by getting out on the Tuolumne River Trail (usually by myself of course), and today including a treat.

It's always a pleasant surprise the first time you see them. They will be here by the thousands in a week or two, but there are always those few leaders who arrive before the others. When you see one for the first time you might mistake it briefly for a mockingbird until you see the bright flash of yellow on their frontside. These are the Western Kingbirds (Tyrannus verticalis), and they've arrived on the Tuolumne River this week. I saw two of them this morning. It's a sure sign that spring has arrived (the first one seen in our county was literally on the day of the spring equinox).

The birds have been wintering in Mexico and Central America, but soon they will be all over the United States and southernmost Canada to breed during the summer.

Stay healthy all. Hiking and walking while maintaining physical distance is still allowed, and is safe if you avoid any crowds.