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Where Did All The Hummingbirds Go?

By on February 26, 2024 in Birds

I was mixing gallons of sugar water with Anna’s Hummingbirds sucking it up as fast as I could make it just a few weeks ago. Where did they all go?

They went back to nature!

The local Manzanitas are blooming this time of year and, of course, the hummers prefer the real thing to sugar water.

During the spring and summer months, there are many native plants offering food for hungry hummers. Here are just a few.

California Thistle (Cirsium occidentale)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at California Thistle

Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora)

Juvenile Male Anna’s Hummingbird at Red Yucca

Autumn Sage (Salvia greggii)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at Autumn Sage

Hummingbird Sage (Salvia spathacea)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at Hummingbird Sage

and my favorite, Woolly Blue Curls (Trichostema lanatum)

Female Anna’s Hummingbird at Wooly Blue Curls

You may have noticed a few other behaviors regarding the Anna’s Hummingbirds. In April, I had several instances of females landing in my graveled driveway and apparently consuming small particles of sand or other minerals from the gravel. According to Cornell’s “Birds of the World,” they are probably acquiring minerals for egg laying.

Getting back to the present, if you are lucky, you might find female Anna’s Hummingbirds gathering nesting material now, maybe in your yard or while out on a bird walk.

You can also provide natural cotton nesting material for them yourself, available at several outlets.

Again from Cornell Lab on the nest building. The inner cup is lined loosely with downy material (plant, feathers, hair). The walls are made of downy material including cattail (Typha), willow, underside of sycamore leaves, thistle, eucalyptus flowers, velvet groundsel (Senecio petasites), and small feathers. Binding materials are mostly spider webs and insect cocoon fibers, but also fibrous plant material and rodent hairs. Usually ornamented on the outside with bits of lichens, mosses, and dead leaves; occasionally bark, algae (Protococcus) or other plant materials, and paint chips. Nest materials are often stolen from another hummingbird’s nest. This is what the completed nest looks like, found at Turtle Bay Arboretum

Anna’s Hummingbird in the Nest at Turtle Bay Arboretum.

Obviously, if female hummers are gathering nesting material, it’s breeding time! Just last Saturday, on our outing to Lema Ranch, we observed the male’s incredible mating flight! This video is incredible! Isn’t nature amazing?

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It’s Time to Clean Out Your Nest Boxes

By on February 20, 2024 in Birds, Conservation, Nestbox Monitoring

Birds can be attracted to your home simply by offering food, water and shelter. Trees and shrubs that yield fruit, berries, seeds, nuts and cones will provide food. Birdbaths or pools can be built to supply water, and feeders strategically placed around the yard will furnish supplementary food for the birds when natural sources diminish. Tangles of wild plants and dense undergrowth left to thrive in chosen areas of your property will provide shelter, protection, and natural nesting and roosting sites.

Adult Male Western Bluebird Feeding a Nestling

Some 84 species of North American birds, excavate nesting holes, use cavities resulting from decay (natural cavities), or use holes created by other species in dead or deteriorating trees for nesting. Many species of these cavity nesting birds have declined because of habitat reduction. But you can help.

Nuttall’s Woodpecker Nestling Ready to Fledge

Several of the birds that nest in cavities tend to be resident (non-migrating) species and thus more amenable to local habitat management practices than migratory species. Bird houses have been readily accepted by many natural cavity nesters, and increases in breeding density have resulted from providing such structures.

My Favorite Nestbox Design

There are probably as many birdhouse plans as there are cavity nesting birds. The important thing is to choose a nest box plan for the species you want to attract that can be opened and cleaned out when necessary. The photo above shows my favorite style birdhouse with a 1 1/2 inch entrance hole. It has been home to Oak Titmouse, Western Bluebird, Violet-green Swallow, Tree Swallow, White-breasted Nuthatch, House Wren, and Ash-throated Flycatcher where I live. I have made one improvement to this design by altering the side door to open from the top rather than the bottom. This allows you to check on the nestlings from the top without opening the door all the way. Here is a nest box specifications chart and several nest box plans.

Oak Titmouse Nestlings

I cannot emphasize the importance of monitoring any nest box you may place in your yard, or anywhere else for that matter. There are three prime objectives for monitoring nestboxes. First and foremost, with regular, frequent visits to each nestbox, you may be able to spot problems threatening your tenants. You may be able to intervene so as to protect the adults and increase the nestlings’ chances for survival. Second, you can develop a body of knowledge about the habits of cavity-nesters. Lastly, you will build a dated record of each visit to the nestbox that will remind you of the age of the nestlings in the box you are approaching, and what’s been going on at the box during the previous weeks. This record will help you understand and interpret the present visit. And the best reason to monitor your nest box – it’s fun!

Oak Titmouse on the Nest

One of the most important aspects of nest box monitoring is cleaning out the box after each nesting. RIGHT NOW, before nesting season begins, all nest boxes should be checked to make sure they are clean and ready for occupancy. Your nest boxes should have been cleaned out back in August, after the last completed nesting of whatever species used them. Since then, it is likely that those nest boxes have been used as places to roost during cold weather, accumulating bird droppings. Below is a typical dirty box that has been used as a roost.

This is an American Kestrel box that has never been used. I recently checked it and found a wasp nest inside. They are usually attached to the roof on the inside of the box. Birds won’t use a box with wasps inside. If you find a wasp nest in your nest box, use a thin spatula and crush the wasp nest against the roof of the box. If you don’t kill the adult wasp, she will soon return and rebuild. Keep checking to make sure the wasps don’t return.

This is a nest box that was used by Tree Swallows. This one apparently had two successful nestlings but wasn’t cleaned out between them. You can see the two distinct flattened nests stacked on top of each other bringing any new nesting attempt closer to the entrance hole and therefore easier for a predator to reach eggs or nestlings.

This is a great time to check and clean any birdhouses you have. It’s also the perfect time to repair any damaged boxes and get them ready for the new season before the birds arrive. Believe it or not, birds like a clean house, just like you and I!

If you are interested in monitoring nestboxes for Shasta Birding Society this upcoming season, contact Larry Jordan at webmaster@shastabirdingsociety.org

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Sapsuckers!

By on January 20, 2024 in Birds

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

There are about 200 species of woodpecker in the world. Twenty-three of those species are native to the United States, but only three are designated “sapsuckers.” These three were originally treated as forms of one species, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. In 1983 they were split into separate species. Lucky for us, even though the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is an eastern bird, we occasionally find them here in Shasta County. This bird was found at Lema Ranch, one of our local birding hotspots. Note the two different types of holes in the bark. The large, rectangular wells must be continually maintained for sap to flow and the bird licks the sap from the hole.

The smaller round holes placed in horizontal rows are probed by the bird inserting it’s beak to retrieve the sap. This Red-breasted Sapsucker probing these small holes with its beak is probably the most often seen here in the northstate.

This Red-breasted Sapsucker was working on the largest trunk of a lilac bush in our yard.

The Red-naped Sapsucker can be a bit harder to find as they don’t have a large presence in California, even though they nest in the far northeastern corner of the state and we found this one nesting in Lassen National Park. This sapsucker has a black stripe along the side of his head, bordered by 2 white stripes and a red nape.

Unlike the Red-breasted Sapsucker, the male Red-naped Sapsucker sports a red neck over a black bib. The female chin and upper throat may be white and lower throat red.

Confusing some folks not familiar with the Williamson’s Sapsucker is the fact that the male and female look like different species. The male is very distinctive with white wing coverts and rump. Two white stripes on the face, one above and one below the eye, contrasting strongly with iridescent black upperparts, head, and breast with a red patch on the chin and upper throat, and a yellow belly.

With a fleeting glimpse the female has been mistaken for a Northern Flicker. She has a brownish head, with heavily barred wings, flanks, and upperparts of white, brown, and black as well as a yellow belly and white rump. This is the female bringing insects to the nest.

Sapsuckers don’t only feed on sap, they also consume berries and large numbers of ants and other insects, especially once young hatch. This is a shot of the nestling.

Also, sapsuckers aren’t the only birds that feed from sap wells …

A pair of yellow-bellied sapsuckers collecting insects at sap wells to feed their young.

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The Dark-eyed Junco (or as some folks call it, the Snowbird)

By on January 13, 2024 in Birds

It’s Dark-eyed Junco season! According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, this “snowbird” is one of the most common and familiar North American passerines. They usually show up in Shasta County in November and grow in number until they disappear in March, except for higher elevations like Lassen Volcanic National Park. We spotted a pair of juncos with a juvenile at Manzanita Lake in July last year during our annual campout!

As you can see from this map, the Dark-eyed Junco appears throughout the United States and Canada, and even spills over into northern Mexico. A large number breed in the far North but many reside year-round in the western United States.

One way to identify the Dark-eyed Junco from a distance, even if they are flying around, is their conspicuous white outer tail feathers. These photos are from Miles and Teresa Tuffli who run the bird blog “I’m Birding Right Now“. They graciously gave me permission to use their DEJU tail feather photos.

Even this juvenile Dark-eyed Junco already has white outer tail feathers!

There are five recognized sub-species of Dark-eyed Juncos, Slate-colored, Oregon, Gray-headed, White-winged, and Guadalupe. The most common here in Shasta County is the “Oregon” subspecies, followed by the Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco. This is a typical Oregon Junco similar to the photo at the top of the post but most likely a female.

And a different image of a female Oregon Dark-eyed Junco.

Here are a few images of the more rare (in our area) Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco…

and another.

We love these Dark-eyed Juncos that visit us every winter. Keep an eye out for those rarer sub-species. You never know when you might find a rare Junco in our midst!

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BirdWords from Blue Oak Country

By on November 18, 2023 in Birds, BirdWords, Conservation, In the News

Our recent past president and author of our “BirdWords” articles has a new book out! It is appropriately titled “BirdWords from Blue Oak Country” and can be found here. Dan was an educator by trade until his recent retirement, and it shows. His incredible wit and command of the english language reveals itself throughout the book. So does his love of birds and the environment.

As an example of Dan’s pros, I would like to give you just a taste of the beginning of his article “Great Egrets” – “Camouflage clearly makes survival sense. But nature doesn’t settle for just one kind of sense. Out along river shorelines and on the damp fields of winter, great egrets are blatantly visible, as uncamouflaged as possible in head-to-tail white. They’re large. They’re out in the open. They’re plainly visible. Shouldn’t they be dead? A hundred years ago they almost were.”

The book presents in chronological order of winter, spring, summer and fall. It not only gives you specific information on several species of birds but also contains information on Christmas Bird Counts, bird migration, outdoor cats, how to begin birding, plants for birds, and importantly, the environment.

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