Sadly, this picture is not mine. Click here for more information about this picture.
Man, life has become quite busy these past few weeks! Today I took my mother and grandmother birdwatching on Bolt Mountain (home to Fish Hatchery Park only on the BLM portion of the mountain). It was an excellent day for birding! It started out great with an ash-throated flycatcher sighting almost immediately into the trip. Then the wind started picking up making birding-by-ear virtually impossible. Finally, it started raining. Then, as spring rains will do in Southern Oregon, as suddenly as the rain started it stopped. We hiked for about 1.5 miles before grandma needed to turn around (the trail is at about a 12% grade). Before she turned around we heard many orange-crowned, black-throated grey and yellow warblers, black-capped chickadees and American robins. Needless to say we talked a bit too much to hear (or see) much else.
After she and my mother turned around I headed off trail toward a long abandoned osprey nest. Well, not so much abandoned as partially destroyed by a wind storm and finally so broken down the osprey moved on. To the north of the phenomenal snag that this nest sits in, directly uphill, is an old "fort" that my grandfather built to sit in while deer hunting. My senior year in high school I climbed up to the fort almost everyday to watch the osprey courting, nesting and then raising their young. I recorded my observations as part of a senior project. Alas, I digress...as I neared the nest I heard a bird to the northeast that I was not familiar with. I have been casually birding in Fish Hatchery Park for almost half my life now and so hearing a bird that I was unfamiliar with up there was rather shocking. After a good fifteen minutes of "stalking" the bird, following its call through the brush trying to pinpoint the source, I caught a flash of white in a Ceanothus cuneatus, or buckbrush. I quickly brought my binoculars to my eyes but was too late, the bird had disappeared to another bush. At least I knew I was in the right area! Then the bird darted out of its hiding place and was joined by a second of the same bird. When I got my binoculars on them I knew instantly that I was seeing a pair of blue-grey gnatcatchers! The last time I saw blue-grey gnatcatchers was in early summer of 2000, in Orange County, CA where I was working on a bird banding internship for the Institute for Bird Populations. I know that they are uncommonly seen on the Table Rocks in Jackson County but I've never heard of them being in Josephine County. After watching the birds for a good fifteen minutes I headed up to the fort where I sat, enjoying the sun and looking out over the Applegate River. Finally, realizing that I still needed to get some things for making Mother's Day dinner I headed home. On the way down I spotted two male western tanagers, one immature and one quite a bit older; two male lazuli buntings and ended the hike with the first male Wilson's warbler of the year!
When I got back to the house I tried convincing my birding compatriot from Eugene to enter the blue-grey gnatcatchers into eBird for me but she, wisely, refused as she had not been the one to ID them. I have been reluctant to create an account on eBird because, well I'm not sure why. I suppose because I am often so busy as it is that I worry I will some how create skewed data by only recording birding adventures when I return excited and motivated. In the end I was motivated to do my part as a citizen scientist (and hopefully one day I will be a paid scientist) by a bar chart for Josephine County showing a very thin line for blue-grey gnatcatchers and only in May. My compatriot was able to dig up some more specific information (I'm not familiar with eBird yet) and informed me that the last recorded sighting was in 2004 in Merlin, OR! This makes two rare birds in two weeks!
All of this has me thinking about citizen science (which will certainly lead to an ethno-ornithology blog) and really how important it is. Citizen scientists have been assisting with tracking bird populations via the Christmas Bird Count and Project Feederwatch for years and eBird is another, more consistent, way for those of us that are regularly in an area to help create a better picture of what birds are where and when they are there. So, if you are reading this blog, you birdwatching regularly and have not yet signed up for eBird, please do so today. Your observations are important!
And, thanks to all you mothers out there for the life you help create!
