Fourth Bird Excursion 2/20/20

Bird Journal Entry #4:

DATE: 2/20/2020

Location: 37.9128,-122.6089 approx.

Site Description: This week we went back over the bridge to Mt. Tam. The landscape was highly coniferous and also was mixed in some places. There were some flowers, but trees and grasses dominated the area. We began at the amphitheater and hiked around the area for the majority of the trip. We also later went to an overlook in an attempt to see more birds. The main bird species spotted during this 2 hour trip were band-tailed pigeons (3), acorn woodpeckers (4), northern flickers (red-shafted) (3), common ravens (2), chest-nut backed chickadees (2), dark-eyed juncos (3), and a California scrub-jay.

Species Account: The bird I enjoyed seeing the most today were the acorn woodpeckers. We saw these birds around the amphitheater about 100m from the car. This species was the first we saw of the morning and I adore the red coloring on the top of their head. These birds flew extremely fast and lived close to one another in small colonies. We saw multiple woodpeckers zooming by together and it was hard to catch them in the binoculars if they didn’t land on a tree in an attempt to locate food. Their habitat is more forest-like with plenty of conifers. They need to have a large number of trees to forage on. I was surprised to see the quantity of holes in some of the trees that the woodpeckers had drilled. The bird is small with black, white, and red coloring. This bird in some ways reminds me of the Downy Woodpeckers. Their coloring and thin frame are extremely similar.There is distinct white coloring on their wings that is shown when they take off for flight. Their diet consists of hoarding acorns as well as eating some seeds and fruit occasionally. They hoard acorns for later use during the winter when food is not as plentiful. These birds are different from other woodpeckers in the way that they never dig within trees to find food, but instead they prefer to glean, which is the process of foraging for food that may be present on the outer part of the tree without actually digging its’ beak within the tree.

Narrative: We started at the amphitheater and began to hike around to look for birds. We spotted band-tailed pigeons over in this area, but they tended to dominate the area because we didn’t spot any other bird species here. The weather was cold, but very sunny so we quickly warmed up and began the hike around 9:15 a.m. The surrounding area was very serene and quiet. It was difficult however to look for birds because the trees are so tall and the birds were either hidden or flew too fast for us to recognize them. We went on a long walk and saw the research that our graduate student Alex is working on up there. As we walked we only saw The weather was very calm, but there seemed to be a lack in birds flying around. We continued to walk around a 2 mile loop in search of birds, but unfortunately they were ether too fast to spot or we could not find them in the binoculars. We spotted one other man on a hike, which was fascinating along with two types of jays that we have seen and Acorn Woodpeckers which were new species to the list. Overall, the bird count at Mt. Tam was not very high whatsoever because there just was not a great amount out that day. We moved on and went to an overlook that was showed endless views of the ocean. We were able to take a great group picture and enjoy the scenic views, but again there were not many birds present. However, this trip was one of my favorites because we were able to do a bit of hiking. We then drove back over the bridge to SF.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S65174943

Citations:

Acorn Woodpecker. (2019, October 11). Retrieved from https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/acorn-woodpecker