Bird Watching - The Outdoor Directory for Birding

Not a lot is known about the Red-Breasted Sapsuckers courtship and nesting behavior. However for our nesting pair of Sapsuckers here this spring their courtship behavior seemed quite straight forward. The male would begin the morning at dawn by hammering a courting rhytmn upon our rooftop satellite TV dish for an hour or so much to the distress of my neighbors trying to sleep past dawn. What a racket it was. The female would fly around occasionally landing in an alder or maple. He must have suitably impressed for the Sapsuckers occupied a nest cavity 40 to 50 feet above ground in a big leaf maple tree next to our deck. We had a great view of the nest site unobstructed by any branches or leaves. When the young hatched they started a "feed me" chatter that was near continuous the entire day. By fledging time the chatter got loader and stronger with both adults flying back and forth to the nest cavity on feeding runs. The adults averaged a food run every two minutes. 30 times an hour, hour after hour! And then the young sapsuckers fledged and silence. The young birds constant feeding chatter had become such an integral part of the background sounds of our daily life that the cessation of their voices has left a somewhat melancholy void.

Posted by bill@birdingguide.com at 07:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The northbound spring shorebird migration at the begining of May here in the Northwest is always a highlight of the birding year for me. It's a thrill to be on the beach at the Long Beach Peninsula while thousands of shorebirds fly past your head at eye level. The Audubon newsletter reported 500,000 birds an hour during the main movement. One birder saw 1,800 Semipalmated Plovers at Bandon OR, along with 75.000 Western Sandpipers. At the Youngs Bay flats 18,000 Western Sandpipers, 600 Semipalmated Ploveres and over 1,000 Dunlin were spotted. Consider a birding trip to the Nortwest next year the end of April and the beginning of May for the shorebird migration. The Oregon coast is beautiful drive and there are many birding opportunities from Coos Bay to Astoria. The Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival weekend is worthwhile too. Check out their website for next Spring.

Posted by bill@birdingguide.com at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For weeks ago a yellow warbler with a striking black face mask and a white streak above its mask seperating the mask from its forehead, a Common Yellowthroat warbler, landed on the french lilac shrub outside our dining room at breakfast time. There are many variations of the Common Yellowthroat, this one the Pacific. They breed in all mainland 49 states and throughout Canada. Our visitor appeared to look into our dining room and liked what he saw or perhaps it was his reflection mirrored in the window that fascinated him. The warbler has stayed with us these four weeks and has established his routine patrol from the dining room lilac, then flitting to the three deck posts, to the an apple tree branch by the living room window and ending at the shrub at the bathroom window. One morning as I was trying to read in bed I counted twenty two passages of our yellow friend in under an hour. At each step of his patrol he looks into the house or so I thought. Watching him butt against the window repeatedly I realized he is responding to the mirrored warbler he sees in our windows. It has become impossible to sleep past 5:45 AM at our house as the warbler makes so much noise attempting to challange his mirrored twin.

Our house cats who never go outside are thrilled with our frequent visitor.

The warbler butts his reflection in the windows. The two black cats leap and bang against the windows from the inside. No, there is no sleeping in. The first week of the Yellowthroat's visit our cats were so stressed, exhausted mentally and physically at the end of the day from all their jumping at the unobtainable. Now they have become accustomed to his window visits.

The Common Yellowthroat is a ground nester prefering brushy, marshy areas for breeding. Also territorial, but I wonder how can this fellow attend to any family duties when he spends most of the day combatting his mirror nemisis. I hear him now at the window with the french lilac.

Posted by bill@birdingguide.com at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New Trip Report Coming Soon

Posted by bill@birdingguide.com at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)