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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)

On Covid and Research

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Wilson's Warbler

It’s apparently been ages since I’ve updated my site here! I’ll share an essay I wrote this spring that was published by the Golden Gate Audubon Society, a large local chapter of the national conservation organization. Given the start of the Covid closures, GGAS put out a call to members for essays on their experience with birds and birding during the shelter-in-place regulations that we still, more or less, are facing here in Northern California. Many people wrote about the opportunities of focusing on their local birds, or the importance of connecting with nature during challenging times. My thoughts turned to the hurdles my colleagues in the sciences would be facing.

Essay is here, from April 2020: When Birds Are More Than A Hobby.

Behind the Scenes: Eclipse Photos

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Standing victoriously next to my camera set-up

I was going to just write a sentence or two about actually taking the photos, but when this part of the story stretched to multiple pages, I realized it deserved it’s own post. Warning: possibly of interest only to would-be camera nerds.  This is pitched at a fairly basic level. Eventually I plan to edit in some links to external articles from at the end of this post. The story of my eclipse trip can be found in the previous post, and a flickr album with more photos can be viewed here.

 

My main goal was to get a photo of the sun’s corona at totality along with some photos of the partial eclipse. I wasn’t trying to make one of those neat composite images showing the entire progression of the eclipse. Since I didn’t know what it was going to look like at the park until I got there, I didn’t plan on doing anything wide-angle to capture the eclipse and the landscape. No video. Just the money shot. Simplifying was also important since I had to fly from the west coast and didn’t want to bring everything I own.

Camera: I went with my older DSLR camera (Canon 60D) over my newer camera. Although in most ways inferior, the 60D had one important advantage- a flip-out, fully adjustable LCD screen. In testing the week before, I found this amazingly helpful when trying to aim and focus when pointing almost vertically at the mid-day sun.

Lens: For the lens, I used my oft-neglected Canon 400mm f/5.6. I usually leave this at home for wildlife because I have other lenses that do the “long lens” job as well or better. But this is a really sharp lens, and since I was going use a tripod I thought the lack of image stabilization wouldn’t hurt me. Additionally, being a fixed focal length lens rather than a zoom might actually be an advantage. There’s something called “zoom creep” or “lens creep”- heavy zoom lenses can inadvertently zoom in or out if pointed much above or below the horizon due to the weight of the lens itself. Again, not often a big issue for photographing wildlife that’s in front of you, but when pointing up at the sky for long periods of time, I thought it could lead to problems.

Filter: To shoot the eclipse before and after totality, I purchased a 77mm solar filter from StarGuy. This is not a cheap filter (especially for being basically a small swatch of mylar in a filter ring), and if you enjoy doing things on the cheap you can probably search the internet for cheaper solutions to not frying your camera sensor.  Luckily the 400mm lens has a 77mm filter thread as do several other of my heavy-rotation lenses. A quick side note about filters: if you have lenses of different diameters and want to use a filter on all of them- you can buy for the larger size and buy “step-down” rings to get it to screw into the smaller one.

Tripod, etc. Even with a decent tripod and tripod head (I used my Gimball head since it’s made for bigger lenses and a little easier to control than a ballhead and easier to point vertically than the panhead I used for my spotting scope), a 400mm lens will show a lot of shake. I hung my backpack off my tripod to further minimize shake through the tripod. I used both a wired remote and the 2-second timer feature so I could capture the image after the vibrations of physically touching the camera had dampened. I also attempted keep the shutter speed as high as possible by shooting at relatively high ISO settings (I think 800-1600 ISO). Although this is an older sensor and high ISO noise can be an issue, I figured that I could fix some of the sensor noise on the computer. It’s much harder to fix an image that is blurry due to shake or motion during too long of an exposure.

I manually focused using the LCD (i.e. “Live View”) rather than the optical viewfinder- in fact I never used the optical viewfinder once it was on the tripod. Not only was it safer for my eyes not to be looking towards the sun, it was ergonomically better to be able to stand and look comfortably. Moreover, the camera has an option to zoom in during live view which really helped in seeing more detail when fine tuning during focusing.

MISTAKES WERE MADE

Even with a practice run on a full California sun the week before, this was a difficult task. The light changes as the sun disappears, and during totality there are only a couple of minutes to try to take in the spectacle while still getting some good photos.

1-    Removing the filter at totality. I remembered to do this, which is good. However, I didn’t think about the implications of unscrewing a filter when relying on manual focus. The lens rotated a bit during this process. As in rotated slightly out of focus. Thankfully I eventually noticed and re-focused when I had to re-aim the camera to track the continued movement of the sun across the sky, but the first few photos I took during totality are trash because of this blunder.

2-    Auto-Exposure Bracketing. This is a feature that’s been common in cameras for at least 30 years. Because it can be a little fiddly to know how your camera’s light meter is actually reading a scene, you can have your camera automatically capture extra images that are over or under exposed.  This is a great idea if you might end up liking one of those alternative exposures better than the “correct” one. Also, if you are into more advanced post-processing of your photos in the computer, you can combine parts of these stacks of exposures to create a manufactured image with more detail in the darker and lighter parts of the image (this is called High Dynamic Range or HDR photography). I didn’t end up doing bracketing, and I’m not really sure why since it’s “free” in every way except for adding 3 to 5 times more photos to sort through.  I ended up paying enough attention to the lights and darks on the screen in Live View that I ended up with images I was happy with, but it was kind of silly of me not to avail myself of this great tool on the camera.

My one wide-angle shot from a point&shoot camera

3- More “scene” images. There’s only so much one can do in the 2-plus minutes of a total eclipse. One of my biggest priorities was to make sure I was experiencing the eclipse- pausing to take in the wonder with my senses and let the spectacular phenomenon wash over me. That said, next time (in 7 years), I’d like to squeeze in a few extra snaps from a second camera to get the whole sky and horizon, and maybe have a video camera aimed at the crowd to get their reaction. I had my phone set to do this but somehow abandoned the plan once we got near totality. Or maybe I should just leave this for a friend to do!

My Eclipse Story

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My eclipse story was almost one of regret. My home in the Bay Area was in a zone of about 70% totality and frequently foggy, so I thought I might miss the total eclipse entirely. I was yearning to see it at our sage-grouse site in Lander, which was just inside the band of total coverage. How magical would it be to be among my favorite Monument Draw rock formations or in the ancient petroglyph site at Castle Gardens when day turns to night?

Thankfully my dad had a plan. When he suggested a trip to South Carolina, I jumped at the opportunity!

We left in the morning the day before. Although it was less than 250 miles from Durham, we were concerned about the possibility of getting stuck in traffic or not being able to find a good viewing location once we got within the path of totality. The extra day also gave us a chance for a more relaxed drive down, allowing us time to explore a long-leaf pine forest in southern North Carolina border. This is a threatened, fire-dependent ecosystem characterized by towering pine trees and limited undergrowth.

Long-leaf Pine forest on state game land near Hoffman, NC

Since we took back roads on the way down, we didn’t hit much traffic before settling in for the night in Camden, South Carolina. Eschewing the “it’s just like Applebees” restaurant next door to the hotel, we found a surprisingly decent Mexican place just north of the Camden downtown. Eclipse morning, the breakfast zone in the Comfort Inn was full of excited groups sharing their viewing plans for the day. Many were headed to the fairgrounds in nearby Columbia, SC.  We checked the weather forecasts for the umpteenth time, decided no place within easy driving distance looked any more or less likely to have clear skies, and set out for on our initial target: Pointsette State Park.  Lynn selected this place since it was

  • a little closer to the center of the path of totality, meaning a longer total eclipse
  • not in/near a large population center, so maybe less crowded than some other places
  • likely to have open areas for picnicking and recreation where we could see the sun overhead without those pesky trees.

I couldn't resist stopping for a photo of this one. Nice driveway!

Our anticipation climbed as we drove south from Camden through small towns and past stately plantation houses. It was a couple of hours before the beginning of the eclipse, but a few people were already set up with tents and umbrellas in clearcuts in the state forest land outside of the park. We were not the first, but certainly not the last people in the park itself. After estimating about where the sun would be in the early afternoon, we found a place in the thin but growing crowd, and then concentrated on not melting in the brutal midday heat and humidity.

 

At one point I escaped to the shade of the woods, and an excited young lady pointed out these orb weaver spiders (probably genus Nephila).  Not much other wildlife with the exception of some butterflies and dragonflies. Other people swam or paddle-boarded in the lake, caught up on their reading in the shade, or played cornhole.

 

We had a typical summer sky- hazy, with scattered clouds. Although the cooling effect of a thunderhead covering the sun was welcome, it made us a little nervous about the eclipse. What if we drove all this way and couldn’t see anything?

A few sunspots visible through the cloudcover

Some time after 1PM, I stepped back to my camera setup and re-centered the sun in the viewfinder. Wait, is that a little nibble! It has begun! My cries of “It’s happening” caused folks to don their solar glasses and peer skyward.

Of course, there is a long way to go between nibble and totality. The day stayed sunny and hot. Many folks returned to their blankets or spots of shade. Others were drawn to the small pinhole images of the eclipse you could see projected on the ground. My dad planned ahead and brought a colander, which was a huge hit!

Eventually somewhere around 75% coverage we started commenting on how the sunlight light was a little dimmer and the temperature was coming down a bit. The passage of time felt a little funny to me, both crawling and racing towards totality. It continued to grow darker and cooler and at last the final sliver of the sun zipped away.

Totality! There was a gasp, then a cheer from the crowd. The sky now looked like dusk, but lighter all around the horizon. It reminded me of late night at Toolik Field Station above the Arctic Circle, where the light lingers and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A few stars or planets peaked out in the deeply dark blue sky. And the corona! The black disk of the moon was now wreathed in a silvery aura. The strange and sudden darkness, the eerie twilight quality of the light, the beautiful foreign object that replaced the familiar sun… Amazing. Absolutely amazing. It is really challenging to put into words how unreal and joyous this moment was, and in the back of my mind I thought about how utterly unnerving this would feel if one were not expecting it.

We heard a few katydids call. In what seemed like 10 seconds and 10 minutes, the moon finally crossed to the other side and the sun flared back. The light was still quite dim, with the quality of a single bright but distant street light.

The famous "Diamond Ring" effect

The spell broken, people chatted excitedly while packing up, many exchanging contact info to share photos and video of the event. While we did the same, I looked overhead and noticed the sky (still with a partial eclipse) now populated with chimney swifts and barn swallows. I didn’t notice any of these aerial insectivores before the eclipse started, so it could be they were triggered to emerge and start foraging by eclipse conditions. I didn’t keep careful enough notes to add to citizen science projects like the one on iNaturalist, but hopefully other eclipse watchers around the country were able to document potential responses such as this.

I don’t know what the interstates were like, but our plan to use back roads did not work quite as smoothly on the way back. We encountered delays approaching pretty much every small town with either a traffic light or stop sign. After a stop for dinner at an Irish pub in Southern Pines, we made it back to Durham by about 9 o’clock. Thus ended our eclipse adventure, although the memories will be with me for the rest of my life.

If you missed this total eclipse, please make every effort to get to the next one on April 8, 2024. I can’t overstate how special this was, nor how big of a difference even high-90% occlusion is from totality.

I’ve got a few more photos in a public Flickr album here.

Also, I’ve written up some technical discussion on how I took the photos in separate post.

Nature Sounds Society Workshop (Part 2)

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Sandhill Cranes

Of course, the biggest part of the workshop was getting out to appreciate nature sounds! We were fortunate to have great weather for the morning recording sessions- the heat didn’t really take over until late morning when we were mostly done.  For more about the sessions at the field station, check out Part 1.

 

 

Eric listening to the dawn chorus

The first full day saw us waking up at 2:45AM to drive from the field station to Sierra Valley on the other side of the pass. Our caravan parked along a gravel road in a marshy area at about “nautical twilight”- that time before sunrise when the sky lightens enough to accurately discern the horizon line. We spread out along the road as the eerie pulsing “winnow” of Wilson’s snipe sounded out of the darkness. Gradually the sky became lighter, and we were treated to a whole range of sounds including bullfrogs, sandhill cranes, 3 kinds of blackbirds, meadowlarks, cows, and one of the most powerful and prolonged coyote chorus that I’ve ever heard. I can only speak for myself, but it took every ounce of restraint not ruin 18 people’s sound recordings by yelling “Holy crap that was amazing!” (we were specifically warned not to do this the night before)

A Brewer's Blackbird pauses on a fence line in Sierra Valley

Our next stop was a one-lane bridge a little farther up the road. The bridge hosts a large colony of cliff swallows, so we were treated to the sights and sounds of hundreds of swallows darting and wheeling around us.

Cliff Swallows, Sierra Valley

After a quick stop to eat (coffee, breakfast sandwiches, fruit, homemade muffins and granola- the organizers spared no effort to keep us happy and powered up!), we headed to a forest meadow site called Carmen Valley. It was getting hot and summer insect sounds started to replace bird vocalizations before too long, although we did see some of the typical Sierra Nevada birds like White-headed Woodpecker, Lincoln Sparrow, and Mountain Chickadee. Most exciting was surprising a young bear with unusually blonde fur. The bear was definitely more scared of us than we were of it.

Brewer's Blackbird

The next morning we woke up at the leisurely hour of 3:15 AM to check out the dawn chorus at the Yuba Pass summit just a few miles up the road from the field station. The mosquitoes finally found us up here, but even so, it was well worth it to hear the forest come alive. There’s not much that beats hearing the ethereal flute-like song of hermit thrushes in a towering forest or the sounds of a sapsucker’s drumming echoing among the trunks. It was also a treat to see several flocks of Evening Grosbeaks along the side of the road.

Dawn light, Yuba Pass Summit

Male Evening Grosbeak

Beautiful scenery, great wildlife, and intellectual and aesthetic stimulation. What could be better than that! I definitely hope to return one day, and would recommend others with similar interests in nature sounds and soundscapes to check out the Nature Sounds Society and the field recording workshop in particular.