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In the birding world a morning fly-out, or an evening fly-in, can be a thrilling sight.  The Winter Wings Bird Festival at Klamath Falls every February features pre-dawn trips to a dead-end road where you can see numerous Bald Eazgles fly out from their communal overnight roost.  And this morning I got to watch a smaller, but wonderful, fly-out right in front of my house.  Let’s call it the Ashland Fly-out.  Our local Wild Turkeys roost overnight in the tall trees of Lithia Park along Granite Street.  Mostly thery roost in Douglas-fir.  And I tried to get shots of the big guys flying out, one-by-one, chirping and squawking as they took wing from forty feet up.

Here’s a youtube video of a Snow Goose fly-out in New Mexico.  You can see the same thing at Sacramento Wildlife Refuge just off Exit 585 on Interstate 5 in Glenn County, CA. And there a small fraction of the geese will be the less abundant Ross’s.

The greatest fly-out I’ve ever seen was in Nebraska on a sub-freezxinf March morning along the Platte River when thousands of Sandhill Cranes bugle, shuffle about and then lift out in a swirling cloud of  cranes.  Here’s a video of a crane fly-out.  Here’s one of cranes moving about.  Here’s one of them on their roost island, uttering their ancient calls.  The cranes in Nebraska I believe to be the finest wildlife spectacle that survives in North America.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (DOA) has just issued a new map showing the planting zones for horticulture and farming.  It’s the first update in twenty years and shows the effects of global warming.  The DOA was stopped from issuing an update back in 2003 when the Cheney-Bush Admin tried to stop release of any data confirming global warming.  Now that federal science is under less political pressure to comply with a particular pro-business slant, the new maps have come out.

No surprise, the winters are warmer and many areas are now in slightly warmer zones requiring slightly less hardy plants.

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At the lower Granite Street owl box near Nutley (click on pic for full screen):

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The White-tailed Kite is usually seen in pairs.  Adults hunt together year round, unlike most American raptors.  The Kite is a vole specialist along the Pacific Coast, hewing to grasslands where the small mammals are most prevalent, most easily seen and caught.  The bird is slender and elegant, quick and pale.  Only the male Harrier comes as close to being a white bird among American raptors.  Most American hawks lack the subtle but eye-catching design elements of the kite.  Our Red-shouldered Hawks in the west are more brightly colored.  But among U.S. raptors only a Swallow-tailed Kite or an Osprey, carrying a fish torpedo-like beneath its fuselage, can compare our local kite.  This pair was hunting along Butler creek Road east of I-5 near Ashland…in grassy pastureland.

A pamphlet from 1975 lists the birds of Jackson County.  It was published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  The booklet drew on all known records up to that point.  This was before any significant Christmas Bird Counts, long before Feederwatch or even an active Audubon chapter.  Not listed among the raptors: Red-shoudered Hawk and White-tailed Kite. So in the past forty-seven years those two species have expanded their range northward from California.  Both are largely lowland birds who eat small mammals.  It is possible their range expansion is tied to the milder winters as neither species is migratory in fall or winter.  Heavy snow would make their hunting impossible.

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Behold the Wild Turkey, much admired by Benjamin Franklin for its fortitude and family values.

Again the breakfast serving was appreciated by a flock of seventeen birds.

One bird book by a renowned expert actually pretends you could confuse these birds with the TURKEY Vulture.  Huh?  After how many bottles of wine would that be? 

The bird’s Latin name is Meleagris gallopavo.  Meleagris is a Latin word for guinea fowl, a bare-headed bird known in Europe long before the Wild Turkey was discovered by Europeans when the penetrated the North American forests.  Gallo is chicken, pavo is peacock.  So here we have the guinea fowl-chicken-peacock bird.  In the early days the European explorers wanted the Anerican wildlife to be inferior copies of what they knew back home.  The wilderness they encountered must naturally be inferior to the Loire Valley or East Sussex, right?  Therefore, the people and animals were also inferior.  It was only after Romanticism spread across European intellectual circles that American animals could be admired, even celebrated by artists like John Gould.  It would have been better if they’d called the turkey “big brown acorn eater.”

Behold the tail, a subtle design in a pallette of dense and contrasting earth tones.  Nothing they sell in the Sundance catalog can compare with the designer clothing our turkeys wear for everyday.  And the toms, when they’re strutting their stuff…well, beyond the scope of any Paris fashion house.

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One day this week the jays did NOT show up for the morning peanut hunt.  They were largely absent from our garden all that day.  The peanuts remained untouched, even the squirrels wouldn’t come onto the porch  The next day: normal peanut frenzy.  My conclusion was that some predator, raptor or owl, had taken one of the local jays overnight and they needed a day to settle their nerves.  This jay-disappearance has happened before and it’s not seasonal nor seem to be weather related.

Speaking of predators, I’m hearing a lot of red-shouldered hawk screams in our neighborhood right now. Last spring a pair may have nested uphill from our house.  But these screams are all phoney as they come from Steller’s Jays who think it’s great fun to scare the bejeezus out of little mammals.  Their imitation is about 85% believable and if you’re a furry little vole, you aren’t going to wait around to see if it really is a hawk.

The Screech-owl is on his pre-spring toot, calling from his hunting perch at night.

The Red-breasted Nuthatches are now showing up in a pair some days.

I learned from local ornithologist Barbara Massey that out Juncos are not “our” Juncos.  The dozens I see in my garden daily during the winter and not the same individuals I spot in the mountains at 4500′ in the spring.  Our local breeders head south and the valley is occupied each fall by transients from much further north.  Ms Massey is working on a book about the migration and dispersal of our local mountains birds which is extremely complex and in some cases, unstudied heretofore.  Where do our local Mountain Bluebirds go to each winter?

GREATER CHIHUAHUA HAWK

This alpha predator was back on her perch at the Ashland Dog Park this morning.  I noted that chihuahuas are extremely rare there now.  Seems to work at least as well as the classic tiger whistle.

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A daily visitos, but hardly ever willing to pose for the camera.  Today, Red-breasted Nuthatch during a brief pause in the action.

The name “nuthatch” comes from an old English word “hatch” which meant same as “hack” for the way the bird hacks away at nuts to break off pieces small enough to eat.  The European nuthatches look much like the ones here in America.  Here are the Wild Turkeys at the breakfast counter, accompanied by the doe who knows the score.

The Screech-Owl was tooting across the street from our house one evening this week as the dog and I took our last walk of the day. And down by the Dog Park a Red-tail perched, waiting for a spare chihuahua?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And over at Ashland Pond, a Red-shouldered Hawk.

Up in LIthia Park, the Wood Ducks are in glorious feathers.  And take a look at our Lesser Goldfinches, they are also in full breeding colors already.

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The FAA has not tried to ground migrating Whooping Cranes.  They have, however, grounded the light aircraft used to lead first year Whoopers from Wisconsin to Florida as conservationists continue to build a second, reserve, population of Whooping Cranes.  There is always the chance that the surviving natural population now breed only in North central Canada and wintering on the Gulf Coast should suffer a major disaster from weather or disease.

Click here to hear the NPR interview with the grounded pilot.

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The Short-tailed Albatross, once thought extinct, is again breeding on Midway.  Here’s the story.  if you do any travel around the coast of the Hawaiian Islands, this is the albatross you’re most likely to see.  I got to see a few offshore of the Kona Coast and they’re beautiful fliers, as are all albatross.

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“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude…”  from “As You Like It” by Shakespeare.

“The  melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,                                                                                                                                        Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.”                                                                                          –William Cullen Bryant.

Perhaps the poets of our temperate climes have given the northern annual winters a bad name.  At this season you get some of the best looks at the most enthralling birds. Sure, it was cold and drippy this morning.  Wind howled through bare branches above Ashland Pond.  The cold was cutting, abrasive. But the birds who weren’t hiding in their brushy redoubts, those birds were fine indeed.

See how the Red-shouldered Hawk had to lean into the wind to stay on his perch.  A passing raven was driven sideways by the wind so his headway was slowed considerably.  The only other airborne birds I saw were ducks navigating against the unseen river of air currents.  Then a Flicker was foiund feeding on a school lawn protected from the wind by nearby hedges.  His patch of grass and his feathers were unruffled.      And in our protected garden where wind almost never ventures, the small birds fussed and fed.

The cold wind kept small birds huddled invisibly inside masses of foliage and branches at more windswept locations.  The winter air capable of desiccating those life-sustaining calories like sun dries a damp sidewalk.

243 Granite Street, Ashland, Jackson, US-OR Jan 22, 2012 7:45 AM 10 species

Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)  6. Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)  1. Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus)  1. Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri)  4. Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)  3. Bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus)  30. Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis)  1. American Robin (Turdus migratorius)  1. European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)  4. Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)  30.

Ashland Pond, Jackson, US-OR Jan 22, 2012 9:45 AM. 11 species

Wood Duck (Aix sponsa)  4. American Wigeon (Anas americana)  1. Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)  12. Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus)  3. Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps)  1. Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus)  1 American Coot (Fulica americana)  3. Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon)  1. Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus)  2. Common Raven (Corvus corax)  1. Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)  3.