January 5, 2020
Pacific Northwest
In the New Year’s Day The Daily Bucket - New Year's open nature thread that I posted a few days ago I noted quite a few folks reporting their first bird or birds of the year. That’s always a fun thing to do: starting another year’s bird sightings, either standing at our window or walking around our neighborhood. I thought this first edition of the Dawn Chorus of 2020 would be a good time for us to compare notes about who we’ve seen around our homes in these early days of the year — and an encouragement to step out to see, even on stormy cold wintry days. Anyone been keeping track of first-of-year birds in prior years? — that would be really interesting to hear about too. We birdwatchers act as citizen scientists, monitoring and documenting our granular local natural history in a way experimental research studies can’t.
Speaking of citizen science, I’d also like to invite anyone who'd be interested in participating in an informal home-range birding-report group some of us have been active in for the past few years. Backyard BirdRace is a monthly diary over at Backyard Science where folks are documenting their local birds both for a personal investigation of birds coming and going, and as a way to discuss who’s common or rare or migrating in one part of the country compared to other regions. If this sounds fun and interesting to you, feel free to drop by to read &/or add your observations, however you choose to keep track of your local birds. I use my eBird reports as an easy way to keep a list going. Some folks just report who’s new and unusual at their place — that’s great too! Click on Follow for the group and it’ll show up in your Activity Stream when the monthly diary posts.
Anyway, to kick things off today, I can share who I’ve been seeing these past few days while looking out my windows and as I’m out on my daily walkies.
After a surprisingly clement New Year’s Day, the weather at my place has settled into typical Pacific Northwest winter rain rain rain, with a side order of wind and more wind, relieved occasionally by very brief sunbreaks. Not surprisingly, except for my regulars at the feeders, birds have been a bit scarce, sheltering from the blustery conditions. Nevertheless, in the first 3 days of the year I’ve seen 28 species in what I consider my “home range”.
That includes both my ½-acre yard (a mix of trees, lawn, garden beds, shrubbery, thickets, clover patches plus my seed, suet and hummingbird feeders) and the circuit I take for my walkies (to several shorelines, each about a quarter-mile away from my house). My daily excursions on foot or bicycle take me not just to sandy, cobbly, rocky beaches but through woods, thickets, fields and ponds en route. The diversity of habitat makes for a variety of kinds of birds, even all at sea level.
Here’s what I’ve noticed so far:
Nine species of “feeder/yard regulars”: 4 sparrows (DE junco, Spotted towhee, Song and Goldencrowned), one finch (House), one woodpecker (Hairy), RB nuthatch, CB chickadee, and one hummingbird (Anna’s). Plus a flyby of an accipiter, no way to tell whether a Sharpie or a Coop.
Also a raven calling in the trees.
But most of my early birds are in or by the water (14): ducks (buffies, RB mergansers, hoodies, Surf scoters, Common goldeneyes), geese (Canada’s and a Cackler), one loon (Common), one grebe (Hooded), one cormorant (Double crested), one gull (Glaucous-winged), two shorebirds (Black oystercatcher, killdeer) and our Beach Crows. Behind the beach, including the wet fields, I’ve seen Starlings and Brewers blackbirds.
The weather makes for big differences in activity, even for the same kind of bird. As an example: among the Buffleheads, on our partly sunny New Year’s Day they cavorted casually near the beach with two Hooded mergansers:
Much more typical conditions are the leaden sea and skies that make most of my pictures at this time of year look like black-and-white photography:
At least the weather was calm enough for that raft of buffies to be in near shore. When the wind kicks up, like on January 3rd, with winds at 30+ knots and gusting to 50, the buffies who hadn’t hightailed it to sheltered ponds or coves were bouncing around in major wave chop, even sheltered in the lee of this rock:
As fun for me in noting who I’m seeing out there is what they're doing. A good example of that is the activity around a crab boat in one of the bays on January 2nd. This is commercial Tribal crabbing season (state season is closed, the quota filled) and workers put out crab pots which they locate by the buoys floating above each one. Crabbers are going for Dungeness crab, and they are rushing to make a circuit before dark checking the pots and rebaiting them. The boat I saw out there was being mobbed by about 100 Glaucous-winged gulls, who watched the crabbers carefully, fighting over any bits of bait tossed overboard. Many dark grey immatures, hatched last summer. Seems to have been a good nesting season for gulls.
All of a sudden they all lifted off, so I looked up. Sure enough, a Bald Eagle swooped in. I was taking video at that moment. Not exactly National Geographic quality (handheld, in wind and rain), but you get a sense of the activity:
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Eagles do flybys all the time, and while on this occasion it was actively stooping, it’s harder to catch one gull than it might appear, and there’s retaliation to consider. Birds of North America notes:
To capture live prey, soars overhead to visually locate the item, then suddenly stoops and attempts to capture such items with 1 or both feet. Repeatedly stoops on waterfowl on the water but often with poor success. Most prey taken to a nearby perch site for consumption, although small items may be consumed on the wing. In areas with high concentrations of Bald Eagles, successful foragers are often chased.
birdsna.org/...
I’ve seen unsuccessful foragers chased and attacked too, and these are big gulls.
The eagle flew over to the nearby headland and called out a few times. Eagles do eat ducks, alcids and gulls but being opportunistic and efficient feeders, will go for whatever’s most productive. The eagles are just now returning to my area after spending the fall and early winter gorging on spawned out salmon over on mainland rivers. They are reestablishing their breeding territories and fixing up nests these days.
In spite of the stormy weather and short days, I like winter birdwatching for all the abundant waterfowl livening up the bays. Spring and summer will bring in a different set of birds, which will liven up the woods and thickets.
Now it’s time for you to report. Who are your Early Birds of 2020? Is winter a good birding season for you or are you expecting lots more as spring rolls around?
Dawn Chorus is now open for your observations.