by Steve Sosensky - O4B Staff
30. November 2011 03:14
On a routine weekend in late November, we went to look at a Harris’s Hawk reported recently at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine, California. Even though this bird is likely to not be accepted by the Orange County Bird Records Committee due to questionable origins, you just can’t miss a bird that cool in a location like this. We arrived at about 8:45 on a sunny Saturday morning. There had to be at least 200 Cedar Waxwings calling from the parking lot as we got set up and headed out. We walked to the end of the boardwalk, and there was the hawk, sitting regally in a bare branched tree. After taking numerous photos of him, we headed back towards the main pond area. Our walk was interrupted by a nice male Sharp-shinned Hawk who posed obligingly in a sycamore some 200 feet away. Next up was what seemed like at least 7-8 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, all fussing away like tiny, angry felines. As we got back to Pond D, one of the birders with us asked “Isn’t that the Vermilion Flycatcher?” He was right! It was, and a nice bright male at that.
While that bird was being photographed, one of us noticed what appeared to be a Brewer’s Blackbird, walking along the shore of Pond D in the stubble of sedge stalks. Closer examination revealed that this bird had a tremendous amount of cinnamon plumage on the crown, nape and saddle, a bright pale supercilium extending well behind the pale yellowish eye, and pale gray between the wings and on the rump. This was an apparent female Rusty Blackbird, a first for San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary and only about the third for Orange County. Further observation revealed the handsome rufous edging to the flight feathers contrasting with the shiny black wings. The bird showed a paler brownish gray chest with faint, short vertical streaking across the chest and belly, all consistent with a female Rusty Blackbird. Rusty Blackbird is a species of special concern in the United States at large, where its population has been in precipitous decline in recent years.
All images were taken with a Kowa TSN-884 spotting scope with 20-60x zoom eyepiece and a Nikon CoolPix P6000 camera attached using a Kowa TSN-DA-10 digiscoping adapter. The optics were mounted on a Manfrotto 701HDV,055CXV3 carbon fiber tripod with digiscoping head. The two Rusty Blackbird photos are of the same bird - one in direct sun at 160 feet, the other in shade at about 40 feet. The difference in these two photos illustrates how much lighting can alter the appearance of a subject.
by Bruce Aird - O4B Staff
27. November 2011 01:28
It’s fall in southern California, so birders are busy looking for the odd vagrants that show up in pocket parks and might stay long enough to be recorded on the Christmas counts. Fall is the time to be looking for sapsuckers. Here in Orange County, CA, it’s possible to see all four species of sapsucker. Red-breasted is the most common species here while Williamson’s is the rarest. We found an unreported juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in Canyon Park on Saturday, 20-NOV-11. Yellow-bellied and Red-naped Sapsuckers can be quite similar in appearance for much of the year and most of their lives, but in fall, a juvenile Yellow-bellied is obvious, due to a major difference in molt patterns between the two species. Juvenile Red-naped Sapsuckers molt into their first basic plumage prior to migrating while young Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers retain their juvenile feathering all winter, not beginning to look like adults until late march or even April. Thus, a primarily brown sapsucker in winter is likely a Yellow-bellied, but you might want to take a close look at it just in case. If it has a paler brown head, or lacks the prominent white wing coverts, you could have an adult female Williamson’s Sapsucker.
We drove up to Veteran’s Park in Sylmar on the 21st to look for a male Williamson’s that had been reported there. After a long search, we found many trees bearing obvious evidence of sapsucker workings, but only two birds: a shy Red-breasted and another unreported juvenile Yellow-bellied. This bird shows the characteristic stiff tail feathers that help the bird be more stable in its perch on the trunk. The red fringe on the crown is not a photographic artifact – the bird had buried red in the crown feathers, hints of color it will show more boldly later. The shot was taken with a Canon S95 digital camera on a Kowa TSN-883 scope using a DA-10 adaptor.
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