Swifts at Sunset

There is a chimney in a brickyard in San Rafael, CA. For a few nights every year, thousands of migratory Vaux's swifts spend the night in this chimney. Tonight, I came out to watch the amazing spectacle of thousands of birds soaring into the top of this chimney. Pretty awesome.

Banding 9/19: Hatch Year Female Cooper's Hawk

Particularly prominent "eyebrow"

This is a picture of me being yelled at by a Cooper's hawk.

Hawkwatch 9/18: Sun

It was a bright, sunny day on Hawk Hill today!

Another sunny day on Hawk Hill with temperatures in the 70's and a light wind coming from the west. We saw a lot of accipiters today, 28 Sharp-shinned Hawks and 41 Cooper's Hawks. To the great delight of the many hawkwatchers on the hill today (184 visitors on a Wednesday...maybe had something to do with the America's Cup final...), we also got some good looks at a Golden Eagle (subadult), a Ferruginous Hawk (juvenile), and two more Broad-winged Hawks. As usual, there were Red-tailed Hawks and Turkey Vulutres apleanty, and towards the end of the day, a Raven carrying a peanut-butter and jelly sandwhich was sighted as well.

Total Sightings: 235
Hours Counted: 5.5
HPH: 42.73
Total Species: 10

Golden Eagle silhouette.

Species Counts:
Turkey Vulture: 55
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 28
Cooper's Hawk: 41
Red-shouldered Hawk: 3
Broad-winged Hawk: 2
Red-tailed Hawk: 91
Ferruginous Hawk: 1
Golden Eagle: 1
American Kestrel: 3
Merlin: 1

Unidentified...
Accipiter: 8
Falcon: 1

Hawkwatch 9/17: Booby Watch

Oh, get your brain out of the gutter, please.

Birders get excited about seeing rare species, especially those that are keeping lists of birds seen in a certain state. For example, a blue-footed booby would be a big deal for birders listing California birds - this bird is rarely seen in California. So, when the hawkwatchers heard that a booby had been spotted at Land's End (the tip of San Francisco, easily seen from Hawk Hill) at 10:00 AM this morning, they started to get excited at the prospect of it potentially flying right past us. Thus, the south quadrant was given the extra task of "booby watch" today. (I giggled when given that assignment. Apparently, I refuse to grow up). Sadly, we never saw the bird.

Here's the HW report for the day:

Today was slow at the start, slow at the finish, with a flurry of raptor activity in the middle. The day was sunny and the wind direction was "all," seeming to change every three minutes or so. We were hopeful to get a look at the vagrant Blue-footed Booby, spotted just across the bay at 10AM today (thank you, eBird!) However, the raptors certainly kept our attention today. We got a good look at a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk, followed by an even better look at its adult counterpart, a great lesson in distinguishing the two. Towards the end of the day, a distant dot was identified as a Ferruginous Hawk of unknown age. As for our usual suspects, the Turkey Vulutures beat out the Red-tailed Hawks by one bird today, 94-95.

An adult red-shouldered hawk (above) being ambushed by a juvenile Cooper's hawk (below).

The quintessential GGRO raptor: a juvenile red-tailed hawk.

Total Sightings: 251
Hours Counted: 5.5
HPH: 45.64
Total Species: 9

Species Counts:
Turkey Vulture: 95
Osprey: 2
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 13
Cooper's Hawk: 26
Red-shouldered Hawk: 4
Red-tailed Hawk: 94
Ferruginous Hawk: 1
American Kestrel: 5
Peregrine Falcon: 2

Unidentified...
Accipiter: 6
Buteo: 1
Falcon: 1
Raptor: 1

Banding 9/13: Small Sharpie

I went raptor banding again today and ended up banding two accipiters: a male Cooper's hawk and a female sharp-shinned hawk. As the migration picks up, these will be the two most common species we'll be banding, both because of the mass numbers of them that migrate through the Marin Headlands as well as the ease with which we are able to catch these particular species.

The sharp-shinned hawk is one of the smallest of the diurnal raptors in North America. It is funny to be banding them as they attempt to act "fierce" - biting at your finger for example - when in actuality, they just look really, really cute. The sharp-shinned hawk we banded today was a hatch-year female, and on the small side. For every bird we band, we have an "expected values chart" that lays out the average and mean range of all the measurements we take for a given species and sex. In this case, our female sharpie was on the low end of the mean range for all measurements.

Trying to look fierce. Actually looking cute.

Our data sheets and the "expected values chart."

Banding 9/12: Backpack

My backpack got locked into a fellow intern's car today, so I had to improv before heading up to the blind. Luckily, I found another pack in the lost and found and I was able to gather up some "lunch" including some granola bars, half a bag of peanut-butter pretzels, and some left-over banana walnut bread (lunch of champions!) At the end of the day, as I got into Lynn's car, I noticed that the window on the other side was rolled down - I could have gotten my backpack all along.

We banded one raptor this morning (the other blinds were much more productive today, including the first merlins of the season, an adult red-tailed hawk, a red-shouldered hawk, and a red-tailed hawk that got outfitted with a GSM tracking device). Our red-tail came out of nowhere without any warning. It was a hatch-year male. Since my initial taloning encounter, I've become much more confident handling and banding these big, sharp birds.

The rest of the day was pretty slow with very few birds passing by. We did see quite a bit of diversity, though, including an osprey, white-tailed kite, Northern harrier, and mysterious black falcon. By 3:00, the wind was blowing fast and we found ourselves surrounded by fog shortly thereafter.

Banded hatch-year red-tailed hawk.

This should probably be a meme.

Flying away!

Hawkwatch 9/11: Tweety Birds

It was a relatively slow day today demonstrated by our brief celebration at 3:00 when the count reached 100 raptors. Overcast with a light breeze, we mostly saw the usual: Red-tailed Hawks and Turkey Vultures (no Cooper's Hawks counted today!). There was some nice movement of non-raptor migrants ("tweety birds" as some hawkwatchers call them) to keep us occupied as well, including flocks of 23 White-throated Swifts, 20 Band-tailed Pigeons, and 15 Cedar Waxwings.

Anna let me play around with her fancy-DSLRey camera during the (great amounts of) downtime today. I took some picture of the non-migrant tweety birds that often hang out with us during the hawkwatch.

White-crowned sparrow.

Western scrub jay.

Total Sightings: 115

Hours Counted: 5.33
HPH: 21.58
Total Species: 6

Species Counts:
Turkey Vulture: 41
Northern Harrier: 2
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 1
Red-tailed Hawk: 65
American Kestrel: 4
Peregrine Falcon: 1

Unidentified...
Buteo: 1

Banding 9/10: Slug

You know it isn't the greatest day of raptor banding when the highlight of the day is seeing a banana slug.

Hawkwatch 9/9: Above the Fog, Away from the Fire

The Golden Gate Bridge, being consumed.

We found ourselves above a thick layer of fog on Hawk Hill today. From our vantage point, the sun was shining, and it looked to be a beautiful day of hawkwatching. My first bird of the day was a prairie falcon flying out of the North quadrant and across the landscape. Then, as the wind began to pick up, we started to count kettles of red-tailed hawks. They seemed tentative to cross over the thick fog in the bay, however, so they began to accumulate in the East. The challenge was to keep track of which red-tails had already been counted, which were joining the kettle, and which were flying away. This proved to be a tricky challenge. There was also an occassional peregrine falcon in the kettle, as well as the usual turkey vultures. By 2:00, the temperature had dropped significantly and we were surrounded by fog, so we ended the count early.

Approaching fog.

Our view by 2:00.

A couple other interesting sights of note:
-A group of five planes flew through the sky, writing some advertising message. However, their handwriting was terrible and we think they were advertising some sort of talent agency, but it was unclear. Maybe they need a talent agency to identify better sky-writers.

Successfactors?

-Yesterday afternoon, a fire started at Mt. Diablo, one of our distant landmarks. Throughout the day, we could see smoke billowing off of Mt. Diablo. At times, it looked like the fire was calming down and then, out of nowhere, a new, huge plume of smoke would appear. Pretty crazy to watch.

Distant wildfires.

Total Sightings: 152
Hours Counted: 4.25
HPH: 35.76
Total Species: 9

Species Counts:
Turkey Vulture: 21
Osprey: 1
Sharp-shinned Hawk: 4
Cooper's Hawk: 7
Broad-winged Hawk: 1
Red-tailed Hawk: 99
American Kestrel: 3
Peregrine Falcon: 4
Prairie Falcon: 1

Unidentified...
Accipiter: 3
Buteo: 2
Falcon: 2
Raptor: 4

Banding 9/7: Superstitious

Some of the volunteers in the GGRO banding program can be a little superstitious about the way things run in the banding blind. Yesterday, for example, as we got the blind set up for the day, I placed all of the banding tools out on the table in anticipation of the processing of a raptor. I was gently informed, however, that this could totally jinx our ability to catch a raptor in the first place. Sure enough, we spent the first three hours that morning staring at a birdless landscape.

Finally, my sight leader took it upon herself to put all the tools back in the drawer from whence they came. Five minutes later, we caught our first (and only) bird of the day, a male American kestrel.  I'm learning so much about science.

Male American kestrel.

Kestrels are one of the few raptors where males and females show distinctly different plumages. In this case, the male shows silvery/blue wings whereas the female is rusty with black stripes across the back and wings.

Male American kestrel tail: solid rusty color with a single, solid black stripe.

Female American kestrel tail: "tiger" striping all the way across. (We banded a female AMKE on Thursday - pretty cool to see both sexes up close within a couple days of each other).

August Bird Count

The bird count is becoming tricky, mostly because I am getting lazy and forgetting to keep good records of new bird species spotted. Turns out, I'm not the biggest fan of this whole "keeping a list" thing. For me, my avian encounters are less about all the different species I'm seeing and more about having meaningful, memorable, educational encounters. Nonetheless, I did make a commitment to myself to keep this up for a full year, so here are the new additions for August.

8/7/13- Los Gallenas Nature Preserve
Long-time GGRO ally Steve took the interns on a birding trip to the Los Gallenas ponds about 20 minutes north of Sausalito. Our focus was on raptors (we specifically saw turkey vultures, cooper's hawks, and osprey) and using not just field marks, but behavior to make correct identifications. We saw more than just raptors though, including:
144. Black Phoebe (L)
145. Rough-winged Swallow
146. Cliff Swallow
147. American Coot (L)
148. Black-crowned Night Heron (L)

This is a juvenile hiding behind some grasses. The juvenile night heron's look quite different from their adult counterparts.

8/10/13-
During a lazy Saturday afternoon, I headed up to Hawk Hill, as it was one of those rare days where there isn't fog. The same Steve was up there and he helped further my education in identifying raptors based on behavior. While on the hill, we also noticed the first of two exciting migratory birds, including what Steve deemed the first migrating raptor of the season, a female American kestrel (which I surprisingly identified correctly).
149. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (L)
150. American Kestrel

And then, of course, here's the beautiful and, I'll admit it, kind of cute kestrel we banded a couple days later.

8/14/13-
Since getting our quick glimpse of a prairie falcon at Slacker Blind, two prairie falcons have been banded and two more spotted by the hawkwatch team.
151. Prairie Falcon (L)

8/16/13-
To celebrate our final Friday before migration season, Lynn, Anna, and I joined Bob, another long-time GGRO hawkwatch volunteer for a birding trip in Davis, CA, a hot-spot for Swainson's Hawks. We saw 26 of them over the course of the day, as well as a host of other awesome birds, including:
152. White-faced Ibis (L)
153. Swainson's Hawk (L)

(Photo credit: Anna Stunkel)

154. Barn Owl (L)
155. Brewer's Blackbird
156. Cattle Egret

(Photo credit: Anna Stunkel)

157. Western Kingbird (L)
158. Killdeer
159. Loggerhead Shrike
160. Burrowing Owl (L)

I was pretty excited to add not one, but TWO owl species to my life list during this trip.

Both of these owls were perched on a fence on either side of a gravel road. We stopped and enjoyed them in all of their awesomeness for a good ten to fifteen minutes. I could've stayed all day.

8/20/13-
My first official day on Hawkwatch got fogged out. As we waited in vain for the fog to clear, we birded at the annex, a lower point on the hill and I was occupied by watching a group of Western bluebirds.
161. Western Bluebird
I've seen these birds in huge flocks in wetlands on the side of the road while driving to and from the city, but had been unable to identify the until we stopped and stared for awhile.
162. Black-necked Stilt (L)

8/29/13
Migratory birds have begun to appear in the Marin Headlands, many of which hang out in Rodeo Lagoon, just outside of the GGRO office.
163. Red-necked Phalarope