Black-headed Grosbeak

The song of the black-headed grosbeaks started flowing through the air as they arrived on the scene in the last week or so. The Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America describes their voice: “Song consists of rising and falling passages; resembles American Robin’s song, but more fluent and mellow. Call a flat ik or eek.”

Along with their robust song, you will also see them darting through the canopy as they began to establish their territory and find a mate.

As I was watching a pair fly around in an Oregon ash, I witnessed their brief copulation. In most birds, the male and female have a cloaca. During mating the cloacal openings of both male and female birds swell and protrude slightly outside of their bodies. The male will usually get on top of the female. She will move her tail feathers to the side so they can rub their cloacas together. At that moment, the male will quickly transfer his sperm to the female to fertilize her egg.

Life is amazing!

Male Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus)

Cedar Waxwing Courtship

I read the following excerpt yesterday about cedar waxwings on The Cornell Lab’s All About Birds website.

“During courtship, males and females hop towards each other, alternating back and forth and sometimes touching their bills together. Males often pass a small item like a fruit, insect, or flower petal, to the female. After taking the fruit, the female usually hops away and then returns giving back the item to the male. They repeat this a few times until, typically, the female eats the gift.”

This morning I watched the male pluck an Indian Plum berry and fly over to a nearby limb where the female joined him. They gently passed the berry back and forth four or five times before it was eaten. This is a tender, sweet way to form a bond and become a pair.

Cedar Waxwings

In an old copy of How to Know Birds by Roger Tory Peterson he describes cedar waxwings: “Dressed in tans and grays, the sleek Waxwings are the most ‘tailored’ birds. They are called Waxwings because of shiny red droplets that look like sealing wax, at the tips of the secondary wing-feathers. But you must be very close to the bird to see this feature. The best field marks are a pointed crest and a yellow band at the end of the tail.”

Cedar waxwings are social birds and they can be seen and heard foraging in flocks. I see them every afternoon along the river trail moving through the trees and their vocalizations are a high, thin lisp or zeee that is slightly trilled. They are gleaning insects and caterpillars off of the foliage. You can also see them catching insects on the wing along the river too. They will perch on a branch and swoop out over the river like a flycatcher. Or they will weave back and forth zig-zagging over the water as they catch insects.

Cedar waxwings feed mainly on fruits throughout the year. Their name is derived from cedar berries they consume in winter. Soon the Indian plum berries will begin to ripen, and they will start gobbling them down well before I think they are ready to eat.

In What It’s Like To Be A Bird, David Allen Sibley writes: “The diet of waxwings is mainly fruit for much of the year, and they have several adaptations related to this. They have a relatively small bill, but it opens into an unusually wide mouth, allowing them to swallow large fruit whole. Their tongue has inward-facing barbs to help pull fruit into their throat.”

Happy Birdwatching!

Golden-crowned Sparrows

Small flocks of golden-crowned sparrows have been using the arboretum as their winter home. I see them at the entrance, the wildflower garden, along the quarry road and the road out to the south meadow. They are never too far from the cover of a small thicket of shrubs that they can use for safety from predators. That said, they seem to be a friendly bird that will allow you to get close to them if you are quiet and move slowly.

This spring I noticed them eating lots of leaves of new plant shoots. I didn’t realize birds would include so much plant vegetation in their diet. I also see them foraging on new tender, grass seeds.

They are often palling around in a mixed flock with white-crowned sparrows. I captured a photo of them together that you can see below.

The golden-crowned sparrow breeds in shrubby tundra habitats near the coast or in the mountains in Alaska and northwestern Canada. I imagine that they will be migrating soon. Good luck on your journey. See you in the fall.

Golden-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla)

Bushtits Building Nest

Over the past week or two, I have been watching a pair of bushtits building their nest. The process of building the nest can go on for a month or more. I have often thought that they abandoned a nest site because I hadn’t observed them there for days, and the nest hadn’t taken on much of a form. They take their time and build a sturdy nest. One winter I found a nest on the ground that had fallen during a storm. I tried to open it up to look at the nest inside and found it tricky to tear with my hands. I had to use my pocket knife.

The nest is an intricately woven nest of moss, lichen, spider webs, spider cocoons, etc. The completed nest is a well-camouflaged, enclosed sock that has a small hole on the side at the top. The nest is at the bottom of the sock.

Bushtits are social birds that pal around together in little flocks. I’ve counted up to around 40 in one. “Within these flocks, several pairs may nest simultaneously, and additional Bushtits beyond the mated pair often attend the nest and help raise the young. These helpers are usually adult males, a pattern that is rare in cooperatively nesting birds (Website: All About Birds - The Cornell Lab).”

White-breasted Nuthatches Nesting

A pair of white-breasted nuthatches have paired up and have selected a natural cavity in an Oregon ash. I read that females build the nest, but I watched both male and female collecting nesting material. So I guess he is allowed to bring in material, but she puts it together. I have observed them collecting tufts of moss and small pieces of bark to line the nest cavity. She will then build a small nest cup of fine grass, feathers, bark fibers, hair, etc. She will lay 5-9 eggs. The eggs are white to pinkish-white, speckled with reddish brown, gray, or purple. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find part of a discarded shell on the ground somewhere. The incubation period is around two weeks and the male will feed her while she is on the nest. Both parents will feed the young when they are born. The nesting period is around 26 days. Good luck and happy parenting.

Wood Ducks Look For Nest Cavity

On Sunday evening there were two pairs of wood ducks flying around through the trees looking for possible cavities for nesting. I could hear the flapping of their wings and calls as I approached. I stood back a little ways and watched them. They were flying up to holes in the trees and looking in to investigate. The ducks were notably adept at maneuvering among the branches and landing at the entrances of the cavities.

They usually chose natural cavities where a tree limb has broken off and a small hollow space has been created where the tree’s heartwood has rotted out. They will also use woodpecker cavities. I saw them investigating both types.

All seemed to be going well until one of the ravens nesting nearby suddenly swooped in, apparently trying to capture one of the wood ducks. The wood ducks successfully avoided the raven and to my surprise, stayed in the area.

Coincidentally, as the raven was watching the wood ducks, a hawk was watching the raven. The hawk flew in and narrowly missed taking out the raven. This sent the raven and its mate into frenzy of trying to chase off the hawk. For now, the ravens decided to leave the wood ducks alone and did not return to the scene. I decided to move on too. I wished the wood ducks a peaceful evening and good luck on their journey of a successful nesting season.

Here’s a link to Audubon to hear the wood duck’s calls:
https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/wood-duck

Violet-green Swallows Return

They have been in the sky circling around the vicinty of the White Oak Pavilion for the past week or so. Yesterday I watched them trying to claim and defend the boxes and other nesting cavities. They were chasing each other and making twittering sounds as they wove invisible, swooping tapestries through the air. Occasionally two would have a tussling embrace that would flutter to the ground where they would release each other. This all seemed pretty harmless as they worked it out between them who was going to nest where.

Their migration pattern according to the website All About Birds: “Medium to long-distance migrant. Most individuals migrate to Mexico and Central America during the nonbreeding season, heading as far south as Costa Rica. Some individuals spend winters in California’s Imperial Valley, the lower Colorado River Valley, and coastal California.”

Ravens Building Nest

There have been a couple of ravens hanging around the last few weeks, and I wondered if they had decided to nest in the area. I went to spend time watching them today to see what they were up to. When I arrived in the area where they were, my suspicions were confirmed. I immediately heard the snap of a limb, and a raven flew out of a tree with a medium-sized twig. They were regularly making trips into nearby trees and breaking off branches. I watched them for an hour and a half, and I never saw them search for nesting material on the ground. The nest is next to the trunk about two-thirds up in an old evergreen tree. It was amusing to see them fly back to the nesting site. As they approached the site, they would sort of crash land in to the branches. You could hear their wings hitting the limbs as they flew into the tree. Also, they were very vocal as they flew in and out building the nest, almost as if they were fussing about how to construct it. I wasn't able to get a good photograph during that time, because there were only brief windows of opportunities as they flew through the canopy and they stayed fairly obscured from view as they looked for sticks. It will be interesting to see how ravens nesting in the area will affect the nesting of other birds nearby.

Heralds of Spring

The Bewick’s wren felt like the official messenger of spring on this warm, sunlit day.

Peterson’s field guide says this about its vocals: “Song suggests a Song Sparrow’s, but thinner, starting on two or three high notes, dropping lower, ending on a thin trill; calls sharp vit, vit and buzzy dzzzzzt.”

Listen to the sounds of the Bewick’s Wren on All About Birds:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bewicks_Wren/sounds

I regularly see a pair of American kestrels around the south meadow, and they often sit in the old, blanched snag out there. As I was attempting to photograph the female, the male flew down to mate. The encounter was brief and the photo is out of focus, but you get the picture.

Nest Box - House Wren

There are nest boxes dotted around the arboretum, and I volunteered to clean them out this year. When I got to this box, I knew it was stuffed full of sticks, because I watched a house wren build a nest in there last summer. I did a drawing as I observed him industriously find sticks and carry them back to the box. Even so, I was amazed at how many sticks were in the box when I opened the front. They were woven so tightly together that it took some effort to pull the nest out. I was curious as to how many sticks were in there, so I put the nest in a bucket and carried it home to count them. There were well over 500, but I want to be conservative in case some were broken in the process of removing the nest. That number is not counting the little nest on top that was made of smaller sticks, grass, pine needles, rootlets, leaves and whatnot.

I just have to wonder, what is the purpose of all these sticks? There is only a small opening into the nest which you can see at the top. The Cornell Lab’s All About Birds had this to say about their nests: “House Wrens pile twigs into the cavities they choose to nest in, either to make a bed on which to build a soft-lined cup, or sometimes mounded up into a barrier between nest and entrance, seemingly to protect the nest from cold weather, predators, or cowbirds.”

Also, to my surprise, there were wasps wintering over inside this fortress of twigs. There were 12 of them huddled together staying warm and dry. It is my understanding that the only wasps that survive the winter are the mated queens which will start new nests in the spring. I find it fascinating that they somehow find a place to be together. Are the queens clustered together from the same nest or a couple of different nests? There were two other nest boxes full of sticks that were used by house wrens, and they also had wasps inside them.

Pileated Woodpecker

I’ve heard and seen the pileated woodpecker at the arboretum throughout the winter. Both the male and female have red crests. The red on the male includes the forecrown and he has a red mustache mark. It is a crow-sized bird. Its length is 15.8-19.3 in (40-49 cm).

It has a varied diet, but its primary food is carpenter ants. It will make deep holes in trees to get to the tunnels of these ants or woodboring beetles and termites. A woodpecker’s tongue is part of a fascinating system of small bones and muscles that wrap around the back and top of the skull all the way around to its forehead. This allows it to extend its tongue in search of prey.

In What It’s Like to Be a Bird, David Sibley writes, “The long tongue has a barbed and sticky tip, and tiny muscles that allow the bird to bend the tip of the tongue in any direction, so it can follow twisting tunnels, trap prey against walls, and pry insects and larvae out of their hiding places deep inside a tree.”

Click the link to All About Birds to listen to their calls:
Pileated Woodpecker Sounds

Downy Woodpecker

Downy’s are spirited birds that are fun to watch as they energetically move through the landscape. This little bird has bold black and white markings, and the male has a red patch on the back of its head. Despite its pronounced field marks, I usually hear one before I see it. I’ll hear tapping sounds as it explores for insects and larvae inside the wood and under the bark of small, tree limbs. I also frequently hear it make a call note which Peterson describes as “a flat pick, not as sharp as the Hairy’s peek!” (It can be tricky to distinguish these sounds.) I have been seeing downy woodpeckers throughout the arboretum all winter. I am looking forward to hopefully finding a nest this spring.

Sharp-shinned Hawk

As I was walking along the edge of the meadow beside the White Oak Pavilion in the late afternoon, it appeared as if something fell out of a tree. Suddenly a bird launched off the ground, and a flock of juncos burst out of the grass in a frenzy. I took a few steps into the woods to look behind some incense cedars. Just inside the forest feathers were flying everywhere as this immature sharp-shinned began plucking a junco on a nearby branch before eating it.

According to All About Birds by The Cornell Lab, “Songbirds make up about 90 percent of the Sharp-shinned Hawk’s diet. Birds the size of American Robins or smaller (especially warblers, sparrows, and thrushes) are the most frequent prey; bigger birds are at less risk, though they’re not completely safe. Studies report quail, shorebirds, doves, swifts, woodpeckers, and even falcons as prey.”

Male Anna's Hummingbird

This male Anna’s hummingbird has chosen a territory to defend. He is usually perched at the top of a small tree watching over the area. Quite a few times I have seen him diving at a song sparrow that flew into the blackberry thicket in his area. As I was walking by the other day, he was perched on a blackberry cane at about eye level. As I stopped to take a photo, he flashed his iridescent gorget and crown. I think I was interrupting the beginning of a much needed and probably well earned nap. A moment later, he closed his eyes and rested for a few minutes. Defending your territory is hard work, so I quietly moved on so he could conserve his energy.

Great Horned Owl

Two great horned owls have been hooting regularly in the late afternoon and early evening. After listening to them one evening, I decided to walk up the trail to see if I could find one. I found one sitting on a branch next to the trunk in a Douglas-fir tree. It was preening its feathers and resting. I watched it for a minute then quietly kept walking.

On the website All About Birds by The Cornell Lab, it says, “Mated pairs are monogamous and defend their territories with vigorous hooting, especially in the winter before egg-laying and in the fall when their young leave the area.” Maybe this is the reason for the recent hooting.

Mixed Flocks

A mixed flock of birds were moving along the pond lily trail. There were chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, brown creepers, golden-crowned kinglets, ruby-crowned kinglets and one other species. The other species had a similar look and flight pattern to a ruby-crowned, but it was a little bigger. It captured an insect, and I was able to get a couple of photos as it paused to eat it. It was a Hutton’s Vireo.

There are subtle differences between the two. The ruby-crowned kinglet has a thinner bill. It also has black bar below its lower, white wing bar, and the Hutton’s vireo doesn’t. In addition, I feel the ruby-crowned kinglet seems to have slightly more zip as it flits between branches.

I’ll be interested to see if the Hutton’s Vireo sticks around the arboretum during the breeding season. I found an interesting article by Kenn Kaufman online where he states: “Hutton's Vireo is a permanent resident to the extent that some individuals occur in all parts of the breeding range throughout the year. However, there is a substantial amount of wandering during the nonbreeding seasons.1”

Ruby-Crowned Kinglet

Hutton’s Vireo

1. Kenn Kaufman, “Field Identification of Hutton's Vireo,” Continental Birdlife, Volume I, Number 3, June 1979: 62-66.
https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/ContBird_Vol1_No3_02.pdf

White-breasted Nuthatch

A nuthatch has the interesting behavior of moving headfirst down a tree as it forages. It will often pause and tilt its head back to have a glance at its surroundings. It’s constantly on the move as it searches for insects, insect larvae and spiders. Sometimes I see them wedge part of an acorn in the bark of a tree to hold it while they break off pieces to eat. I also see them stash seeds, like Douglas-fir, in bark crevices.

In David Sibley’s book What It Is Like to Be a Bird he says this about how nuthatches move around a tree:
”They do not use their tail for a brace when climbing—just their two feet clinging with sharp claws. The hind toe is particularly important for clinging, and it’s relatively large and strong. Usually they position one foot above the other so that the lower foot acts as a brace while the upper foot clings to the bark.”

This is a fun bird to watch and get to know.

Dark-eyed Junco

There are small flocks of juncos moving around the arboretum. I often see them foraging out at the barn. There is a low growing plant on the road that produces an abundance of seeds that the juncos enjoy eating. If someone or a dog gets too close they will often fly up to the beam under the edge of the roof to monitor the situation.

Juncos have a behavior of flashing their tails when they fly. Their outer, white tail feathers are a burst of light as they quickly flit through the air.

For me, juncos are a warm-hearted, peaceful little bird. They can be fairly tolerant of my presence if I am quiet, move slowly, or sit still. I am looking forward to hearing their gentle, trilling song in the spring.