Meet The Neighbors: The Verdin

One of the first birds I met in the yard was the verdin (Auriparus flaviceps). Verdins are permanent (non-migratory) residents of the lower southwest United States and northern Mexico. They are generally found in desert washes, where shrubby thorn trees such as acacias, mesquites and palo verdes create suitable nest sites. It seems that verdins are also adapting to living within our residential communities, as well.

Yards which provide enough forage often support a resident family group of verdins. For a verdin, forage would mostly consist of insects. Here's a picture I took of the male verdin hunting for insects off the desert willow flowers. Insectivorous birds such as verdins, flycathers and warblers can be encouraged to visit a yard by avoiding the use of chemical insecticides to kill insects. Don't worry if you see insects flying around your landscape plants. Leave it to Nature's Pest Removers - insect-eating birds - to take care of the situation! You'll have a less-toxic yard, plus you'll be rewarded with bright avian visitors who will add color to the trees and shrubs and will provide you with lyrical songs!

The photo to the left is the male verdin scolding me when I got too close to one of his nests. Verdins can be territorial. We even consider our resident verdin to be the "guard dog" of our yard! When predatory animals such as roadrunners, neighbors' cats, or the local Cooper's hawk enter our yard, we often hear the "alarm" or "scold" call from the verdin. Links to some sites where you can listen to verdin calls are here and here. Usually I can't get a clear sight of this active little bird, but he was so focused on me, he let me take this picture. The shot to the right is often what I end with after several attempts to photograph this active little guy.

The photo to the right is a desert willow with a verdin nest constructed within its branches. You can click on the photo to get a better impression of the architectural marvel these little birds create! The verdin couple in our yard are often busy making different nests. Verdins construct several conspicuous nests throughout our yard. Verdins are the only birds in the New World that are part of the pendulous tit Family, which construct bag-shaped nests that hang from trees. Although verdins don't create such complex nests, they do perform an impressive architectural feat - they weave together tightly enclosed globular nests perched among the branches of shrubby trees and cacti. The photo to the left shows the female participating in the nest building process. Here, she hangs upside-down from the nest as she weaves a twig into the structure.

Spring-time with the verdins is one of my favorite times of year because I get to watch them feed the babies. This is a photo of poppa verdin feeding his baby (perched on a palo verde tree).

Meet the Neighbors - The Black-throated Sparrow

One of my favorite new additions to the yard is the black-throated sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata) (BTSP) (it has a lovely song, which you can hear through a link on the Cornell Bird site (linked above), or by clicking here and here. I prefer the second links because they capture more of the lyricism than the Cornell clips. These sparrows in particular are bold, curious, and vocal. They're a great addition to the yard, because they enjoy hanging out "where the action is", usually in a shrub nearby where I'm working in the yard, often making their high-pitched twinkling calls and songs.

Sounds like the sparrows' population is in decline, mostly linked to hotter-burning fires in the Great Basin region and habitat conversion, which is too bad. Here's a nice little essay about the loss of BTSP due to suburbanization.

The BTSP prefers habitats with mature cacti and enough vegetation to provide their seed-based diet (they also eat insects, esp during breeding and nestling season). It was a nice "compliment" to the yard to have the BTSP choose to call it his territory and decide to breed here.

Seems its not as easy as just showing up - in the three years that a BTSP has called the yard his territory (I assume its the same male, but we can never be sure unless we banded him), there have been only 2 years where a mate has shown up and they've bred. In fact, this year, I wasn't even sure if a female sparrow was in the yard (in this species, the male and female have the same plumage, which means that, unless you see two sparrows hanging out togther, you don't know you have more than one). Then, I was looking out the back door, and, lo - I saw it!! The baby black-throated sparrow!! The pic to the left is the first one I was able to snap of the chick. You can see that it still has that big-billed baby look. There is no black throat and the white eyebrow is just begining to form. The chick has the characteristic brown speckling that many baby birds have - great camo in the nest, in shrubs, and on the ground!

The pic on the right was taken just a couple days later. The chick has already developed the characteristic white eyebrows. The black throat won't appear until the winter molt. To the left is one of the babies (there ended up being 2 this year!) begging in a shrub. I heard the typical BTSP chirping; but this time it was particularly high pitched. Chasing down the sound, I found the baby perched within the safety of the many-branched creosote bush shrub, loudly begging for food. It would also flutter its wings rapidly. The pic isn't in focus - my cheap point-and-shoot camera couldn't focus very well with all the random branches. An example of why the baby uses the shrub for cover!

I sure hope this successfull nesting event means more black-throated sparrows in our yard many years into the future!