The Nevada Bird Count is Winding Down, Part 1

It’s hard to believe that it’s the middle of July already.  Most of my crew has finished up their season this afternoon, and flown off.   I have a stack of data several feet high staring at me in the eye, blowing a raspberry.  I’m giving it the side-eye today, hoping that it will magically enter and proof itself.  Tomorrow I will accept reality, and begin that less-than-exciting phase between the joys of collecting the data and the interesting analyses to figure out what all that data means.  But this evening, magic sounds like a stellar plan.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird; copyright & courtesy of Bill Schmoker

It really was a wonderful field season, and I continue to be so incredibly lucky in my field crew!  They were troopers, every one.  This year was rather tougher than usual, with some impressive topography, some (even more?) impressive (ly bad) roads, and the occasional backpacking stint, and they dealt with it all with great attitudes, strong legs, and a can-do spirit.  I asked them last night to write up a couple of notes on their field season and what stuck out to them, now that it was over.  Personally, I had a lot of wonderful moments, particularly watching territories on Warm Springs Natural Area, progressing from courtship to nest-building to incubation to keeping those darn nestlings fed!, to riding herd on a group of fledglings spreading their wings.  I think the most memorable happening though was as I was hiking up a canyon, and a gorgeous Broad-tailed Hummingbird male came by to check me out.  I paused, and he came closer. And came closer.  Closer.  Pretty soon, all I can focus on is that bright gorget.  And then came closer … whereupon he stuck his beak up my nose!  I know my face gets red when I hike, but that’s a little ridiculous! 

Sam's Zone-tailed Hawk

Sam: “Some of my favorite moments of the season were, maybe surprisingly, in the Virgin Mountains.  The Gold Butte transect where we saw the Zone-tailed Hawk pair had particularly terrible topography, but it just stands to show how you have to get out into the middle of nowhere, climb over some boulders, and get away from the highway to see the cool stuff.  Some of the most scenic parts of Nevada are only accessible by foot, and it was pretty great to get to see them…. Also, I got really good at changing flat tires this season!  The transect near Lake Mojave was great – a cool swim after a hot Mojave Scrub transect is pretty luxurious.”

Kelly:  “After a transect that required hiking 23 kilometers, we realized the road leading to the following day’s transect didn’t exist.  Feeling defeated when having to admit a 4 kilo backpacking trip wasn’t doable, it was nice being told “Relax, put your feet up, and eat some ice cream." ... There were so many days when a road didn’t exist, a hike was extremely difficult, it took 4 hours to get between transects, or you’ve had two flat tires, and you just have to laugh at the absurdity of the day. Then you get to your camping spot, it is absolutely gorgeous, and you realize you are probably one of the only people that will ever get to see that spot. When you also remember you have two Capriotti’s subs in your bag, it really feels like the happiest moment in the world.”

Sue: “My favorite memory is hard to pin down, but off the top of my head MR-Smith was a wonderland of birds, veg, and just pure enjoyment in nature … and getting paid for it!  I could say the same for a lot of other transects where I wanted the point counts to be 30 minutes long!  But one hilarious but should-have-been-terrible experience was camping next to railroad tracks, to wake up and walk to do DS-BradyCtrl.  Only ~40m max from the tracks, I could hear a train coming way off … Amtrak … An hour later – cargo train, ~98 cars.  Then, about 11 pm, I’m sort of asleep, a train is coming, the train light illuminated my tent, and the ground begins to shake, I mean really shake, “My Cousin Vinny” shaking!  It goes by, I go back to sleep.  Same thing 12 midnight, 1:30 am, 2:30 am, and about three more.  By the third passing, I just laid there and laughed out loud a hysterical, funny though, happy laugh, at the ridiculous of the situation – and actually it is a fond memory!”

To be continued …

-- Jen

Nevada Bird Count 2013, mid-May to early June

The amazing NBC crew has been hiking over hill and over dale in search of birds … not to mention wading through rivers, climbing over dunes, and tunneling through tamarisk.  Lots of great views, fun birds, and some impressive hiking skills!  We’re almost entirely transitioned from our Mojave Desert surveys up into the Great Basin, with just a handful of surveys left down south to be done over the next week.  Here are a few photos from the past month – most of them are from Clark County, but a few are from our early Great Basin surveys.  A couple of photos are from the headwaters of the Walker River in California; the rest are all Nevada!  Thanks for all your hard work, guys!

-- Jen

Nests, nests, everywhere!

Tis the season for the birds and the bees, and the Nevada Bird Count crew is finding nests everywhere!  Here are a few of our finds ...

Kathryn found this Mourning Dove nest in Mojave Scrub/Mojave Yucca habitat:

Rayann saw these Lesser Nighthawk nestlings in Mojave Scrub

Sue was a tad startled when she flushed a Common Poorwill from this nest in Joshua Tree habitat:

I found this sparsely-woven Mourning Dove nest with eggs just above my head in a honey mesquite:

Phainopepla nest in bare Screwbean mesquite:

And another Phainopepla nest in a honey mesquite:

And yet another Phainopepla nest in a cottonwood:

Last but not least a Vermilion Flycatcher female on her nest in a cottonwood:

Happy birding everyone!

--Jen

Pinyon Jay Monitoring Update

What started out as a radio-telemetry project on Pinyon Jays in the Desatoya Range quickly took a detour into a nest study of Pinyon Jays. Our field crew's Mercer Owen and Sue Bruner were just that good at finding Pinyon Jay nests without any tracking devices. Six colonies and 80 nests later, Mercer has been busy monitoring nest success until the nesting season was over, which it was in the second week of May. With a cool new device, a small remote camera that transmits photos wirelessly to a handheld monitor, we could see and photograph the nest contents while causing almost no disturbance to the nest. Pinyon Jays specialize on pinyon pines, and they cache their seeds so they can eat them in the winter and spring, when other food is pretty much unavailable. 

 
They nest in colonies in pinyon pines at a height of about 8 – 12 ft, and the young from the previous year help feed the new brood. Our study will provide the first comprehensive data on nest site selection by Pinyon Jays in the Great Basin, which will be critical information for advising land managers on how to protect this rapidly declining species. Here are a few photos from the last 6 weeks of the study.

GBBO at Earth Day in Reno, April 20, 2013

This year, GBBO’s Susan Merideth and Elisabeth Ammon promoted bird conservation in at Reno’s Earth Day celebration in Idlewild Park. We were invited to the conservation zone organized by The Nature Conservancy and NV Energy, and we showed some of the fun bird monitoring and research techniques we use on a regular basis. Many people saw for the first time a mistnet, a radio-tracking setup, a call-playback setup and banding gear. About 15,000 people attended and many stopped by to talk birds with us and check out our map of Nevada Bird Count coverage. Only very few asked how much for “our jewelry”, referring to the strings of bird bands we had on display. We were humbled and excited by how many folks really care about birds and bird conservation around the state. Here are some pictures of the event and of our informational card.

 

Surveying Birds Along the Lower Colorado River

Well, training is over, and data collection is well underway on our Lower Colorado River (LCR) project, where we monitor distribution, population size, and long-term trends of breeding bird species in riparian habitats within the LCR Multi-Species Conservation Program (MSCP) project area. We are collecting data on all bird species that breed and migrate through the lower Colorado (up to 200 species a year!), including the following six focal LCR MSCP covered species:

• Sonoran Yellow Warbler
• Arizona Bell’s Vireo
• Summer Tanager
• Gila Woodpecker
• Gilded Flicker
• Vermilion Flycatcher

We conduct area search surveys where we identify all the birds in a plot, mapping their locations and recording breeding behavior for each individual. The surveys are challenging, and we train our techs for several weeks in bird identification by sight and sound, breeding species’ natural history, survey techniques, and data collection methods.

Here are a few photos so far this season: