Bird of the Day: What the Ground Squirrel Was Worried About...

We decided to avoid some traffic by parking along Dry Creek in downtown Modesto as the sun was setting. While we were there, we saw a bit of drama, although it was of the nuanced type. There were lots of Ground Squirrels living on the stream bank adjacent to the creek, and they were noticeably nervous, pacing, standing, and not going more than a few feet from their burrows. I looked around to see what was upsetting them, and eventually noticed a branch in the distant oak tree that didn't look exactly like a branch. I whipped out the camera (which I use in place of binoculars) and figured out what they were worried about.

How would YOU feel if you were only eight inches tall and saw this in the trees above you?

The Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), as I've noted before, has a very strange distribution. They are widespread around the eastern United States from New England to Texas and into Mexico. Then there is a west coast population, confined to Alta and Baja California, although a few have been noted in Oregon and Arizona.

Dry Creek rises in the Sierra Nevada foothills south of Jamestown, and flows through central Modesto where it joins the Tuolumne River. Although it does not have a wide riparian forest, a string of majestic oak trees can be found along its course in the Great Valley, and I need to spend more time finding what birds live there.

Dry Creek is supposed to be dry as the name suggests, but during the summer season irrigation overflow tends to keep the channel wet. In winter it is prone to flash floods, as very little snow falls along its upper reaches, so water gathers quickly during storms. Last year the channel was dry throughout most of the winter season as we suffered the third year of drought.

Bird of the Day: Phinally, a Phainopepla! And a Phemale Too!

It's a little bit phuzzy, but I phinally got a phew pictures of a Phainopepla! Your bird-brained host blogger has been traveling in some isolated country the last few days, but I'm finally back on the internet today. There are some pretty nice bird habitats in and around Death Valley National Park, but we saw few birds during our journey, mainly Ravens, House Sparrows, and a few House Finches. It was a little worrisome to me. Death Valley has a surprising amount of water in the right places, and there should have been more activity.

Just the same, we made a short gas and restroom stop for the students at Shoshone, California, a small village just east of Death Valley National Park. Despite the dry desert conditions, the area is a marshy oasis due to groundwater being forced to the surface. The spot is used as a stopover spot by migratory birds, but there are year-round residents as well, and one of them is the Phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens). It is a member of the silky flycatcher family, and is the most north-ranging of the group. They have been recorded in my area of the Great Valley, but I have yet to see one there.

Shoshone has several signed bird trails, and I really need to find some time to roam there more freely. I literally had just ten minutes to get these pictures, which may explain their fuzziness. The birds were keeping their distance from the manic looking guy with the camera who was running and snapping pictures at the same time!

A female Phainopepla

Bird of the Day: I Don't Know, But Don't Really Care Anyway

So here are two birds. I couldn't identify them, although I suspect they are geese, based on the way they were flying. They are probably of the Canada sort, although thousands of Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, and Greater White-fronted Geese are wintering in the San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge, which is only about eight miles away as the goose flies.

 Of course, I was actually taking a picture of the rainbow this afternoon after a real gully-washer roared through town, the first rainstorm of any sort in six weeks. The drought is not over yet.

The setting was hardly idyllic. We were in a Walmart parking lot in town, but we had literally four minutes to do what we could with photography before it faded.  There was no running out to a pasture or bird refuge this time, although I would have loved being out at the Beckwith Road viewing platform at a time like this!

The photo below might be a first for me, a nearly complete rainbow. My new camera has a pretty wide field of view. Enjoy

Bird of the Day: Red-shouldered Hawks on Superbowl Sunday

More birds from an extraordinary day of bird-watching, last Superbowl Sunday. We decided to head out of town, and hadn't even made it to the bridge over the Tuolumne River when I spied a colorful looking hawk on a telephone pole. I don't see a lot of hawks inside the town limits, so I stopped and got a couple of pictures. It's a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), a medium-sized raptor with a very strange distribution. They are widespread around the eastern United States from New England to Texas and into Mexico. Then there is a west coast population, confined to Alta and Baja California, although a few have been noted in Oregon and Arizona.

We continued down the road to the Bear Creek Unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos, passing dozens of hawks on the highway, but at the refuge, there was another Red-shouldered Hawk posing for us. It turned out to be quite a day for raptors (except the ones from Seattle...)

Bird of the Day: American Kestrels at the Merced and San Luis National Wildlife Refuges.

Superbowl Sunday turned out to be a great day for seeing raptors and other hunters at the local bird refuges. I got a few shots of some American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) at two different locales, the Merced National Wildlife Refuge (above), and the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge (below). The bird, which has been called a sparrow hawk, is actually a falcon, the smallest of the American species.

The kestrels have been struggling, with only about half the population they had in the 1960s. Most of the decline comes from habitat loss, including the clearing of fields with tree snags that they prefer for nesting.

Bird of the Day: Tundra Swans at Merced National Wildlife Refuge

Winter in Central California is a special time. We never see the beautiful snow crystals covering the land in a wondrous blanket of white, unless it happens to snow in the mountains and we go up to visit it. And that's fine with me. I have no desire to shovel snow off my driveway!

No, winter is special for a different reason. The tundra and muskeg of northern Canada and Alaska serve as the breeding grounds for an astounding number of migratory birds. During the long days of summer there is plenty of food, and they are adapted to deal more or less successfully with whatever predators are around. But for obvious reasons, the birds and their young don't stick around to see what it's like in the cold dark days of winter.

Instead, they make their way thousands of miles to the south and spend the winter along the Pacific Coast and southwest states. By the hundreds of thousands they spend their days in a string of Central California wildlife refuges including the San Joaquin River and San Luis National Wildlife Refuges near my home base at Modesto. One of the most special to me is the Merced Unit, because in six different visits over the last year, we've never failed to be awed by the number and variety of birds to be found there. Sunday was no exception.

I had already watched the Superbowl ads online, and had no emotional attachment to either team in the big game (unlike some of my Seattle-area relatives; sorry, y'all), and Mrs. Geotripper wistfully noted that she has never seen a wild swan. I thought about it and figured that of all the places we might look, our best chance would be the Merced refuge. It has not let us down yet.

We took a brief drive through the Bear Creek unit of the San Luis NWR where we saw a lot of raptors, but then we drove a few miles more to the Merced NWR auto tour, a six mile gravel road that traverses part of the refuge. A mile in I saw a huge pillow sized "thing" floating in the water off in the distance. After a seemingly long time, it's neck came up and I realized we had found what we were looking for: the Tundra, or Whistling Swan (Cygnus columbianus).

Don't these two look like they are bowing to each other?

After a moment, a second swam into view, and around the next corner we saw half a dozen more.  It occurred to me that we've probably seen them in the past, perhaps missed among the tens of thousands of Snow Geese and Ross's Geese that winter at the refuge. They are beautiful, graceful birds.

Bird of the Day: Snow Geese at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge

I have to admit I haven't been following football much this year. I think there was some kind of big game today, seeing as how I detected a sense of despair and sadness emanating from the spirits of my Seattle region relatives. I took advantage of the afternoon by heading out to the Merced National Wildife Refuge to visit the overwintering birds.

There were birds of all kinds (look for lots of them in coming posts!), but the Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens) were just stunning. There are tens of thousands of them spending the winter months at the refuge.

The geese will be leaving to their breeding grounds in the far north in just a few weeks. In the meantime, they are foraging on the refuge wetlands and in surrounding agricultural fields to fatten up for the flight.

They roost in huge flocks, and there is nothing quite like the sound when they all take flight at once. They didn't do it while we were there today (and it's not really good for them if it is a false alarm; it uses unnecessary energy). To get an idea, check out these videos I posted earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fHPoNMnCJw or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTPMSrxHtvU.

It was a beautiful day on the refuge after a month of fog and gloom. We hope to be back soon!