Bird of the Day: Sooty Fox Sparrow (If you can see it!)

The rains fell in California this week, and I hadn't been to the west campus pond in a long stretch of weeks, but today the sun was out, and so were lots of birds. I now have a large backlog of pictures from the west campus and from the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, so expect plenty of them here in coming days. Today was a new discovery (for me) on the west campus at MJC. It appears to be a Sooty Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca unalaschcensis). I'm not surprised I haven't seen them before; I barely noticed this one in the leaves on the ground at the "mini-wilderness".

The Sooty Fox Sparrow breeds between the Aleutian Islands and the Olympic Peninsula and migrates into California (this one anyway). It is one of many subspecies of the Fox Sparrow, and according to some of the sources I read, it may be elevated to a separate species.

As always, I welcome comments and gently applied corrections to my amateur identification skills!

Bird of the Day: Turkey Vultures at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

One of my favorite television shows was "Dirty Jobs", in which Mike Rowe took a stab at doing the kinds of crummy jobs that make life liveable for the rest of us: the sewer work, the cleaning jobs, all the stuff that few of us would ever want to do, but someone has to do it, or else. Sometimes we hold some of these unfortunate folks in low esteem, but I try not to. They are real heroes in my book.

That's the way things sometimes work in the bird world as well. Things die and they get stinky and kind of put a damper on the "circle of life" thing, except that there are animals who come along to process and consume the carcasses. They are the scavengers. There are several birds that fill this role, but two are supreme at it: the California Condor and the rarely heralded Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura). As many people realize, the Condor was at the brink of extinction, and still number in the low hundreds, so it is the Turkey Vulture that most often takes on the role of scavenger in the American west.

We were on a long road trip over the Thanksgiving weekend and made a stop at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge for a second time (we came through briefly on Thursday). I wasn't expecting to see Vultures but couldn't help but notice that dozens of them were roosting in the Eucalyptus trees by the visitor center, so we wandered down for a closer look. They were apparently settling in for the evening.

They can hardly be called beautiful birds, but as a function of efficiency, they are nicely adapted. Given that they spend a lot of time with their heads in dead carcasses, the bald skin makes a lot of sense. Their huge wings allow them to soar for hours on warm thermals, and their large nostrils can detect the smell of rotting flesh from great distances.

The Turkey Vultures were originally more of a southern species but have been expanding their range northward, quite possibly in concert with global warming. They are found today in all the lower forty-eight states and parts of Canada as well. They are probably increasing their numbers, but are threatened by pesticides and lead shot used by hunters.

I've always associated the vultures with the grossness of death and dying, but as I watched them yesterday, they seemed rather fastidious in their grooming. Perhaps it was in the manner of the funeral director, who is always well-dressed...someone who fills an important role, even though we don't like thinking about it or dwelling on what they do.

Bird of the Day: A Sparrow that's not a Sparrow, and a Successful Immigrant

The House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) is one of the most common birds in existence, with a success that stems from a close association with human habitations. It's not a sparrow, at least in the American sense, and instead is part of a family called the weaver-finch in Europe where the bird is native. It was introduced to the North American continent in 1850 and has since spread to all the contiguous American states.

The birds are apparently evolving as they compete in different environments across the continent. They are showing differences in shading with paler colors in the southwest, and darker colors in more humid regions. 

I caught these images in Florence, Oregon in a small park along the Siuslaw River. I figured if I am going to post images of one of the most familiar birds in existence that I'd better catch them very close! I hope these pictures fit the bill (or the bill fits in the picture).

The House Sparrows originated in the Middle East, and have spread throughout the world along with the development of agriculture. They, like domestic cats and dogs, seem to have cast their lots with we humans, and will thrive as long as we do.

Red-winged Blackbird at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

On our travels north this week, we had the opportunity to explore a new (for us) wildlife refuge, the Sacramento complex just off Interstate 5 near Willows in the Great Valley. A six mile long auto loop allowed access to a variety of environments. Thousands upon thousands of birds were there, as well as a few deer.

The Snow Geese will undoubtedly be featured here before long, but today we have some Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) that were hanging out in the cattails and reeds.  Their wings weren't as red as they are in springtime, as they aren't trying to catch the eyes of the ladies so much.

The Red-winged Blackbirds are common across the United States, but although there are tens of millions of them, they have declined in number by about 30% over the last five decades, presumably because of habitat destruction. Their close relatives the Tri-colored Blackbird are in serious danger in our Great Valley, with only 300,000 of them left.

The last picture is a juvenile male. It's more of a brown color with buff wing tips. In a few months, the birds will be black all over, and competing with each other for territory and females.

Bird of the Day: What Else Could it Possibly Be?

Of course, the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). It's native to North America, but is mostly an introduced species in the western states. I was not aware that the Turkey was almost extirpated in the early 1900s when the wild population may have declined to as few as 30,000 individuals (hunting and habitat loss were the major culprits). It was the effort to bring the bird back from an endangered status that led to its introduction in the western states. The recovery effort has been successful and there are an estimated 7.8 million of them in the wilds of every state but Alaska.

As you enjoy your domestic version of the bird at the table tomorrow, give some thanks that there were those who made an effort to save the wild ones for posterity. The birds are an American original.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Just for the fun of it, take a look at the antics of the Turkeys I ran into last year near Morro Bay...

Bird of the Day: Yellow-rumped Warblers on the West Campus

A Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata) has been seen on this blog before, when we saw a number of them at Chaw'se a few weeks ago. I've seen a few here on the valley floor on our west campus, and once even on our back porch.

 But I've never seen so many as I did today. I was walking past the sheep pasture on our west campus and saw a lot of small birds hopping on the fence and on the ground near a large walnut tree. Every time a car drove by, two or three dozen birds exploded off the ground and into the tree. I took a closer look.

There were at least three species, including White-crowned Sparrows and possibly a female Western Bluebird, but most of them had the yellow flash of color that gave them away as the Yellow-rumped Warbler. How would you like a name like that?

Beautiful little birds! I expect there will be more of them here in the future...

Bird of the Day: Sagebrush Sparrow in the Mojave National Preserve

Today's bird is a totally new one for me, and given the circumstances I'm not surprised that I've never seen it before. It's a Sagebrush Sparrow (Artemisiospiza nevadensis). They are apparently quite common, but hard to see, as they spend much of their time in the shrubs, and as you can see in these photographs, they blend in well with their surroundings. I wouldn't have even seen them except for the movement.

We were on our way home from a short trip in Arizona and stopped to stretch our legs at the Essex Road offramp on Interstate 40. This is one of the entrances to the Mojave National Preserve, one of the gems of our national park system. The park preserves a wide swath of the best parts of the Mojave Desert, with high mountains with relict fir forests, pediments with thick forests of Joshua Trees, and valley floors covered by some of the highest sand dunes in North America. The mountain range in the picture above is part of the Providence Mountains, which is famous for a number of cavern systems, including Mitchell Caverns. During the recent depression, the park was shut down, and vandals did their terrible work on the facilities. An effort is being made to reopen the caverns as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the Sagebrush Sparrows were quietly moving along the shrubs near the freeway offramp. It was a while before I even noticed them. Although it won't surprise my birder friends, I have been astounded by the diversity of bird life in California that I've always overlooked in the past. There are a great many new birds out there to be discovered, some gaudy with bright colors, and others well-camouflaged in their drabness.