Natural History Journal

Picture this:  In a garden of native plants, along the edge of a streamside grove of oaks and cottonwoods, tanagers and grosbeaks fly from branch to branch, flashes of brilliant color against a tapestry of muted greens and browns.  Woodpeckers and nuthatches hitch up the trunks of oaks, gleaning insects from crevices, while doves, quail and juncos pick up seeds from the ground.  A jay calls raucously, and another answers.  Finches and titmice visit swaying seed feeders, and flycatchers perch on conspicuous branches, sallying out to nab passing insects.  A hawk rides the thermals above, while a screech-owl peers sleepily from a cavity in an old cottonwood.  A dazzling array of bejeweled hummingbirds buzz from flowers to nectar feeders to flowers and back again.    From the trees along the creek echoes the peculiarly unique bark-like call of an Elegant Trogon. This, of course, is not my backyard! This, however, is my backyard!  (American Gold...

 Around mid-September, the Fox Sparrow, one of my favorite sparrows, moves into our part of the Great Central Valley to spend the winter quietly and unassumingly scratching around in the leaf litter covering the ground in brushy woodland-type settings.   Fox Sparrows ( Passerella iliaca ) are divided into four regional subspecies, based largely on coloration.   The dark colored "Sooty" Fox Sparrow (pictured here) breeds in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, and migrates south into chaparral along the Pacific Coast and the Central Valley for the winter months.   The "Thick billed" Fox Sparrow breeds predominately in California's Sierra Nevada, and moves south into Southern California during the winter.  (This is the Fox Sparrow that is likely to be encountered during summer in the Sierra.)   Some "Slate-colored" Fox Sparrows, which breed in the Rocky Mountain region, and "Red" Fox Sparrows, which breed from Alaska to Newfoundland, spend th...

Autumn is upon us, that glorious season marked by the return of so many long-absent friends.  While we have bidden farewell to many of our last warm-weather friends, those birds who leave the Central Valley to spend the winter in the distant tropics, a whole new suite of avian life is arriving on our doorstep.   I've been fortunate enough recently to be able to spend a couple of days out at one of my favorite local haunts, the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge, wandering the looping trails, watching the birds (and counting 70 different species), while soaking in the warmth and golden glow that is autumn in the Valley.   Sandhill Cranes fly low over the wetland at San Joaquin River NWR. Sandhill Cranes  have arrived, their distinctive croaking trumpet call carrying on the wind and echoing across the wetland.  Flocks of White-faced Ibis number in the hundreds, intermingling with conspicuous Snowy  and Great Egrets .  Noisy shorebirds, ...

Last fall, we looked at a few key players in California's great goose lineup, migratory waterfowl that travel south from their Arctic breeding grounds to spend the winter in our Great Central Valley.  Those species include the  Greater White-fronted Goose , the  Snow Goose , and the  Ross's Goose .  (Click the links to catch up on these three neat species!)  Merced National Wildlife Refuge is an excellent place to see all three of these species together, and get an ear-full of their great goose cacophony!  Greater White-fronted Geese show up first, beginning in September; in October, Snow Geese begin arriving in great numbers; and by November, large numbers of Ross's Geese will have arrived as well.  Numbers of all three peak in the tens of thousands in December and January. But today, I think another more familiar goose deserves some time in the spotlight.  And so I bring you... the Canada Goose. Ah yes, the ubiquitous Canada ( not "Ca...