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Five Valleys, Many Birds

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On Saturday, April 20^th, my dad and I headed out to Five Valleys Land Trust’s Rock Creek Property, our truck full of plants and shovels. I had completed my Eagle Scout Project on this property last year. For my project I had planted about 30 native plants in an enclosure, on a part of the property dominated mainly by invasive grasses and the grasshoppers that fed on them.

We brought five cottonwoods to replace dead plants and to our surprise only used three of them—the majority of our plants were healthy! We planted the other two trees inside Five Valleys’ much larger enclosure, where about thirty volunteers had gathered to weed the area around the large pond.

Braden planting a new cottonwood to replace the few winter mortalities in his Eagle project. The project should create awesome habitat for birds in coming years.

As we finished putting our trees in, I heard an obnoxious call. I looked up to see an excited tuxedo-colored bird with bright pink legs—a Black-necked Stilt! We knew it was shorebird migration season, but we hadn’t expected to see anything, let alone a rare Western Montana migrant! On the pond we also tallied three Ruddy Ducks, another Year Bird.

We then put down our tools and picked up our binoculars to wander the edges of the property, where all the best habitat was. At the Clark Fork River, we found a large flock of migrating swallows zipping inches above the water. The main members of the flock were Tree and Violet-Green, but we also managed to spot some rarities: a few Northern Rough-winged Swallows, one Barn and one Cliff! The day was already shaping up to be a rare one.

Lincoln’s Sparrows are always a surprise in Montana, and we were lucky to see a migration pair out at Rock Creek.

Next we explored the flooded riparian area in the back of the property. We had seen a Pacific Wren and several Ruby-crowned Kinglets here in the fall, as well as our first Yellow-rumped Warbler of 2018, so we excitedly scanned the shrubs and trees. Sure enough, movement caught our eye. Two Lincoln’s Sparrows foraged in the brush, another great spring pick-up! As we reached the very edge of what Five Valleys owned, we flushed two Green-winged Teals that had been hiding along the shore.

As we made our way back to the car, I spotted movement in a patch of trees up ahead. Upon further investigation, we discovered a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and a brilliant male Yellow-rumped Warbler, both firsts for the year. They hung out in a large mixed flock that also included White- and Red-breasted Nuthatches and Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees. But the flock wasn’t done. Suddenly, a bright dandelion-yellow bird hopped into view. It danced through the branches in front of us, displaying its light gray head, white eye-ring, yellow throat and red cap. It was our best look ever at a Nashville Warbler!

Rain prevented us from getting any good bird photos, but the birds cooperated for some great viewing!

Back at the barn, we ate with the volunteers, led by Jenny Tollefson, who was also my Five Valleys Eagle project contact. We had put in good work and been rewarded with epic finds. I could only imagine what the property would become when the plants I and others had put in grew up to create even more habitat for the birds of the area.

Birding the Burn—Again!

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If you’ve followed our blog, you’ve probably realized that some of our favorite places to bird are recent burn areas—that is, burn areas that have not been destroyed by so-called “salvage logging.” I first fell in love with burn areas while researching my book Fire Birds—Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests. The book highlighted the fascinating work of biologist Dick Hutto, who showed what vital habitat burned forests are for more than one hundred bird species. Yesterday, after dropping Braden off for a Boy Scout leadership weekend near Seeley Lake, I decided to hit a burn area we’d visited with Dick last spring—the Morrell Creek watershed.

Burn areas provide outstanding habitat to more than one hundred species of birds. Unfortunately, so-called “salvage logging” destroys the burned forest by removing the larger-diameter trees that woodpeckers and other birds most need for food and shelter.

I had two ulterior motives for going there. One was to scout out a good place to bird with some kids next month. The other was to see one of Braden’s and my favorite birds, the Black-backed Woodpecker. As I was driving in, I was dismayed to find that the “salvage loggers” had already ruined a lot of the habitat along the road, but I eventually pulled over at a likely place to explore, one with larger-diameter dead trees still left standing.

Forget bluebird boxes! If you really want bluebirds to thrive, leave burned forests alone. Untouched burned forests may be the favorite habitat of these birds, providing food, shelter, and safety from squirrels and other small predators.

Right off the bat, I encountered large numbers of two favorite burn species: Mountain Bluebirds and Dark-eyed juncos, who seem to prefer burn areas to almost any other habitat. The bluebirds especially were going crazy. Twice, I saw groups of three (two males and a female, I think) chasing and mobbing each other, sometimes driving themselves to the ground. A territorial dispute? The birding equivalent of a bar fight over a girl? I wondered.

It didn’t take too long for me to hear woodpecker drumming and my heart raced as I hurried through the trees hoping to see a Black-backed. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the woodpecker until it was too late and spooked it before I got a good ID. Curses!

While Black-backed and Three-toed Woodpeckers get more attention, Hairy Woodpeckers are also burned forest specialists. If you have any doubt, just look at how well this Hairy blends in with its burned background. Like the Black-backed and Three-toed, the Hairy Woodpecker is “hard-headed” enough to drill into the rock-hard wood of newly-killed trees for wood-boring beetle grubs and to drill out nesting and roosting holes.

I kept walking through the forest, finding a great sense of peace from the sounds of Morrell Creek splashing below and from the dark, silent sentries surrounding me. Eventually I located another woodpecker drumming, but only snatched two blurry photos of it before it, too, flew away. My photos, though, did show a yellow crown, narrowing the bird to a Black-backed or Three-toed Woodpecker. Unfortunately, it was a crummy day for light and photography and the next woodpecker I saw was too backlit for me to identify. I did see a Golden Eagle circling above and an American Dipper in the creek below. A Hairy Woodpecker also posed for a picture. Finally, as I was about to leave, I heard more drumming. I grabbed my camera from the car seat and chased it down.

Success!

On a high narrow snag sat a beautiful male Three-toed Woodpecker drumming his heart out. It wasn’t a Black-backed, but I didn’t care. Three-toed Woodpeckers, like Black-backeds, are specialists of burned forests and I was delighted to meet up with this fellow—and even more delighted that he’d found a beautiful, blackened home.

Though lighting conditions stunk, I was delighted to finally get a good look at this Three-toed Woodpecker drumming on one of many awesome “drumming posts” to be had in the burned forest.

Hawai’i: The International Jungle

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During Spring Break this year the Hellgate High School Band travelled to Oahu, Hawai’i for the Pacific Basin Music Festival. Almost every day my friends and I worked with music professors, performed, and enjoyed music in many different forms. The festival provided us with experiences we’d never forget. However, we did not spend every second playing—we actually had quite a bit of free time. During this time, we hiked, surfed, snorkeled and shopped around Honolulu, giving me time to take in the island and its birdlife.

White Terns lay their eggs precariously on bare branches, without nests. In Oahu, the White Terns did not discriminate between native and nonnative trees.

Only about 6 of the birds I spotted on the trip were actually native to the island chain (Brown Booby, Hawai’ian Coot, White Tern, Pacific Golden-Plover, Oahu Amakihi and Wandering Tattler), which opened my eyes to the exotics of the tropics. The city of Honolulu itself was an international jungle, full of plants and birds from all over the globe. A few native Hawai’ian birds had taken to the civilized landscape; wintering Pacific Golden-Plovers lounged on lawns, suited in their dappled patterns, and ghostly White Terns floated between skyscrapers. The majority of the birds, though, hailed from other continents. Familiar birds included Rock Pigeons and House Sparrows (Europe), and House Finches and Northern Cardinals (North America). Lawns yielded a high diversity of species, including Common Mynas, Red-vented Bulbuls, Chestnut Muñias, Zebra and Spotted Doves, and Java Sparrows (Asia) and Cattle Egrets, Common Waxbills, African Silverbills and Yellow-fronted Canaries (Africa). Red-crested Cardinals (South America), which are brilliant gray birds topped with crimson crests, sang from palm trees.

Red-crested Cardinals swarmed the streets of Honolulu. They were almost as common as pigeons!

One morning, when hiking through densely rain-forested canyons, I encountered a plethora of different species. I did manage to hear one native, the Oahu Amakihi, but the forest echoed with mostly non-natives’ songs, like in the city. White-rumped Shamas (Asia) belted out complex, froglike songs, and Red-billed Leiothrixes, Japanese White-eyes and Red-whiskered Bulbuls (Asia) lurked high in the damp canopies. Red Junglefowl (Asia), the ancestors of domesticated chickens, as well as actual domesticated chickens, ruled the streets. By the end of the trip I had reached my goal of 30 species, even if one of them was an unidentifiable white booby (I’m guessing a Red-footed) dodging the waves off of North Shore.

The White-rumped Shama is a subtly beautiful Asian songbird that now makes its home on the forest-covered slopes of Oahu’s extinct volcanoes.

We ran into large numbers of Rose-ringed Parakeets (Asia and Africa) on several occasions, and I glimpsed a pair of Red-masked Parakeets (South America) shooting past the scrubby slopes of Diamond Head volcano in southeastern Honolulu.

Rose-ringed Parakeets (or known by pet-lovers as Indian Ringnecks) aren’t just introduced to Hawaii. Parrots escaped from a damaged aviary in Bakersfield, California a while ago, and now also can be found there with a little effort.

This raised controversial questions. Most of these species definitely did not belong here, that much was true. But now, thanks to human involvement, they had established and thrived, and many of them caused no obvious harm to the native birds. So, what should we do with them? Should we eradicate them, killing innocent birds because of a crime humanity committed? Or should we allow them to stay, letting these foreign species form their own niches in Hawai’i and other places?

In the case of many of the birds, it is too late. For better or for worse, they will be here forever, and I think that if they are not harming indigenous birds, we should let them be, and let nature decide what to do with them. Introduced predators such as cats, rats, and mongooses, however, are another matter and take a terrible toll on all of the islands’ birdlife. More resources should definitely be allocated to eliminating these destructive invasive pests.

San Diego Seabirds

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Our last day of the San Diego Bird Festival took us away from shore on the mighty birding (and perhaps fishing) vessel New Seaforth. This would be Braden’s and my third California pelagic birding cruise and in many ways it proved the most memorable. Almost immediately upon leaving the safety of Mission Bay, we began seeing dozens of Black-vented Shearwaters heading north and, of course, we followed them. They led us to a massive fish feast, where from 5-10,000 shearwaters gorged themselves on acres of anchovies. At least a thousand gulls, countless cormorants, and sea lions and common dolphins joined the fray.

Every time a shearwater surfaced stuffed with anchovies, gulls mobbed it until it regurgitated part of its catch. Note the shearwater on the far right fleeing the gang ‘o gulls!

After enjoying this spectacle for half an hour, we turned south and angled farther out to sea. Braden said, “I have three priorities today: Scripps’s Murrelets, Pomarine Jaegers, and Brown Boobies.” My own priority was simpler: I really wanted to see a Brown Booby—or any booby for that matter. It wasn’t long before our target species began showing up.

Scripps’s Murrelets were only described for science in 1859 and were heading toward extinction before efforts to rid their nesting islands of invasive rats and cats.

Undoubtedly the stars of the day were the Scripps’s Murrelets. These birds nest only in the Santa Barbara Channel Islands and on Mexico’s Coronado Islands, which loomed in the distance. The murrelets lay gigantic eggs compared to their body sizes—a full twenty percent of an adult’s weight. This advanced “in egg” development is no accident. Only two days after hatching, the chicks sneak away to the ocean to be raised by their parents almost entirely at sea. As we steamed south, we saw more and more of these adorable alcids, usually floating in pairs.

The boat “chummed” with popcorn, and that kept the gulls busy behind the boat, but also attracted brief visits from Braden’s second target, Pomarine Jaegers. Then Paul Lehman, our leader for the day, shouted over the PA, “Brown Booby at 12:00 o’clock, coming straight toward the boat!”

Braden and I had longed to see a booby in American waters since visiting the Galapagos in 2016.

I hurried to the rail in time to see the elegant “gannet shape” of the booby as it sped fifty yards off the port side. The bird even did a quick circuit around the stern, giving us all good looks at its handsome chocolate-covered head and back before speeding away again.

“Yes!” I whispered to myself.

The day wasn’t without its challenges. The steady 3-foot swell took a toll on Braden, forcing him below deck for part of the journey. Still, he agreed that the birds were worth the queasiness and, as if to drive home the point, a pod of common dolphins escorted us part of the way back to the mainland.

Hasta la vista, San Diego—until the next time!

Dolphins are a highlight of any pelagic birding adventure—even if they *are* mammals!

Big Day Mentality

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This is the Big Day Mentality: Every species, no matter how rare, is worth one tally. During a 24-hour period, a team of birders try to collect as many tallies as possible; the end total is the sum of every single bird species seen or heard during the day by at least two members of the team. At the San Diego Birding Festival, my dad and I were invited to be “first lieutenants” on two Big Day field trips.

We co-led our first outing under the expert leadership of veteran birder Phil Pryde, a local San Diegoan who had an ambitious schedule planned out for the day, in order to maximize the amount of species we saw. From dawn to dusk we scoured San Diego county, which is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined; a bird only counted if one of the leaders and one of the participants identified it. By the end of the day we had arrived at a total of 113 species, and my dad and I at just over a hundred individually. The number wasn’t bad, and the day had given us a rough idea of how many birds to expect for the next Big Day. Overall, though, the day hadn’t been very “birdy”—we had missed quite a few common species.

At Lindo Lake we spotted several pairs of the most photogenic Wood Ducks we had ever encountered!

On our next Big Day, under the guidance of our good-natured chief, Eitan Altman, we were determined to break this record. Unfortunately, the conditions didn’t look good—a low, wet mist had rolled over the area. Thanks to the rain, we didn’t have to rush inland to get early-morning songbirds (they were probably huddled in their warm, dry nests with no intent on warbling at the weather), so we birded along the coast at a relaxed pace. While doing this, we saw an unexpectedly high number of species, including Common Loon, Surf Scoter and Brant, which had not been a guarantee, a huge flock of Black Skimmers, and rarities such as Glaucous-winged Gull and the well-known Reddish Egret which hung out in the San Diego River Estuary. The eccentric bird’s gait reminded me of Kramer from the TV show Seinfeld.

This Greater White-fronted Goose is a regular at Lindo Lake.

Finally, around nine in the morning, we headed inland to Lindo Lake, the place which had yielded the highest number of species to us on the previous Big Day. We tallied high numbers of waterfowl, woodpeckers and more, including some more rarities: the resident Greater White-fronted Goose hanging out with a flock of domestic geese, not one but two Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, and a Bonaparte’s Gull that had somehow wound its way inland.

We continued hitting different habitats to nab species, and by three in the afternoon our total sat at 120 species, the most recent being an altitudinally-challenged Band-tailed Pigeon, a calling Canyon Wren and the ever-rare American Robin. As soon as I confirmed our total, Eitan began thinking of other species we could pick up, now determined to beat his personal record of 128. On our way back to the coast we stopped at places to grab specific birds, including White-tailed Kite and Greater Roadrunner. The tide was out now, and at the San Diego River Estuary we grabbed another six species, though unfortunately none of the rarities being reported there (Tricolored Heron, Mew Gull, Eurasian Wigeon) except the spunky Reddish Egret and a beautiful double rainbow.

We spotted a wintering flock of blackbirds at Lindo Lake, including many Tricolored Blackbirds, a California endemic.

As the day grew closer to our deadline of five o’clock, we opted to try and get a few last birds at a place called Fiesta Island, arguing over possible birds:

“Was that a Northern Harrier?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?.”

And finally, right at the entrance to the island we hit 130 with a Spotted Sanspiper bobbing along the rocks of the coastline. A pair of American Kestrels on the actual island sealed the deal.

We finished the trip, said our goodbyes, then responded appropriately to our biggest day ever by collapsing into bed.