Pine Nut Range

The Nevada Bird Count has included several surveys in the Pine Nut Range over the past few years, and in 2014, we stepped that up quite a bit.  Most of our surveys have been/are in areas that will be undergoing (or have undergone) some pinyon-juniper treatments, along with control surveys in areas with no treatments planned.  Other transects were burned in the 2013 Bison Fire.  The goals of our surveys are to provide baseline monitoring of birds within the Pine Nuts, and to use those data to evaluate the impacts there (both short- and long-term) of treatments and fire.  

Some of these areas are in pure upland; others are along streams and drainage bottoms.  The Eldorado Canyon area is one of our survey areas (see previous post), but we’ve been covering the length of the mountain range, from the north near Dayton, all the way south to Bald Mountain.  In the process, we’ve been enjoying some great birds, beautiful views, crazy roads, and more than a few close encounters of the predator kind (mostly bears, but several mountain lions, as well).  In the case of the cats, one of those encounters was a little too close for comfort!  

What follows is not a full species list from our 2014 surveys, since our data entry/proofing process is not yet complete, but hopefully is enough to spark your interest!  For those of you that remember my request to keep your eyes and ears pricked for breeding Gray Vireos , we were sadly unsuccessful.  Maybe next year!  Please do let me know if you had better luck!

 

Chukar

Mountain Quail

California Quail

Turkey Vulture

Cooper's Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Golden Eagle

American Kestrel

Band-tailed Pigeon

Mourning Dove

Northern Pygmy-Owl

Common Nighthawk

Common Poorwill

Red-breasted Sapsucker

Hairy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Western Wood-pewee

Gray Flycatcher

Dusky Flycatcher

Western Flycatcher

Say's Phoebe

Loggerhead Shrike

Steller's Jay

Western Scrub-jay

Pinyon Jay

Common Raven

Horned Lark

Mountain Chickadee

Juniper Titmouse

Bushtit

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Rock Wren

Canyon Wren

Bewick's Wren

House Wren

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Mountain Bluebird

Townsend's Solitaire

American Robin

Orange-crowned Warbler

MacGillivray's Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Black-throated Gray Warbler

Wilson's Warbler

Green-tailed Towhee

Spotted Towhee

Chipping Sparrow

Brewer's Sparrow

Vesper Sparrow

Lark Sparrow

Black-throated Sparrow

Sagebrush Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Western Tanager

Black-headed Grosbeak

Lazuli Bunting

Western Meadowlark

Brewer's Blackbird

Brown-headed Cowbird

Cassin's Finch

House Finch

Lesser Goldfinch

Happy birding,

Jen

Gray Vireos: A Coda

Gray Vireo, photo copyright & courtesy of Deb Vogt

Thanks, everyone, for the Gray Vireo emails and all the location info!  (Just so you know – I really use that location information, entering them into one of my databases – next year’s map will be including all of these new sites!) 

I wanted to share a few photos Deb Vogt sent me – in June, she found a pair of Gray Vireos and their nest down in southern Nevada.  She thought they were feeding a fledgling deep in the tree – one parent “cussed her out”, while the other sang.  I hadn’t seen a Gray Vireo nest before, so I was happy to finally get to see a picture, at least!  Thanks, Deb!

Happy birding,

Jen

Gray Vireo nest, copyright & courtesy of Deb Vogt

Gray Vireos: A Request To Keep Your Birding Eyes Peeled

An NBC point where Gray Vireos recorded

Gray Vireos are a favorite of mine (though, to be honest, there’s hardly a bird on Nevada’s species list I haven’t said that of, at one time or another!), breeding primarily within pinyon-juniper habitats in Nevada; juniper appears to be particularly important.  They’re also a species of conservation concern within the state, and Nevada supports an estimated 20% of the global population [1].

Another Gray Vireo location

These guys are ones I enjoy mapping, and every year, it seems I generate a “hmmm, let’s see what the data look like this year” map.   This morning, I was going through some data collected in the Pine Nuts earlier in the year, and saw that we have three more Gray Vireo records there.  So you can tell what’s coming next: my thoughts turned vireo-ward!  During the afternoon’s caffeine break, I dove into GIS, played with the data, and churned out the following maps.  The first one is of all our Gray Vireo locations recorded during the Nevada Bird Count (NBC) and Atlas [2] surveys, with confirmed breeding locations broken out.  

And yet another one!

You can see during the Atlas years all of the locations are down south and within the eastern mountains of the state.  During the past 10 or so years of the Nevada Bird Count, we’ve also been accumulating records within central/western Nevada, including along the Nevada/California border, north of the Mojave Desert.  The border locations are mostly from surveys completed during and after 2009.  The second map is of all of our NBC points and Atlas locations, for reference (including incidental locations). 

On to the request:  we don’t yet have confirmed breeding records for these northern/western locations, and I’m particularly interested in confirming the breeding status along the Nevada-California border.  We have probable breeding records in the north/central portion of the state, but the highest evidence we’ve so far recorded for the border mountains is singing and possible pairs.  If you find yourself hanging out in pinyon-juniper in May/June/July, keep your eyes and ears peeled for these guys -- and if you confirm breeding (e.g., carrying nesting material, nests/eggs/nestlings, parents carrying food/fecal sacs, recently-fledged juveniles), please do let me know!  … Then I’ll have a good excuse to make up another map!

Happy birding!

Jen

Gray Vireo Atlas and Nevada Bird Count locations, with confirmed breeding

Nevada Breeding Bird Atlas and Nevada Bird Count survey locations, including incidentals

[1]   Great Basin Bird Observatory. 2010.  Nevada Comprehensive Bird Conservation Plan, ver. 1.0.  Great Basin Bird Observatory, Reno, NV. 

[2]  Floyd et al. 2007.  Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Nevada.  University of Nevada Press, Reno.