Let’s not beat around the bush! We recorded fifty species on our Wednesday outing, which is outstanding! Forty-two of these species were either in the taxonomic order Piciformes, the woodpeckers, or the order Passeriformes, the passerines or perching birds. Over half the world’s bird species are passerines (flycatchers, jays, swallows, chickadees, wrens, thrushes, warblers, sparrows, etc.); all of which are characterized by having an anisodactyl toe arrangement – one toe directed backwards and three forward – which facilitates perching and grasping branches.
Among the several woodpeckers we saw one of the most interesting was the Red-naped Sapsucker which gets its groceries during breeding season at little sap wells that it makes in the thin bark of willows, river birches, alders, and aspen so that sap can slowly ooze out. The Sapsucker can then eat the sap and the insects that are attracted to it. While obtaining its sap it also performs maintenance to make sure that its wells are flowing, and it chases off hummingbirds, warblers, and chipmunks that try to take advantage of this great food resource. Interestingly, these wells generally appear as a horizontal row of little rectangular pits, that can often end up girdling a small stem ultimately diminishing that plant’s productivity or even killing it.
As for the passerines, we had four different flycatchers, four corvids (jays, crows, etc.), two chickadees, three swallows, three nuthatches, five thrushes, eight finches and sparrows, three blackbirds, and several more individual family representatives, e.g. Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Western Tanager, and MacGillivray’s Warbler.
I think the big highlight of the day has to have been the twenty or so times we noted some degree of parental care for nestlings and fledglings. I particularly enjoyed getting to watch the cavity nesting birds bringing food in. Except for the occasional squawking of the parents this can be done fairly quietly, but as those nestlings get just a few days older we’ll be able to hear them begging from inside their trees, and they can create quite a ruckus.
Beaver Ranch Park
Jun 19, 2024
12 participants
50 species
Canada Goose 6
Mallard 5
Mourning Dove 1
Broad-tailed Hummingbird 19
Great Blue Heron 3
Turkey Vulture 4
Cooper’s Hawk 1
Red-tailed Hawk 5
Red-naped Sapsucker 5
American Three-toed Woodpecker 1
Downy Woodpecker 2
Hairy Woodpecker (Rocky Mts.) 5
Northern Flicker (Red-shafted) 8
Olive-sided Flycatcher 3
Western Wood-Pewee 8
Western Flycatcher (Cordilleran) 5
Say’s Phoebe 2
Warbling Vireo 6
Steller’s Jay 8
Black-billed Magpie 8
American Crow 3
Common Raven 5
Black-capped Chickadee 2
Mountain Chickadee 12
Tree Swallow 2
Violet-green Swallow 3
Cliff Swallow 4
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 13
White-breasted Nuthatch 9
Pygmy Nuthatch 4
Red-breasted Nuthatch 3
House Wren 14
Western Bluebird 1
Mountain Bluebird 3
Townsend’s Solitaire 1
Hermit Thrush 3
American Robin 36
Evening Grosbeak 7
House Finch 1
Pine Siskin 7
Chipping Sparrow 4
Dark-eyed Junco (Gray-headed) 10
Song Sparrow 8
Lincoln’s Sparrow 5
Red-winged Blackbird 18
Brown-headed Cowbird 4
Common Grackle 3
MacGillivray’s Warbler 2
Western Tanager 8
Black-headed Grosbeak 5