Tag Archives | songbirds

Go Listen to the Cattails!

Marsh Wren Singing

The cattails are chattering, chittering, burbling, trilling, and buzzing! The noises of spring, evidence of things not seen, are pouring forth! And now is the best time to actually see the maestros of the marsh!

Responsible for most of the cattail chatter you’ll likely hear are marsh wrens. They are quintessential and versatile singers, storming the reeds with song from their little walnut-sized bodies. Some have stayed around all winter, quietly tucked into the tules. Now the longer and warmer days draw them out from their hideaways, both down in the ditches and down south.

Males are busy building many nests throughout their marshy turf, and scolding away invaders–other male marsh wrens, too-forward blackbirds, poking egrets, and passing people. The nests are about a yard above water, big hollow softballs of reeds with a small entrance hole, all tied to surrounding vegetation. When a female arrives, with song and fluttering he will give her a guided tour of his six or ten or twenty nests. If she sees him as energetic enough to keep local predators away and help feed the fledglings, and if his territory is biologically rich enough to provide abundant insects and snails, she will line one of his nests with soft vegetation and feathers, and there incubate a handful of eggs.

A second and even a third female will receive the same treatment from the male, and the new females will make similar instinctive calculations.

All the parents seek to protect resources for their children, and will pierce the eggs or nestlings of competitors–usually blackbirds or other wrens. The birds are conducting their own sub-humane warfare, each parent liable to the same treatment it tries to deliver.

Eggs hatch after two weeks of incubation. Both parents feed the blind and naked babies, who in another two weeks turn bugs into a nest full of young birds as big as their parents.

Eventually the young will grow their adult feathers–buffy browns, a white-ish eyebrow, and decorative black and white-lined plumes on their back. Good luck seeing them! Now, while they’re out courting, is the time!

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Payne’s Creek Wetlands

This is a no fee area and a very active hotspot this time of the year, especially with all the recent weather events we have had in 2023 so far. We are planning to meet at the Bass Pond Parking Lot at, 22459 Bend Ferry Rd, Red Bluff, CA 96080, at the main entrances to the Wetlands.

This half-day event should yield many varieties of waterbirds, raptors, woodpeckers, and many songbirds in this unique and open wetlands area. From the parking lot we will start with a walk on a two-mile loop through several ponds to the south side of the road. If time permits, we will take a short drive to Payne’s Creek Crossing to round out our journey.

Please contact Dan Byeby text/cell 530 228 9373 or email danbye56@gmail.com for more information.

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Birds of Northern California

Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle Screaming

Our webmaster, Larry Jordan, will be offering “The Birds of Northern California” as our September presentation. Larry was monitoring nest boxes back in 2008 when he joined the Wintu Audubon Society. He also joined the California Bluebird Recovery Program as the Shasta County Coordinator around the same time. With the help of our Audubon members, and others, we now monitor over 70 nest boxes in Shasta County!

Larry actually became interested in birds back in 2007 and started his blog – “The Birders Report.” When he started the blog he had no way to take photos for his postings so he tracked down some of the best bird photogs he could find and asked for permission to use their photos. By the summer of 2008 he was taking his own photos for the blog. This presentation is basically a slide show of over 300 of his photos. We will be discussing bird identification and any other birding topics that come up with audience participation.

Birds of Northern California: Sep 8, 2021 07:00 PM Pacific Time
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Dr. Brett Furnas of the CDFW Discusses Ongoing Songbird Surveys

Mountain Bluebird

Dr. Brett Furnas of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will discuss ongoing multi-species songbird surveys that use automated recording devices at over a hundred sites each year across public and private forestlands throughout northern California. The purpose of this long term project is to monitor population trends and to be able to link changes to land use or climate change for informing conservation planning.

Feral Cats Drive Songbird Decline

Feral Cat Feeding Station

Feral Cat Feeding Station

Cats can be great pets, low maintenance purring machines. Unfortunately, they are also active and effective predators.

There are many ways for birds to die. Among the human causes in the US, window collisions may kill a billion birds a year. Cars kill a fraction as many, some 200 million. Pesticides, power line and cell tower collisions, wind turbines, hunting, and oil spills may kill another 200 million.

But the big killer in the US is cats. It is estimated that outdoor cats kill 2.4 billion birds a year in our country. With the exception of habitat loss, this number dwarfs all other current human-caused bird mortality combined.

Many of the studies are small, but they reveal a grim pattern. Cats kill nearly 50% of suburban songbird fledglings. Pet cats average one wildlife kill per fifty-six hours outdoors. They eat or abandon most of their kills at the kill site, not on the owner’s doorstep – belying many owners’ hopes that their pet is too domesticated to follow its instincts. A University of Nebraska study pins thirty-three bird extinctions on cat predation worldwide.

Feral cats number between 30 to 80 million in the US, according to World Animal Foundation estimates. If their kill rate equals that of pet cats, simple arithmetic indicates kills of small animals – birds, lizards, voles, etc. – of nearly 8 billion per year.

Despite being an invasive species, domestic cats are often maintained in the wild. Well-meaning people develop feeding stations that create unnaturally dense colonies. These colonies turn city parks and neighborhoods into native species kill zones, contributing hugely to the declines of American songbirds.

Further, these feral cat concentrations create sinks for the spread of disease and suffering, Feline leukemia and panleukopenia are highly contagious, disabling diseases of outdoor cats. FIV – the cat version of the AIDS virus – spreads mostly through saliva in cat-fight bites.

People, too, are at risk from cat-spread disease. Rabies is found in three times as many cats as dogs, possibly because of their greater involvement with wild animals and the lack of vaccination.

The toxoplasmosis parasite, famous for warnings to pregnant women against cleaning cat litter, can infect any warm-blooded being but only reproduces in cats. Over 70% of cats are expected to carry the parasite at some point in their lives, and they release hundreds of millions of oocytes that can deliver the disease for years through gardens and parks where they defecate. In people, our immune system usually prevents symptoms. But the parasite attacks the brain and is associated with deafness, eye lesions, and a wide range of behavior disorders including Alzheimer’s, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia.

Some solutions to these bird kill and public health problems are easy. Pet owners who keep their cats indoors will protect both wildlife and their cats.

Feral cat problems are tougher to tackle. Trap-Neuter-Release programs have been shown to be ineffective. Neutered cats still kill birds and spread disease, and neutering efforts do not keep pace with the influx of new cats. A single breeding pair can produce 400,000 offspring over seven years.

US governments spend over $50 million a year to reduce the problems posed by feral and stray animals. In Redding, city land is being used to support feral cat colonies.