[EBB Sightings] Jewel Lake field trip

Dear Birders:

Light rain, a chilly breeze, and clouds enveloping the tree tops -- not
a promising beginning for the regularly-scheduled Jewel Lake field trip
yesterday -- but a singing Yellow Warbler high in a live oak at the
parking lot, was a promising harbinger.

Six intrepid souls showed up including two visiting Brits who seemed to
think it was a fine morning.  Within the hour, the clouds parted
revealing a fresh-minted day full of singing birds. 

Wilson's Warblers were as vocal and numerous as usual and we heard not
the song but the call note of the Swainson's Thrush.  We saw or heard
three woodpeckers -- the Northern Flicker, Harris and Downey Woodpecker
pair who came and went from trees in the vicinity of their nest hole,
and two vireos -- the Warbling Vireo always melodious and the Hutton's
Vireo's who sees some advantage to repetition.

The star of the morning especially for the Brits was the Black-headed
Grosbeaks who were both feeding and singing  One male displayed his
rich yellow and orange breast in the full sun near the top of a willow.

Hearing both a Western Tanager (in migration) and seeing several robins
reminds me that May is the month of the three sing-alikes.  The
tanagers song is the most 'laid back' and slower, the robin's
lively'cheer-ups' are familiar to many, while the Back-headed
Grosbeak's song deserves kudoos for the most variable and impassioned.

We didn't see the remaining bufflehead or the female Macgillavry's
Warbler reported by Emilee Strauss the day before, but we did manage a
respectable 25 species on our hour-and-a-half walk.

Phila Rogers

Note:  Berkeley ornithologist Joseph Grinnell (founding director of
UC's Museum of Zoology) reports in his 1914 published list of the birds
of the UC campus, that Yellow Warblers were common singers in downtown
street trees. 
  ))


 
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