Away out there, they got a name for wind. They call the wind Mariah. And over this weekend Mariah was really doing her thing! First, imagine us thirteen birds out there, being buffeted around, loosing our hats, going back for jackets. Then, imagine the birds, weighing only few ounces but with a relatively large body mass. If you were that bird would like to go out, or would you like to be hidden and nestled by a tree trunk, staying out of Mariah’s way. And so it was. Many of the birds we came to see, we missed. No summer or western tanager, just a few of the common warblers, hardly any birds venturing out to feed at any one of Dee Zellar’s fifteen feeders.
Enough of the negativity. There was lots of action over at Covington Park. It was a year of pairs. We watched the vermillions fly around collecting bugs then delivering them home to a very visable nest. Two Bewick’s wrens were cleaning house in a previously used hole. A pair of lesser goldfinches that Charlotte discovered were huddled sweetly together in a nest high in a tamarisk tree. At feeders nine and ten a pair of white-winged doves fed on grain. A pair of Cooper’s hawks had the ideal nest/lookout right above the water feature and we got to watch them as they raced after each other all the way to the baseball diamond and back again. And let’s not forget the new and busy elongated bushtit nest at the beginning of the boardwalk.
Our count, including birds spotted by those who stayed over Saturday night, was 44. Of this number 32 were seen Saturday morning at Big Morongo, 3 the next day there, and 9 more species in the general Yucca Valley area. The pair of Scott’s orioles looked just spectacular and were sighted, as always, from the ranger station at the Black Rock Canyon Campground. Here’s our list:
| 4/16/16 | 4/17/16 | 4/17/16 | |||
| Big Morongo | Big Morongo | Yucca Valley | |||
| QUAILS & ALLIES | |||||
| Gambel’s Quail | 25 | ||||
| AMERICAN VULTURES | |||||
| Turkey Vultures | 1 | ||||
| HAWKS & FALCONS | |||||
| Cooper’s Hawk | 2 | ||||
| American Kestrel | 1 | ||||
| PIGEONS & DOVES | |||||
| Rock Pigeon | 13 | ||||
| White-winged Dove | 2 | ||||
| Eurasian Collared-Dove | 1 | 6 | |||
| Morning Dove | 1 | 14 | |||
| TYPICAL OWLS | |||||
| Great Horned Owl | 1 | ||||
| HUMMINGBIRDS | |||||
| Black-chinned Hummingbird | 1 | 1 | 4 | ||
| Anna’s Hummingbird | 3 | ||||
| Costa’s Hummingbird | 1 | ||||
| WOODPECKERS | |||||
| Nuttall’s Woodpecker | 1 | 1 | |||
| Ladderback Woodpecker | 3 | 2 | |||
| TYRANT FLYCATHERS | |||||
| Black Phoebe | 2 | 1 | |||
| Vermillion Flycatchers | 6 | 2 | |||
| Ash-throated Flycatcher | 1 | ||||
| Cassin’s Kingbird | 2 | 2 | |||
| VIREOS | |||||
| Bell’s Vireo | 1 | ||||
| JAYS & CROWS | |||||
| Western Scrub-jay | 6 | 2 | 8 | ||
| American Crow | 1 | ||||
| Common Raven | 15 | ||||
| LONG-TAILED TITS & TITMICE | |||||
| Bushtit | 10 | ||||
| Verdin | 1 | ||||
| Nuthatches | |||||
| White-breasted Nuthatch | 1 | ||||
| WRENS | |||||
| Bewick’s Wren | 6 | ||||
| House Wren | 2 | ||||
| Cactus Wren | 12 | ||||
| BLUEBIRDS, THRUSHES & ALLIES | |||||
| Western Bluebird | 2 | 1 | |||
| MOCKINGBIRDS & THRASHERS | |||||
| Northern Mockingbird | 8 | ||||
| California Thrasher | 1 | ||||
| PHAINOPEPLA | |||||
| Phainopepla | 3 | 4 | |||
| WARBLERS | |||||
| Orange-crowned Warbler | 2 | ||||
| Yellow Warbler | 3 | ||||
| Common Yellowthroat | 2 | ||||
| Yellowrump Warbler | 1 | 4 | |||
| TOWHEES & SPARROWS | |||||
| California Towhee | 1 | ||||
| ORIOLES & BLACKBIRDS | |||||
| Brown-headed Cowbird | 1 | ||||
| Hooded Oriole | 2 | 2 | |||
| Scott’s Oriole | 2 | ||||
| FINCHES & ALLIES | |||||
| House Finch | 8 | 5 | 15 | ||
| Lesser Goldfinch | 11 | 4 | |||
| Lawrence’s Goldfinch | 3 | ||||
| OLD WORLD SPARROWS | |||||
| House Sparrow | 6 | 15 | |||
Until next time! And next time will be April 29, 2017 (we’re waiting until the very peak of the migration).
Flying high,
Doig Walkley
