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Redding’s Miracle of the Swallows

By Dan Greaney on July 28, 2018 in Birds, BirdWords

Cliff Swallow photo courtesy David Bogener

Late July, and you may see no more of Cliff Swallows than their orange rumps, heading south.

For a couple of months they have eddied around North State bridges like summer snowflakes. But now nesting is done. Roomfuls of flying insects have been caught and turned into feathers and warm heartbeats. Winter remains distant, so young birds and vagrant souls may roam with no sense of urgency.

Cliff Swallows In Flight

But the flocks will tend south, to the clime that history tells them is home. For cliff swallows this is deep into South America, a 6000 mile flight to where they may be seen hawking insects over Argentinian grasslands.

Cliff Swallow In Flight

Throughout most of North America, these are the swallows that build their gourd-shaped nests of mud, cemented under eaves, sills, and bridges. In Redding, they have long colonized the old Monolith at Turtle Bay. With recent developments, house sparrows have taken over those nests, and the swallows have moved to both the Sundial and Highway 44 bridges.

Cliff Swallow at Nest

Architecture like the Sundial Bridge is a boon to cliff swallows. The bridge provides the ceilings and cornices where the birds can construct their nests beyond reach of terrestrial predators. The shoreline provides mud that the swallows can carry, one beakload at a time, to form their crèches. The river also hosts its salmon-fest of insects, which the swirling clouds of swallows catch in flight to feed their young.

Similar conditions made them and the Mission of San Juan Capistrano famous a century ago through the legend created by Fr. O’Sullivan, and recorded in his book Capistrano Nights:

One day, while walking through town, Father O’Sullivan saw a shopkeeper, broomstick in hand, knocking down the conically shaped mud swallow nests that were under the eaves of his shop. The birds were darting back and forth through the air squealing over the destruction of their homes.

“What in the world are you doing?” O’Sullivan asked.

“Why, these dirty birds are a nuisance and I am getting rid of them!” the shopkeeper responded.

“But where can they go?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he replied, slashing away with his pole. “But they’ve no business here, destroying my property.”

Father O’Sullivan then said, “Come on swallows, I’ll give you shelter. Come to the Mission. There’s room enough there for all.”

The very next morning, Father O’Sullivan discovered the swallows busy building their nests outside Father Junípero Serra’s Church.

Since then, generations of tourists have marveled at the annual “Miracle of the Swallows.” Indeed, when 1990’s renovation cleaned out the nests and chased the swallows off, Capistrano undertook substantial efforts to coax the birds back.

Here in the North State our development has created our own “Miracle of the Swallows.” Their nesting success allows the hope that we will see them swirling here again each spring!

Lassen Volcanic National Park Outing 2018

By Larry Jordan on June 21, 2018 in Birds, Events

Mount Lassen and Manzanita Lake

One of the best things about our annual Lassen Park campout is that we get to see several species of birds that are rarely, if ever, seen in the valley. Many of those species also nest in the park. According to their website, Lassen Volcanic National Park provides habitat for approximately 216 species of birds in which 96 have been known to actually breed in the park.

For those of you that have never been to Lassen Volcanic National Park, I thought I would post some photos I have taken inside the park of some of the bird and animal species we may encounter during our annual campout.

One of my favorite species is the Water Ouzel, more commonly known now as the American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus). This is a photo I took at King’s Creek picnic area of an adult feeding its nestlings. Click on photos for full sized images.

and a short video of the nestlings begging for food and being fed.

Of course, LVNP has a great variety of woodpeckers on their bird list, eight of them known to nest in the area, including the White-headed Woodpecker (Picoides albolarvatus.) This is a male with some treats for the youngsters.

and a short video of the adults feeding the nestling and drumming.

We will hopefully see the rare Black-backed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) as well.

and maybe hear it drum!

There are Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) that hang out just adjacent to our campground in an old burn.

And Red-breasted Sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus ruber) are common.

Near Summit Lake we have been able to witness Williamson’s Sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus thyroideus) raising their young in a snag near the campground. The handsome male…

and the not as recognizable female.

Another of my favorite Lassen Park nesting birds is the Brown Creeper (Certhia americana)…

This is a video of the nesting activity of a pair of Brown Creepers at Summit Lake. Their nest is concealed in the narrow space behind loose bark on a tree.

Mountain Chickadees (Poecile sclateri) are one of the many secondary cavity nesters at the park. This is a nestling waiting to be fed at Hat Lake.

Also seen at Hat Creek, Red-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta canadensis) tending their nestlings.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

And the video accompaniment.

Other secondary cavity nesters at the park include the Pygmy Nuthatch (Sitta pygmaea)…

the Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides), the male seen here…

Mountain Bluebird Male

and the Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola).

Lassen Volcanic National Park is one of the few places that this incredible cavity nesting duck breeds in Northern California.

This is a video of a female Bufflehead searching Manzanita Lake for a cavity to nest in for the following nesting season. She is in a snag, at least forty feet up!

American Coots (Fulica americana) raise their young at the park also. If you have never seen a American Coot chick, Manzanita Lake is a good spot to find them.

American Coot Chick

Since we’re checking out the youngsters of the park, I found this juvenile Clark’s Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) at Bumpass Hell. Note the remaining flesh colored gape below the eye at the corner of the beak.

Other species that nest at the park include the Cassin’s Finch (Carpodacus cassinii). The male seen here…

and the female.

You would be hard pressed to miss the boisterous Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri)

But if you are really lucky, you might find a young Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius) at Hat Lake!

You gotta see this…

Or a Green-tailed Towhee (Pipilo maculatus) that also nests here.

Of course there are more than just birds at Lassen Volcanic National Park. The park is home to approximately 57 species of mammals ranging is size from the tiny shrew to the North American black bear. We are most likely to see the Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel (Callospermophilus lateralis)…

the American Pika (Ochotona princeps)…

and the Yellow-bellied Marmot (Marmota flaviventris).

I hope this post intrigues you enough to consider joining us this year at Lassen Volcanic National Park for our 2018 annual campout. As always we will be camping with our friends and fellow Audubon members from other Northern California chapters. As with all of our activities, the Lassen Park Campout is posted on our calendar for more information. You are welcome to campout beginning Friday, July 27th, anytime past noon, or drive up Saturday morning to join us for the hike around Manzanita Lake.

Want more information on Lassen Volcanic National Park? Visit their website! And here is an interactive map of the park.

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If Birds Could Vote

By Dan Greaney on May 26, 2018 in BirdWords

Greater White-fronted Goose with Ducks

Birds can’t vote, and they shouldn’t. They don’t study the issues.

If they could, however, they probably wouldn’t get too worked up over much of it. They mostly embrace the migrant lifestyle, so immigration isn’t a concern. Cutting Medicare and Social Security to fund tax cuts wouldn’t bother them; after all, they’re not slated to get Medicare or Social Security anyway. As for civil rights in general—well, people may aspire to things like kindness and decency, but birds, honestly, are more known for things like hen-pecking than human compassion or civility.

But if they could understand the issues rather than only suffer them, there’s one area in which birds would likely vote as a fairly united bloc. They’d vote for a healthy environment.

Birds would vote to test chemicals for toxicity. Like humans, birds start gathering toxins in utero. Adults in the US contain over 250 synthetic chemicals, new to the world, in our tissues and fluids, entering us from food, furniture, carpet, clothing, and environmental effluent, through our mouths, lungs, and skin; 70,000 more synthetics are on the market, and we imbibe them in ever-increasing dosages. Current law requires testing for carcinogenic effects only if there is evidence of potential harm, and the EPA is given only 90 days to find that harm. Cancer doesn’t work that fast. But if birds could understand the issue, they would object to this bird-brained process and the 80 million of their feathered kin killed by poisons each year. They would likely vote for synthetic chemicals to be held off the market until there was reasonable assurance that they were safe.

Birds would vote for clean water, too. They need it for healthy food supplies, drinking, and for places to swim. But government powers are reverting to Cleveland-River-on-Fire policies, trying to allow more toxic discharges into water supplies, redefining pesticides as nonpollutants, discontinuing monitoring of toxic discharges so that voters are less aware of the poisoning, and suppressing existing studies that, as the White House recently noted, would be a “public relations nightmare.” Birds with understanding would recognize that gutters run to creeks, to rivers, to all of us, and would want to protect all the waters of the US. They would know that we—birds, people, and trees, now and for our children—rely on clean water.

Clean air would also be a priority. Birds process oxygen even more rapidly than incumbent congressmen do, and those incumbents’ efforts to allow vehicles and industry to dump more mercury, benzene, and nitrous oxides into the air will most emphatically harm the lungs of fast breathers like birds and children.

Birds would also seek to protect grasslands and forests from development and destructive extraction practices. In the last 50 years, American forests have lost a quarter of their birds, and grasslands half. Past Farm Bill provisions have shown promise in curtailing habitat loss, but the current bill in congress allows increased toxic dumping.

And perhaps most emphatically, birds would vote to curb the craziness of climate change. They would recognize that the problems are devastating, with most of their kin expected to lose most of their seasonal range within the lifetime of today’s children; and that there is no good reason to exacerbate droughts, fires, and floods when clean fuels are available if people choose them.

The birds might recognize that they cannot make lifestyle changes or government changes, but they might hope that their more intelligent North American companions will.

Tree Swallows Return, It Must Be Spring

By Larry Jordan on May 5, 2018 in Birds

Whenever I see Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) I know that Spring is upon us. I have witnessed small groups of these gorgeous aerial acrobats twice, from an excellent vantage point, engage in what seems to be a courtship or pair bonding display. (Click on photos for full sized images)

Here you see, what appears to be an adult male clinging to a snag, being approached by a yearling female sporting the mostly brown plumage with a hint of greenish-blue.

This activity seems to be centered around the small hole in the snag which the male has been checking out, but is obviously too small for a nesting cavity.

The male assumes a rather vertical posture and the female comes toward him, both with mouths open

This is another encounter where it is difficult to determine the sex of these two birds but I believe the bird on the right is a female

They may make several passes at each other with their mouths open like this

And then actually connect with a mock feeding display

Of course this all takes place in the blink of an eye so I never really saw this mouth to mouth connection until I viewed these photos from the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge blind I took a few years ago.

I concluded that this must be pair bonding behavior, after all, Spring is in the air! Does anyone know for sure?

Here is another photo of this beautiful species.

Watching the Tree Swallow, or most any swallow, makes me wish I could fly myself, how about you?

It’s Parenting Season

By Dan Greaney on April 28, 2018 in BirdWords

Black-headed Grosbeak Male

It’s spring, and the busier the birds and bees are, the better it is for all of us. Part of that busy-ness has to be raising offspring.

Birds take on rearing their children with all the variety and flair of feathers. Many young birds are brought up in two-parent nests; others just by mom, some just by dad; some are raised by foster parents; still others are grouped into “it takes a village” scenarios. There are numerous child-rearing styles. But no young bird prospers without substantial parenting in some form.

Black-headed Grosbeak Male Feeding Young

Billions of aspiring avian moms and dads are in this child-raising season right now. Most songbird pairs share their nesting duties. Typically, the female incubates and turns the eggs, and quietly chirps to the young, who learn her voice before they hatch. Males in some species spell their mates on the nest, but more often do guard duty, dive-bombing or distracting predators. Both parents feed the hatchlings, hunting down hundreds of insects and making scores of feeding visits to the nest every day. When the fledglings take wing, the male often shepherds them, while mom perhaps begins a second or even third nest.

Black-headed Grosbeak Female

Black-headed grosbeaks, colorful, big-billed birds, take the sharing of nest duties a notch or two farther than most species. When a dangerous jay or neighborhood cat approaches, the female readily joins her mate in harassing the predator, attempting to drive it from their vulnerable young. On his part, the male, with rare egalitarianism, undertakes an even share of egg incubation and nestling-warming. More noisily than his mate, he nests with what seems foolhardy flair; he sings loudly right from the nest, as if he can’t contain his proud papa-hood.

Black-headed Grosbeak Juvenile

Unike the precocial ready-to-go chicks of turkeys, ducks and quail, hatchling grosbeaks are altricial—blind, naked, and helpless. Within two weeks, however, under their parents’ relentless feeding and guardianship, the babies are full grown and feathered, ready to try their wings.

Like so many of our nesting birds, grosbeaks are travelers, wintering in Mexico and nesting as far north as British Columbia. Like robins, they have adapted effectively to suburbs and parks. They prefer to nest near water where both trees and brush offer cover. The females weave loose nests, usually on outer branches no higher than a second story window. Both the male and female sing profusely, a tune and tone frequently likened to that of a tipsy robin. His song is especially loud and clear, waltzing through the woods any time of day.

These singers of the American West dine on seeds, insects, and fruit, happily foraging high above us mere walklings. They are, however, happy to descend to our level to empty our feeders of sunflower seeds. There we can enjoy their burnt orange plumage and oddly hefty bills.

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