Natural History Journal

I often mention that owls are perhaps my most favorite group of birds.  They are beautiful, powerful and mysterious; every encounter with one of these magnificent creatures evokes a sense of awe and wonder. North America boasts an impressive 19 species of owl, all of which can be found in the Western United States.  Over a dozen species (15-ish, to be more accurate) are found in California alone. That number is a little vague due to owls' nocturnal habits and many species' preference for remote habitats.  For example, biologists suspect there may be Boreal Owls wintering deep in the remote montane forests of Northern California and the Sierra Nevada, where snowfall is heavy, roads or even trails are few and far between, and humans rarely venture.  And desert-dwelling Elf Owls may or may not be still clinging to survival in dwindling habitat along the Colorado River. While some species are rarely seen, others are quite common.  Though populations of Spotted...

I'm a little late to the birding party in terms of getting this post written, as my geology professor and fellow nature blogger, Garry Hayes, beat me to it with  his article over at Geotripper's California Birds.   But I want in on some of the birding excitement too, so bear with me! A Sage Thrasher is quite a rare find here in the Central Valley; before this bird, there have only been about a dozen sightings in Stanislaus County.  This individual was first spotted on the campus of Stanislaus State University almost two weeks ago by none other than my own father!  (I take full credit for getting him involved in birding, by the way!) While out on one of his regular walks around the campus, he noticed a new bird along the  Trans-California Pathway , a walking trail that meanders a few hundred yards along a man-made creek through vegetation representative of the plant communities found as one travels east and up in elevation from the valley floor into the Si...

Significantly more common and widespread than Sunday's Surfbird , Brewer's Blackbirds are familiar to many across the western United States as "parking lot birds," often encountered in close proximity to humans as they shamelessly seek handouts. These Brewer's Blackbirds were hanging out around the parking areas (and picnickers) at Point Pinos in Monterey last weekend.  But I was happy to see that the whole flock actively engaged in catching flying insects (namely, the flies that so adore piles of beach wrack) rather than feeding on crumbs and garbage left behind by careless tourists. Members of the blackbird family (Icteridae), Brewer's Blackbirds are closely related to orioles, grackles and meadowlarks.  Like some other members of their family, they are gregarious and social birds, nesting in colonies of up to one hundred birds.  They typically nest in trees and shrubs near water, but may also nest in reeds or cattails, tree cavities, and even on t...

Yesterday, Eric and I spent the day in Monterey with some friends, browsing used book stores, taking in the historic sites and, of course, exploring the tide pools and the rocky shoreline around Point Pinos.  The area affectionately known as The Great Tide Pool, made famous by the research, collections and publications of Edward Ricketts, is not only one of my favorite places to peer into tide pools, but also to bird, particularly with an eye for the birds of the rocky shore, like turnstones, oystercatchers and the appropriately-named Surfbird ( Calidris virgata ). Surfbirds are stocky migratory sandpipers, closely related to other familiar shorebirds  such as sanderlings , dunlin, and least and western sandpipers.  Surfbirds are relatively common along California's rocky shores during migration and winter, from late summer through late spring.  They are almost always found within the splash zone, just out of reach of the pounding waves and foaming sea spray....