Looking back at 2021 continued: Owens Valley, Crescent Dunes, & Species Shifts

Owens Valley

Owens Valley Program

Kelly and Kayla run the Owens River program, and tag-teamed for this update! 

Willow Flycatcher nest with eggs and nestling

In spring 2021, GBBO began a three-year monitoring effort on the Owens River on Southwestern Willow Flycatchers (SWFL), Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Least Bell’s Vireos, and other riparian obligate species. Despite drought conditions, partners from Southern Sierra Research station detected over 100 SWFL territories using call playback. SWFL nests were also monitored for success and parasitism – 11 nests were found on 10 territories. While at least 6 of these were parasitized by Brown-headed Cowbirds, they produceed at least 13 fledglings. 

We were also joined by Murrelet Halterman, who conducted Yellow-billed Cuckoo surveys in the area.  Two cuckoos were detected (one was an incidental), though neither was thought to be territorial. No Bell’s Vireo were recorded during point counts, but we recorded 92 species along 10 point count transects. We look forward to surveying again this spring!

 

Kayla added

Nest with decoy egg

: These surveys are no joke and had us crawling through thick willow, wild rose, and stinging nettle all while hoping our rubber boots were tall enough to avoid wet feet. A fun encounter in one of the most densely forested parts of the riparian corridor was coming face to face with a Northern Saw-whet Owl (no photo, but an extremely cool sighting)! One of the interesting things we learned during Willow Flycatcher nest monitoring was to replace any Brown-headed Cowbird eggs found with decoy eggs. One of the reasons for using the decoy egg is to trick the SWFL parents into thinking that nothing has changed. If they notice fewer eggs in the nest, they may think the nest has been parasitized and abandon it. Another fun fact is if a cowbird lays an egg in a nest before a SWFL does, the SWFL may realize there is a foreign egg or object in the nest, prompting them to build another bottom layer to the nest covering the egg. This way, the cowbird egg won’t hatch. Overall, this was an exciting project and the awe-inspiring sunrises and sunsets of the eastern Sierras never got old. Though the days had their challenges, monitoring SWFL nests was extremely rewarding. Plus we had some adorable field dogs to keep us company and made the most of our time working in and around Bishop!

Monitoring Renewable Energy Facilities

 

GBBO continues to monitor the impacts of renewable energy facilities in on birds and bats by conducting ongoing standardized mortality surveys. In the Altamont Wind Energy Area of California, our teams are working on two sites to perform these surveys using highly trained dogs that locate mortalities by scent.  At the Crescent Dunes Solar Facility near Tonopah, human survey teams perform the searches. These efforts are critical in understanding and minimizing any negative effects of renewable energy production on birds and bats.  

 

- John

 

Species Range Shifts

 

I think everyone is going to talk about how hot and dry 2021 was. Every year there are seasonal differences, but the ones I saw this year were some of the starkest I’ve ever observed.  Rather than gloom and doom the place up, how about a less direct discussion of these changes!

In early 2021, many birders are aware, that the northernmost nesting attempt of LeConte’s Thrasher was documented, rather thoroughly by a few researchers. This nesting effort was ultimately unsuccessful, but suggests several important things.  The species has not necessarily been extensively studied, but those who have spent considerable time with them all note that they are not exceptional flyers, and do not disperse particularly far. This nesting site was some 200 miles north of the closest previously known nesting location. For a bird that is not described as a particularly strong flyer, that is a pretty impressive distance for not 1, but 2, birds of opposite sexes to travel and find each other. To me that really emphasizes the title of Jay Sheppard’s recent book, The Biology of a Desert Apparition: LeConte’s Thrasher. It seems likely that these guys are making smaller leaps, finding suitable habitat along the way, and making their way north. If only birding the salt desert were more exciting, we could get some more eyes out there…

A semi-related bird record is the appearance of Nevada’s second Barred Owl, while this is a review species in the state, and this record has not yet been reviewed by the committee, the photos leave little doubt as to this bird’s Identification. The Barred Owl is expanding south through the Sierra Nevada, and before that, the Cascades, and before that, west through the boreal shield. This pattern suggests we are likely to see more of them in Nevada. While the specific reasons for both of these phenomenon are the grounds of much speculation, it is nonetheless interesting to note we are seeing species coming south, and species coming north, of their expected ranges. Nevada is a large state that covers a lot of habitat, and as such, we are uniquely situated at the fringes of many species’ ranges.  In my mind, this makes Nevada an extremely interesting place to pay attention to the birds, as we see changes in climate such as those observed in the 2021 field season.

 

Ned

 

 

Looking Back at 2021: the Nevada Bird Count & IMBCR programs

Wow, how time is flying!  Our 2022 field work is now well underway.  We had a very successful 2021, and are bringing those experiences to the current year!  So we will be sharing a short series of blogposts to talk about what we were working on last year, and some of the highlights and maybe a few lessons learned.

I’ll start off talking about our Nevada Bird Count/IMBCR (Integrated Monitoring of Bird Conservation Regions) crew/projects.  It’s probably not a surprise to anyone, but man, 2021 was DRY. Scarily dry.  We started off helping out with surveys for the thrasher program in April - Dawn will be sharing some highlights from that later – and our southern Nevada point count surveys. I wrote up a blogpost on one of my thrasher surveys down there last year – you can find that here.  My overwhelming memory is of large numbers of desert shrubs, with few to no leaves – even the creosotes with brown dessicated leaves, and branches that had died back within the past year. Even the seemingly-ever-present Black-throated Sparrows appeared impacted – many did not appear to be breeding (unusually, I never saw any breeding evidence for them during my southern Nevada surveys). Even singing was affected – one creosote site where I’ve camped and surveyed most years since 2008, where there are always Black-throated Sparrows singing during the breeding season – I heard one singing a single short phrase at about 3 o’clock in the morning, and that was it.  It brought Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring to mind.  One of our sites in the southern Great Basin looms similarly large in my mind – very few birds singing, with many of the sagebrush only supporting a branch or two that contained leaves.

Our two primary Nevada Bird Count projects were located at Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and along the Truckee River. Our Ash Meadows surveys were definitely a breath of fresh air amongst our other southern Nevada upland projects, and it was wonderful to be surveying near water!  My favorite survey was definitely our Crystal Reservoir transect that samples the wet ash meadows near the reservoir.  Summer Tanagers, a few Phainopepla and Vermilion Flycatchers, lots of Bewick’s Wrens … and wet feet!

Our Truckee River surveys continued work begun in the 1990s along the lower Truckee River, from Lockwood down to Nixon. As with our Ash Meadows surveys, we definitely appreciated surveying near water!  What stands out the most to me was the growth of the young cottonwoods (and a few willows) that had established in 2017-2018, and surveying points where once we’d had an unobstructed view for hundreds of meters, and now we looked out at a bank of young cottonwoods, their tops waving in the breeze.  On one of the long-term area search plots, where for years we had only had Yellow Warblers migrating through, now there were several territories, two with confirmed young.  It was incredibly heartening!

Upper McCarran #11, in 2019 ... you can see the young cottonwoods coming up!

Same place, 2021 ... you can just barely see the top of the hill & gallery cottonwoods!

Last but not least, we conducted 109 surveys of IMBCR plots for the BLM and Forest Service in Nevada and eastern California.  Our Forest Service surveys are only on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, and cover all three conservation regions, in the Carson Range/Sierras, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert.  Our BLM surveys were only within BCR 9 (the so-called Great Basin region). We definitely appreciated the opportunity to cover most of Nevada and some of eastern California, and having such widespread coverage was helpful to look at drought impacts.

I mentioned above that we appeared to be seeing impacts of the drought on the Black-throated Sparrows in our IMBCR surveys.  During the season, it seemed I was detecting fewer of them, and when I was, it seemed there were more at higher elevations than “normal,” and further north.  Talking to Ned, he, too, was seeing them in greater numbers on his more northern surveys.  So I did a quick data dive – I didn’t look at elevation, so I can’t say whether my initial impressions were correct in that regard, but we certainly did see some changes in latitude!  The following quick video shows the results of three years of our BLM surveys – the numbers are detections of Black-throated Sparrows within 100m, summarized at the transect level, but to maintain consistency between years, I only used data from points that were surveyed in each of the three years: 2019, 2020, and 2021.  We can see that there’s a fair amount of annual variation in those numbers, but that there was a clear tendency for fewer detections overall, and fewer detections in southern Nevada.

 

The total abundance (of all species) was even clearer on these surveys, declining over the three-year period, with the steepest drop in 2021, where total detections (tallied as above) in 2021 were 25% lower those in 2019.  Here’s how those results were visualized.

 

 

So, it was an interesting year for us, and we are looking forward to seeing what 2022 holds!  Stay tuned for our next installment ….

- Jen

 

 

 

 

Surveying in the Spring Mountains, May

Well, tomorrow’s plot starts up there…,I was thinking to myself as I gazed upward, enjoying the sunset on the cliffs of Potosi Mountain’s neighboring peaks. Part of the standard evening routine is determining what time I need to set the alarm for the morning, factoring in that I must climb a full 1,000 feet higher than my current elevation, in a half- mile, 30 minutes before sunrise. While the implications of this were setting in, I heard a Scott’s Oriole singing.  It was a welcome reprieve from the unwelcome realization that it was not yet dark, and yet I will be waking up in 8 hours for a doozy of a hike. I poked my head around the corner to see the gorgeous male Scott’s Oriole perched atop a lonely Pinyon, and got to appreciate his beauty for a brief moment before he realized I was watching. It was truly a lovely, peaceful scene-not a soul in sight, shadows growing long as the sun’s amber glow bathes the cliffs, while the melody of my oriole carries across the valley.

This survey is part of our IMBCR program on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, which I briefly discussed in my previous post about Grasshopper Sparrows. IMBCR stands for Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions, and is a very neat project developed by Bird Conservancy of the Rockies in 2007.  It connects a massive survey area, nearly the entire western United States, under a common protocol, and generates some very interesting and useful data. These surveys are point-count surveys with 16 points, arranged in a grid, each point 250 meters apart, so that a 1kmx1km grid is created. In order to be a valid survey, at least 6 points must be completed.

I have surveyed this plot once before … have I mentioned it’s steep?!  Every direction you look is a stunning mountain-scape of sheer cliffs and infinite vistas. On this particular plot it is only humanly possible to (safely) reach 6 survey points; dangerous cliffs and scree slopes prevent access to a majority of the plot.  So, I have painted a picture of a very difficult location to traverse, but it is not without its rewards. A previous surveyor found Rufous-crowned Sparrows two years in a row up there, even confirming breeding once!  I missed them the first time, but was hopeful for this second time. I should have known that if I lugged my camera up there, they would smell me coming and make themselves scarce. You can likely gather I did not detect any Rufous-crowns on this survey either. Gray Vireos, Black-chinned Sparrows, Scott’s Orioles, and White-throated Swifts would have to suffice—poor me, I know, it’s a tough job, but some one’s got to do it!

 

 

Once safely down the mountain, it was just a little jaunt back to camp.  Once there, it was time to decompress and pack up camp. But, first things first, after a hike like that I needed ice cold refreshment. Fortunately for me, modern technology has created miraculously insulated vessels that hold ice for days.  It was only 9:00 (I had been up since 4:00, after all) yet the sun was still warming the air to a point just beyond comfort.  With no shade in sight, and the patch created by my truck rapidly dwindling, it was time to finish up, pack up, and get on out of here.  Another adventure awaits, as I get out the maps and begin navigating to tomorrow’s survey! 

- Ned

 

 

Surveying for Desert Thrashers

My day starts about an hour before sunrise on this April morning, as I get up and prep for the coming day’s surveys here near Knob Hill, by Searchlight.  Grabbing my pack and my water bottle, I start walking, and arrive on my first of three plots a few minutes after sunrise, enjoying that golden moment when the landscape glows … but not enjoying it for too long!, since as soon as I crest the ridgelet that is on my plot’s boundary, I need to scan around me, on the off chance there’s a thrasher perched.  No such luck. 

 

So I begin walking the plot. It’s a 300 by 300 meter block, and I’ve got 40 minutes to survey it - so I walk the length of the block, north then south then north again, making sure that I get within 50m of every point in it.  We’re collecting information on every bird we detect using the plot, but mostly we’re focused on Bendire’s and Le Conte’s Thrashers, and Loggerhead Shrikes. It’s a busy little plot, with several singing Black-throated Sparrows, some migrating Brewer’s Sparrows, chirping House Finches (though nothing like the flock of 90 I saw on a plot two days before), a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, with a singing Scott’s Oriole and Cactus Wren a bit beyond the plot boundaries.  None of my focal species though.

 

On to the next! It’s funny, the habitat isn’t much different and it’s still early in the morning, but this plot is SILENT compared to the first one.  I flush a group of four silent adult Black-throated Sparrows, and a little thereafter a silent Mourning Dove. And then, as I near one corner, where there’s a little bit higher density of Mojave Yucca, there it is – a fairly quiet, long song, that screams THRASHER. I pause my 40-minute timer, and head over to the yuccas … and nothing. I wander around in hope that I’m going to find it, but time is ticking, and I need to continue my survey. So I sigh, excited but a little bummed that I haven’t been able to see it, re-start my timer – and there it is! Yep, a beautiful Le Conte’s Thrasher, perched on the top of a Mojave yucca, beginning to sing again.  So I re-pause my timer, enjoy the view, and then when it flies off shortly thereafter, walk over to get the perch location and other details. Then I get going again, and finish up the plot.

 

My final plot is also quiet, so I’m able to survey it straight through with no pauses, and then work on some habitat surveys (and finish up my water bottle - my internal thermometer is still set on northern Nevada mode!). Finally, I’m done, and ready for the hike back to the car. After several days of work, it feels really good to finally have a thrasher! It is so incredibly dry down here right now, and the plants are reflecting that. Over the past several days, I’ve been looking at white bursage that are functionally leafless; creosotes often still with brownish leaves, and letting one or more branches die; and shadscale lacking a full set of leaves – with many of those that are there, dropping at the gentlest touch. So I wonder how the thrashers will respond, and am looking forward to the end of the survey season, and being able to see where we have found them, and what we're able to conclude about this year's breeding season.

 

This desert thrasher project has arisen out of Partners in Flight’s Desert Thrasher Working Group. You can find more information about the working group here. 

 

Happy birding,

Jen

 

Epilogue: As it turned out, that was the only thrasher I detected during my surveys. Data are still in the entry phase right now, so stay tuned for the overall results.

 

Thrasher survey plot west of the Spring Mountains

 

Flashback Friday: Big Day 2020

As we approach the 2021 Nevada Birdathon, our thoughts run to our adventures last year. GBBO’s Birdathon team, The Iron Merlins, set out on May 6^th, 2020. We had a great time, saw 128 species of birds, along with some unidentified hummingbirds and peeps, and very few other humans. Birding during these early months of the pandemic had us noticing other people far more than usual, and instead of our usual eagerness to share our sightings with anyone and everyone within hailing distance, we were still in very diligent Social Distancing Mode. The day started at 3 AM at Damonte Ranch wetlands - heavily caffeinated and hoping for some rails calling late at night.  A few Virginia Rails obliged us, and several other species vocalized, including singing Marsh Wrens.  Feeling off to a strong start, we headed off to find some owls, but as we drove up to the Carson Range we realized that the strong winds were going to put a damper on our owling effort.  

Noticing the time, we figured we had better stake out our Dawn Chorus spot.  Galena Creek yielded another 28 species, including a singing Olive-sided Flycatcher and a Western Wood-Pewee, and a few distant humans on another trail.  We spent the morning hitting various spots throughout the Carson Range and along the east shore of Lake Tahoe. Lingering snow prevented some high elevation access, but Spooner Lake was lovely. Here we had our first Wilson’s Warblers, Evening Grosbeaks, and a calling Northern Pygmy-Owl! Perhaps it was the amazing sun-soaked meadows, beautiful weather, and flyover Bald Eagle that set the tone for us needing to make up time throughout the day…But still we managed to go until 10:30 AM before seeing or hearing a single Clark’s Nutcracker…though we had to use the 95% rule since I only saw the shadow of the Nutcracker that Kayla clearly saw fly over. But nonetheless, we felt very successful as this was likely the most potentially crowded place we would be birding all day and we only saw a few distant trail-runners.

We followed our route into the Carson Valley, and feeling a little pressed for time decided to skip a few spots, hoping we would have time to get out to Carson Lake in Fallon.  Vesper Sparrows cooperated very nicely at the Bentley-Kirman trail, a singing Lark Sparrow at the west end of Sunrise Pass road was our only one for the day, but Juniper Titmouse eluded us.  Rushing over to Mason Valley, we stopped a few times in the PJ along Highway 395, and enjoyed Western Bluebirds, a flock of 20 Evening Grosbeaks, and a singing Lazuli Bunting from the flowering bitterbrush. We picked up White-throated Swift and (sigh) an unidentified Hummingbird at a quick stop in Wilson Canyon, but no Canyon Wrens.  By the time we got to Mason Valley, it was HOT, the cottonwoods were not jumping with migrants as we might have hoped, and water levels seemed to be much lower than usual. After driving around for a bit we decided we had better head for wetter conditions in Fallon, as those wetlands had been very productive just a week ago. As we drove out of Yerington, a Golden Eagle appeared almost on command, soaring over the mountains just as we were talking about them.  But how did we manage to complete the drive to Fallon without seeing any Horned Larks flying across the highway?

As we got to Fallon it became clear that conditions were not significantly wetter here, but the Horned Larks didn’t mind, and kindly cooperated. We managed to turn up Sora and Long-billed Curlew, and scope out some distant kettling Pelicans. Those peeps we flushed while driving just wouldn’t land though... An Ash-throated Flycatcher in the greasewood was a nice surprise, and this ended up being the only location where we saw Northern Mockingbirds. A Sagebrush Sparrow sang in the greasewood, we spotted a Gray Flycatcher, and then we headed off to the next stop. We missed Bufflehead and Lesser Scaup at S-line reservoir, but the Great Egret and Double-crested Cormorant rookeries were enjoyable to watch. No time for Screech-owls, but maybe Soda lake has some Phalarope hanging out? No? Ok- time to race back to Reno to attempt to make up for species missed along the way.

 

On our way back in, we were drawn to the wetland and pond complexes of southeast Reno, and finally picked up Northern Pintail.  Our second round at Damonte yielded a Marbled Godwit, but we still didn’t have some very common species. So we raced across town to Oxbow in search of a Yellow Warbler, but just could not get one to sing for us.  Running low on daylight, we heard a Downy Woodpecker whinny and decided we had better check elsewhere. We booked it to the Mogul bridge for the lingering Hooded Oriole.  As we arrived it was just getting dark, but an American Dipper called and flew under the bridge right as we were crossing, and midway across the bridge we watched a Bullock’s Oriole chase a smaller Hooded Oriole into one of the cottonwoods.  Another few minutes and we spotted the Great Horned Owl on its nest. Still no flashing Yellow Warblers…Just about out of daylight, we thought we might try for that strangely-elusive warbler and maybe Greater Yellowlegs and Wood Duck at Rancho San Rafael. No such luck, but we finally got a Ring-necked Duck.  Then as bats began to emerge from their roosts, we realized we had left our headlamps in the truck, so we decided to call it a day: a long, exhausting, bird-filled, wonderful day … with celebratory burritos awaiting!

 

-Ned

 

 

Lazdigo Buntings

by Ned Bohman

 

We all know and love Lazuli Buntings, with their brilliant blue hue and sweet, warbler-y song.  When I hear my first Lazuli of the season, my first thought is almost always: “wait, what’s THAT warbler??” And then it hits me: of course, it’s a Laz!  But now, let’s introduce more confusion, a very close relative to our beloved Lazuli: the Indigo Bunting.  Not that this species is anything new, especially to those of us who have ever lived in the eastern United States - these guys can be THE most common songbird in some overgrown fields. They are continuing to expand their breeding range, westward and northward.  The species’ distribution during the breeding season roughly encompasses the entire eastern United States, north to very southern Canada and west to the Mississippi River, though they do hop over the river a bit, and there is a spur cutting from northeastern Nebraska southwest through Colorado; encompassing New Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah, and more recently southern Nevada. 

 

In search of the elusive Lazdigo Bunting ... Success!

Every year it seems I see more and more Indigo Buntings here, to the point where I no longer feel as confident identifying Buntings that I only hear singing and do not see.  I have now had this experience several times: I hear a Bunting song, the notes seem very paired, and relatively slow for a Laz. So naturally, I start thinking Indigo, and I spend up to an hour tracking these birds down ... and what do I find but a beautiful rosy-chested, white-wing-barred, brilliant-electric-blue-male Lazuli Bunting.  After accepting that some bunting songs just cannot be confidently identified without a visual, “unknown Bunting” has become a regular on my checklists.

 

 

courtesy of Don DesJardin

Both buntings prefer to breed in edge habitat; often in riparian areas, and prefer to nest low in shrubs.  They both eat seeds and fruits throughout the year with an increase in arthropod consumption during breeding season. They both forage from ground level up to 15 meters off the ground.  Both sing conspicuously from the tops of shrubs such as willows, and commonly produce 2 broods per season. Essentially these two species occupy very similar ecological niches and they coexist largely because they are separated by range.  There is only a small amount of overlap in both breeding and winter ranges of the species currently, but this seems to be changing. Where their breeding ranges do overlap, hybrids occur.  (Stay tuned for a future post on hybridization between these bunting species!)

This is one of the fun observations that result from birding the same locations time after time: there is always the opportunity to see and learn new things. Whether it is as simple as a new behavior for a species you are intimately familiar with, or spotting a rare vagrant during migration; whether you are confirming breeding of a secretive species, seeing a species for the first time, or seeing a new species at a particular location.  But it doesn’t just afford these opportunities to observe new things, it also allows you to track changes as they occur on the landscape over time … like our Indigo Buntings becoming more common in Nevada. I consider us lucky to be in a part of the world where both of these beautiful birds occur!

Spring has sprung!

Photo courtesy of Don DesJardin

Spring is here and now it finally feels like it! With the lingering wintery weather and crazy social conditions, it has hardly felt like it. But today it is 75 degrees and my resident Mockingbird is singing his little heart out. For now, I can forget about being cooped up at home, because my yard birds are so busy! I have been enjoying sitting outside listening to this Mockingbird’s mimicry. His song is easy to pick out because he doesn’t use any original phrases, every element of his song is taken from things he has heard in his surroundings, and he repeats these in phrases of 3, constantly changing and rotating between sounds.  It is fun to identify what he is mimicking, and then to use these clues to try to decipher the places he has been and who he has been hanging out with. He has been singing a lot of different Ruby-crowned Kinglet song phrases, plenty of California Scrub-Jay screams, and lately he has been adding phrases that I can only interpret as car alarms! I watch him as he sings from atop the ornamental Trees-of-Heaven in my backyard. But the story doesn’t end with a raucous male Mockingbird serenading my neighborhood. A second silent bird seems to be following him around.  Based on their behavior I assume this to be a female and potential suitor for my resident copy-cat. As I sit here, I hear another Northern Mockingbird begin to sing a few blocks to my west, I wonder if this silent bird I have been watching is in fact female, and if she has chosen her mate yet.

This time of year most birds are thinking about their biological reason for existence: reproduction.  If you watch and listen to the birds in your yard you can easily pick up on these cues.  You may have noticed the early mornings are a bit noisier lately, this is because male songbirds are advertising and attempting to attract mates.  They use their song to defend the territory from other males, and they also sing to attract females. If you are able to watch them for a while, you may be lucky enough to observe other behaviors associated with breeding.  

If you see a bird carrying something in its bill, pay attention to where it goes and what it does with its load. It could be carrying material with which to construct its nest. During this season of courtship males may bring their prospective mate an attractive food item to demonstrate their prowess. For example, male flycatchers will often bring their mates big showy insects like butterflies and dragonflies, presumably to impress or to demonstrate their hunting capability.  Later in the season, they will be bringing food to feed hungry females stuck on the nest incubating eggs. After this, the eggs will become nestlings that will need to be fed constantly. Being a bird parent is a busy business, and involves a lot of food-carrying!

It is now a few hours later, and while I am strolling around the block, I see a Northern Mockingbird hop into a dense hedgerow with a mouth full of dried grass stems. To the field-trained eye, this behavior is clearly associated with nest-building. This particular hedgerow is about 100 yards from my house, so I wonder if this bird is one of the pair I have been watching in my Tree-of-Heaven. Now that I have discovered the location of a nest, I can pay attention to various clues to tell me if the Mockingbirds in my yard are the same ones using my neighbor’s hedgerow. I will start to cue in on which direction the birds come and go from, I will listen for how close other Mockingbirds are, and if I am lucky I will be able to follow one from my yard to my neighbor’s. By paying attention to these little things, I am able to interpret so much about the birds that share the neighborhood with me.

You can do the same thing in your yard, if you notice a particular bird hangs around a lot, stay put and watch it for a while.  Maybe you will get the chance to see it carry some fruit from your ornamental shrub to its mate that is waiting just around the corner.  Maybe it has even decided your yard has enough resources to sustain its brood this year. By paying attention to the subtle things they are doing, you can learn a lot about them and their world. At the end of the season you may even be lucky enough to see them toting a brood of clumsy, fuzzy, fledglings around the yard!

- Ned