Yesterday, 12 October 2024, was October Big Day, an annual community science event hosted by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and their eBird app. Each Big Day is a snapshot of bird diversity, and the October date is timed to catch migratory birds. The goal is to record how many of each species you observe, either by sight or hearing, at some location for some period of time. Due to circumstances beyond my control I was constrained near home, but I managed to get three sets of observations in.
Back deck at home 15:30-16:00
SPECIES
NUMBER
Anna’s hummingbird
15-20
Lesser goldfinch
4
Chestnut-backed chickadee
2
House finch
2
Northern mockingbird
1
Spotted towhee
1
Scrub jay
2
California quail
1
California thrasher
1
Bewick’s wren
1
Song sparrow
2
Golden-crowned sparrow
2
Red-tailed hawk
1
California towhee
1
Wrentit
1
Bushtit
1 (really? only the 1?)
Hermit thrush
1
TOTAL: 17 species
Long Marine Lab 16:43-17:30
Distance traveled: 0.61 miles
SPECIES
NUMBER
Mallard
2
Rock dove (i.e., pigeon)
14
Western gull
2 for sure, plus probably many others
Brandt’s cormorant
33
Brown pelican
80-ish
Black phoebe
5
American crow
3
Bewick’s wren
1
House finch
2
Golden-crowned sparrow
1
California towhee
1
TOTAL: 11 species
Natural Bridges State Park 17:30-18:20
Distance traveled: 1 mile
SPECIES
NUMBER
Anna’s hummingbird
4
Red-shouldered hawk
1
Northern flicker
1
Black phoebe
1
American crow
3
Chestnut-backed chickadee
4
Oak titmouse
1
Pygmy nuthatch
1
Bewick’s wren
1
Golden-crowned sparrow
2
California towhee
2
Song sparrow
3
Spotted towhee
2
Townsend’s warbler
1
TOTAL: 14 species
If I counted correctly and didn’t double-count anybody, that makes for 30 species observed in about 3 hours. I’m not really surprised that I saw the most diversity at home, compared to the marine lab and Natural Bridges. Our back “yard” is literally a canyon with lots of habitat diversity, although not as much native vegetation as I would like. It’s a bit of mostly-wild nature in the city. We also know that we have larger wildlife—deer, foxes, skunks, raccoons, and the occasional mountain lion—prowling around down there. I’m very lucky to live here.
The most interesting thing to come out of these observations is the question “Was there really only one bushtit?” Because you always see them in a group of 12-30, forming a twittering mass of tiny objects flitting around in the bushes. But I kept looking, and saw only the one.
People who consider themselves good birders would scoff at numbers like mine, and some would wonder why I would even bother counting birds I see at home. But I’m not a birder. I am a birdwatcher, and there can be a big difference between the two. I literally just watch birds. I can do so for a long time, observing the same species (maybe even the same individuals) over and over again. Sometimes I count them, sometimes I draw them, and sometimes I just watch them. And it’s a delightful hobby! I don’t keep a life list, except for when I remember to enter observations into eBird, which doesn’t always happen. I don’t travel to see a rare bird that got a little lost, like that poor snowy owl that ended up in Southern California and attracted the attention of hundreds (thousands?) of birders and photographers. For the most part I’m perfectly happy spending time with “my” usual friends, watching the hummingbirds fight-fight-fight and taming a chickadee to take peanuts from my hand. We put out a couple of bird houses and keep hoping that somebody moves in to raise a family, but so far that hasn’t happened yet.
One of my favorite seabirds is the pigeon guillemot (Cepphus columba). According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithololgy, pigeon guillemots should be present along the California coast year-round, but I seem to see them only during the summer breeding season, when they forage close to shore. Having first to incubate eggs, and then to feed hungry chicks, the adults cannot venture too far from land. At this time they are central place foragers, which just means that they make short flights to find food, then always return to the same site (where the nest is). During the nonbreeding season the pigeon guillemots are still around, but forage farther out to sea. Once their young have fledged and are feeding on their own, there is no need for the adults to spend much time on land at all, and they certainly are no longer tied to any particular location.
This morning I was at the marine lab looking for the black oystercatcher chicks that hatched recently. I didn’t seem them today. However, patience was rewarded and I saw a pair of pigeon guillemots land on one of the cliffs near where I was sitting. For a while they just rested, then they rose up onto their feet and started circling around each other. That sure looked like courtship behavior, so I brought up the camera and snapped away.
Given how conspicuous those red feet are, it’s no surprise that they are indeed used in courtship displays. The birds walk around each other to show off their feet, and touch their bills together. The inner surface of the mouth is a matching crimson color. Presumably the redness indicates vitality that would be desirable in a mate.
I’ve seen pigeon guillemots nesting in cliffs up at Pigeon Point. I’m not sure where the birds at the marine lab have made their nests, though. Must investigate further!
A week ago I was with a group of students at Moss Landing, where we spent a couple of hours watching birds on our way down to Fort Ord Natural Reserve for an overnight camping trip. The visit was well-timed: we arrived at low tide so there was a lot of mud flat exposed, meaning ample real estate for foraging shorebirds. By now the students were pretty comfortable using binoculars, and it warmed my heart to see them getting used to one of my favorite tools in the naturalist’s kit.
The real stars of this particular tale were the birds. Specifically, a pair of willets (Tringa semipalmata). As we walked along the road towards the dunes and beach, I caught sight of a pair of willets involved in what appeared to be an altercation of sorts. I snapped off a bunch of photos and continued on.
When I had time to review the photos a few days later, I saw that what I had thought was some display of aggression was actual mating, or preliminary activities to actual mating. Oops! That hadn’t occurred to me at the time because somewhere in the back of my brain I thought that willets are winter visitors here who breed elsewhere. Of course, courtship and pair-bonding involve multiple bouts of copulation, and any single copulation event may or may not result in successful insemination. It does make sense for copulation to occur before migration to breeding grounds, whether the “real thing” happens here or in the birds’ summer range.
All this to say that I captured a series of photographs that, if they were of our species, would be considered pornographic. But since the subjects were willets and not humans, I can call them wildlife photography!
This is a series of 21 photos, presented as a slide show. The entire sequence of events took about 10 seconds.
I didn’t catch the exact moment of cloacal contact, if indeed there was any. It does still feel a little bit voyeuristic, but that’s why I like watching birds in the first place—they carry on their lives and don’t care about human morals or pruderies. It is always an honor and a privilege to witness nature doing its thing. And who knows, perhaps a new generation of willets was conceived by this pair!
Since the fields at the marine lab flooded, birds have been gathering in the vernal pools. It’s frog-hunting season for the herons and egrets! This morning there was a group of about a dozen egrets were stalking prey in the area near the old road, and I finally had my camera with me to take photos and it wasn’t raining horizontally.
For anyone interested in such things, I took these photos with a Sigma 150-600mm lens on my Nikon D780 DSLR body shooting mostly in the 200-400mm range.
No great blue herons today. Another storm is blowing in now, and the birds will take shelter until the wind and rain are less violent. Forecasters predict that today’s storm will be stronger than the one that tore up the coast a couple of days ago. Fingers crossed we keep power!
It feels like forever since I’ve checked in on the cormorants at Natural Bridges. I simply haven’t had time to mosey down there, take a gajillion photos, and then deal with them on the computer. But today I thought I’d give myself until lunch time to play with photos and such, before I hit the grindstone again and work on a lecture about the natural history of Big Sur.
And for the update: The Brandt’s cormorants (Urile penicillatus) chicks are growing up! They’re still mostly fluffy but some have a few feathers, and they’re getting big now. I watched for about half an hour before realizing that the parents were feeding them; after that it was pretty easy to see when a feeding was imminent.
First, there’s the behavior of the chick(s). Most of the time they are flopped like sacks of brown fluff, but when there’s possible food they perk up and pay attention. It’s funny how long their necks can be when stretched up! The chicks don’t seem able to hold their heads up for very long yet. As we all know, however, food is a powerful motivator.
The parent also demonstrates what I think of as an about-to-regurgitate movements. It sort of reminds me of the cats’ convulsions right before they hork up a hairball, only not as fast or violent. The parent cormorant stands up and sort of undulates front to back a few times, then bows low. This gets the chicks’ attention and they start looking alert and expectant. The parent might go through the whole routine a few times before leaning towards the chick. The chick begins poking at the parent’s bill, which seems to stimulate the actual regurgitation. Nom nom nom!
What I want to showcase this time is a series of photos showing a feeding session. The whole thing took about five seconds.
Look at those stubby little wings! These youngsters have some growing to do and have to make real feathers before they can fledge. Maybe they’ll have done so by the time I finish up with school for the year.
This week was my spring break, and although I have more than enough work to catch up on, I decided that each day I would spend a few hours doing something fun before or after getting stuck in with adult responsibilities. I didn’t set up formal plans, but knew I wanted to collect a plankton sample early in the week. Monday 21 March 2022 was the vernal equinox, which seemed as good a time as any to see what was going on in the plankton.
And the plankton was quite lively! I was very pleased to see a lot of diatoms in the sample. Diatoms are early season bloomers, able to take advantage of nutrient inputs due to coastal upwelling. They are usually the most abundant phytoplankters from about March through July.
All of those button-like round objects are centric diatoms in the genus Coscinodiscus. They can be large cells, getting up to 500 μm in diameter. Coscinodiscus is in some ways the quintessential centric diatom, as you will see below.
Take a look at these objects:
Clearly, one is a circle and one is a rectangle, right? Well, yes, but these two objects are the same type of thing—they are both cells of Coscinodiscus. The easiest way to understand diatom anatomy is to think of the frustule (the outer skeleton of the cell) of Coscinodiscus as being constructed like a petri dish. Because that’s actually what it is: an outer casing of silica with two halves, one of which fits over the other exactly the way a petri dish lid fits over the bottom of the petri dish. If you place a petri dish on a table and look down on it, you will see a circle. But if you pick up the petri dish and look at it from a side view, you will see a rectangle. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and try it with any canned food item in your pantry. Coscinodiscus is the same. If it lands on the microscope slide lying flat, it will look like a circle; this is called the valve view because you are looking down on the surface of one of the two valves of the frustule. Most of time when we see Coscinodiscus we see it in valve view. Sometimes you get lucky and a cell remains “standing up” even after you drop a cover slip on top of your sample, and you see the cell as a rectangle. This is called the girdle view. So in the photo above, what you see on the left is a Coscinodiscus cell in valve view, and what you see on the right is the same type of cell in girdle view. Same object, two perspectives, and two shapes. By the way, this is the answer to the question posed in the previous post.
And this is what a valve view of Coscinodiscus looks like when you zoom in:
You can see some of the sculpturing on the frustule, and the beautiful golden-brown color of diatoms. The diatoms are related to the brown algae and share the same overall set of photosynthetic pigments, which explains why diatoms are often the same colors as kelps.
Another of the common diatoms around here are those in the genus Chaetoceros. The prefix ‘chaet-‘ means ‘bristle’, and the cells of Chaetoceros have long bristles. Unlike Coscinodiscus, Chaetoceros forms chains. Some species form straight chains, others form spiraling chains, and still others form a sort of meandering chain that is embedded in a tiny blob of mucilage. The cells below are forming a straight chain.
In addition to all of the diatoms, there were more dinoflagellates than I expected to see. Ceratium was very well represented, often in chains of two cells.
I was even able to capture some video of Ceratium cells swimming in the thin film of water under the coverslip. Dinoflagellates have two flagella: one wrapped in that groove, or “waistline”, and one that trails free. Usually it’s the trailing flagellum that’s easier to see, and if you watch you’ll be able to see it in each of the cells.
Protoperidinium was another common dinoflagellate in the sample. Unlike the diatoms and photoautotrophic dinoflagellates, which have that sort of golden-brown color, Protoperidinium is a heterotroph. It eats other unicellular protists by extruding its cytoplasm out of the holes in its cellulose skeletal plates and engulfing prey, similar to the way an amoeba feeds. Because it does not rely on photosynthesis for obtaining fixed carbon, Protoperidinium comes in colors that we typically don’t associate with photoautotrophs. Pink, red, and grayish brown are common colors. This time I saw several that were bright red.
So that’s a glimpse of springtime in the ocean. Now let’s look up!
Legend has it that the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano every year on March 19, which is St. Joseph’s day. I don’t pay attention to St. Joseph’s day, but I do pay attention to the vernal equinox every year and keep an eye out for the return of our swallows to the marine lab. We get both cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) and barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) building mud nests on our buildings. Last year (2021) the cliff swallows showed up first, with the barn swallows arriving a few weeks later; I remember being worried that they might not show up at all.
This year the swallows returned right on schedule. I saw my first barn swallows on the day of the vernal equinox, 21 March 2022.
They are so pretty! I haven’t seen any nest-building yet, but did witness what might have been a territorial spat. The bird in the photo above is the one on the left that is retreating in the photo below
Look at that gorgeous outspread tail! Barn swallows migrate to North America from southern Mexico and Central America. The cliff swallows come all the way from South America; no wonder they’re a little late arriving in California! I think they’ll show up any day now, and both they and the barn swallows will begin daubing mud above doorways and under the eaves.
Somehow, no matter what else is going on and what the calendar says, it never feels like spring until the swallows are zooming around again. Spring is my favorite season, as there’s so much going on, and I begin to feel energized again with the longer days. I have a busy spring teaching schedule and don’t know how much time I’ll have to do fun things like look at plankton for the hell of it, but will try to slow down often enough to take note of what’s happening around me.
Date/time: Saturday 2022-02-19, 08:00-09:30 Location: Natural Bridges State Park Weather: Chilly (8.3C), as sun hadn’t yet risen above the roofs of the houses nearby; very light breeze
For Day 2 of the 2022 Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) I went to Natural Bridges, not suspecting that I would be able to ID and count so many species literally just inside the park boundaries. I ended up dividing my observation period into three locations and spent about half an hour at each.
Observation spot #1: Just inside the park boundary on Delaware Avenue (see map below)
This weekend, 18-21 February 2022, are the four days of the Great Background Bird Count. This is a global community science project in which people go out and document bird life. The beauty of a project like this is that is available to anyone who has a window to the outside. Of course, anybody can look at birds any time. To participate in the official project, people need to add their observations to eBird, which is similar to iNaturalist only specific to birds.
Day 1
Date/time: Friday 2022-02-18, 09:00-10:00 Location: Younger Lagoon overlook Weather: Sunny, with very slight overcast; no breeze at first, but light breeze after about 09:30
Canada goose (Branta canadensis): 6
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos): 4 female, 4 male
Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola): 4 female
American wigeon (Mareca americana): 4 female, 5 male
American coot (Fulica americana): 12
Northern harrier (Circus hudsonius): 1
Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis): 1
Red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus): hard to say, but at least 20 lekking away in the field across the lagoon
Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), carrying a fish!: 1
European starling (Sturnus vulgaris): murmuration of ~100
Bewick’s wren (Thryomanes bewickii): 1
Song sparrow (Melospiza melodia): 2
Yellow-rumped warbler (Setophaga coronata): 2 male
In addition to this tally of species, which is fine in and of itself but not all that interesting, I did get to see some interactions. The northern harrier is a perennial resident, and I often see it either perched on a fence post across the lagoon or soaring low over the fields. Today the red-tailed hawk was perched on a fence post, and I didn’t see the harrier until it flew in several minutes later. The harrier crossed in front of the hawk, flying low, and flushed out a murmuration of starlings. It chased the starlings around for a little while, obviously not hunting them. And as much as I wish starlings hadn’t been introduced to North America, the flow of a murmuration is fascinating to watch. Even a small one of about 100 birds is rather impressive. Anyway, the hawk on the fence post watched all this activity for a few minutes and seemed to be rather peeved by all the kerfuffle. It ruffled its feathers and flew off. The harrier flew away later, and the starlings kept up their murmuration until I left.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve rented two super telephoto lenses, to see what all the hype was about. I mean, do I really need 500 or 600mm of reach? I had read up on the specs of such lenses, and one major drawback is the weight—1900 grams or more. Would I be willing to lug a beast like this around, and would I be able to use it effectively? You never know until you try, so I rented them. And, of course, it was foggy both weeks so I didn’t have much opportunity to take decent photos. But since the entire point of renting the lenses was to see if I could use them at all, that was fine.
As part of the test-drive for the second lens, I went up to Waddell Beach to see if there would be any birds to photograph. It is migration season, and our winter residents will be arriving soon. Some of them, such as the red-necked phalarope, have shown up at Younger Lagoon over the past four weeks or so. It was really foggy at Waddell, remember, and I didn’t have much hope of seeing anything remarkable. There were some gulls and whimbrels off in the distance. But it turned out that the stars of the show were blackbirds!
They were hard to miss, because there were 50-60 of them and they were hopping up and down like jumping beans.
This is a mixed flock of Brewer’s blackbirds (Euphagus cyanocephalus) and red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoenicius). The glossy greenish-black birds are the male Brewer’s blackbirds, and most of the brownish birds are female Brewer’s blackbirds. Since both sexes were doing the hopping, I didn’t think this behavior had to do with courtship or mating.
So yes, while most of the birds seemed to be Brewer’s blackbirds, I did hear the liquid gurgling of the red-winged blackbird’s song coming from somewhere in the flock. When I got home and looked at the photos on the big monitor, I did see some red-winged blackbirds. Here’s a male, surrounded by other males red-wingeds and both female and male Brewer’s blackbirds.
In this photo above the black birds are male Brewer’s blackbirds. The brown birds without faint wing bars are female Brewer’s blackbirds, and the brown birds with the wing bars are male red-wingeds. There were no female red-winged blackbirds in any of my photos. According to an article from Cornell’s Bird Academy, the males spend the weeks leading up to springtime competing for territories, and when the females return from their winter migration they will choose mates based partly on the quality of the territory. Mid-September is too early for this kind of competition, though. We are just about up to the autumn equinox, but not near winter quite yet.
Back to the hopping. There’s a clue in this photo about what I think was going on:
See that little fly? There were many such flies, most of which were lower on the beach gathering around the kelps and other wet detritus that had washed up. There were fewer flies up where the driftwood accumulates, though. Once again, it wasn’t until I saw the pictures on my big monitor that I could figure out what those blackbirds were doing. They were hopping up to eat flies!
Here’s a series of shots showing one of the male red-wingeds in mid-hop.
I don’t have any hard evidence that the blackbirds (both Brewer’s and red-wingeds) are catching flies. And while I was at the beach watching them hopping up and down I had no idea what they were doing. However, now that I’ve seen the flies in the photos, it makes sense that the birds would be hopping up to catch and eat them, especially since both sexes of the Brewer’s blackbirds were doing the same thing.
In Morro Bay, CA, there is a stand of eucalyptus trees that has been designated a natural preserve. In 1973 the Heron Rookery Natural Preserve was established to protect great blue herons (Ardea herodias) as they nested. Since then other bird species have taken to nesting in these same trees. When we were there at the end of May we saw these species with nests in the eucalyptus trees:
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias)
Double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus)
Great egret (Ardea alba)
Snowy egret (Egretta thula)
This particular rookery is not at all removed from human activity. It is right across the street from the municipal golf course and next to a hotel, and there is a walking/biking trail that runs directly under the trees. Signs advise people to keep their voices down, but pedestrians are walking under the trees all day, dodging the rainfall of guano from above. The birds don’t seem to be bothered.
Unlike the Brandt’s cormorants (Phalacrocorax penicillatus), which nest on cliffs and rocks, the double-crested cormorants nest in trees. Birds build nests with local materials, and there is a difference in what I could see making up the nests of these two species. The Brandt’s cormorants at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz were using seaweeds as the main building material; I could see birds flying back with algae in their beaks, and then either handing it off to a mate on the nest or tucking it into the existing structure itself. In some cases I could see the pieces of algae well enough to make a tentative ID.
Those are the Brandt’s cormorants. The double-crested cormorants nest in the trees, as we saw at the heron rookery. Here’s a pair that have a brood of three chicks:
At Morro Bay, which is an estuary rather than a rocky area, the double-crested cormorants use a lot of eelgrass (Zostera marina) in their nests. Eelgrass is very abundant in the Morro Bay harbor and Estero, whereas the birds would have to fly a bit farther to gather algae. Eelgrass, being a true plant, is less slimy than the algae are, and these cormorants’ nests look much drier than the mounds of algae used by the Brandt’s cormorants up in Santa Cruz.
A short distance up the coast at San Simeon the double-crested cormorants were nesting in a smaller rookery, also in eucalyptus trees. I liked the pattern of how these four nests were situated in three-dimensional space:
Double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) nesting at San Simeon 2021-05-23 @ Allison J. Gong
Returning to goings-on at the heron rookery in Morro Bay, the herons and egrets were also raising youngsters in that stand of eucalyptus trees. Remember, this rookery is very easily visited by humans. Here’s a view of the trees, taken from the small parking area:
It’s difficult to photograph the nests because of all the branches obscuring the view. We were also there near mid-day, with the overhead sun making lighting conditions less than favorable for good photography. I did find one comparatively visible heron nest, containing one parent and one sullen punk-ass teenager of a chick. The nestling had started growing feathers but was still almost half fluff, clearly not ready to fly yet.
From what I could see, the herons and egrets don’t use any marine material at all to build their nests. One factor that determines the suitability of a potential building material is proximity—even if a certain material is fantastic in other ways, birds may not use it (or may use less of it, compared to other materials) if it costs too much energy to fetch and bring back to the nesting site. For the herons at this site, sticks are easy to come by. Another thing to consider is that herons and egrets are not marine birds. Although some populations live and nest in coastal areas, most do not. Thus it is not surprising that their nests are built from materials that are terrestrial rather than marine.
I did not see any snowy egret nests in areas where they could be photographed well. However, there were some adult snowies in their spectacular breeding plumage. There was enough of a breeze to ruffle up those long plumes that used to be harvested to decorate ladies’ hats.
For several decades now, the cormorants, herons, and egrets have been nesting in these eucalyptus trees, which brings to mind the consideration of native versus non-native species. The trees themselves, blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) are non-native, having been imported to California from Australia starting in the 1870s. This introduction was encouraged by calls to replace native trees that had been cleared for fuel and building material, both of which were desperately needed during and after the Gold Rush. Since ecologists began considering the effects of non-native species in the 1980s there has been a backlash against the blue gums. Given their large size, their having been planted in groups to serve as windbreaks, and their propensity for dropping a lot of debris, they are very conspicuous, and it is easy to get all hot and bothered at how in certain places they dominate the landscape.
At which point, however, does a species cease to be considered non-native? Having been established in California for 150 years, what is the role of E. globulus in the ecology of the Golden State? There are many people and organizations that would like to see the blue gums eradicated, or at least their populations greatly reduced. On the other side of the argument, groups such the San Francisco Forest Alliance posit that blue gums should be treasured as heritage trees.
At the Heron Rookery, some of the eucalyptus trees are dying. One reason is sheer old age. Another is the several decades’ accumulation of bird wastes onto the soil, which is slowly killing the trees. As the blue gums die, the birds will have to find other places to nest. One of the pro-eucalyptus arguments is that many species of native birds—not just these here but other species such as red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawks, and a whole host of songbirds—nest in eucalyptus trees throughout the state. If the blue gums are removed, then where will these undoubtedly native birds nest? Especially if the native trees have long been gone?
Taking the long view, my guess is that the birds will figure it out. Ecological communities evolve over thousands of years. The 150 years of the eucalyptus trees’ presence in California seems like a long time, but in terms of ecological time they are merely a blink of the eye. The herons, egrets, and cormorants have been nesting at the Heron Rookery for an even shorter period of time. When this stand of blue gums is gone, due to either natural attrition or removal by humans, the birds will find another place to nest. They might not choose a place that is so easily visited and observed by people, though.
