Terri Lhuillier will share the continuing saga of our famous Redding Eagles as she begins her 17th Nesting Season closely monitoring the local bald eagle pair. Terri has been following “Liberty” for 17 years since the bald eagle pair first arrived & built a nest at Turtle Bay in Redding back in 2004. She has spent numerous hours observing, documenting & photographing Liberty with her 3 mates as they successfully raised 22 eaglets from egg to fledgling!
Terri will discuss how her passion for eagles has grown over the years and how now, she and her husband Dave, monitor seventeen bald eagle nests in Redding, Anderson, Palo Cedro, Red Bluff and Corning. Terri and Dave document annual nesting data for the nests which they share with several Fish and Wildlife and Whiskeytown biologists to help them monitor the local bald Eagle population.
Wintu Audubon Society is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: As The Nest Turns: The Continuing Saga of the Redding Eagles
Time: Jan 13, 2021 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Meeting ID: 915 0064 4744
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Meeting ID: 915 0064 4744
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G-r-rick! G-r-rick! The woodland call of the ash-throated flycatcher manages to sound both dry and optimistic, and this bird has reason to feel both. It is well adapted to the summer conditions of the arid west.
Although it sports a hipster beanie and jaunty colors–a sulphur-yellow belly, burnt orange in the wing, and a red-brown tail–you are apt to hear the bird before you see it. From a perch or in flight, its frequent calls abound in our north state woods.
These birds are up from coastal Mexico, reversing the summer vacation travels of many pre-Covid Americans. But of course they are here not to vacation but to raise their families on the abundant insects of the season. Unlike many kinds of flycatchers, they rarely capture their meals out of the air. Rather they perch in the understory, study the foliage and bark near them, and then hover to pick their insect prey from the plant.
Ash-throated Flycatcher at Natural Cavity
Gleaning insects is a service that should not go unrewarded, and trees, particularly oaks, generously provide cavities that the birds use as nest sites. Along with oak-rot hollows, ash-throated flycatchers readily nest in cacti cavities, woodpecker holes, nesting boxes, drain pipes, or the deep pocket of a jacket left hanging over the back fence.
Ash-throated Flycatcher with Nesting Material
Both parents build the nest of various plant fibers. The mother bird incubates her handful of eggs for two weeks, and both parents feed the young about sixteen days more, as their offspring grow from naked to feathered to feeding themselves. Though just the size of grocery-story zucchinis, they develop the mesomorphic form of strong flyers–big-breasted due to powerful flight muscles.
Ash-throated Flycatcher Eggs
Beginning as soon as July and lasting into early fall, those muscles will propel the birds on a fifteen-hundred mile migration. The North State insect populations wane, and the flycatchers head for buggier turf to power their next month-long phase of life–shedding their worn feathers and growing new ones.
Ash-throated Flycatcher Nestlings
Several qualities feed the optimism that ash-throated flycatchers warrant. Their ready adoption of human artifacts for nesting sites serves them well. Also, they usually line their nests with mammal fur, which is soft for the nestlings but less insulating than feathers and so may reduce overheating that feathers could cause as the seasons warm. Further, ash-throated flycatchers do not need to drink water; like some other desert dwellers, they manufacture enough for themselves in the process of digesting their food. In this warming arc of the world, ash-throated flycatcher populations have grown about 1% per year over the last fifty years.
The Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) at Anderson River Park in Shasta County have been nesting atop a soccer field light stand for over 17 years. The problem is that they build the nest right on top of the field lights. This becomes an issue when, every four or five years the light bulbs need to be replaced and the nest can be destroyed in the process.
One of my wildlife rehabber friends had received a legacy gift and contacted me regarding the prospect of building a nesting platform to place at the top of the utility pole. This would allow the Osprey to safely nest above the bank of lights, thereby keeping their nest intact year after year, with no interference from the maintenance crew.
I, of course said, “what a great idea!” I found an excellent plan for the platform (shown below) from the International Osprey Foundation and built it in less than a day. It is a 40 x 40 inch box which I modified using all 2 x 6 inch pressure treated lumber.
Before building the platform I contacted the Anderson City Public Works department to discuss the possibility of actually putting up the platform and got the OK. We obviously wanted to get it up before the Osprey arrived and were able to install it on January 31st.
This is an 86 foot utility pole so a lift was rented and the excellent workers from the City of Anderson Public Works department generously gave their time and expertise to the project.
Having never seen an Osprey nest close up, I asked one of the installers to take some photos of the nest before removing it and placing the nesting material in a bin to be put back into the new platform.
The shape of the Osprey nest changes during the breeding cycle. During incubation the nest is distinctly bowl-shaped. After hatching the nest flattens out, but a rim of sticks is maintained, sometimes by the young themselves, while the young are beginning to move clumsily about the nest. In the last weeks of the nestling phase, the nest often becomes completely flat1. Note the large sticks and bark.
Here’s a shot of one of the installers placing the nesting material back into the newly installed nesting platform.
About four weeks after the install I went back to the park to see if Osprey had shown up. I found one bird perched inside the platform!
However, there were also a pair of very vocal Red-Shouldered Hawks(Buteo lineatusin) in a nearby tree.
Apparently they were interested, for whatever reason, in the nesting platform as well.
A week later when I returned, the platform was now occupied by a pair of Osprey!
I observed them for over an hour but never saw them bring in nesting material, although there is obviously new sticks in the nest. The Red-shouldered Hawks were still hanging around but this day, the Osprey pair were involved in mating and the hawks were vigorously chased away by the male Osprey.
Osprey pairs copulate frequently, on average 160 times per clutch, but only 39% of these result in cloacal contact. Pairs average 59 successful copulations per clutch, starting 14 days before, and peaking a few days before, the start of egg-laying1.
Pairs copulate most often in early morning, at the same time as egg-laying1.
As I returned a couple of weeks later, the first thing I noticed is that there has been much more nesting material placed into the platform and the male was bringing in more and arranging the sticks.
After trimming and arranging these large, long sticks, the male Osprey took off and the female did some rearranging.
The male soon returned to a nearby utility pole on the opposite side of the soccer field with a rather large, what looks like a trout.
He ate about half of the fish, starting at the head, before carrying the remaining portion back to the platform to share with his mate.
Nature offers relentless beauty, free—not for the taking, but still for enrichment. One of this season’s beauties is goldfinches.
If you hang a feeder with thistle seed out your window, then a dozen or more of these lemon cuties may well deck the twigs nearby. They’re tiny, just elongated ping-pong balls, but on a chill winter morning they can turn bare branches into a Christmas tree.
The birds are known as Lesser Goldfinches. “Lesser” because they are smaller than their cousin American Goldfinches, and because in summer the cousins have more stunningly bright plumage. But in winter the larger birds lose their brilliance, turning an amber tan, while the lesser goldfinches continue to shine.
As is common in birds, the males are the prettier ones. Their wings are black with small flashes of white, and they wear smooth black caps. Their greenish backs melt into bright yellow undersides. The females dress in similar colors, but muted and without the hat.
It is uncommon to see a solitary goldfinch. They are gregarious, hanging out together like teens at the mall, and filling the air with their wheezy chittering and trills. In their native western US and Mexico, they can be seen wherever the small seeds they thrive on are abundant. They scour sycamore pods high in city treetops; they flock through weedy lots and fields; and they congregate at feeders. Development does not seem to have reduced the presence of weeds or seeds, and the goldfinches are prospering.
Our North State climate is temperate enough that the goldfinches out your winter window will stay in the neighborhood for their spring nesting. Finches are singers, and a male will twitter and tweet until a female succumbs to his melody and allows him to perch by her. He will eventually begin feeding her, a consideration he will continue as she selects a nest site and does the work of construction. She is practical in this task, weaving her grassy cup in a leafy tree or shrub and lining it with fluff from flora or fauna, making a soft, warm bed for the naked nestlings.
The nest is usually just 4-8 feet off the ground. Keeping it low facilitates his food delivery to her while she incubates their eggs, and later, their exhaustive efforts to fill the bottomless pits of their annual handful of children. In under two weeks of incubation, the young hatch out scrawny and helpless, but strong enough to demand that incessant deliveries of seeds and insects be gathered from the neighborhood and fluttered up to them. In less than two weeks more they will be as big as their parents, feathered, and flapping awkwardly from the nest.
Lesser Goldfinch Female with Nestlings
After a little more tending, the weary parents can take a break. Their energetic young flutter on, replenishing the local flurry of color and song, continuing the persistent beauty of the natural world.
Mama bank swallow and her chick gaze out over the Sacramento River from their cliff-bank burrow – photo courtesy of David Bogener
Spring is in the air and birds are in the creative construction business. The homes they build, where they will lay and incubate their eggs and raise their young, come in many styles, shapes, and sizes.
The simplest is almost nothing – a mere scrape on the ground such as the Killdeer use—and is abandoned as soon as the eggs hatch and the precocious babies follow their parents and pick up their own food. More complicated is the floating platform, such as the rafts that Pied-billed Grebes construct on local ponds, allowing these swimmers to live their entire lives without ever setting foot on land.
Simple elevated nests are the familiar cups that many songbirds such as the beloved American Robin build in bushes and trees. A robin’s sturdy home is formed with twigs, then cemented with mud– so if you see a female robin with mud on her chest you can bet that her nest is nearby. Robin babies hatch blind, naked, and helpless, so she lines the nest with grass to make a soft cradle for the nestlings in the weeks that their parents fly food to them. Even after the young fledge, the parents continue to feed them for some time.
Bird nests are unique to each species, so the builder of an old abandoned nest can often be identified by the materials, size, placement, and other construction features of the nest. There’s no confusing the tiny, dainty hummingbird’s nest, woven of moss and spider webs, with the massive stick-built home of the Bald Eagle! I once observed a Bald Eagle in Seattle land on a sizeable tree branch and keep on flying, snapping the branch and heading off toward the nest the pair was constructing – no picking up old sticks from the ground for this mighty bird!
Many birds are cavity nesters, using holes in trees that they have chiseled out themselves or reused after the original makers have moved on. All of the woodpeckers excavate their own cavities, although sometimes even they will start housekeeping in a provided nesting box.
To a certain extent we can select nesting box tenants by sizing the hole in the birdhouse. Entrances up to 1 ¼ inch round will admit wrens, titmice, and nuthatches. Bluebirds and tree swallows will use 1 ½ inch doorways. Larger holes will invite the nonnative European starlings, and so are not advised.
Unusual cavity nesters are the Belted Kingfishers, who dig long tunnels in river banks to house their eggs and chicks, and the Bank Swallows, who seem to use their burrows in courtship. The males dig two foot tunnels into a riverbank cliff, and the females check the sites out before selecting a package deal of mate and burrow. Their cousins, the Northern Rough-winged Swallows, will similarly burrow or can be seen nesting in the weep-holes of the concrete Bella Vista water intake downstream from the Sundial Bridge.
The master architects of the local bird world build complex nests such as the hanging basket of the Bullock’s Oriole. The Bushtit builds a woven construction more like a long sock with a tiny entrance hole up above the ankle. When the parent birds come to feed their chicks, the sock does the shimmy as the babies eagerly take their meal.
So, enjoy the season and the beauty of its diverse lives and homes! With your eyes open maybe you will see a bird carrying a piece of material to line its nest, and you’ll know that parent birds are preparing to raise their young ones!
