[EBB Sightings] park use up, bird activity adjusts

After this past gloriously wet spring, my natural history passions are finally segueing from BA mushrooms back to the birds. And as folks tighten their belts and cut out unecessary spending, park use is going up, nowhere more true than at my formerly highly underused favorite trail at Huckleberry Preserve. 

With more constant human disturbance, the birds can no longer afford to "wait it out" for folks to head off along the trail before jumping back into the adjacent shrubs and trails to forage. This plays into the hands (or binocs) of a patient birder who can just pause and observe, quietly and unobtrusively.

Calling Pacific slope flycatchers have peppered my walks, as well as an exasperated parent dark-eyed junco, longing for a little empty nest syndrome, and pursued by a fat and demanding juvenile. A young Swainson's thrush softly called by the Huck entrance, behaving far less surreptitiously than its more experienced parents.

I even observed my first direct bird/fungal interaction! A brown creeper worked the cavities and folds of a dried and somewhat stinky parchment fungus that had sprouted this spring from the downed trunk of a live oak SOD victim. The bird wasn't interested in the fungus per se, so much as the insect and spider habitat that its convoluted form provided. Still, it was a nice visual overlap of two of my favorite natural history subjects...

Hawks and eagles at Huck have been conspicious by their absence, or perhaps our walk/fly schedules are just off-sync? You would think the hills at Sibley would be full to bursting with fat and delicious ground squirrels, what with all of the increased vegetation this year... 

Happy birding, wherever you search.
Debbie Viess