Author Archive | Larry Jordan

The Dark-eyed Junco (or as some folks call it, the Snowbird)

By Larry Jordan on January 13, 2024 in Birds

It’s Dark-eyed Junco season! According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, this “snowbird” is one of the most common and familiar North American passerines. They usually show up in Shasta County in November and grow in number until they disappear in March, except for higher elevations like Lassen Volcanic National Park. We spotted a pair of juncos with a juvenile at Manzanita Lake in July last year during our annual campout!

As you can see from this map, the Dark-eyed Junco appears throughout the United States and Canada, and even spills over into northern Mexico. A large number breed in the far North but many reside year-round in the western United States.

One way to identify the Dark-eyed Junco from a distance, even if they are flying around, is their conspicuous white outer tail feathers. These photos are from Miles and Teresa Tuffli who run the bird blog “I’m Birding Right Now“. They graciously gave me permission to use their DEJU tail feather photos.

Even this juvenile Dark-eyed Junco already has white outer tail feathers!

There are five recognized sub-species of Dark-eyed Juncos, Slate-colored, Oregon, Gray-headed, White-winged, and Guadalupe. The most common here in Shasta County is the “Oregon” subspecies, followed by the Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco. This is a typical Oregon Junco similar to the photo at the top of the post but most likely a female.

And a different image of a female Oregon Dark-eyed Junco.

Here are a few images of the more rare (in our area) Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco…

and another.

We love these Dark-eyed Juncos that visit us every winter. Keep an eye out for those rarer sub-species. You never know when you might find a rare Junco in our midst!

Scrub-Jay: The Elegant Bully

By Larry Jordan on May 3, 2023 in BirdWords

California Scrub-Jay

California Scrub-jays are the West Coast, lower-altitude version of the widespread jay tribe, which itself is part of the corvid family, the global group that includes crows, magpies, and similar large-billed, intelligent, opportunistic birds. Our scrub-jays are oak woodland specialists.

Like most jays in North America, the California Scrub-jay wears a lot of blue–although, following the geography of European colonization, only the Eastern bird wears the name “Blue Jay.” Our scrub-jay has a rounded head, not crested, and a blue topside with a partial necklace extending into pale gray underparts; it’s a well-dressed, thoroughly attractive bird. The jays are imposing–large, bold, and inquisitive. They often patrol their neighborhoods in brash family gangs.

Their bills are particularly hefty, allowing the versatility to acquire and eat a range of foods–fruits, nuts, and a variety of meats. Those formidable bills empower a proprietary demeanor, and seem to intimidate smaller birds, who scatter from feeders when the scrub-jays arrive and watch helplessly when the larger birds dine on their eggs or nestlings. The unstated threat that the scrub-jay’s powerful bill poses seems to reprise the Pancho and Lefty lyric: He wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel. They are wild animals, after all, and live by a brutal code.

Some steal the acorns their companions have hidden for winter consumption. That behavior in turn seems to affect their social attitude. Scrub-jay thieves, like those among their cousin crows and other species, seem suspicious; they wait to hide their own acorns until they are alone and unobserved.

With their mates the scrub-jays appear reliable. Nearly 90% of them remain paired from one year to the next. Both adults help build their nest, and they often feed each other as well as their young.

Come winter they typically gang up and hold their territories, often with loud sorties of spread-winged flight through the neighborhood understory. Their flocking, their size and robust demeanor, their power and assertiveness, all seem to keep the scrub-jays going. Until the 1930’s California fruit and nut growers, thinking it would protect their crops, organized large-scale shoots of these birds. Still, the scrub-jays have persisted, and maintain a stable population.

Osprey are Awesome!

By Larry Jordan on June 26, 2021 in BirdWords

Osprey Adult with Nestlings Underwing

The Osprey, aka fish hawk, is a bird of prey with some very special adaptations giving them their own taxonomic genus, Pandion and family, Pandionidae. Their outer toes, like those of owls, are reversible, allowing them to grasp their prey with two toes in front and two behind. Osprey toes also have sharp spicules on their lower surface allowing them to grasp slippery fish. They are the only raptor that plunge-dives feet first for live fish, which account for over 99% of their diet.

Osprey Diving For Fish courtesy of Teddy Llovet, Flickr Creative Commons

Like the Bald Eagle, Osprey populations suffered major declines largely due to the use of DDT in the 1950s and 60s. Osprey studies provided key evidence in court to block continued use of persistent pesticides, and Osprey populations recovered rapidly thereafter. Although small pockets of contamination remain, their historic range has greatly expanded and many populations in Canada and the United States now exceed historical numbers, owing to a cleaner environment, increasingly available artificial nest sites, and this bird’s ability to tolerate human activity near its nests. Now Osprey are the second most widely distributed raptor species, after the Peregrine Falcon, found in temperate and tropical regions of all continents, except Antarctica.

Osprey Building Nest at Shasta Dam

Being a predominately fish eating raptor, they nest near fresh or salt water, building large stick nests historically atop trees, rocky cliffs, and promontories. However, predation, loss of trees, and development of shorelines have been driving forces of Osprey shifting their nesting preferences to an array of artificial sites like channel markers in harbors and busy waterways; towers for radio, cell phone, and utility lines; and platforms erected exclusively for the species.

Osprey On Nest Platform

Shasta County is blessed, having many nesting locations for Osprey, several of them being man-made platforms. There was a pair of Osprey that built a nest atop the soccer field lights at Anderson River Park for many years. Unfortunately, the lamps in that light array had to be replaced every so often which usually caused damage to the nest. Wintu Audubon Society and the late Karen Scheuermann, wildlife rehabber of Tehama Wild Care, coordinated with the City of Anderson to install a permanent nesting platform atop that light stand to allow the Osprey to nest there in the future without being disturbed.

Osprey are usually monogamous and mate for life. They also show high fidelity to successful nest sights. We are pleased to announce that a pair of Osprey have indeed accepted our nest platform at the Anderson River Park soccer field and are currently raising two young! In the coming weeks we will be mounting a plague on the light pole to commemorate this coordinated and successful effort to advance the continued breeding success of this beautiful raptor.

Osprey Adult with Nestling at Anderson River Park, June 17, 2021

The Redding Christmas Bird Count: a History

By Larry Jordan on January 25, 2020 in BirdWords, Christmas Bird Counts

Great-tailed Grackle

Up through the 19th century many folks in this country celebrated the Christmas season in “side hunts” in which they competed at how many birds they could kill, regardless of whether they had any use for the carcasses and of whether the birds were beneficial, beautiful, or rare. Ornithologists and bird watchers were appalled at the slaughter. In December 1900, Frank Chapman an early officer in the nascent Audubon Society proposed a new holiday tradition—a “Christmas Bird Census” that would count birds during the holidays rather than hunt them. On Christmas Day of that year 27 birders took part in 25 places in the United States and Canada. Since then participation has grown every year, now exceeding 80,000 people in 2,400 locations in 17 countries.

Bird Hunting

Shasta County participation, conducted by the Lassen Bird Club, began briefly in the late 1950’s but ended when the club folded in 1967. The first project of the newly formed Wintu Chapter of the National Audubon Society was the Christmas Bird Count in 1975. It was soon followed by a Count in Fall River Valley, Red Bluff and more recently Anderson. All Counts follow a standard protocol. The count is performed any day from December 14 to January 5 within “a count circle” with a diameter of 15 miles. The Redding Count is centered just north of Keswick Dam and extends north to Shasta Dam, south to Clear Creek, west to Oak Bottom Marina on Whiskeytown Lake, and east to Shasta College. It is designed to include a variety of habitats, open water, valley grasslands, oak woodlands, brush lands and conifer forest–and, of course, an increasing portion of urban and suburban habitat. The circle is divided into 10 sectors with a team leader assigned to each sector. Teams count from dawn to dusk rain or shine every bird they see by species. Participation is open to all and is free of charge. At the end of the day participants gather at a local restaurant for a no-host dinner and a compilation of the results. Learning the surprise findings of other teams is fun and emphasizes the old adage that “birds are where you find them” not always where you expect them.

The results are by no means as accurate as a human census. The experience of the birders, the weather, and the changing quality of locations examined, all influence both species identification and number of individuals. Not all of the area in the count circle is covered, and not every bird along the route is seen or identified. Big flocks can’t be counted precisely. Also, telling whether a bird has been counted twice can be difficult. A Bald Eagle in flight over the count circle may be counted by several teams, whereas only a fraction of the White-crowned Sparrows in the roadside bushes might be counted. The strength of the results lies in the long-term trends in species numbers, recognizing that the habits of birds and people remain the only constant.

Bald Eagle in flight photo courtesy Andy Morffew

Our results are sent to the National Audubon Society that along with other organizations uses data collected in this long-running wildlife census to assess the health of bird populations, and to help guide conservation action. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has included Audubon’s climate change work from CBC data as one of 26 indicators of climate change in their 2012 report.

Western Meadowlark

Now with 45 years of Christmas Bird Counts here in central Shasta County several clear trends are apparent. As expected, urban development within the count circle has reduced the habitat available for Western Meadowlarks and California Thrashers. The range expansion of Great-tailed Grackles, originating from the southeastern U.S., reached the Redding Area in 2010 and now has several established sites at Lema Ranch and the Clover Creek Preserve. The Common Raven has made a strong move into the valley and downtown Redding beginning in 2007. You can now see them on light poles along busy streets. The Red-shouldered Hawk habitat in central Shasta County historically was confined to riparian vegetation along the Sacramento River. Since 1997 it has expanded its range and can be found on farms and rural subdivisions throughout the valley. Perhaps most spectacularly, the Eurasian Collared-dove arrived in the Redding area in 2008 and is now well-established at about 60 individuals throughout Redding neighborhoods. You are probably aware of its tiresome hooting, a pushier sound than the coo of our native Mourning Doves.

Mourning Dove

These are just some of the trends the Redding Christmas Bird Count has documented.

A Gentle Beauty

By Larry Jordan on December 28, 2019 in BirdWords

Mourning Dove

As they say, it takes all kinds. That all-kindliness brings a variety of glories into the world. Some are brilliant, like orioles. Some are loud, like mockingbirds; or sing melodically, like finches, or raucously, like jays. Some just dignify life with a humble beauty and gentility. Consider mourning doves.

They don’t sparkle with rainbow colors. They dress in a soft gray-brown, adorned by just a few black dots and dashes, and, for the careful observer, tinges of peach and blue.

Mourning Dove

Nor do they flutter fancy plumes. Their feathers are smooth, gentling from head to tip of tail, unruffled. In flight their tails fan white edges. At take-off their wings whistle against the wind, an unvoiced call to their mates and perhaps a distraction to predators. But they flaunt no fancy flags.

Nor do mourning doves shout for attention like carnival barkers or buyers of computer screen pop-ups. They just coo a mellow refrain, the sorrowful song that gives them their name. Listen to that song: its apparent sadness sounds not so much like a complaint as an homage to beauty.

The doves are quintessential Americana, living all over the contiguous US. Like many other Americans, they do some seasonal travel, mostly north in summer and south in winter. They live in a variety of habitats, and like historical Yankees, they make do.

Mourning Dove Range

They thrive in fields with scattered trees, but they’ll make home in suburbia or deserts, too.

They enjoy a good meal, out-eating holiday revellers with daily consumption of 12-20% of their weight in seeds and grains. Don’t try that at home, or anywhere else!

Mourning Dove

They drink deeply, sucking in water without the need to tilt up robin-style for gravity’s assistance. If fresh water is not available, they will handle brackish.

Perhaps the rarest quality of mourning doves is in how they feed their nestlings, known as squabs. In a simple nest, just a flimsy platter of twigs, the mother dove lays two eggs. When the helpless squabs hatch two weeks later, feeding must begin. But tiny seeds do not carry to a nest as readily as insects, nor do they have the same nutrient quality, nor can squabs digest them. The solution?– Both parents have crops, and hormonal changes cause their crops to switch from food storage to lactation a couple days before the young hatch. This “crop-milk” consists of sloughed-off cells from the crop lining, and, like mammalian milk, it is high in protein, fat, and antibodies–just what the babies need. Both parents feed this milk, mouth to mouth, to their young newborns.

In all the bird world, only doves and pigeons, flamingoes, and male emperor penguins (the females are away feeding in the ocean when emperors hatch) have evolved the capacity to create crop milk.

Mourning Dove

With their nutritious jump on life, and up to six clutches per year in their varied habitats, mourning doves nearly keep pace with not just the losses that all birds of our time face, but the high ingestion of lead pellets to which grain-eaters are vulnerable, and an annual hunt of twenty million. They have declined only 15% in the last half century, a terrible statistic, but better than the 50% decline of field birds in general.

Mourning Dove

And through it all, these unassuming doves sustain a special place in human lore. Not flashy, but vital, they remain a gentle and enduring symbol of peace, a beauty we can all appreciate.

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Author Archive | Larry Jordan