Pacific Wren

Pacific Wrens sing amazingly complex songs. Erika and I heard one calling from shrubs on the floor of the Woodard Bay Conservation area on 10 May 2021. We never saw the bird. We recorded the song using BirdNet on our iPhone. I was relieved that the app confirmed my identification. Researchers describe the song as one of the most complex of all birds. You can listen the our recording by clicking here.

Toews and Irwin (2020) describe the complexity of Pacific Wren songs. Each male has up to ten short song introductions. These intros are followed by up to 80 successive songs. The male, therefore, may have a repertoire of over 800 songs. Wrens are able to repeat songs. The songs are composed of syllables. In one study, the average syllable number within a song ranged from 73 to 338, with an average of 158. You may note in the song graph, Pacific Wrens can can sing simultaneous notes from their syrinx and each of their two bronchial tubes. How a male sings seems to depend on how he feels and the intensity of competition from other males. 

Swainson’s Thrush

Our first Swainson’s Thrush of 2021—a very common breeding bird along most of the west coast of North America, Alaska, and central Canada and the northernmost United States. We caught this individual on 9 May, and noted that the bird was already banded. We first banded this thrush on 13 June 2020. This age is not unusal for songbirds, but its fidelity to our backyard is noteworthy. The closest that these thrushes spend the winter is central Mexico. Many continue south, wintering through Central America and all the way across western South America to Argentina.

Pigeon Guillemot

Erika and I spent most of 8 May 2021 counting birds for eBird’s Global Big Day. For 24 hours (local time), birders from around the world are urged to submit checklists to be tallied. Last year over 50,000 people from 175 countries submitted 120,000 checklists—6,479 species were recorded. I doubt any of the 50 species that we submitted this year were unique or even all that rare. This photo of a Pigeon Guillemot in the Olympia harbor was one of the best birds we found. In any event, we enjoyed the chase. We suspect that ours will be an easy total to surpass next year if we forgo an unproductive afternoon driving through the birdless hills beyond Olympia.

Wood Duck

A photographer of birds can hardly walk by a Wood Duck without stopping to take a picture. These images are of six at the McLane Creek Nature Trail near Olympia on 7 May 2020. Erika and I only saw males. Perhaps they staked out territories while waiting for females to arrive. We did not, however, notice any aggression between the drakes.

As we watched from a viewing pier, two of the drakes swam quickly, making a wide circle around us. After making three quarters of a circle around us, the two ducks flushed and flew further down the lake. Looking at these images, I notice that the closer drake has his scapular feathers raised. I find no mention of this behavior in the literature. The day was windy—perhaps the scapulars just blew oddly on the close bird. Drakes are not normally aggressive towards one another. When aggression is shown, drakes open their beaks, lower their necks, and attack. Possibly the drake was showing aggression towards us, but hesitant to attack.

American Goldfinch

A pair of American Goldfinches sang from a hedgerow at the Nisqually national wildlife refuge on 5 May 2021. Because of the black, rather than gray, wings, I identified the second bird as a second-year male. Actually we kind of hoped for Lesser Goldfinches, which we have seen in Oregon but not in Washington. Lesser Goldfinches are often reported from the Olympia area, and their numbers seem to be increasing. In fact, Lesser Goldfinches appeared on a couple of eBird lists on the same day and in the same general area of our birds. These photos definitely show pale, pinkish bills typical of American Goldfinches. Lesser Goldfinches’ bills are dark-gray.

White-throated Sparrow

I agree with Wahl et al. in Birds of Washington that White-throated Sparrows are uncommon migrants and winter visitors in western Washington. Erika and I have only seen six since we moved here in 2019. Our seventh was this bird that Erika found for me along a road in the Billy Frank Jr Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge on 5 May 2021. Breeding Bird Surveys indicate widespread decreases of White-throated Sparrow populations (Falls and Kopachena 2020). In western Washington, however, this species is now more frequently reported than historically. Wahl et al. are at a loss to explain this increase, but suggest human creation of sparrow habitat through clearing forests, increased bird feeding by the public, and more birders looking for this species. 

Mallard

Erika and I found a hen Mallard with several chicks at the McLane Creek Natural Trail. 23 April 2021 seems like an early date for hatched birds. However, 14 March is the earliest first egg laying date (Paulson pers. comm.). Incubation averages 28 days. Thus our April record is probably not so noteworthy. 

American Dipper

Tumwater Falls Park,  in the middle of Olympia, is the easiest place for us to find American Dippers. The park, however, has been closed for over a year, first due to the Covid virus, then for renovation. This 15-acre private reserve, originally donated by the Olympic Brewing Company, is reopened with a new new name, Brewery Park at Tumwater Falls. The park basically consists of a cascade as the Deschutes River drops over  80 feet into Capitol Lake. This habitat is perfect for dippers, but the birds can be hard to see and are not guaranteed. I am fond of dippers because they inspired my father to become interested in birds when he read to watch for dipper’s bobbing spasmodically along mountain streams. The result was a remarkable patience with his bird-watching sons. After much searching, we three found our first dipper in the mountains of central Mexico.

I have previously posted a lot about American Dippers, so I will not repeat too much of what I have already written. As the birds search for aquatic critters, dippers blink a striking white eyelid. On 3 May 2021, Erika and I found three dippers along the Deschutes cascade. All of these images are of the first bird. The first photo is uncropped, meant to show you what their habitat looks like. The second photo is an enlarged version of the first, and shows the bird’s white eyelids.

Dippers feed both on the wet rocks along the riverside and in the river itself. Often they will completely submerge under the water. The submersive behavior does not produce much of a photo, so I am content to share this fourth image of the bird with only its head under water. The dipper in the last photo has water rushing off its back after it dove into the rapids.

Even in the summer, dipper streams are cold. Dippers are evolved to survive the cold water by having a low metabolic rare, blood with extra oxygen-carrying capacity, and a thick feather coat (Kingery and Willson 2020).

Western Azure

Western (or Echo) Azures are tiny butterflies that flutter by, flashing their brilliant upper wings. They are difficult to photograph in the air. When they land, these butterflies fold up their wings, showing only their white undersides. This azure, in our backyard on 23 April 2021, was an exception. These butterflies have an interesting life cycle. The larvae are cared for by ants, and the caterpillars may pupate in ant nests (Butterfliesandmoths.com). Echo Azures are found in western states from British Columbia to Baja California and are habitat generalists.

Black-necked Stilt

eBird is a large part of Erika and my birding. This computer application keeps track of the birds we see, even filling in the counties in which we see our quarry. The app is able to alert us when a bird we have not seen has been reported by other observers, and can give you directions on where to look. (eBird is also a tool for “citizen science,” although those words seem oxymoronic.) Erika and I are not good at chasing rare birds, but yesterday we did search for two Black-necked Stilts reported from the Nisqually national wildlife refuge—only 12 miles from home. Stilts have a patchy distribution across the western hemisphere. They can be tolerably common in eastern Washington, but, inexplicably, there are only several dozen records for the western part of the state. Finding rare birds at the refuge is often not difficult—all you have to do is look for the abundant birders.

Black-necked stilts wade in freshwater wetlands in search of crawfish, aquatic insects, snails, small fish, and frogs. Robinson et al. (2020) do not specifically mention dragonfly larvae, but I am sure stilts would also find them tasty. 

Stilts use a few hunting methods. This stilt plunged its head under water. This strike was successful, but I am not sure of the prey’s identity. Stilts can hunt by simply walking along with their heads and necks under water. Other stilts peck prey form the surface of the water or off muddy shores. Others snatch prey that attempt to fly away from the birds. Usually stilts find their prey by sight, but they can also hunt using tactile methods. Stilts can also hunt using scythe-like sweeps, swiping their bills sideways through the water or mud.