Tag Archives: birds

Birds of Wildcat Canyon: July Edition

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Note: this post was published on NextDoor.

**As always in our new normal, please check with local agencies regarding safety alerts and closures. **

 

European Starling, Wildcat Canyon

WHAT’S IN THE CANYON? We are still in summer birding mode here in the East Bay hills. A glance at the eBird data from the park indicate we may notice some departures of a few species from Wildcat Canyon. By the end of July it will be a lot harder to find Allen’s Hummingbird, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Hooded and Bullock’s Orioles, and Grasshopper Sparrows. I’m not going to put money on whether these are truly gone from the area or just much harder to detect, but from our perspective as birdwatchers it amounts to much the same thing.

 

July may seem to be peak summer and way too early to be thinking about fall migrants coming through, but that’s not strictly true. Some individuals of northern or montaine (mountain-dwelling) species could turn up. These “early” migrants could be parents who failed to nest successfully and are cutting their losses with an early exit. On the other side of the coin, some species don’t require an extended period of parenting so successful moms and or dads might be able to start their migration before their kids are ready to make the trip. Finally, we could see some movement of birds because of local or regional events like fires, droughts, or extreme heat. We are still learning about these responses. Bird reports from this time of year can help scientists chart and predict how birds react to our frequently-inhospitable western landscapes.

 

MORE BIRDING RESOURCES. Last month I provided some information on physical field guides and binoculars. This month I’ll add to that some apps and online resources for birds and bird identification.

 

Apps for Identifying Birds:

 

Great Horned Owl, Wildcat Canyon

Guide apps. Most paper field guides now have mobile app analogs that you can download to your phone. The convenience of this is pretty revolutionary – to have a book, or even a whole library, with you at all times! On my phone I have Sibley, Peterson, and an app-only title called iBird PRO. Audubon is also highly regarded. Most of these aren’t free, so maybe start with one (my favorites is Sibley, possibly for the same reasons I like his real-world guide) and then watch for sales on the other ones.

 

Aside from convenience, these bird apps have another huge advantage. Along with the photos or illustrations, most also provide a few samples of sound recordings for each species. These may be listed as either songs or calls, with songs usually the more elaborate territorial or mate attraction vocalizations and calls often indicating alarm, anti-predator behavior, contact with conspecifics, begging for food, etc.

 

White-tailed Kite, Wildcat Canyon

A couple of warnings and caveats about the sound recordings: First off, most species have a lot of variation in their sounds and even across several apps you may not capture all of this. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t find the exact sound you are hearing. Secondly, it’s possible that the birds themselves can hear the recordings and react to them. While this can be a handy technique for matching a sound to a species THIS CAN ALSO BE DISRUPTIVE TO THE BIRDS. Imagine some stranger standing outside of your house shouting at you! It’s not that it’s never OK to use audio playbacks, but just be mindful of how you use this tool. Don’t do it to sensitive or threatened species, don’t do it in popular birding spots where the impacts are multiplied, don’t do it when you might be near a nest, and don’t do it more than you absolutely have to.

 

For more on this and other issues of responsible birding, please check out the American Birding Association statement on birding ethics:

 

 

If our first generation of apps are more or less translations of the field guide and birdsong records to the mobile format, the next generation is here and getting better. Check out Merlin, an app from the famous Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Merlin makes use of your location to suggest birds you might be seeing. More than that, you can upload photos (and now sounds) that it will try to identify using machine learning. These AI-ID techniques are not perfect ­– the sound identification in particular is pretty new – but they sometimes get it right or at least might suggest the another part of the avian family tree if you aren’t close to an ID through more traditional means.

 

Of course you can also crowdsource your questions, either in local birding forums or on sites like Whatbird.com.

 

Apps for keeping track of your bird sightings:

 

Most of the field guide apps will let you check off whether you’ve seen a species or not. Here I want to focus on apps where your sightings data can be put to use by scientists.

 

eBird: this app has a lot of functionality for both reporting birds you’ve seen and finding birds. This is primarily what I use for my hikes in the canyon and more and more for “official” counts such as the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. I’ll direct you to some tips for using the app since I could spend several updates on how best to use it. The one thing that I’ll mention is that there are (volunteer) reviewers who follow up on sightings of unusual or unexpected birds. There is no shame in being asked for more information or being gently corrected by one of these people. It has happened to yours truly. Since your sightings become part of datasets that many scientists depend on, the reviewers provide an important function in quality control.

 

 

iNaturalist. This app is hosted by the California Academy of Sciences. This app isn’t strictly for bird sightings. You can enter mammals, plants, insects that you see as well. I’m not quite as familiar with the app as eBird, but my impression is that iNaturalist focuses more on documenting presence using photos or other media and is less expectant that your list is going to include everything you saw (compared with eBird, which puts a premium on completed lists).

 

Technology to find birds

 

Gone are the days when you had to dial into a phone recording to hear the latest bird sightings. What are some of the 21st century options to learn what birds are where?

 

List-serves. This is still a go-to for many people – send your birds by email and receive sightings as they come in or as daily digests. Be sure to understand the rules for each one, they may or may not allow photo attachments, discussion, out-of-area sigtings, etc. The local list for the East Bay is run by Mt. Diablo Audubon and is called ebb-sightings@groups.io

 

For an overview of all the birding listserves, check out this compiler (California is near the top).

 

eBird. Wait, didn’t I already talk about eBird for reporting your lists on a hike? Ebird is also a powerful way to keep up with both expected species in a location and specific birds you might be interested in. At eBird .org check out the Explore tab for some of the possibilities. Hotspots are birding locals (like a park, or section of shoreline) — searching through these lets you see what’s been reported at a given location, either scrolling through recent sightings or bar charts of seasonal abundance. This is my main tool for writing these updates about Wildcat Canyon!

 

Want to know where other people have reported a species you want to see? Use the Species search and you’ll see a map with sightings of that bird flagged for you. You can even set up county-level email alerts to inform you when a new sightings of interest show up.

 

Social media. Like photos of birds? There are facebook and flickr groups that might be your cup of tea. Birding California gets dozens of posts per day from all over the state, while The San Francisco Bay Area Birding Group is lower traffic but everything you see will be within an hour or so drive. Some locations and parks may have their own small groups as well. As with the listserve, be sure to check out the rules before you post or share content.

 

This has turned into quite a long post, but I’ve only scratched the surface. Questions? Suggestions for your favorite apps? Let me know!

 

Good birding!

Alan

 

alankrakauerphotography.com

 

 

Birds in Wildcat Canyon: April Edition

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Spring has sprung! Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, the poison oak is nice and juicy. Pop a Claratin and get out there! Lots of birds to feature in this update.

 

**As always in our new normal, please check with local agencies regarding safety alerts and closures. **

 

Lazuli Bunting, Wildcat Canyon

NEW ARRIVALS: Who’s new to the neighborhood? As the vegetation on the hillsides matures, we’ll get some fresh birds in the open areas before the month is out. There should already be lots of red-winged blackbirds making homes of the taller weed patches, but look and listen for a couple of other species. First is a small finch-like bird called the Lazuli Bunting singing from the edge of fields or the middle of mustard thickets. Male Lazuli Bunting have coloration reminiscent of a bluebird with the saturation slider cranked up to 11, electric blue head and back with a rusty swatch on the sides and breast. They repeat their cheerful song frequently – it bouncing quickly along in a series of notes that can be repeated in pairs. These are definitely one of my favorites here in the canyon!

 

Grasshopper Sparrow, Wildcat Canyon

The other grassland bird I’ll highlight here, the Grasshopper Sparrow, often falls into the ‘seen but not heard’ category. If you are hiking in the open areas of the park, for example above the Belgum grove or along the lower reaches of the Mezue Trail, listen carefully for a long, even, insect-like buzzy trill emanating from the slopes. The sparrows themselves tend to be hard to localize and spot. My best advice is to check distant shrubs for little brown birds on top. The pretty patterning won’t be visible unless you get a close look.

 

Black-headed Grosbeaks, female (l) and male (r). At feeder in Richmond, CA

We also welcome back a colorful bird that might be familiar to those of you with backyard bird feeders, the Black-headed Grosbeak. These stout-billed relatives of tanagers and buntings are striking to look at, with bold blocks of black, white, orange and yellow in males and broad stripes on the head for the females. Their song resembles a loud robin song, swinging up and down in pitch through variable phrases, but with notes that are more staccato and more impatient rhythm. Listen for them in the tree tops in the canyon and your neighborhood.

 

Ash-throated Flycatcher, Wildcat Canyon

With Spring comes more insects, and with those come more insectivorous birds. Flycatchers are one such type, they comprise a sprawling collection of species that mostly share a hunting style – making short flights from perches to catch insects on the wing. We have resident species (Black Phoebe) and wintering species (Say’s Phoebe) but most of the flycatchers we meet here are migratory birds who show up to have their families here. The Ash-throated Flycatcher are Personality Plus, loudly announcing their presence with “BrrrReeeeep” calls and sporting a punk hairdo. Ash-throated Flycatchers nest in boxes or tree cavities much like bluebirds and you often find them along fences, scrub, and forest edges.

Pacific Slope Flycatcher, Wildcat Canyon

At the tinier end of the spectrum is the Pacific Slope Flycatcher. Pac-slopes are not much bigger than a warbler. You may see these in the forest, perched on a branch bobbing their tails and broadcasting their abrupt “Ptik” call. Look for their teardrop-shaped eye ring that’s slightly wider towards the back of their head than towards their beak. Pacific Slope Flycatchers are members of the genus Empidonax which are notoriously hard to identify even for seasoned birders. They are the only one we commonly see here in this close to the Bay, but several other species are possible especially during migration. Telling them apart requires a good look at their shape, color, behavior, and ideally, a description of their call.

 

WINTER BIRDS ON THE MOVE: Time to say goodbye to more of our friends. Most of our wintering sparrows will head out this month, led by our Sooty Fox Sparrows, followed by White-crowned and Golden Crowned Sparrows. The Golden-crowneds all breed in western Canada and Alaska. The White-crowneds make a much more complicated patchwork of resident and migratory populations with California migrants traveling to the Sierras or up the coast and even all the way up to northern Alaska. We are just on the edge of the range for some of the resident populations (apparently there are some in the scrubby areas of Hillside Park in El Cerrito, along with some spots closer to the bay and coast), so it’s not completely out of the ordinary to find one here in the spring or summer but for most of us in this part of the bay we won’t see them until the migrants return it the fall. For now, just enjoy their last days here as they sport their fresh breeding plumage and zip around full of vim and vigor.

 

Other woodland birds heading out soon include the tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet and the Hermit Thrush. As the Hermit Thrushes leave, their cousin the Swainson’s Thrush will arrive from the south, but that is a story for next month…

 

OUTSIDE THE PARK: There is no bad place to bird right now! As I mentioned in the March update, this is the perfect time of year to check out parks and trails in the interior East Bay.

 

Need an excuse to get out? April 10th is the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory’s Photo Big Day. This is a fundraiser for a bird research and conservation organization on the Peninsula. The special theme for this event is “color”, either pictures of colorful birds or birds with a colorful background. For more information visit https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/MTEwNjMx

 

Stuck at home? Golden Gate Audubon Society, one our local chapters, has some classes and virtual field trips. Many of these are also important fundraisers as part of the GGAS Bird-a-thon. Visit https://goldengateaudubon.org.

 

More Wildcat Canyon images available at alankrakauerphotography.com

(This essay was originally posted on NextDoor)

Wildcat Canyon Birding: Late Summer

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Townsend's Warbler

This is the second essay I wrote on birding in my local open space. Originally posted on Next-door as a way to reach out to neighbors and get them excited about enjoying the biodiversity in our local park.

 

 

 

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Birds in Wildcat Canyon: Late Summer Edition. After more than a week of extreme heat, smoke, and park closure, my binoculars and I finally made it out to Wildcat Canyon yesterday. It was pretty quiet, but I ended up with around 37 species including several fall migrants. I heard a Western Tanager, so they are still coming through. I also had four species of warblers, a sure sign that fall is approaching! Wilson’s Warblers breed in the park so the one I saw may have been a local bird from this summer, but Yellow Warbler, Townsend’s Warbler, and Black-throated Gray Warblers are all newly arrived from their breeding grounds. [photo is a Townsend's Warbler, probably a young female]

FALL WARBLERS: Up for a challenge? Fall warblers can be tricky to find and to identify. In the spring, male warblers are considerate enough to SING LOUDLY AND DISTINCTLY, OVER AND OVER AGAIN. We’re not so lucky in the fall, and today I was straining my ears to pick out quick, infrequent call notes. Also, the adult birds will now be mixed with the young of the year, so be prepared for some drabber plumages along with the more vibrant yellows that the spring males of some species show off. Sometimes warblers will join our noisier resident birds in foraging flock, so if you come across some chickadees or bushtits, take a moment to pick out bird movement in the trees and maybe you’ll spot some other species too. The warblers and other migrants can show up anywhere, and different species may prefer different vegetation, but in general good places start your search include patches of willows in Wildcat Canyon and the mixed woodland along Wildcat Creek in Alvarado Park.

ACORN TIME: Fall in our oak woodlands means the start of a food bounty for some of our local wildlife. Watch for Western Scrub-jays flying around with their mouth full. Like many corvids (crow relatives), these jays will obsessively collect food then stash it around the landscape. And of course there are the aptly-named Acorn Woodpeckers. Family groups of these noisy hoarders can include multiple breeding males, multiple breeding females, and stay-at-home kids from previous years! The whole family works together to stash large numbers of acorns in tree sections called granaries. Other wildlife that incorporate acorns in their fall diet includes Wild Turkeys, California Quail, Band-tailed Pigeons (our fantastic large native pigeon), Woodrats, and Fox Squirrels. The Huchiun Ohlone people who lived in what is now Wildcat Canyon also relied on acorns as part of their diet.

LEAVING SOON: if not already gone, many of our breeding birds that head further south for the winter. These include the Wilson’s Warblers and Orange-crowned Warblers, along with Black-headed Grosbeaks.

OUTSIDE THE PARK: Looking for other places to see migrating songbirds? Wildcat Canyon is pretty dry, and in our parched summer landscape birds may be a little easier to find around water. Keep your bird bath filled, you could get surprise visitors to your backyard! One spot I’ve visited in late summer (although not yet this year) is Creekside Park on the Albany/El Cerrito border, on the north side of Albany Hill. The solitary wooded hill rising out of the urban landscape may be an attractor for birds coming through. Once they’re drawn in, they pause and forage in the trees along the creek. I’ve never had a sketchy experience there but as always be aware of your surroundings.

One of the most exciting bird migrations we get in the Bay Area is the fall migration of raptors. Not all raptors migrate, but some species and populations do, and they often take routes with advantageous topography and thermals to make their way south. The best place in the Bay Area is probably Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Prime days will see dozens or hundreds of hawks of several species zoom past, some practically at eye level. Osprey, Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks should start increasing soon, and the overall peak is usually late September. Go on a sunny day for your best chance. Visit https://www.parksconservancy.org/programs/golden-gate-raptor-observatory for more details.

I’ve always thought we should get more migratory raptors along San Pablo Ridge than we do. Could be I’ve just not caught the right day yet!