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BirdWords: The Belted Kingfisher

By Larry Jordan on March 27, 2015 in BirdWords

The Belted Kingfisher by Linda Aldrich

If you’ve ever heard a loud rattling call and seen a flash of blue and white splash into the water, you have spotted a Belted Kingfisher, one of the more interesting denizens of the waterways of our area.

Follow the flight of this bird to a perch above the water and you will see a 13 inch stocky, big-headed creature with a stout dark bill, shaggy topknot of feathers on its head, small feet and a relatively short tail. The male bird has a slate blue head, wings and tail. The breast is white and encircled with a blue band which is the belt that gives it its name. The female has all of those features plus a second rusty red belt and reddish flanks. In most birds with plumage differences between the sexes, the male is more colorful; however, Ms. Kingfisher is the one sporting the flashier feathers in this species.

The feet of the Belted Kingfisher and its kin are unusual, too. Like a chicken, three toes point forward and one points to the back; but, unlike other bird groups, the forward-facing toes are partly fused together at their bases – a characteristic that probably comes in handy in nesting season. Belted Kingfishers dig a tunnel in a vertical bank above water to raise their families in.

They start work by flying full tilt into the bank beak first, then kick loosened soil out behind them with their feet. Both male and female construct the tunnel which is usually 3 to 6 feet deep (although one ambitious pair tunneled for 15 feet). At the end of the tunnel, they hollow out a chamber in which the female lays 5 to 8 white eggs. Both parents participate in incubating the eggs for about 3 weeks and then feed the voracious chicks (each eats 8 fish a day) for 4 weeks until they exit the tunnel. In past years, a pair of Belted Kingfishers has nested in a bank above the Sacramento River visible across the river from Anderson River Park.

The Belted Kingfisher’s fishing behavior is fun to watch. One of these birds will sit on a branch over-hanging water until it sees a fish near the surface. It will splash into the water (stop-motion videos show its eyes closed) and grasp the hapless fish firmly with its stout bill. The kingfisher than flies to a near-by branch and “tenderizes” its catch by bashing it against the branch, finally swallowing it whole. Occasionally, the bird will hover above the water to spot and catch a fish.

Although the Belted Kingfisher is the only kingfisher in most of the United States, there are about 90 species worldwide. These include the smallest, the tiny 4 inch African Dwarf Kingfisher, a forest dweller that eats insects (in common with many non-fishing species) and the Giant Kingfisher of Africa which is an 18 inch sturdily-built lunker. Surprisingly, the famous Laughing Kookaburra of Australia is actually a kingfisher.

BirdWords: Beaver Dams Help Bird Habitat

By Larry Jordan on March 24, 2015 in BirdWords

Beaver Dam

Article by Jeannette Carroll

Last October found the Sacramento River dropping lower and lower. The slough along Redding’s Cascade Park dropped to ankle-deep water. The ducks were gone. But wait, despite low Keswick Dam releases, residents along the slough noticed the water level begin to rise.

Puzzled, they followed the slough down to Cascade Park and discovered an amazing beaver dam more than 50 feet in length and 3 feet high, constructed of tree limbs and branches, twigs, grass and mud. Its height gradually increased to 4 or 5 feet. The dam survived December’s downpours and, even after our dry January, continues to hold water in a pond that extends over a quarter mile. The pond is well appreciated. Birds, like all creatures, need the right habitat. The Cascade beaver pond is creating a winter home for mallards, wigeons and other dabbling ducks. The dabblers are those who tilt bottoms-up to browse for pondweed, snails and underwater insects.

Along the pool’s edge, an egret patrols in its sharp-eyed hunt for fish, frogs,or just about any animal it can gulp down its long white neck. A steel-blue kingfisher rattles over the pond, taking advantage of the still water to spot its prey. Even a Barrow’s goldeneye, a diving duck typically found in the deeper river, has found a place to rest in the quiet pond.

Of course, any engineering project has costs, too. Without the dam, the slough would now be a riddle of exposed rocks. Shorebirds such as killdeer and yellowlegs, and also jays and sparrows, might pick for food in the trickles through those rocks. As it is, they will be confined to the drier habitat below the dam.

For people, beaver dams can be positive or negative, too. Fortunately, the Cascade pond is only wetting the slough, not posing a threat to area homes.

In the Midwest beavers are being reintroduced in some areas to hold water, a sort of substitute snowpack in the face of dry summers.

Beavers are native in Shasta County and throughout most of North America. Like the dipper, a bird of our mountain streams, they have an extra set of transparent eyelids that enables sight under water.

Beaver families form colonies and may have as many as eight members. Reaching maturity in three or four years, they breed in January or February, and usually have three or four kits. Because they are mainly nocturnal mammals, beavers are not often seen. Residents near Cascade Park have found a second dam on Olney Creek, but checking early and late, have not seen these great engineers at work. Still, they are out there, shaping habitat that some birds and people can enjoy.

BirdWords: Snow Geese Flock to Central Valley

By Dan Greaney on January 10, 2015 in BirdWords

Snow Goose at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

My sister is not a bird watcher, but as she and her family drove back to the Bay Area after a Redding Thanksgiving we received her text: “What’s a big white bird with black wingtips?”

After confirming that they were near Willows and that there were many of the birds we told her “snow geese.”

Small wonder that the birds grabbed her attention. Every winter hundreds of thousands of them, in squealing tornadoes in the sky and squawking blankets over fields and ponds, inundate the Central Valley after nesting in the high arctic, mostly on the islands between Alaska and Greenland.

First the arctic story. The tilt of the North Pole toward the sun in the spring and summer creates a polar season in which the sun never sets, for up to as much as six months right at the North Pole. This abundance of daylight spurs plant growth, in which the grasses, sedges and algae lock great quantities of solar energy into their cells through photosynthesis. That energy is then available to feed geese and ducks and shorebirds by the millions. The birds eat either the plants or the hordes of invertebrates that eat the plants. It’s calorie-rich season, perfect for raising hungry offspring.

Snow geese typically lay a handful of eggs in a tundra tussock, usually in late May. The eggs hatch in some 23 days. Both parents then tend to the young, which follow them about, foraging on their own within a day of hatching. The goslings grow quickly, developing the strength to migrate south in the fall.

Spring snows can disrupt nesting, but mild weather has helped our Pacific flyway geese do very well over the last 10 years. Their numbers grew 53 percent from 2012 to 2013 alone, up to nearly 1.4 million.

In the Redding area, the geese and many arctic nesters find winter habitat at refuges like the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge in Willows. While some 95 percent of original Central Valley habitat has been paved, built upon or turned into farms, the refuges and unburned rice fields help compensate. Many farmers flood their fields through the winter, providing rich grazing and resting grounds that have helped geese thrive, perhaps to record numbers.

However, our drought limits the extent of field flooding both on farms and refuges. The birds, with less water available, squeeze into wherever the water is — a crowded condition that risks spreading disease. For the snow geese, nesting success may be countered with winter die-offs.

Still, in a time when so many species are in decline, the snow geese are flourishing. They remain a sight and sound that harkens to a wilder and inspiring time, and make it well worth a visit to the refuge or at least an open eye as you drive south on Interstate 5.

Note: The Wintu Audubon Society will be conducting a trip to the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 24. See our calendar page for all the information.

Send your bird questions to education@wintuaudubon.org

White-crowned Sparrows Are Regular Visitors to Redding

By Dan Greaney on November 30, 2014 in In the News

White-crowned Sparrow

Birds are among the most evident wildlife around the world. They sing, sport a crazy variety of shapes and sizes and live in all sorts of habitats. They’re also often colorful and can be lured into close-up viewing. And they live here.

In Shasta County, we have more than 250 species seasonally every year, plus another 50 species who have made cameo appearances.

One regular visitor that graces our parks and backyards every winter is the diminutive white-crowned sparrow. This ball of feathers, the size of a child’s fist, is perhaps our most common bird of brush and patio. It has a subtle beauty that unmindful people will easily miss.

Its underside is a plain gray and, like most sparrows, its back is a mottled brown. But its bill is egg-yolk yellow and its head is decked out in bold black and white racing stripes.

That yellow beak is short and chunky — good for cracking seeds. These sparrows are eager visitors to bird feeders, where they specialize in eating up grains scattered on the ground. A close-up feeder or a pair of binoculars will allow precise inspection of the black-and-white head, which can reveal where the bird travels to nest in the summer. If the black-line behind the eye continues forward of the eye, that sparrow likely nests in Lassen or the Northern Rockies, from Colorado through Montana and Idaho.

These birds have mostly passed through our area and are now wintering at a resort in Baja. If the black line stops at the eye, these travelers may nest as far north as the high arctic of Canada and Alaska, a journey of as much as 200 miles — no mean feat for little birds that often look like they have to work hard just to cross the yard.

Whether in Redding, Baja or Fairbanks, sparrows are brush birds. White crowns nest within a few feet of the ground, building a soft cup of plant material. As is the case in many species, the female picks the nesting site. She typically lays three to five eggs, and both parents feed the young until they fledge in a week and a half, and then a little longer to get them going.

If you notice a sparrow whose black and white stripes are replaced with reddish-brown and tan, you are looking at a young bird, just hatched last spring. If it can survive through winter, it will fly to its nesting grounds, grow adult feathers, and try its own hand at raising a brood or two before returning to your yard next fall.

Wintu Audubon provides the new BirdWords column. Please send your local bird questions to education@wintuaudubon.org