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).

Quail Diaries: This Year, Its Super Dad!

Welcome back to our ongoing stories of the California Quail (Callipepla californica) who live in our neighborhood! Last year, we got to meet Super Mom. Well, there's a new Super in the yard, and that is: Super Dad! One of the first families to hatch-out this year was a huge group of (we think we counted) 20 chicks. A week or so after we first spotted them, I began to notice that I didn't see an adult female.

Our first question was, "Did a predator (such as a neighbor's cat or dog, a Cooper's hawk, or even a bobcat) get her?"

That seemed unlikely because the babies were still all present and unharmed (as far as we could count - its not easy to get an accurate count! The quail babies move en masse, with a sort of "flow" that makes it hard to discern one baby from the other). Usually, a predator would target the babies, which are easier prey. This did not make the "predator theory" very plausible.

We decided that she must have become gravid again, and went to lay more eggs (with another male). We have many male quail in the yard, fighting daily over the females, so this explanation made the most sense.

Overall, Super Dad has done a GREAT job! He keeps the babies moving through the yard, a behavior that most likely prevents predators from reliably finding where the vulnerable babies may be. The babies themselves have adapted well, and form a tight-knit group that follows Dad when on the move, and lays together in a cohesive unit when he's allowing them to rest. The picture on the right is Super Dad assembling the babies in a safe group near the edge of tree cover, but still in the warm sun. As you can see in the photo to the left, the babies are quite content to just lay down, preen themselves, and wait for the next command to move.

And I'll leave you with my final picture: here he is!! Super Dad!!!

With the babes content in the sun, Dad gets the good perch, calls out some territorial "chucks" and watches over his chicks. What a guy! To hear examples of his territorial call, click on this link, and scroll down to the "male aggressive call". This is also the sound the males make when the fight over the females during mating season.

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!

Quail Diaries: The Return of Lady Coop

She's back!! Yes, making a sooner-than expected visit to our yard was a top predator of our resident California quail (Callipepla californica) covies, a female Coopers hawk (Accipiter cooperii). Usually the coops are found in our town only in the cooler months of late fall, winter, and early spring. Otherwise, they live up in the higher elevations, within deciduous and coniferous forests. We very recently had a rare monsoon rainstorm; which brought a number of the mountain birds down to forage in our yard, including a brightly colored western tanager.

Hawks have what is know as reverse sexual dimorphism, where the female of the species is larger than the male. It is hypothesized that this has been an adaptation associated with diversification of feeding and prey-capturing. Females hunt for larger birds (such as mourning doves and quail) and males hunt for smaller prey (such as sparrows and larger songbirds). This means that it is usually the female coop who is a threat to the quail.

Coops are amazing hunters and are known for their comfort with running on the ground to pursue their prey. Here's another lady, last winter, who had chased some quail into the bushes (to the right). As you can see, she's looking into the bush, ready to chase. Don't worry, our little quail friends were safe!! (This time... actually, in the winter, the coopers hawk will hunt our yard up to 4 times a day!! I suspect its that often when her hunts are unsuccessful...) After I snapped the shot, the hubby (who was waiting for my Go) ran out and chased her away.
The presence of the Lady Coop strongly affects the covey behavior of the quail. Just before her arrival each fall, the quail have massed into one huge covey that wanders the neighborhood, relaxes in the shade, and call to one another across the acres. After a couple days of her incesent chasing, they break down into small, quiet groups that hug the shade, cautiously skurrying from shelter to shelter.
This was the first time that the juvenile quail who were born this season have met their most-feared predator... and they were definitely scared. I knew she was in the yard because I heard the adults make their alarm call for 30 minutes! See, I feel guilty now because I'm trying to learn the quail calls. There are many of them and some sound alike. The alarm call sounds oddly similar to the "lets eat" call... Took me a long time until I realized that something was up in teh yard. I look out the back door, and there she is, Lady Coop, just 20 feet from my face, waiting in a low branch for an unsuspecting victim to come eat the bird seed!!
Luckily, she was only present for a couple days this time. Then the summertime temps returned and Lady Coop must have high-tailed it back to the mountain! I wonder if she is one of our regular winter residents and knew exactly to come to our ash tree? I mean, she was perched 5 feet above the exact spot where we *always* throw out bird seed. How did she know that?
And, as a final parting shot, here's a picture of the super-family I mentioned before... As part of their daily wandering and circling through the yard, they regularly cross our "stream" (we dug the drainage, flood it with a hose, and planted native wetland vegetation). The quail moms especially love to take their chicks through the stream because the tall bunch grasses provide both cover and forage for her babies. Cute!

Happenings In the Yard

We had a couple of warm days here - it got up to 106 F in the shade!! Came on pretty suddenly, and some of the critters were breathing hard (esp. some warblers, like the Townsend's warbler, which travel through our valley on their migrations, but live up in cooler temps in the summer). The cacti are in full bloom (some already past bloom), and I thought I'd share a couple of the ones with spectacular magenta blooms.

Got a nice shot of Super Mom with her chicks (her myth is explained in my last entry). If you look carefully, you can see how some are larger than others (story below). I've been watching her, to try and understand her "super" style... and I see that she's a real leader and a herder... she keeps the babes in line and moving along, as this photo is evidence. I can count 13 chicks in this photo, and I know more were hanging out to the side with pop.

And, with the warm weather, out come the desert iguanas (Dipsosaurus dorsalis), who are endemic to our yard. One of my favorite residents is Stumpy Joe, who can be identified by the fact that his long back toes are no longer present. He either lost them through fighting with other males (or females?) or from getting away from predators (road runners, gopher snakes, red racer snakes, etc.). As you can see, he's also re-growing the tip of his tail. What a scrapper! Joe could have been living in our yard for years... but we have so many iguanas now, its difficult to truly tell them apart (some - the babies and the gravid females - are easier to identify than others). Its only through his lost toes that I can tell him for who he is. And what a character! Truly a ruler of the yard. These photos are from when I came upon him as he was hanging out on the tallest mound in our yard - a real territory treasure. And he's the one who commands it. Stumpy is fun to feed meal worms (got a photo of the hubby feeding Joe last year posted on the blog) and he's always willing to run up to us and see if we've got a treat for him. I ran out of meal worms and fed him some creosote flowers instead. He enjoyed them... but they certainly aren't as exciting as meal worms! Here's another shot of Joe. How can you NOT love that face?

And to close us out, I'll give ya another photo of another nice cactus flower. Its a beauty!! The yellow is so brilliant, our semi-cheap digital camera just can't deal with it - that's a common problem when photographing cacti flowers. Those pink petals just freak the camera out! Maybe its time to learn the Program Mode of the darned thing.

Quail Diaries - The Legend of Super-Mom

Well, I'm a week late for the official "Mother's Day" holiday... but anyone who knows me is aware that I'm not very good with these dates... I wanted to write about our tortoises; but the quail have been so active, and I've gotten such great photos of them... we'll focus on Super Mom first. Yes, there she is to your left... Super Mom. As I had written in a previous entry, the California quail (Callipepla californica) that naturally occur in our yard are known for communal raising of their chicks - at times, a couple parents will join forces and raise their babies together. This greatly reduces predation, a big problem for both the babies and adults - quail are highly desired by the predators out there, and are constantly wary.
The quail in our yard seem to be "figuring out" this technique, and, for some reason, this mom has ended up with the babies from three (3!) families! She's got about 18 chicks following her (impossible to get a real count on 'em) and she and the dad have been leading these babies through our yard for the past couple weeks. I don't know how she ended up with all of them... somehow they imprinted on her and her chicks, not their own mom. If you look carefully at the photo here, you can see that some chicks are almost twice the size as others. Its a little tough to see; but its there... We hope momma can handle the responsibility... We hope some mommas start helping (there's a family that lost their babies to her, and are walking around with a single baby chick... why they don't pair up with Super Mom, I'm not sure...

Here's another fun photo of a different mom with her chicks (we've got about 3 or 4 families in the yard right now, never mind the counting mess that Super Mom has created). I opened up the back window-door shade at 6 this morn, and saw this very plumpy female resting in the yard. Look closely, and you'll see all her chicks scrunched in, trying to stay warm under her feathers. Cute!!! The quail used to be very difficult for me to photograph. They were scared of the camera lens (the Big Eye)... but each successive generation has adjusted and habituated, so that this mom allowed me to snap several shots.

And finally, lazy days and resting babies!! Here are 3 chicks from

Super Mom, resting in the sun. They love to lay down on their sides and stretch out their massively big feet.

Spring Update

Busy busy busy!! And we just can't avoid that wind. Guess that's life.

I've been seeing the baby Costa's hummingbirds and they are very entertaining. One (some?) of them sits on the hummer feeder attached to the edge of the kitchen window sill and stares at me (washing dishes) for several minutes at a time. Intense staring. For a hummer to stand still for 30 seconds is rare. Several minutes is unusual - this tells me it must be one of the babies of this year, and its learning its environment. I do believe that this hummer is one of the babies. Its difficult to see in the photo, but it *is* smaller than the other Costa's adults. Its also a little duller and fuzzier.

We've also seen some Anna's hummers, which are unusual here (they occur more towards the coast) they usually leave by the heat of the summer. I like them because their gorgets are red.

The desert iguanas are starting to emerge... which means the heat of the summer is arriving!

I also wanted to share this photo. It is looking south, across the Antelope Valley, to the California Poppy Preserve. See that orange?? Those are the California poppies!! We're so close, and yet so far... At least I can share several other poppies that I've seen this spring. To the right is the small-flowered poppy (Eschscholzia minutiflora). The flower is much much smaller (desert stuff is like that...).



And this is a prickly poppy (Argemone munita), which also occurs in the desert, but this one likes washes. You can see a rodent hole behind this poppy. Probably a desert kangaroo rat, one of the cutest rodents, ever! I've never seen one, only their huge burrow holes (I have seen the more-common Merriam's kangaroo rat (Dipodomys merriami), which even live in our yard). The desert k-rats must be big, because the holes are about 4 inches across. Kangaroo rats are not rats. In fact, they have cute tufted tails. They have large legs and hop around like kangaroos. Very cute.

Costa's Hummingbird Chicks

Welcome to our hummingbird world! We currently have 4 hummer feeders in our yard, and are looking to put in 2 more. We have also planted a lot of hummingbird-friendly vegetation (remeber my YouTube video, Costa's hummingbird on penstomens?) - more on that in the future... In the past couple years, the hummer population in the yard has exploded! We generally have Costa's hummingbirds (Calypte costae), but occassionally we've seen/heard a black-chinned hummer (Archilochus alexandri), although they usually occur farther east. Everywhere you step in the yard, you either hear hummingbirds, or you get "buzzed" by one as it whips past your ear. They're great fun to watch, and I'll write more about them in the future...

But this spring has had a great suprise: one of the hummers built her nest in clear view of our kitchen window!! She built the next in a mesquite tree, which doesn't leaf-out until late spring, so we had a clear view the entire time to observed the developement of the nest... and then the babies.

We first observed the female busy making her nest. She would even fly around the house and pick off cobwebs to use for her nest. Eventually, this is what we saw: two little beaks poking out of the edge of the nest.

While in house, I saw a couple great "family moments" that I took a photo of. The pictures were heavily zoomed, then cropped, so they aren't the greatest quality.

The entire chick development only occured for a couple weeks. The female built her nest in February (early!), we saw the first sign of babies around the 16th of March... and then, on the 2nd of April, we got home from a couple days in the field, and the babies had already fledged the nest!

This is the last photo I got of the chicks. I'm sure they're hanging

around the yard, waiting for handouts from mom, I just haven't

had the time to really look for them.

Quail Diaries: Our Little Chickens

The quail babies are here!! This is one of my favorite times of the year! Our neighborhood has roaming coveys (aka, groups) of California quail (Callipepla californica) that wander among the yards and vacant lots. The desert area is normally inhabited by the Gambel's quail (Callipepla gambelii), but we believe that our locality near the Sierra Nevada mountains, the eastern edge of the CA quail's range, provided a corridor for these quail to come down into our valley and settle within the residential area.

Since more houses have been built, its been a little difficult for the quail; but they seem to be adjusting and we've noticed that they are definitely better at managing fences. In past years, they would run run back and forth and back and forth at the base of the fence (quail avoid flying whenever possible, so as not to bring attention to themselves). They now seem to understand that flight is necessary and not so dangerous out here in the 'burbs. That's a good thing, because the hubby and I were wracked with angst when watching the little guys freak out at our fences (and we've got lots of fencing in our yard - to keep out rabbits, dogs, and cats).

To attract the quail into our yard, we throw out a lot of seed and also create various quail safety-zones (lots of shrubs, patches of cactus, and cover shelters made of tangles of branches - this structure especially helps to protect the quail from predatory hawks, such as Cooper's hawks (Accipiter cooperi), a winter visitor to our valley.

It is not easy to get photos of the quail. They are very timid and panicky birds. That's one of the reasons we call them "our little chickens". The other reason is their scratch-and-peck way of eating seeds. Here's a picture of a quail "feeding frenzy" last October. Fall is a great time for quail because they band up together in large groups. Last fall we were getting over 100 birds in our yard each day! As you can see, another difficulty in photographing the birds is their tendency to stay in shady spots. They do this both to avoid the heat of the desert and also to remain in relative darkness, under cover of branches; again, to avoid predator detection. Quail also have an amazing ability shown by all wild birds - a great awareness of when they are being observed, especially through a camera lens. Its pretty incredible. They are now finally becoming less fearful of when I look at them through binoculars, but the photo lens is still too much for them. I believe I was able to take this photo because there were many quail present and they were becoming habitualized to feeding in our yard. I also had the camera on a tripod and fully zoomed-in. In addition, this photo was taken before their major predator, the Cooper's hawk, had migrated down into our valley from its summer range up in the mountain forests. The quail are still rather fearless at this time of year...

This is a male California quail, strutting his stuff. See the black plume feathers on the top of his head?







Here is a female. There was a lot of competition amongst the birds for this perch.








In early spring, the covey breaks up as the males and females begin to pair up, defend territories, and create their nest. In the 6 years that multiple quail pairs have nested in our yard, we've only found a single nest. They are very secretive!!

We were unsure if we would see any babies this year, since its a pretty rough drought year; but I'm sure that the watering we do in our yard and spreading of bird seed has helped. As a result, about 2 weeks ago, we got our first glimpse of the proud parents and their babies. Happy day!

Getting photos of adult quail is hard enough. Taking a picture of mom and her babies is nearly impossible!!! I tell ya, they can see into our house, in our dark living room, and recognize a camera lens. The moment they see it, they herd the little babies into the nearest shrub. I think these parents were just so hungry, they didn't notice me at first. Soon after I took this picture, though, mom saw me and the babies were led into a shrub... You can see in this photo that there are two females. We were lucky enough to have two pairs successfully breed this year. As quail often do, these two pairs are raising the babies communally. Cornell University says that there is a higher life expectancy in adults who raise their chicks communally.

I was able to count 11 babies in the above photo. The chicks are very difficult to see because of their cryptic coloring. Here's the best photo of a baby quail I will ever be able to take. This is because, unfortunately, the little guy got stuck in one of the holes in a cinder block in our yard. The hubby found it and rescued it. I snapped a quick photo before we placed it under one of the quails' favorite shrubs and hoped and hoped that the momma would bring her babies by soon so that this little fellow could rejoin its family. By the way, I went out and filled the holes in the block with soil. One less hazard in our yard!


And I'll leave you with this picture of my cat, Zeebo, happily quail-watching along with us. You can just barely see a male quail on the edge of our porch, taunting the poor kitty.

Hummingbird Video

I've got another low-res video for everyone! This is one I made last year. Its of a Costa's hummingbird (Calypte costae) female feeding on our desert penstomen (Penstomen pseudospectabilis). The Costa's are our resident hummingbirds and are a great entertainment for us. The males have shiney purple gorgets and bold attitudes. My friend Laura can attest to that. During one of her visits she was wearing a red coat, and our male hummer wouldn't leave her alone whenever she was outside. He would hover just a couple feet from her and watch her every move!

In this video, as low quality and fuzzy as it is (the original is so much better... YouTube really loses out on the resolution), you can see that the hummingbird has a very big belly. That's because this female is ready to lay her eggs. I would see her visit these penstomens every day to feed. The following day that I took this video, she was about half that size! She must have laid her eggs that day, which can explain her need for so much feeding!

As an intro to the movie, I'll also leave you with this photo of one of our African spur-thighed tortoise (Geochelone sulcata) babies sitting under the penstomens. As you can see in the photo, her name is Buffy. And yes, that IS from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

For your viewing pleasure, Costa's Hummingbird:

Warbler Days

Spring is certainly here and life is exploding in our yard. We've seen an adult desert iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis), which means the heat has arrived (i.e., hotter than 95F or so). Our mesquite trees are blooming, and that means that all is well with the world.

Our matriarch mesquite is an amazing tree. It has produced seed to sprout a number of other mesquites, all of which provide nice shade in the hot summer days. Now is also their time to shine. They're flowering, which brings out a great diversity of native bees and honey bees. We walk out onto our porch in the mornings and can hear a low buzz from all the bees flying around the trees. Today was a great treat because we also had a number of insect eating warblers taking advantage of the trees' multitude. There were probably about 15 warblers, mostly Wilson's warbler (Wilsonia pusilla), hopping around among the branches, actively feeding on all the insects.

Here's a photo of the Wilson's warbler. Not so good; but those guys just wouldn't stay still. There are about 20 of these birds in our yard right now, feeding amongst all our trees and shrubs. They must be migrating north right now.

Also found out there was a Townsend's warbler amongst the Wilson's. See?

These aren't the greatest photos... wish I could somehow express to you how magical the birds and the bees are right now! Its amazing!