Welcome back, Golden-crowned Sparrows!

This was a little longer between posts than I’d hoped for, but it means that I have more to add to my “weekly” capture highlights: Orange-crowned Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Hermit Thrush, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Downy Woodpecker, Chipping Sparrow, Puget Sound White-crowned Sparrow.

The Orange-crowned Warbler is really awesome because they have a hidden crown that is difficult, if not impossible to see unless you’re holding it. When I was extracting this guy from the net, I was thinking about what kind of warbler it might be while pulling the last bit of netting over his head, which exposed the orange crown. Awesome! We don’t catch these guys very often. I think I caught one in my first week, but this might be the only other one since then.

What orange crown?

THAT orange crown!

We caught the Yellow-rumped Warbler at one of our off-sites. It was our first one of the season, so it was awesome to see up close. On the same day we also caught about eight Yellow Warblers, which we don’t catch very often, so it was crazy getting so many at once! We actually had two little flocks of birds at different times during the day – in the first check of the morning I had nine birds in one of my nets, and a few hours later I had another seven in a different net. Those were my first flocks, so it was exhilarating kicking it into high gear and processing birds as quickly as possible. Fortunately that was a day that Renee came out to calibrate with us, so she was able to scribe while Wyatt and I processed all the birds. That was just a great day overall – we caught a lot of birds and there was a huge diversity of the species.

We also caught our first Hermit Thrush and Ruby-crowned Warbler of the season. Both species have migrated from northern areas (as far north as Alaska), so we’ll be seeing more and more of them as the season goes on (we’ve already caught several of each already). The Ruby-crowned Kinglet has a more secretive crown than the Golden-crowned Kinglet – only males have the ruby crowns, and they are somewhat hidden, like the Orange-crowned Warbler crowns. Apparently there are usually way more female Ruby-crowned Kinglets at Palo (so without the ruby crown), but we managed to catch a couple males at an off-site this week!

Hermit Thrush

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

We’ve caught Downy Woodpeckers before, but I got to process my first one this week, so that was cool. Downy Woodpeckers look exactly like Hairy Woodpeckers, but they are way smaller and have a much shorter bill.

Downy Woodpecker

This week we also caught a pair of juvenile Chipping Sparrows, which are not commonly seen at Palo, especially not in juvenile plumage, so that was exciting. After Kaitlin and I extracted them from the first net we couldn’t figure out what they were, so we brought them into the kitchen where the rest of the staff was eating lunch. The great thing about working with bird people is that all you have to do to get their attention is walk into the room with a bird in your hand and say “what is this bird?” and they’ll all immediately run over to take a look!

Chipping Sparrow

Last but not least, we caught a Puget Sound White-crowned Sparrow. That was the first one that I had seen in the hand, but a couple of the others caught one the week before. To determine which subspecies of White-crowned Sparrow you have, you have to do a bunch of funky measurements and formulas. I think you first measure the wing chord, then you determine the amount of fat on the bird on a scale of 0-6 and the corresponding gram equivalent, then you weigh the bird and subtract the grams of fat to get the lean weight, and finally you divide the wing chord by the lean weight. Somehow someone came up with that formula as the best way to distinguish between subspecies! Weird.

White-crowned Sparrow (not the one we caught)

Other notable species that I saw in the last “week”: Lincoln’s Sparrow, Acorn Woodpecker (Bobby and Wyatt actually caught one at Palo while Kaitlin and I were at an off-site!), Rufous-crowned Sparrow, California Towhee, Brewer’s Sparrow, Palm Warbler. I also saw a Cooper’s Hawk attack a flock of California Quail!

Palm Warbler

Okay, so last time I said I would talk about some of the things I do for fun. Well, this was an extra special week with some awesome activities planned. Last weekend I went to visit a friend from college (Kevin) who is now living in Oakland. He spent the morning smoking some ribs and preparing stuffed bell peppers, so we hung out in his back yard all afternoon, stuffing our faces with mouth-watering ribs and beer before making some peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. It was great day.

Side note: On the drive over to Oakland my fuel gauge did this super random thing where it decided to stop registering the amount of fuel in my tank (it slowly dropped to below empty). However, within 30 minutes it started rising again (with some wobbles here and there) until it settled roughly where it should have been. I even filled my tank up right after that and it seems like it’s been displaying the correct amount ever since then. Anyone ever have that happen to them??

Anyways, yesterday we had our annual Golden-crowned Sparrow (GCSP) party to welcome back the GCSPs to Palo (they breed as far north as Alaska and just started showing up here a couple weeks ago). We had golden food and drink, people made golden crowns, we played “pin the band on the GCSP” (I was the closest one for the entire game until our banding instructor went last … of course!), sang a song about GCSPs, we bet on the number of GCSPs detected at Palo that day, and they announced the winner of our bets on when the first GCSP would be caught at Palo (the birds were super late this year – the winning bet was still two days early!). Pretty fun and random party!

Showing off that golden crown

In addition to those special events, sometimes I head down to the beach if it’s warm enough after work. It’s only a 20 minute walk to get to the beach from our station, but it’s a rocky beach with not much shore. However, there’s a really great sandy beach in town a 10 minute drive away, so that’s perfect. This week in particular was incredibly hot for this area (yesterday it got up to 32 degrees Celsius! (90 degrees Fahrenheit)). So after finishing our data entry on Thursday, which was a particularly busy day at our off-site, the four of us interns headed down for some beach time before dinner. So great to be this close to the beach! I really need to take advantage of this more, as in multiple times per week. Good to keep in mind if you ever decide to visit – I’m 15 minutes from the ocean!

While this week has been great beach weather, it’s really taken a toll on my car, specifically the cleanliness. I’m not talking about getting sand inside or anything (please, I’m a field biologist – I wear dirty boots and drop pine needles all over on a daily basis). I’m talking about the outside. The last mile of the drive to our station is actually a dirt road, and it kicks up a ton of dust (the plants along that stretch all look gray). That means that my car also gets a nice dusting of dirt. When it was colder and cloudier, there was often a nice layer of dew all over my car, and sometimes even some morning mist to help out. At one of our off-sites (Muddy Hollow), our banding station is in the parking lot, so we hang out right next to the car. On a particularly slow morning a couple of weeks ago I grabbed a bird bag and started rubbing the dew/mist all over my car to attempt to wipe some of the dirt off. It seemed to work pretty well (the bag turned black), at least until sections of the car started drying. Then it was evident that I had just smeared the dirt around instead of actually cleaning the car. I did it a few more times with some of the dirty bags (didn’t want the birds to be stuck with only dirty bags, and my car already had bird poop on it, so why not use a poopy bird bag to clean with?), and it started looking better. My plan was to do this every time I went to that site, but lately there hasn’t been any dew to help smear the dirt around! I like to think that my car is drought-friendly, rather than dirty, but at some point I may have to cave and actually wash it (you know, rather than rubbing bird poop on it).

This Monday is our Bird-A-Thon! It sounds like we’ve got a course planned out, fortunately with pit stops at some of the staff houses, and it’ll be roughly 11 miles… in a dress and hiking boots. The good thing is that it will have cooled down a bit by then, so it should be a great day. For those of you who have already donated, thank you so much!! For anyone who still wants to, you can do so here: http://pointblue.kintera.org/levins. You can also donate per species if you, like my brother, want to make me work for it. In the past I think the total count was close to 120 species, but this is the first year that our team is doing the “green team challenge” by not using vehicles at any point during the day, so our count will definitely be lower. I’ll keep a list of the birds that we detect and let you all know how it goes! And get a stunning team photo, of course.

Banana slug