New Voices on the Ridge

Two new voices were heard yesterday on our ridge.

The first began about 6:15 and piped off every 20 seconds for about 45 minutes thereafter. ‘Piped’ is the closest I can come to describing the high pitched, extended, single call note of Mountain Quail. This large quail with the long, tall, erect top knot has a very limited range of western state mountains, including California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Additionally it is quite shy and is typically found in dense hillside brush, making it the target of bird ‘listers’ from around the world.

The second was a continuous ‘peenting’ coming from the very top of a tall pine in my neighbor’s yard. Suspecting the identity of the bird I grabbed my field-glasses and followed the sound. There, silhouetted against the lightening sky was a Townsend’s Solitaire. In contradiction to it’s ‘solitary’ name a second solitaire flew in and chased the first from it’s perch. This species, lovely in their very subtle shades of gray, are only here briefly, during their up/down slope migration in spring and fall.