When birds stray from home
We went out for a stroll in northern San Benito County
Saturday.
The going was a little slow because we were walking without
benefit of paths much of the time and there was ample reason to
stop and stare at things. At one point, the vegetation we were
pushing through went from thigh deep to over our heads, closing
around us like a small, green room.
When birds stray from home
We went out for a stroll in northern San Benito County Saturday.
The going was a little slow because we were walking without benefit of paths much of the time and there was ample reason to stop and stare at things. At one point, the vegetation we were pushing through went from thigh deep to over our heads, closing around us like a small, green room.
We watched a few birds before marveling at the seemingly effortless movement of a garter snake.
A few minutes later, a beautiful buck, antlers still cloaked in velvet, bounced across a nearby field. It was in the same field that, just as I was about to set my right foot down, a mallard hen burst from her nest and flew straight up, just a few inches from my face.
After getting my breathing back under control, I bent to brush covering grass aside a bit. There, in a bowl of grass, was a feather-lined nest, stuffed with large, white eggs. We snapped a picture and quickly moved along to encourage the hen to return to her brood.
We approached a pond through a thicket of willows that were alive with singing warblers, recent arrivals from tropical regions. Around the edge of the pond, shorebirds – dowitchers, avocets, stilts, spotted sandpipers and killdeer called and danced around. We counted a large flock of American white pelicans, as large and substantial looking as the shorebirds are delicate and fragile.
Then something unexpected came into view. Two black terns zigzagged back and forth, dipping to pluck things from the surface of the pond.
Terns are not uncommon in the area. Nearby a Caspian tern was also scanning the water. But most of the terns we’re used to are nearly white. A casual glimpse might lead one to conclude the birds are gulls. But terns have much narrower wings and fast, buoyant flight. Their fingernails-on-a-chalkboard calls are frequently heard over coastal beaches.
The black terns did not drop into the water violently like other terns do. But their shape and movements gave them away as terns, even if their color was unexpected.
When a bird crops up far from its expected range, birders refer to it as a vagrant.
These terns are not vagrant birds, but they’re uncommon enough in San Benito County to be worth noting. They’re more often found during the summer in the Central Valley, seldom crossing Pacheco Pass.
Some birders chase vagrants the way some baseball fans chase foul balls, traveling to hot spots across the country when a real rarity shows up. But it’s easy to hunt for the unexpected by looking for birds at the edge of their range without going far from home.
Phainopepla, North America’s only representative among the silky flycatchers, is near the edge of its range in San Benito County. The slim, glossy black birds with a cockatoo’s crest can often be found at the San Benito County Historical Park.
Even chestnut-backed chickadees, common in some of Hollister’s established neighborhoods, are a rare sight as one climbs into the Diablo Range just east of us.
A brown pelican inland from the coast is an extremely rare event. When one turned up several years ago at the same pond the black terns visited, it was only the second record of one being seen in San Benito County.
A reader (apparently there’s more than one of you) called this week. He’s hosting guests from the East Coast and wanted suggestions about where he might take them. The first place that occurred to me was to pack a lunch and spend the better part of the day venturing up San Juan Canyon to Fremont Peak. It’s a beautiful place at any time, but the canyon and the small state park surrounding the peak are aflutter with life right now. I like to stop whenever a pullout offers the opportunity to do so safely. Passing from open grasslands to mixed oak woods to chaparral to conifers to black oaks to the rocky crag of the peak in just nine miles, the road offers an unmatched mix of habitats.
With the park targeted for closure in the governor’s proposed budget, a visit now has special poignancy.
