western gull ~ 07/07/14 ~ at home

western gull chick

Larus occidentalis

I encountered a small surprise as I headed to the laundry room.  Looks like one of this year's Lord of the Dance exited its nest and fell from our roof a little too early.  It's a cute bugger.

ps 08/14/14 - I should note that this little one did not survive the week.  We found it without its head and disemboweled on the side of the road out front.  My friend Bee thought it could have be an opossum that killed the chick.  Over the course of several days, bits went missing until only a pile of feathers remained.  Gross, I know, but hey, it happens.

western tanager ~ 05/11/14 ~ at home

western tanager in New Zealand Christmas tree

Piranga ludoviciana in Metrosideros excelsa

Myrtaceae

On Saturday, Andy spotted an all-yellow bird in the neighbor's kiwi Christmas tree from our 3rd floor window and described it to me.  He said it looked like a canary with a yellow head and some coloring on the wing, but not all black.  Besides Townsend's warblers over the winter, we rarely get bright yellow birds on this side of town.  So, I queried a friend less than 2 miles away on the ocean side of the Peninsula since she sees yellow birds regularly around her home.  She's also noticed a couple atypical birds with orange heads hanging around.  We finally got a picture of it Sunday after several glimpses of it and a mate as they flew around from the neighbor's tree to the tree tops in the park and back again.  We went running from room to room, too, hoping to see them through one of the windows.  I think they'd be impossible to see from the ground.  I went from guessing it was someone's lost pet parakeet to a female hooded oriole.  Ha!  Nope.  Depending on the angle, that orange crown is not always visible, which makes distinguishing male from female difficult at times.  I wonder how long they'll hang around?  They really seemed to like picking at the red blooms that look very much like bottle brush.

bald eagle ~ 02/16/14 ~ Los Padres Dam

bald eagle

Haliaeetus leucocephalus

What a nice surprise!  I almost didn't believe it.  This bird was massive with an all white head and all white tail.  I didn't even know we could find bald eagles in Monterey County, because I usually associate them being further north starting near Oregon. Now, I wonder how many I may have seen in the distance riding air currents and mistook for turkey vultures.  I'm almost ashamed to admit how little I know about the bald eagle story here on the Central Coast.  This blog post is as good of an excuse as any to read up on this delisted federally endangered and currently state endangered national symbol.  It's interesting how the bald eagle was extirpated from the county back in 1934 and reintroduced by the Ventana Wildlife Society starting in 1986. Monterey Birds 2d ed. by Don Roberson has an excellent accounting of bald eagles and their nesting history in the county.  Don confirmed to me that they are indeed rare at this location.

hairy woodpecker ~ 01/19/14 ~ Black Hill

 

hairy woodpecker

Picoides villosus

more information

Ta-da!  This has got to be one of the crappiest pics posted to Nature ID.  I digitally enhanced it as much as possible, too, which is something I rarely do.  Oh well, I think it's good enough to make a positive ID.  It's another new-to-me sp.

The first thing that caught our attention was the tree seemed to be dropping bits and pieces.  What the hey?  Turns out this woodpecker was pulling bits of bark off the tree trunk in between brief bouts of drilling.  Well, that's different.  Hey, where's the red head?  Usually, whenever I notice woodpeckers (rarely), they almost always have a red head, which I assume (probably inaccurately) are the clown-like acorn woodpeckers.  The last thing I noticed was that long white stripe.  Visually it didn't make sense to me that it was located in the middle of the back, because I kept wanting to believe it was on the edge of the wing, like with the sapsuckers.  It really confused me until I looked at my pictures and read up on an ID.  Turns out there's a smaller, cuter look-alike called the downy woodpecker (P. pubescens).  I liked the description on Cornell's site that said the larger hairy woodpecker has a "somewhat soldierly look".  True, true.  Oh, and that pulling bits of bark is to find tasty insects.  They're apparently pretty decent at pest management.  Btw, males do have a small patch of red on the back of the head.

Cool.  Slowly expanding my bird awareness...

spotted towhee ~ 01/19/14 ~ Black Hill

spotted towhee

Pipilo maculatus

more information

Considering I still have my bird books out, I might as well continue with the crappy bird photos... hop, hop, hop, nah, nah, nah, you can't get a good shot.  This is a new sp. to Nature ID.  Except for its shape, it looks nothing like the related California towhee.  I like this striking bird, which reminds me more of a bolder and more colorful dark-eyed "Oregon" junco.  What would be the evolutionary advantage of the dark executioner's hood that many birds seem to have?

Cooper's hawk ~ 01/18/14 ~ Tidelands Park

Cooper's hawk

Accipiter cooperii 

I'd really like to be able to ID all the local hawks, but until I'm willing to carry around binoculars and/or a better, larger camera, my learning is slow going.  So, after much comparing of photos and finding this great Project FeederWatch page, I've concluded what I have here is a Cooper's hawk, not a sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus).  I focused on its capped (vs. hooded) head and tubular body shape.

cedar waxwing ~ 01/06/14 ~ Casa del Oro Garden

cedar waxwing

Bombycilla cedrorum

I love the look of waxwings.  They'd make a great model for an avian masked comic-book hero.  I've been keeping my eye out for them this winter and have spotted them 4 times since November.  It appears this group likes to sun themselves on a couple tall sycamore trees along the Casa del Oro Garden.  If you weren't paying attention to their chattery flock calls, they'd be easy to miss from a distance because they look a lot like dried leaves that haven't fallen off the tree.  I had to laugh when an Historic Garden League volunteer grumpily pointed out how much their seedy poop makes a mess on the sidewalk below, especially since I was just thrilled to be lucky enough to see them.  The flock is easily frightened to flight even with a horn honk.  It was somehow reassuring to read from several sources that cedar waxwings look a lot like starlings in flight, because that was my first thought when I saw them flow around in the air as a group.  I'm going to keep my eye on nearby toyon and pyracantha shrubs in the coming months.  The berries are plump and red but still untouched.  Maybe they're not ripe enough for the waxwings?

heron and egrets ~ 12/19/13 ~ Rec Trail

black-crowned night heron
Nycticorax nycticorax

more information

great egret
Ardea alba

more information

snowy egret
Egretta thula

more information

I never used to look up in the trees while walking along the water, because I was so focused on otters and harbor seals.  One day I startled a night heron near the Coast Guard Pier, and I watched it fly off to perch in a tree.  From then on, I kept an eye on the tree.  Lo and behold, there's a small group of 4 trees, 3 cypress and 1 willow, each with its own night heron for most of the last half of this year.  I wonder if I'll get to see them make a nest or two in the coming months.  Once I started looking up, I also started seeing lots of great egrets and great blue herons (not pictured here) perched all along the Rec Trail. Whoa!  How could I have been so blind to all these large birds above my head?  I don't know if it's only my new found awareness, or if the herons and egrets are actually numerous this year.  For certain, I have seen more snowy egrets than in years past.  They're all so elegant and fashionable.

pelagic cormorant ~ 12/19/13 ~ Monterey Bay Aquarium

pelagic cormorant
Phalacrocorax pelagicus

I love how the pelagic cormorants don seasonal attire appropriate for Christmas.  They have such a cute red face this time of year.  The sun has to hit them just right for the greens and purples to appear in the feathers, otherwise they look kind of drab.  A couple weeks ago, I noticed several already had their white butt patches (properly called flank patches), but not all of them yet.  I'll have to try to get photos of that, even if they are crappy like the first one above.  I gotta tell you, I so appreciate good nature photography now that I know how difficult it is.  I've really enjoyed watching the pelagic cormorants hang out at the Monterey Bay Aquarium all year.  They build their nests on those ledges under the building.  Their presence at the Aquarium is a relatively new occurrence, maybe within the past 10-12 years?  I believe the MBA is one of only a few places you can easily observe breeding and nesting up close, because they typically nest on inaccessible rocky cliffs.  Back in August, I suggested to Jim Covel that they add a cormorant nest cam to their relatively new Web Cams.  We'll see...

ps 12/23/13 - Today I saw my first pelagic cormorant carrying kelp nesting material back to the MBA ledges.  They really don't seriously nest until about March.  Maybe they're practicing?

pss 12/30/13 - Today I saw 2 cormorants actually sitting on what look like nests.  Crazy early?

black turnstone and surfbird ~ 11/29/13 ~ Coast Guard Pier

black turnstone (left) and surfbird (right)

Arenaria melanocephala (left) and Aphriza virgata (right)

The problem with self-study, like I do here on Nature ID, is that it's challenging to catch my own mistakes.  Fellow blogger John Rakestraw's recent post made me do a double-take of his last picture of two birds.  Hmm, the black turnstone and surfbird sure look a lot alike!  Have I been able to tell them apart before?  Based on my only confirmed sighting of surfbirds down in Morro Bay, I remembered them having yellow legs and being significantly heaftier than black turnstones.  Nope, they're only slightly larger.  It just so happened that as we were enjoying a post-holiday walk, we saw the two birds hanging out together along the Coast Guard Pier (apologies for the distance shot, but ever since they put up the fence on the Pier, good close-ups are hard to come by).  I really loved how different they look when they take flight, as Monika Wieland captured so well on her blog Orca Watcher - the black turnstone has the more striking white center strip down its back ending in a bold black spot, and the surfbird has a solid grey back.  As I was looking at my blog records, sure enough my only previous black turnstone post also shows the surfbird.  Right?  I made corrections.

CA condor ~ 01/20/13 ~ Pinnacles

California condor

Gymnogyps californianus 

posted 04/13/13 - Yep, I'm back with my exceptionally crappy photos.  This was our first ever sighting of the state and federally endangered CA condor.  During past trips to Pinnacles, we've been taunted by fellow hikers and campers with their breathless tales of how big they were.  I have to say, from a distance with only massive rocks as references, these condors did not impress me with their size.  Initially, we were flummoxed over what appeared to be white shoulder feathers.  Are those condors or maybe golden eagles?  A little later in our hike we talked with some researchers who confirmed the white shoulders were numbered tags with radio devices attached.  Pinnacles National Park (this designation has recently been upgraded from a National Monument) has a great page filled with condor links.  Also, Don Roberson has a nice summary of condors in Monterey County.  Very cool!

ps 10/22/13 - For a local blog post about a new condor streaming web cam, check out BigSurKate.

peacock ~ 11/24/12 ~ Casa de Fruta

peacock / male Indian blue peafowl
Pavo cristatus

Well, we didn't have turkey this Thanksgiving holiday, but we did spot another phasianid on our way home.  There were 5 peacocks haphazardly crossing the road and creating a traffic jam at Casa de Fruta, a roadside attraction that has grown to monstrous proportions in the 35 years I've passed through here.  Andy and I conferred that it's been about that long since we last saw peacocks regularly.  They seem to have been in fashion back in the 1970's.  Friends of my parents had them in their yard, and I have a vague recollection of my mom not knowing how to get one off the car so we could leave.  While the name peacock is ostensibly gender specific, I had never given peafowl a second thought before and figured Nature ID is as good of an excuse as any to look them up.  There are two other kinds of peafowl, the green peafowl (Pavo muticus) and the Congo peafowl (Afropavo congensis).  The Indian blue originates obviously from India, where it is the national bird, as well as from Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.  They have been introduced around the world.  In some places, feral populations have caused a nuisance with their calls and other issues with such a large bird.

great blue heron ~ 08/16/12 ~ at home

great blue heron
Ardea herodias

posted 08/25/12 - Grey, gray, blue? Fog, fog, bird. Heavy sigh. The typical CA coastal fog this summer has really sunk deep into my mood this year. We call it June Gloom, even though up here in Pacific Grove hundreds of miles from SoCal the drizzly fog hits hardest in July and August. I haven't been motivated to go out and take pictures of what I find. Silly really since in neighboring Monterey the fog often burns off by the afternoon. Today we're heading 3 hours inland to the Central Valley for my family reunion. A cousin reminded me how lucky I am to live in coastal summer weather. The forecast there is 99°F (37°C), "cooler" than the 110.4°F (43.5°C) from a couple weeks ago. Yellow, yellow, brown, here we come.

western gull ~ 07/27/12 ~ at home

western gull fledgling

Larus occidentalis

Ever since we got back from our road trip in early July, we knew we had a gull nest on our roof from all the calls that echoed down our kitchen vent and evening stomping on the ceiling that sounded like a production of Lord of the Dance. This is the second year in a row we've had a nest, and I worry it won't be the last. It's not well publicized online, but western gulls here have taken to nesting on rooftops in addition to their typical rocky island breeding spots.

We woke in the middle of Tuesday night from such a ruckus of screeching and trampling that we wondered if a raccoon had managed to get on the roof and attack the nest. The next morning, I had to shoo 3 fledglings out of the driveway while 2 adults cried and looked down at me from the roof. Western gull fledglings are not the swiftest at moving out of the way of moving cars. Lighthouse Avenue through New Monterey (a business district just up from the infamous Cannery Row and is one of only 2 publicly available roads out of Pacific Grove) is frequently littered this time of year with flattened fledglings. It fascinates me that drivers will patiently stop for a family of Canada geese crossing the road but will not even slow down for young gulls wandering aimlessly around.

Fluffy feathers rained down from the roof for a couple days like some sort of pillow fight had occurred while the 3 fledglings stayed at the end of our driveway. One of them could barely stand up, let alone fly.  Maybe it broke its leg from the fall?  The one shown above was testing its wings out and had awkwardly managed to perch in our oak tree and then to the Douglas-fir. One of the parents watched from the roof and called out as if in encouragement. Shortly after I took these pictures, this young gull crashed through the branches to the ground.

barn owl ~ 02/20/12 ~ Pinnacles

barn owl
Tyto alba
more information

I hope I never loose my enthusiasm about nature and the incredible diversity of life. I can't even begin to describe how excited Andy and I were when I spotted this owl on our drive into Pinnacles. As I've mentioned before, he hates backing up, whether running or driving, but when I shouted "Oh my god! There's an owl in the willows!" he immediately turned around, which is a bit difficult on a narrow one-lane road. He quickly dropped me off with the point-and-shoot as he went to look for a place to park. When another car came through, it flushed the owl out, and Andy had the better vantage point to see it fly. So cool!

Truth be told, I had no idea which kind of owl this was until I looked at my pictures and looked through my books. Yeh, yeh, it's a common barn owl, a very distinctive owl at that. You'd think I would have known, but I didn't. Apparently barn owls are listed as endangered in some states, like Connecticut and Wisconsin. For some reason, I thought barn owls were much darker, but I think I was mistaking them for great horned or spotted owls. As an aside, I love the notes my friend made in the books she's letting me borrow. She describes the spotted owl sounds as "like strangling a chicken with laryngitis." Too funny.

Woohoo, my first owl post on Nature ID!

kestrel ~ 02/18/12 ~ Fort Ord

male American kestrel
Falco sparverius

Yup, I've reached a new low (or is that high?) for crappy photos, especially of birds. Never mind the massive early-blooming silver bush lupine, the coyote brush, the coast live oak, or the dried bit of telegraph weed, there is a kestrel in this pic. Can you find it? Perched on the coyote brush?

When we went to Palo Corona back on January 2, 2012, I spotted several kestrels and was unable to capture any pictures of them. I love how brightly colored the males are with their light-colored breast, slate grey wings, and brown backs. The mere fact that I can actually recognize them is because I've flipped through every single page of the handful of bird books I now have in my possession (some are on permanent loan from a dear friend). It's a sharp learning curve for me to ID birds, but it's been fun.

sparrows ~ 02/12/12 ~ Hopkins

white-crowned sparrow (left) and song sparrow (right)
Zonotrichia leucophrys and Melospiza melodia

I love hearing the songs of these sparrows every time I walk past this 30 yard stretch of blackberries on both sides of the fence between the Rec Trail and Hopkins Marine Station. It's such a surprising and stark contrast to the sounds of Monterey Bay waves, gull cries, traffic, and jabber of tourists. Sparrow songs immediately transport me to a woodland's edge back in Ohio, even though they are quite common here in CA.

ps - I'm posting this 02/18/12 in honor of the Great Backyard Bird Count being held this weekend, even though I'm not participating in it myself. I'm learning about one bird at a time, and I think it would be an exercise in frustration for me to do a count on my own. The February Checklist for Pacific Grove is daunting.

black-crowned night heron ~ 01/08/12 ~ Coast Guard Pier

black-crowned night heron
Nycticorax nycticorax

For quite a while I've wanted to capture a picture of an adult black-crowned night heron during daylight hours. I've seen them regularly near the Coast Guard Pier, adults and juveniles, but I've never had a camera on me when I spot them. It's been almost 3 years ago since we often found a black-crowned night heron while grunion greeting in the middle of the night. We named him "Charlie" and knew if we saw him on the beach, we would have good luck finding grunion. The above picture is an unusual angle, because I was leaning over the railing of recently built restrooms at the boat docks. The actual Coast Guard Pier is once again closed this winter due to additional pier maintenance. They claim it'll be open to the public come February, but I suspect it won't open again until at least June.

belted kingfisher and western gull ~ 11/12/11 ~ Elkhorn Slough

belted kingfisher (below) and western gull (above)
Ceryle alcyon and Larus occidentalis

Phew! I'm done posting about non-native invasive plants for this hike. I realized I had neglected covering the most obvious weeds at Elkhorn Slough and needed to rectify the situation. In a similar vein, considering this estuary has so many birds, I always try to post at least one bird photo from an outing, even if it's crappy - I'm talking about the photos, not any particular bird... but now that I think about it... Unfortunately, many of the birds are far enough away that my little point-and-shoot can only cough up fuzzy, zoomed-to-the-max shots.

We came across two hikers with large binoculars, loudly ooing and awing over the various birds across the water. It was quite entertaining to hear their excitement. I overheard they were looking for a belted kingfisher that they thought had left the area. I casually looked down and pointed out, "Is that the kingfisher you're looking for?" As Andy and I walked away, we chuckled how sometimes people are so focused looking through their binoculars that they're unable to spot the bird nearest to them. And, in the relative quiet away from the hikers, we thoroughly enjoyed the amazing afternoon bird chorus that carried across the water. I wish I could have recorded it for this blog. For an incredible blog that does have various animal recordings, check out The Music of Nature.

ps - I'm considering organizing Nature ID birds a little better than I have. At this point, I'm undecided if I should do Order or Family, like is featured at BirdWeb, or more loose groupings based on shape, like is featured at Bird Friends of San Diego County and whatBird.com. For you birder followers out there, I'd appreciate hearing your opinion. Thanks!

terns ~ 11/03/11 ~ Morro Strand Beach

royal tern
Sterna maxima

edited 11/11/11 - These were the funniest looking birds I've seen in a long time, like gulls with clown outfits on. It's too bad we lost sight of the Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival leader who pointed out the surfbirds for us.

I originally posted these as all being elegant terns, but I was unsure and considered royal terns as an option. I asked if anyone could help me tell the difference between the two species, because I was pulling my hair out thinking they all had to be either elegant terns or all royal terns. I tried to convince myself the variations I spotted were due to some being younger birds. As I've blogged before, I'm aware I often make the incorrect assumption that similar looking things near each other must be the same. Thanks to commenters Neil and Jennifer, I agree there are actually two species of birds hanging out together. Neil provided an excellent link to the San Diego Natural History Museum Focus On Royal and Elegant Terns. Thanks to you both!

royal terns with 1 elegant tern 2nd from right
S. maxima with 1 Sterna elegans 2nd from right

The royal terns have white tops of the heads, like a man balding on top, and thicker, pumpkin-colored bills. They look stockier than elegant when standing side by side.

elegant terns with 1 royal tern 2nd from left
S. elegans with 1 S. maxima 2nd from left

The elegant terns have heads with black hoods that touch their eyes, thinner, sharper bill, and slightly smaller overall size. Note the yellow legs of the juvenile elegant tern.

mixture of elegant and royal terns

Now, can you spot the differences above? With all the variations in plumage within a species, depending on time of year, age of the bird, and sometimes sexual dimorphism (other birds), I hope my confusion can be easily understood. Now that I know what to look for, the differences seem obvious. It'd be more of a challenge distinguishing these terns in their breeding plumage. I'm just glad a caspian tern (Sterna caspia) was not in the mix, too.

Somehow it's comforting to know other people have a hard time IDing these terns, e.g., Ben's Blog - In Search of Nature, Birds, Butties & Bugs, and John Wall's Natural California (does he have a mix of both species, too?).