[EBB Sightings] This morning at Jewel Lake

Dear Birders:

After a spring and early summer of bird songs, Jewel Lake early this morning was almost silent.  Even the Swainson's Thrush, the last of the song birds to sing in the summer, called only once.

Along the Upper Pack Rat trail we heard the "chip" of a Wilson's Warbler and saw an Orange-crowned Warbler which appeared to be molting.  The Bewick's Wren can be counted on for a scold or two and maybe a few snatches of song -- which is what we heard.

Shelves of white oyster mushrooms growing on an oak caught our eye and Emilie spotted the remains of a raven in the leaf litter.  Poison oak wining up the trees is turning red.  
In this quiet season, berries are ripening -- purple currant berries, red thimbleberries resembling raspberries, and heavy bunches of elderberries bending down branches. Along the trail, a nice display of creek dogwood, leaves turning a delicate rose,  bear a generous crop of white berries. It was in this particular thicket of dogwoods that we watched a flock of feeding Warbling Vireos last year  -- pale birds eating pale berries. Migrating songbirds will find Jewel Lake a feast worth remembering.  

The lake has shrunk to the point to where no water trickles over the dam.  Now that more silt is invading the lake each year, cattails and bulrushes are finding a purchase in certain places along the muddy edge.  Emilie suggests that maybe one day a Sora or Virginia Rail might show up.  

The most interesting bird of the morning was a leucistic Junco, white blotches making a random pattern on its black head.

This somnolent time at Jewel Lake will end in another month or so when summer birds prepare to depart, migrants move through in larger numbers, and the early winter birds start arriving.  And maybe even best of all -- the possibility of the first rain shower of the new season!

Phila Rogers