Hooded Merganser

I have seen a few hooded mergansers paddling around the edges of the river out at the arboretum lately.

Both males and females have a distinct, fan-shaped crest that they can raise and lower. Its hooded silhouette is a good identification clue from a distance.

The male has a white patch on the crest, a white breast with two black bars, a white wing patch, and rusty brown flanks.

The female has a gray-brown body and a brown crest. She blends in well with the surrounding earth tones of the vegetation on the river’s edge.

Their diet consists of small fish, aquatic insects, crustaceans, amphibians, vegetation, and mollusks. They have a slender, serrated bill that makes it optimal for grasping their prey.

Hooded mergansers nest in cavities of live or dead trees that are usually close to water. Therefore, it is important to have older, mature trees with sizable trunks which have either developed a natural cavity or have one excavated by a woodpecker.

Black Phoebe Returns

The black phoebe has a black breast that softly fades into a white belly. The rear of the crown ends in a slight peak, and it has a slender, pointy bill.

To further help identify the black phoebe, you will see it continuously bobbing its tail up and down. Also, the one out at the arboretum regularly vocalizes. Peterson describes their voice as, “Thin, strident fi-bee, fi-bee, rising then dropping; also a sharp slurred chip.”

Their diet is almost entirely insects, and interestingly, they will occasionally catch small fish at the surface of the water. Phoebes are usually found near water like the bank of the Willamette River or the lily pond out at the arboretum where they will find a rich source of insects.

It forages from a small perch where it will quickly swoop out, snap an insect out of the air and quickly return to its spot. Its perch is usually no more than about seven feet off the ground or over the water. That said, I routinely see it sitting on top of the barn or the adjacent silo catching insects.

As you can imagine, parts of many insects are indigestible. Phoebes eat most of their insects whole and leave the chewing up to the gizzard. Naturally, there are sturdy pieces that aren’t easy to break down. These pieces build up in the gizzard where they are formed into pellets to be regurgitated. Phoebes can cough up small pellets just like owls!

Over the last 3 or 4 years, I have seen a black phoebe spending the fall and winter months at the arboretum. I wonder if it is the same individual. The map in Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America shows that the Willamette Valley is the northern part of their range. A note on the map states that their range is expanding northward.

Oregon Junco Camouflage

With all the newly fallen leaves, the earth-tone colorations of the Oregon junco blend in well with the surroundings. Even as they hop, skip, and jump around in the leaves foraging for food, it is easy to flush them off the ground if you aren’t moving slowly and paying attention. They are also well camouflaged as they explore the branches in the tree canopy.

They stay in constant contact with each other as they move through the landscape. Their communication sounds are subdued, so you must keep a fairly sharp ear out. Peterson describes their vocalization call as “a light smack.” They also have “clicking or twittering notes.”

Robin Eating Madrone Berries

Yesterday I could hear robins making clucking noises in the upper part of the parking lot, and I went to investigate. They were chasing each other around the tree tops and calling to each other. I’m not sure what all the excitement was about, but I did see robins occasionally visiting the madrone tree to eat a berry. I was expecting them to start gobbling them up like they did with the dogwood berries, but they didn’t. They seemed to be testing them out to see if they were ripe enough for their taste. After about 15 minutes the robins moved on, but I have a feeling they will be back.

I am only hearing and seeing robins up in the trees around the arboretum. I haven’t noticed them foraging on the ground for a few weeks. With all of the recent rains, I am sure there are lots of yummy worms to be found underneath the newly fallen leaves. Most animals vary their diet. As the seasons change, food sources become more or less available or unobtainable. I’m sure the robins know what is best to eat to have a well-rounded, nutritious diet.

Barred Owl

The other evening I watched a barred owl zigzagging down the creek trail corridor hunting for food. It would sit on a perch about 10-20 feet off the ground and scan the area with its eyes and ears. When it zeroed in on its potential prey, it silently drifted out over the meadow and pounced.

Barred owls prey on a variety of animals. On the National Audubon Society website they list their diet as: “Mostly small mammals. Eats many mice and other small rodents, also squirrels (including flying squirrels), rabbits, opossums, shrews, other small mammals. Also eats various birds, frogs, salamanders, snakes, lizards, some insects. May take aquatic creatures such as crayfish, crabs, fish.”

The barred owl is an elegant, magical creature with a distinctive hooting rhythm that is interpreted as, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” Click here to listen on the All About Birds website by The Cornell Lab.

Their original range was the mature forests of the eastern North America. During the past century they expanded westward across Canada and down into the Northwest and California of the U.S.

The expansion of its range has brought it into contact with the spotted owl of the West, because they share a habitat of older growth forests. As a result barred owls have been displacing or occasionally hybridizing with spotted owls. This interaction, along with loss of habitat, increased the decline of the spotted owl’s population. I won’t expand on this story here, but I recommend researching more about it.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. Hope to see you out there.

Bushtits

Bushtits are busily moving about the landscape in small foraging flocks. It is common to see around 20 in a group, and I have counted as many as 40 together. They are loosely strung along a small area looking for insects on the foliage and limbs of trees and shrubs. They have joyful spirits and acrobatically bounce around often clinging upside down from leaves and branches. Their ability to zip every which way finding tiny insects and spiders is dizzying and makes getting a photo challenging.

Peterson aptly sums up this bird’s movement as, “travels in straggling talkative flocks.” They are in constant contact with each other through quick call notes that Peterson describes as “insistent light tsits, pits, and clenks.” This chattiness makes them fairly easy to locate. In addition, you’ll often find them in mixed flocks in the fall and winter with other small, song birds like chickadees and kinglets. So be on the lookout and keep an ear out for them too.

Bushtits only weigh 4-6 grams and with all the acorns laying around, I wondered how the weight of an acorn compared to the weight of a bushtit. I gathered various sizes of acorns and weighed them. Starting from the smallest on the left and moving right, the weight of each acorn is 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 grams. Can you believe that!?

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. Hope to see you out there.

Peterson, Roger Tory. Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. 4th ed. New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

Gobbling Up Dogwood Berries

Yesterday robins, spotted towhees and golden-crowned sparrows were gathered around the dogwood tree in the island of the drop off loop at the front of the arboretum eating the tree’s bright red berries.

The robins were eating the most. First, they would pluck a berry and adjust it in their beak, seemingly testing it for edibility. If it felt right they would toss it back and swallow it whole. If it didn’t feel right, they would drop it and get another one.

On the ground there were golden-crowned sparrows foraging. They would pick up the dropped berry and break off a small piece to eat.

The towhee would also break apart the berry and eat it in small pieces. It was also getting them out of the tree like the robin. It would either eat in the tree or it would fly off to the ground nearby to eat.

At the rate the berries have been consumed over the last couple of days, I imagine they are not going to last much longer.

Turkey Vulture

Turkey vultures are a regular site at the arboretum. They can be seen slowly soaring along the river corridor or catching updrafts and circling the hillsides as they search for recently dead animals.

Turkey vultures are skilled soarers. They have a long, broad wings that are raised slightly upwards forming an open V-shape. They have a distinctive flight pattern—they constantly teeter from side to side adjusting to air currents. Using their sense of sight and smell, they like to fly low over the landscape as they search for food.

Turkey vultures are beautiful, mysterious creatures. They will soon be drifting south, as they don’t spend the winter here. I always look forward to their return as spring approaches.

Black-capped Chickadee & Speckled Oak Gall

While the Steller’s jay is busily exploring the oak tree canopy collecting acorns, the black-capped chickadee is investigating the speckled oak galls on the underside of leaves.

As it forages for these galls, you will see it acrobatically clinging to the oak leaves. Sometimes it will open the gall while hanging on to the leaf. Other times it will pluck the gall off the leaf and take it over to a nearby branch to extract the larva.

I took one of the galls over to a picnic table and cut it in half. The gall reminds me of a ping-pong ball—it is round, light and the shell is paper thin. On the inside there are white, electric fibers radiating from the center where the small larva is encased. The larva will emerge from this small encasing when it is ready and eat the inside of the gall for food.

Small groups of chickadees are roving through the landscape at Mt. Pisgah exuberantly opening these little packages and eating the yummy larva inside. To help locate them, listen for their chick-a-dee-dee-dee call. You might also hear them whistle the notes fee-bee-ee or fee-bee of their song.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. Hope to see you out there.