What Do Songbirds Have To Do With Wine?

By Larry Jordan on January 26, 2025 in

Eleanor is a graduate student at Cal Poly Humboldt in Dr. Matt Johnson’s Habitat Ecology lab. She is investigating how the addition of songbird nest boxes affects bird communities and whether this has any top-down effect on insects in Napa Valley wine-grape vineyards. She is examining avian point counts and insect sampling conducted over the 2023 and 2024 breeding seasons on 20 vineyards, 10 with existing nest boxes and 10 with nest boxes added between field seasons. Her project focuses on vineyards that lie along gradients of local habitat and landscape complexity and will also address how local habitat and landscape composition influence bird communities. Eleanor is passionate about researching how anthropogenic effects influence avian population and community dynamics and how management can help mitigate these effects.
Agricultural expansion threatens biodiversity, but promoting native species like insectivorous birds in agricultural landscapes could benefit both biodiversity and farm productivity alike. Recently, some California wine-grape growers have used nest boxes to promote biodiversity and attract insectivorous birds, such as Western Bluebirds and Tree Swallows, in an effort to help control insects. This presentation will focus on the results of a before-after-control-impact experiment involving the addition of nest boxes to wine-grape vineyards that previously had none in Napa Valley, California. This research has the potential to offer deeper insights for management decisions concerning pest control by investigating the potential benefits of attracting more insect-eating birds to agricultural landscapes. This is part of a large collaborative research effort between Cal Poly Humboldt, UC Davis, UC Riverside, and UCCE and is funded by the Agricultural Research Institute.

Shasta Birding Society is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: What Do Songbirds Have To Do With Wine?
Time: Feb 12, 2025 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82926444555

Meeting ID: 829 2644 4555
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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.