OYE

The managers at EE Wilson have mowed some of my shrubs! In some small sections they're completely gone, in others they're just thinner. I'm not sure how this affects the survey. I saw a juvenile and adult female Orange-crowned warbler today. There were a ton of juvenile Cedar waxwings too. Normally I see predominantly adult Cedar waxwings and wonder where all the young are, today it was the opposite. There were three American kestrels too, an adult male, adult female, and a juvenile. Other birds of prey included an Osprey and an adult female and juvenile Northern Harrier. The female Northern Harriers always fly really close to my head, sometimes I honestly believe they are thinking about landing on me. The males never fly as close and the juveniles sometimes do, sometimes don't. At one point the female was perched in this ridiculously small, dead tree or bush. Above her five Purple finches were rockin' out, it was so funny. Another weird phenomenon is that I rarely see adult male Purple or House finches. I see what could be young of female (some combination of both is likely) but they are infrequently accompanied by males of their species. In the second site of the day there was a Western tanager female. I'm sure there were more but I couldn't find any (I tried really hard). Otherwise there weren't any new birds today. It was oddly another day with no Bushtits, I wonder where they've gone? My curiosity about bird behavior is certainly being piqued by this experience. Maybe I'll end up trying to find some combination of urban ecology/landscape dynamics and bird populations with consideration of their behavior in influencing how they respond to the things we do. That was a little wordy, but I think I got my point across! I almost forgot the craziest thing that happened today, well one of them. At one point near the "lake" that I pass by, between the first and second site I did today, I have to pass through some very tall cottonwoods. As I approached them I could hear European starlings in the trees. Not just a few either. I'd say there were probably 60 of them! They created such a cacophony like none I've ever heard before (at least not recently). The other weird thing was that I ran into a young coyote. It ran ahead, but never very far. I ended up running into it three times before it finally ran in the opposite direction. I love coyotes, they're so weird. There was a pack I used to watch when I was in Murrieta, CA. They were at the Santa Rosa plateau (on Nature Conservancy land) and would let me get VERY close to them before they disappeared. Often they'd start talking . . . they seemed quite unphased by my presence. Anyway, I'm off to work on Ecology and History of the Columbia River Basin homework (videos).