But Wait There's More!

We thought that yesterday was pretty spectacular for newly arriving migrant birds but today was just as good!

This morning Liam, Alita and I met Dawn Garcia, Steve and daughter Raina King and Gerardo to conduct some migrant monitoring at the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve. As a master bander Dawn has operated a mist netting station here for several years, and Steve and Raina are experienced banders as well, so Liam and Alita assisted with net runs (checking a series of nets strung at strategic points along a trail) and processing (weighing, measuring, examining and releasing) the birds. Dawn and I headed down canyon to conduct counts at a series of eighteen different points.

Songs not heard for nearly a year wafted out of the forest and down from the tree-tops. Western tanagers and ash-throated flycatcher sang along the riparian corridor. An insect like refrain was heard, then lost, then heard again…a flycatcher certain but dusky or Hammond’s? A check of my trusty birdjam provided a perfect match to the vocalization of Hammond’s flycatcher – the first of many heard by Dawn and I. In a sunny meadow lined with large oaks a syncopated, metallic song came from the top of the largest of the trees, and the binoculars revealed the source – an electric blue Lazuli bunting. From across the same meadow a sing-songy, upbeat tune was diagnostic of the melody of a warbling vireo.

Back at the nets the banding crew had some exciting captures as well, and provided us with up-close, in-hand looks at Hammond’s flycatcher, the same bird Dawn and I had heard in the tree-tops - and an itinerant migrant, only stopping here shortly on it’s way to higher elevations. Other birds banded by the crew included orange-crowned warbler, Bewick’s wren, spotted towhee, and bushtit.