Ninth Bird Excursion 04/07/20

Bird Journal Entry #9:

DATE: 4/7/2020

Location: 33.1646, -1172521 approx.

Site Description: 

The place I visited this week was my backyard because there has been quite a bit of rain in SoCal and I haven’t been able to go on a walk to go birding. My backyard is filled with palm trees and grass, but there is a large slope behind my house that is filled with many trees and angiosperms, so the birds that I saw mostly were from there. I observed some species from my front windows as well because the foliage differs from the backyard, so I thought maybe different species would appear. My neighborhood is planned and all of the houses are fairly close to one another, so the birds that I have been seeing are the same species for the most part. The rain as a result limited my eBird list to only 6 species. The species I observed were the American Crow (3), Anna’s Hummingbird (1), Black Phoebe (4), American Goldfinch (1), Song Sparrow (2), and Western Tanager (1).

Species Account: 

The species I decided to focus on this week was the American Goldfinch. The goldfinch is a rather small bird with a short beak and  has a notch in its’ tail. I believe I saw a male because they have this stark yellow and black coloring. I really took notice of the black patch only on the top of its’ head. I saw it at the first on the top of my neighbor’s about twenty feet in the air. Then, the bird slowly came down closer to the ground and I was able to see the bright colors more clearly with my binoculars. The bird was very active, which is extremely common for this bird. Although these birds are most commonly found in floodplains, they can still be found in backyards. Their diet consists of mostly seeds and insects as well as weeds and daisies, which are plentiful in my neighborhood. The one common thing I noticed between the species account of Cooper’s Hawk that I wrote about last week and this week’s is that both of the males feed the females while they are nesting and they both play a crucial role in bringing up their young. Lastly, a cool fact I learned was that the nests these birds build are so strong that they can withstand water. This is a very good adaptation because they are prevalent pretty much all across the U.S. and many parts receive a lot of rain, so this is a key evolutionary adaptation of this bird species.

 

 

 

Narrative

This week I did my birding from my house in Vista, California. I was unable to travel this week because it has been raining for the past three days. Thus, I have not seen many birds because the weather has been about 60° and it has been on and off showers for the past 72 hours. Fortunately, I have a backyard that when the rain lets up I can see some birds flying over my yard. Today, I was working all day on homework and observed some birds from my kitchen table. I saw a few Black Phoebe’s. They were very easy to identify because we had seen them during our birding excursions in San Francisco. I was also able to see a American Goldfinch flying through my neighbor’s yard. I was unsure what kind of bird it was, but through my binoculars I saw the yellow pattern and was able to ID it from eBird. I also saw American Crows as usual and some Song Sparrows. These sparrows tend to forage in the grass both in my front yard as well as in my backyard. I also believe I saw a Western Tanager, but it was far away and my binoculars only did such a good job of detailing what the bird look like. From the coloring and the style of the beak as well as the tail I identified the bird at the Western Tanager. Lastly, as always I saw Anna‘s hummingbird which was actually a very unique siting because it flew so close to my window that I didn’t even need to use binoculars to see clearly that it was an Anna‘s hummingbird. This birding adventures was fun because I was able to identify the birds that most likely inhabit my backyard daily. Also, it was made easier by my cat who always meows when he sees a bird,  so I was able to quickly grab my binoculars and run to see which type of bird he was talking to.

 

 

https://ebird.org/checklist/S66849398

Citations:

 

“American Goldfinch Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.” , All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Goldfinch/id.

 

“American Goldfinch.” Audubon, 11 Oct. 2019, www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/american-goldfinch.

 

 

Caption: My backyard where I did most of my birding this week

 

 

Caption: My frontward where I also saw some bird species

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Comment

  1. Sometimes birding conditions can be tough…

    That’s great that you think you saw Western Tanager! Was it a male with an orange head on a yellowish body with wing bars? Males are pretty unique, but the females can be confusing – compare to Bullock’s Oriole female for example – many details differ but from a distance they can both look like medium-large yellowish birds with prominent white in the wings. Hopefully you see both these species down the road!

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