Of Inadvertent & Fortuitous Birds-in-Action Sightings Here & There

Corvid family members selecting acorns

Catching birds in the act of doing something is a cool (and highly serendipitous) aspect of watching birds engage in their largely undetected but multifarious daily activities.

American Goldfinch contemplating his world Goldfinchy world

Just going about their bird business.

Peregrine Falcon with captured Towhee (SF Bay shoreline)

Bird comings.

Bird goings.

Bird doings.

A beautiful Vulture in flight

BIRDS BEIN' BIRDS.

Canada Goose on display

Ted Floyd writes in his introduction to the

Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America:

Willets and Whimbrels and whatnot feeding on Albany Bulb mudflats

"Birds do things.

Their behaviors are sophisticated."

Lazuli Bunting out on a limb

No small surprise,

given they've been around for 100,000,000 years or so!

Fine specimen of a Northern Mockingbird

And, of course, they can do a whole lot more than feather their nests or find a worm in the ground. Go ahead and try to accomplish either of these "mundane" tasks. It's not all that easy to feather one's nest or come up with a subterranean annelid on the spot!

California Quail preening just for me (Mount Tamalpais)

Birds, as Floyd points out, are never "quite ordinary to us." They "inhabit a realm of diversity and complexity, of fecundity and commotion." They "sing richly and gloriously, and some birds make astonishing annual migrations."

Northern Flicker in the act of doing not much at all

Try on for size and perspective

the 40,000 miles logged yearly by the Sooty Shearwater!

Peppy little Oak Titmouse

Any and all birds qualify as "never quite ordinary" but some birds seem a bit more exotic, a bit more rare, somehow different from the usual, mostly urban (but never pedestrian) sightings of Pigeon / Crow / Junco / Jay / Dove / Towhee / etc.

Heron wading in golden waters (SF Bay)

So when you're graced with the infrequent spectacle of, say, a life and death struggle between a Great Egret and a Corn Snake, or the precision blitzkrieg strike of a Blue Jay taking down a dragonfly, or a mob of Magpies picking clean a deer carcass in a few hours, then you know you've been witness to something truly momentous in some small miraculous way.

Magpies devouring deer carcass

Even so, despite making it look easy,

birds must work hard for their efforts.

P.D. James acknowledged:

Finch / Sparrow showdown

"God gives every bird his worm,

but He does not throw it into the nest."

High Voltage Crows

How many such moments have you experienced? That instantaneous turning of the head to barely glimpse the Lazuli Bunting or the well-timed stop near the Botanical Garden to join a group of admirers homing in on a somewhat rare passer-by: a Varied Thrush.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

All of which could just as easily have been missed because your head was turned the other way! Imagine how many instances of bird behavior are simply not catalogued in the human sphere of cognizance.

Bewick's Wren, a lovely little peeper

Perchance to dream of seeing a Hummingbird hatch out of a Good 'n Plenty-shaped little white egg; a mother Hawk feed her fledgling pieces of a hapless snake; a mating dance of excited Warblers; Queen Quail hurriedly ushering her half dozen little charges across an open trail; Wild Toms stalked and killed by hungry coyotes; a curious Jay posing with Yosemite Falls as a backdrop.

Steller's Jay pining for a crumb

The simple, yet complex behavior of

birds bein' birds.

Red-winged Blackbird

Over the years, I've had a few head-turning moments where by felicitous chance I happened to be in the right place at the exact moment to catch birds in action doing their thing – mostly common activities, like hunting, mating, nest building, playing or feeding, but even so, the vast majority of such activity goes unnoticed (even if in plain sight!).

Western Bluebird in repose

So to catch one of the wildest, most elusive creatures that nature ever designed – the BIRD – in the act of swooping down on a vole and bringing it back up or a Seagull swallowing a starfish . . . why, it's a revelation of the magical interconnectedness of the natural world, binding you deeply to its innermost secretive workings.

Flock of Cedar Waxwings in neighborhood tree

ECCE AVIS!

Hot and thirsty Townsend's Warbler in city park spring

Below are some of my favorite sightings ever of birds acting naturally in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each sighting occasioned a unforgettable moment of awe, reverence, giddy joy.

Hungry Osprey on pole in SF Bay waters

OSPREY

Seen flying away clutching an 8-inch long fish in talons,

on Coast Trail, Point Reyes National Seashore.

Another time saw her swoop down to grab a fish victoriously,

Alpine Lake, Marin Municipal Water District.

Nesting Osprey pair

Fun Fact:

Ospreys will completely submerge in the water during dive bomb

for fish and still be able to come away with a prized canape.

Stalking Great Egret hunting for a fish, snake or frog

GREAT EGRET

Seen flying off with a 3-ft. long snake clamped in her mouth,

at marsh near Pacific coast, Steep Ravine, Marin County.

Great Blue Heron going about his business

Fun Fact:

Great Egrets can live over 20 years.

Great Horned Owl at dusk at Point Reyes

GREAT HORNED OWL

Spotted on four occasions barreling through overhead:

once in a backwater on Bear Valley Trail, Point Reyes National Seashore.

Once careening away into thick woods at Briones Regional Park.

Another time in a secluded woodland area of Wildcat Creek Canyon.

And another time at Tennessee Valley in the Marin Headlands

roosting in the hollow of a large Eucalyptus tree branch.

Barred Owl Pair, Tracy Aviary, Salt Lake City, Utah (photo by me)

Fun Fact:

Great Horned Owls are known to eat scorpions, rattlesnakes and – gulp! – skunks! Also, those "horns" are not ears or horns, but tufts of feathers called Plumicorns.

Bald Eagle pair, Tracy Aviary, Salt Lake City, Utah (photo by me)

BALD EAGLE

Ecstatically spotted on two separate occasions for a few brief moments soaring the skies over water district land while hiking Sea View Trail in Tilden Regional Park, and over a different area of water district land while hiking McDonald Trail in Anthony Chabot Regional Park. Bald Eagles, while having bounced back nicely from the brink of near extinction over the past several decades, are still rare in the Bay Area with six total nesting sites. I know of three in the East Bay, two on water district land separated by twenty air miles and the third nesting pair being observed in Chabot Regional Park's forest.

Photo of Bald Eagle by Andy Morffew

Fun Fact:

Bald Eagles can live for up to 30 years in the wild,

and their reusable nests can weigh up to – imagine! – 4,000 pounds!

Night-crowned Heron at Jewel Lake, Tilden Park

SEAGULL

One day while lollygagging on a magnificent stretch of beach at Point Reyes National Seashore, I happened upon a small Seagull with a large pink seastar in his mouth. I’ve seen Herons stabbing up frogs, snakes gobbling down lizards, and Raptors swooping down for tasty rodent meals, but a Seagull in the prolonged act of masticating and devouring a seastar seemed highly unusual, rather impossible and a bit zany.

The Seagull about to masticate and swallow a seastar

I stopped to observe the bizarre feeding moment as it unfolded before my eyes over the course of twenty minutes – no exaggeration! At first, the Seagull appeared nonplussed, bobbling around with the squiggling creature dangling from his mouth, unsure how to proceed, before realizing that by rotating it and chewing on different portions for a few minutes,

he could soften it up with saliva,

thus enabling him to “gull-p” it down in slick fashion.

Off-color Seagull

Once the seastar was down the gullet, the Seagull gave a little smack of his beak and staggered momentarily due to the weighty cargo distending his stomach. Following a few unsuccessful flaps of his wings, the seagull finally managed to lift off and fly away like a lead balloon.

Seagull at coast's edge

Fun Fact:

Most of the world's Seagulls are born in California.

Golden Eagle pair, Tracy Aviary, Salt Lake City, Utah (photo by me)

GOLDEN EAGLE:

Ten minutes of observation as this stealth creature engaged in a demonstration of sheer thrilling acrobatic hunting prowess in the rolling hills of Big Springs Trail in Tilden Regional Park.

Golden Eagle pair captured at Smith Rock State Park (OR)

Fun Fact:

Golden Eagles eat tortoises by picking them up

and dropping them on rocks.

Tough to capture a good photo of Belted Kingfisher

BELTED KINGFISHER

Numerous sightings at Briones Regional Park, Del Valle Reservoir

(one of the nesting sites of the Bald Eagle),

and little old Jewel Lake in our own little old Tilden Regional Park.

As I was saying (Belted Kingfisher)

Fun Fact:

Kingfishers are the only perching bird that dives for food.

Horned Lark (my only sighting and only photo)

HORNED LARK

Watched them feeding in a hillside meadow at Briones Regional Park.

I had never noticed (seen?) them before.

American Pipit

Fun Fact:

Horned Larks walk instead of hopping!

Brown Creeper collecting nesting material

BROWN CREEPER

Spotted at Codornices and Live Oak Parks in Berkeley. An interesting little guy resembling a sparrow, except with a curved scimitar-like beak to enable easy peckings to get at insects trapped in small crevices in tree bark. The skittery little bird scampers up and down tree trunks and branches like a little wind-up toy. Another moment in a local park I espied a sweet little Creeper feeding chicks in a Redwood tree slot.

Brown Creeper feeding chick through crack in Redwood tree

Fun Fact:

Brown Creepers flatten their wings against the tree trunk,

making for perfect camouflage against predators.

An alarmed Sharp-shinned Hawk protecting her nest

SHARP-SHINNED HAWK (maybe Cooper's)

Observed hanging out on a branch of the 108-year old Interior Live Oak in the side yard.

Sharp-shinned Hawk in 108-year old Oak tree in yard

Fun Fact:

Adept forest Hawks are often seen chasing down songbirds

in urban areas at backyard feeders.

Handsome Varied Thrush

VARIED THRUSH

Seen foraging in a thicket of woods near a parking lot next to the Botanical Garden of the East Bay Regional Park District.

Just passin' through for the good pickins.

Secretive Varied Thrush, Mitchell Canyon Trail, Mount Diablo

Fun Fact:

Varied Thrushes are wandering individuals,

regularly turning up far from home.

European Starlings, such darlings

BREWER'S BLACKBIRDS (no photo)

Three baby Blackbirds and their mama spotted in a dead tree nest living in a hole in the trunk. Mama'd fly off occasionally to snatch up some grub and return to parse it out to three wide open mouths at the hole entrance clamoring for more.

Grooming Crows on high wire act

Fun Fact:

Seen in full sunlight, this so-called common bird is "a glossy, almost liquid combination of black, midnight blue, and metallic green."

Townsend's Warbler warbling

So there you have it – a personal compendium of sightings, observations, and musing on our avian friends, near and far, near and dear, common and exotic, engaged in their instinctual survival modes interacting with and blending in with their natural surroundings in ways that astound, amuse and otherwise entertain  – from our distinctly distant human vantage point.

Roadrunner
BEEP ! BEEP!