Female and male Bushtits—Photo by Bob Boekelheide

Flocking Madness: The Story of Bushtits

by Bob Boekelheide

March 2024

Bushtits are spritely little birds, usually seen flying in loose, bouncy flocks from bush to bush. They are the antithesis of long-distance migratory birds, staying in the same general area year-round and typically flying only far enough to reach the next bush or tree. Their flocks act more like superorganisms, moving through the brush as if with one mind, kept together by their chattery call notes.   

Bushtits are the smallest passerine on the north Olympic Peninsula, weighing just over five grams, or about the same as two pennies. This makes them only a couple grams heavier than the smallest bird on the Olympic Peninsula, the Rufous Hummingbird, and about half a gram less than the relatively chubby Golden-crowned Kinglet. If you’re birding with someone who says, “There goes a ton of Bushtits,” remind them that it would take about 170,000 Bushtits to weigh one ton.

Bushtits range along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to Central America, as well as inland through the Great Basin and southern Rocky Mountains to west Texas.  The local subspecies, Psaltriparis minimus saturatus, is the northernmost subspecies of Bushtit, found from southern coastal British Columbia through the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound. At the other end of their range, the southernmost subspecies of Bushtit is found as far south as the mountains of Guatemala. In between, Bushtits probably reach their peak densities in the oak woodlands of California and the mountains of Mexico.

The genus of Bushtit, Psaltriparus, comes from a combination of two other genera: Psaltria and Parus. Or, as described in Words for Birds by Edward Gruson, “Psaltry” is an ancient stringed instrument, and “Parus” is the genus of titmice. Technically it translates to something like “lute-playing titmouse,” but, to be honest, their chittery vocalizations don’t sound like a lute to me.

Bushtits belong to the family Aegithalidae, known as the “long-tailed tits.” The family Aegithalidae contains 11 species, of which the Bushtit is the only one found in North America. All the other members of the family live in Europe and Asia, particularly around the Himalayan Mountains, including some species ranging up to 15,000 feet elevation. It is hypothesized that ancestral Bushtits moved into North America by crossing the Bering land bridge sometime during the Ice Ages.    

There are a multitude of interesting stories about Bushtits, many of which can be found in Birds of the World, the wonderful on-line resource from Cornell Lab of Ornithology. For one, Bushtits are eating machines, having to consume approximately 80 percent of their body mass each day to maintain body temperature and avoid losing weight. For comparison, if a 150-lb human ate like a Bushtit, they would have to eat 120-lbs of food every day. That’s a lot of insects!

Bushtits are classic “foliage-gleaners.” Their diet is mostly insects and spiders, with a smattering of small seeds and other plant material, particularly during winter when insects are scarcer. Their preferred diet seems to be scale insects and moth caterpillars, especially when feeding chicks. Their penetrating little eyes are able to spot the smallest insects and insect eggs, mostly impossible for human’s eyes to locate. If you have a feeder, you know that Bushtits also love suet, furiously gobbling mini-mouthfuls of high-calorie fat.

Speaking of eyes, do you know that you can determine the sex of Bushtits by their eye colors? Females have light eyes, whereas males have dark eyes. Females hatch with dark eyes, but their eyes turn light within one month of fledging. 

How does a tiny bird like a Bushtit survive freezing nights, particularly when temperatures drop into single digits like we had in January this year. There is no evidence that Bushtits use hypothermia or torpor, the way that hummingbirds reduce their body temperature and slow their metabolism on cold nights. Instead, Bushtits are huddlers, gathering their flock together into a tightly-packed clump lined up in thick foliage within a bush or tree. This increases their collective volume while decreasing each individual’s exposed surface area. Adults also huddle within their nest during the nesting season, warming with their chicks and sometimes other adults.

Bushtits have one of the most unique bird nests in North America.  Their nest is a “hanging sock” made out of spider webs, lichen, and bits of plant material, fashioned into a foot-long pendulous tube that looks like it is part of the plant. The entrance hole is under a hood at the top of the sock, whereas the nesting chamber is at the bottom in the “toe” of the sock. The spider webs create flexibility, so that the nest stretches as the chicks grow. One nest in Arizona even had four adults and ten chicks huddled in it at night, a testament to how flexible and strong they can be.  

On the north Olympic Peninsula, one of Bushtits’ favorite places to build their nests is within Oceanspray, Holodiscus discolor. They even build nests within thick Douglas-fir foliage. They often build their first nests in early spring before the deciduous trees and shrubs have started to leaf-out, making their nests look very vulnerable to predation. Studies in Arizona, however, have shown that exposed nests experienced about the same level of predation as hidden nests, so maybe their nests already provide enough camouflage to confuse some predators.    

Inside their sock nests, Bushtits lay an average six to seven eggs, ranging from four to ten eggs.  Despite the bird’s tiny size, the female lays only one egg per day, the same as many other birds, including chickens. Bushtits don’t begin incubation until the last egg is laid, so even though the incubation period is listed as 12 to 13 days, some of the eggs may be in the nest for up to three weeks before they actually hatch. Curiously, even though both the male and female incubate, only the female develops a vascularized brood-patch.

Chicks are totally altricial, naked until they grow their first down at three-days old, and not opening their eyes until eight-days old. Based on the size of Bushtits, it is likely that their chicks fledge in a couple weeks or so, when the fledglings depart their nest and never come back. Their age at fledging is a bit uncertain, because tracking individual chicks in enclosed nests is difficult without destroying the nest. After their first chicks fledge, most Bushtit pairs attempt a second clutch most years, sometimes using the same nest and sometimes building a new one.

Studies have shown that flocks forage over an area of about 250 acres during the year, but flock members typically place their nests within an area of about 80 acres, which may facilitate awareness and interactions with other flock members. Even though individual pairs maintain their own nest sites during the breeding season, they apparently still make contact with fellow flock members throughout the nesting period. If a pair loses their nest, they may join adults at other nests, where they might help feed the other pair’s chicks or sometimes even take over the nest. Although it is hard to imagine what Bushtits are thinking, they appear to be remarkably non-territorial with other Bushtits, letting other Bushtits approach their nest and chicks without concern.

In at least the southern part of their range, from Arizona to Central America, Bushtits are cooperative nesters, with attendant birds helping at the nest. Typically, the helpers are adult males, apparently because the sex ratio in these populations is skewed towards more males than females, producing a surplus of males. More studies are needed to determine if Bushtits use helpers in the Pacific NW.

Social interactions like these suggest that members of Bushtit flocks may be closely related. More data are needed to reveal how closely related they really are, but the flocks we see during the non-breeding season could possibly be mixes of parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relationships. How do they keep from interbreeding? Apparently, there are times during the non-breeding period, like in late summer and early fall, and again in early spring, when multiple flocks join together to form “superflocks,” within which individuals switch between flocks. Despite small sample sizes, it appears that female Bushtits are the ones most likely to disperse into new flocks, thereby mixing genomes between flocks.

Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC) data for the last 30 years reveals that Bushtits are doing quite well in the Sequim area (Figure 1). Despite lots of interannual variation, likely due to weather on different count days, the number of Bushtits counted per CBC party hour has increased by fits and starts over 30 years. Between 1995 and 2005, we tallied an average number of about one Bushtit per party hour.  Between 2015 and present, the average count increased to about 1.5 Bushtits per party hour. 

Similarly, the Wednesday morning bird walk at Railroad Bridge Park, which has occurred along the same stretch of the Olympic Discovery Trail every week since 2001, also shows a slight increase in Bushtits over the last 22 years (Figure 2).  During that time, we observed Bushtits on 60.4 percent of Wed am bird walks. Even though Bushtits are somewhere in the area of Railroad Bridge Park throughout the year, we don’t encounter flocks every week.

Data from 22-years of Wednesday morning bird walks at RR Bridge Park also show the annual cycle of Bushtit abundance in the Sequim area (Figure 3).  Peak numbers of Bushtits occur in late summer, after new fledglings join the population. Numbers steadily decline through fall and winter, likely due to winter mortality, reaching lowest numbers during the next breeding season in April and May. Another reason we likely count fewer birds during the breeding season is because that is when pairs occupy individual nest sites, so instead of counting birds in flocks we’re instead counting adults present at the few nests visible along our sample route. 

The longest-living Bushtit on record, from USGS Bird Banding Lab data, was 8 years 5 months old. In actual breeding studies, one marked male nested for four consecutive nesting seasons, but most Bushtits do not reach these “old” ages. Another study showed that only 27% of marked Bushtits showed up again one year later. This appears similar to the annual cycle data at RR Bridge Park (Figure 3), where we recorded a high-count average of over 30 Bushtits just after the nesting season in August, to less that 10 Bushtits just before the next nesting season in March. This suggests that only one-fourth to one-third of Bushtits survive each winter. It’s not easy being a little Bushtit.

Here is your springtime homework assignment. Find a Bushtit nest, then every week spend an hour or two watching the birds coming and going from the nest. Are there more than two adults attending the nest? Can you tell whether they are incubating eggs or feeding chicks? How often do they feed the chicks? Can you follow males and females (remember their eye colors)? How do the birds interact?

Or, if you’re really fast, try following a Bushtit flock as it moves through the landscape. I’ve tried to do this, but I must admit that I can’t possibly move as fast as a Bushtit flock. I can follow them for a few minutes, but then “Poof,” they disappear. After you’ve gathered your data, please write an article for the Harlequin Happenings telling us all about your observations. Thanks!

Many of the interesting facts about Bushtits contained in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados subscribe to Birds of the World, both for the information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

Those Flashy Flickers

by Bob Boekelheide

November 2023

This month we give tribute to the amazing Northern Flicker, likely the most abundant woodpecker species in Clallam County. Without exception, on every Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC) since the SDCBC began in 1975, Northern Flicker has outnumbered all other woodpecker species combined.

Here is a graph (Figure 1) showing the number of Northern Flickers observed on the SDCBC over the last 30 years. 

It really looks like flickers have increased on the SDCBC over the last 30 years. This is true even when corrected for our counting effort, by calculating the number of flickers seen per party hour. The number of flickers still shows an increase, although it doesn’t look quite as steep (Figure 2).

The number of flickers varies quite a bit between years, as shown by the sawtooth pattern moving above and below the regression line. Still, the overall increase is apparent. For example, prior to 2009 we never observed more than 200 flickers on a SDCBC, yet during 8 of the last 10 years (2013-2022) our count has surpassed 200 flickers. Have we become better at finding flickers? Not likely. Flickers are big, obvious, vocal woodpeckers, so I suspect the increase is real.       

We know, however, that counting birds during a CBC is a bit of a crap shoot. Weather conditions and counters’ abilities vary every year. This is why it is so important to not place too much emphasis on changes between individual years. Long-term changes, like over 30 years, are much more meaningful, as shown by flickers. 

Supporting our local observations, trend analyses from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, as shown in their eBird Science section, also show increases in Northern Flickers in western Washington and along the West Coast of North America. Curiously, the same analyses show substantial decreases in flickers throughout many other areas of North America, including eastern WA.

Flickers are not particularly social, usually found singly, in pairs, or small groups. Flickers sometimes join together to form bigger flocks, perhaps dependent on food supplies or predators. The largest group I’ve seen locally was 25 flickers perched together in a big shrubby hedgerow in Jamestown on a cool fall day, possibly eating elderberries or some other fruits. 

What time of year do we see the most flickers in the lowlands of the north Olympic Peninsula? Data from 21 years of Wednesday morning bird walks in Railroad Bridge Park show the annual cycle of flickers throughout the year. It is a clear pattern, with relatively few flickers during the nesting season from April to August, then rising to a peak in flicker abundance in October (Figure 3). 

Where do the flickers seen in the Clallam lowlands in fall and winter go to nest in the spring and summer? A few flickers nest in the lowlands, but relatively few. It is likely that some flickers move upslope into the Olympic Mountain to nest, where they are abundant in open montane and subalpine forests during the nesting season. It is also likely that many flickers here in winter migrate north to nest in Canada and Alaska, where they nest as far north as the northern-most tree line.

This leads to an interesting story about flickers. There are three main “types” of flickers in North America – Yellow-shafted Flicker, Red-shafted Flicker, and Gilded Flicker. If you started birding before the 1980s, you remember when these three types were separate species. A watershed year occurred in 1982, when the American Ornithological Union lumped the three flicker species into only one species, the “Northern Flicker.” They did this because the three types freely hybridize and produce viable offspring (so why don’t they do this with large pink-legged gulls?). In 1995, the AOU partially reversed itself and decided that the Gilded Flicker, a desert flicker that typically nests in cacti, is unique enough to return to full species status, where it has been ever since.

Even though Yellow-shafted and Red-shafted Flickers now comprise separate subspecies within Northern Flicker, their geographic ranges are fairly distinct. The Yellow-shafted is mostly found east of the Rocky Mountains, whereas the Red-shafted is found in western North America down into Mexico. Where Yellow and Red-shafted types meet on the eastern slope of the Rockies, from Texas to Alaska, they produce “intergrades” that show variable characteristics originating from the two different subspecies. (Just to complicate matters, the term “intergrade” is used to designate crosses between subspecies, whereas the term “hybrid” designates crosses between full species.) One of the main intergrade zones lies north of us near the border between British Columbia and Alberta, the likely origin for many of the intergrade flickers we see in western WA during fall and winter.  

The typical Yellow-shafted Flicker you see in eastern North America, other than having bright yellow wing linings and tail feathers, has a brown face, bluish-gray crown, and a red mark on its nape, on the back of its head. Yellow-shafted males have a black moustache, also known as a malar stripe. In contrast, the typical Red-shafted Flicker, other than having salmon-red wing and tail feathers, has a bluish-gray face, brown crown, and lacks the red mark on its nape (although some Red-shafteds nesting in western WA may occasionally show some red on the nape). Male Red-shafteds have a red moustache, or malar stripe. Pacific NW Red-shafted Flickers may have darker bluish-gray back and breast, in contrast to a brownish back and breast on Yellow-shafteds and other Red-shafteds.

Intergrade Northern Flickers combine characteristics from both parent subspecies, in a myriad of ways. They often have orangey wing and tail feathers, although these may range from yellow to red. They have variable face and crown colors, and may or may not have the red nape mark. Males have either red or black moustaches, sometimes both on the same bird. 

It turns out the yellow, orange, and red colors found on flickers depend upon how the birds process carotenoid pigments from their diets. As the various pigments go through several metabolic pathways, the yellow feather colors arise from the least oxidation of the carotenoid pigments, the reddish colors have the most oxidation, and intergrade orange appears to be the result of incomplete oxidation when normal red pigment pathways are interrupted. It’s based on genetics, of course, which controls the biochemical pathways.

We live in an area with many intergrade flickers. Lucky us! Look closely at all the flickers you see this time of year and you’ll probably notice some flickers showing intergrade characteristics. The proportion of flickers listed as “intergrade flicker” on the SDCBC make up about two percent of all flicker sightings, but I suspect it might be higher than that.

Other research has shown that the intensity and saturation of flicker shaft colors, regardless of whether it is an intergrade or not, varies with the health of nestling flickers as they grow up in the nest. Healthy nestlings that fledge at higher body weights may show more intense coloration. Even the size of the black spots on their breasts varies with nestling mass, getting larger with higher body weights. The “blackness” of the bib on their breast may also be related to adult body condition and the age of the bird. Females with blacker bibs, likely older birds, laid eggs earlier, laid more eggs, and fledged more chicks. Their black tail bands may also enlarge with age, so that the chicks of older males with wider tail bands have higher fledging success. Feathers tell no lies, undoubtedly used by other flickers to determine the quality of potential mates.

Some Native American tribes are renowned for using flicker feathers in their regalia, particularly the Miwok and other tribes in California. The feathers are trimmed and sewn into strips, for use as spectacular head dresses.

Flickers are master carvers, excavating nesting holes in as little as a week or two. The majority of flickers make their holes in dead trees, emphasizing the importance of leaving snags for wildlife. In actuality, many flicker pairs reuse old nest holes, so they may not excavate new holes every year. Their nest holes are not only used by flickers, but also by other species of birds and other animals. For example, the nesting distribution of the Bufflehead, the most abundant diving duck on the SDCBC, is mostly dependent on old abandoned flicker holes throughout the taiga forest.

Like many woodpeckers, flickers drum not only on trees, but also on houses and even metal, both as territorial gestures and possibly to attract mates.  Woe be the homeowner if a flicker sets up shop pounding on the eaves or the siding of their house. A question frequently asked at the River Center in late winter and early spring is “How do I get rid of a flicker pounding on my house?” You can try to scare them away, but eventually they go away on their own, when either the hormones change or the bird migrates somewhere else. Draping the area with netting, hanging mylar tape, or somehow covering the area may help keep the bird away.  

What do flickers eat? Their preferred prey during nesting is ants. Lots of ants. They carry ants to their chicks using a bulge in the front of their esophagus, similar to a crop. They eat other insects as well, including beetles, flies, termites, and bugs. They are unusual for a woodpecker because they forage mostly on the ground, where they ingest ants, other insects, and even seeds. Outside the nesting season they eat a variety of insects and fruits, including poison ivy and poison oak fruits. Around Sequim, they often gather in fall where there are fruits like elderberry and blackberry, but it’s hard to tell exactly what they’re eating. If you provide suet at your bird feeder, you know that flickers can demolish suet cakes in no time.   

Flickers are renowned for having a relatively “fast” life history compared with other birds of similar body size, even compared with other woodpeckers. Flickers usually breed in their first year of life, they lay relatively large clutches averaging 6 to 8 eggs, and they don’t live as long as many other woodpeckers. Studies of banded flickers showed that less than half of the adults survive each year. Out of a sample of over 3000 banded flickers, the oldest male reached 10 years old and the oldest females only reached 9 years old. Life in the fast lane! 

Your mission this month is to look closely at the flickers you see around the Olympic lowlands. What color are their wings and tails -- red, yellow, or orange? How and what are they eating? Are they alone or traveling with other flickers? How do they relate to other types of birds? We take flickers for granted because we see them so often, but there is so much to learn about flashy flickers.

Many of the interesting facts about flickers contained in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados subscribe to Birds of the World, both for the information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

Something to Crow About

by Bob Boekelheide 

September 2023

We all know crows, right?  We see crows every day in the lowlands of the north Olympic Peninsula, walking on beaches, flying about towns, and cawing on the rooftops.  Their reputations range from noisy pests to cunning thieves to smart opportunists. 

But do we really know crows? As recently as 2020, birders still thought there were two species of crows in Clallam County – American Crow and Northwestern Crow. Remember the good old days, when we used to say that the crows walking around the schoolyards in Sequim and Port Angeles looked and sounded like American Crows, whereas the crows foraging in the intertidal at Neah Bay looked and sounded like Northwestern Crows? In 2020, that myth came crashing down. Based on genetic information, that year the American Ornithological Society lumped the two species, making the Northwestern Crow a subspecies of American Crow. 

The lumping was based on scientific research and a paper entitled “Cryptic and Extensive Hybridization between Ancient Lineages of American Crows,” headed by David Slager. The research showed that American and Northwestern Crows have a “hybrid zone” stretching from southeast Alaska to southwest Washington, centered right here at the Strait of Juan de Fuca and southwestern B.C. In their study, crows at both Neah Bay and Victoria B.C. showed fairly even proportionality in both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA between Northwestern and American types, which means that our Olympic Peninsula crows could not be assigned to one species or the other. Therefore, they are the same species.

The researchers speculated that the Northwestern-type crows split from generic American-type crows when ice sheets advanced during the Pleistocene epoch, within the last few hundred-thousand years. As the ice advanced, Northwestern-types moved into coastal ice-free refugia to the north. When the ice subsequently melted, the two species recombined. This likely happened several times, as continental and coastal mountain glaciers advanced and retreated. Genetically, the study demonstrated that the “hybrids” showed lots of back-crossing, indicating that their crossbreeding may have occurred over many generations, not just recently. Once again, they are the same species.

If you live in a town on the north Olympic Peninsula, it’s likely that you often see roving bands of crows in your neighborhoods. Depending on the time of year, flocks may be only a few crows, sometimes many more. Crows elsewhere sometimes form giant flocks of thousands of crows (aka “murders”), particularly at communal roost sites, although flocks on the north Olympic Peninsula rarely number more than a few hundred.

The all-time record crow count on eBird, the amazing bird app from Cornell University, occurred in southern Ohio in November 2001, estimated at 500,000 crows. Other communal roosts in the southern plains reportedly held one to two million crows, particularly where migrant flocks mixed with resident flocks. That’s a lot of “caws” for concern. The high count for western Washington was near the UW Bothell campus, where upwards of 20,000 crows may roost together outside the nesting season. The high eBird count for Clallam County is 673, seen by Sue Nattinger near Joyce in November, 2009. As you can see, Clallam crow flocks can’t compare in size with other flocks around North America. 

In actuality, the long-term counts of crows throughout western Washington seem to be declining.  One measure is our Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC), occurring every year in mid-December (see Figure 1). The SDCBC shows lots of variability between years, but the average crow count for the last 30 years has declined from just over 1000 crows in the 1990s to just over 800 crows in the last 10 years (Figure 1).  Similar trends appear in eBird, which shows an average decline of about 21 percent in relative abundance of crows in the Sequim area between 2007 and 2021.

Since crows are considered very adaptable to humans, why are there fewer crows? One possibility is West Nile Virus, which has caused serious mortality in crows, especially in eastern North America. Another possibility is Avian Influenza, which has spread widely particularly this year, although it seems to affect water birds and raptors more than passerines like crows. The spread of both these viruses is likely enhanced by warming climate and related changes in migratory and nesting patterns of wild birds.     

Even though crows are present year-round on the north Olympic Peninsula, data from 20 years of weekly bird walks show that crow numbers in Railroad Bridge Park bump up in the fall, peaking in November (Figure 2). The data also show that fewer crows visited Railroad Bridge Park during the nesting season, from April to September. Crows do not nest within RR Bridge Park, as far as we know, but there are usually several crow nests within a mile or two of the park. Like all corvids, crows are very social, forming structured flocks with a nucleus of older breeding adults. In some ways, crow flocks remind me of wolf packs, centered around older, more experienced individuals.  

Crows often target humans and human foods, which perpetuates their reputation for thievery. We have a walnut tree in our yard, where our neighborhood crows tentatively start sampling walnuts about mid-August. The walnuts usually don’t really ripen until September, so in August the first crows taste a walnut or two, then leave. Every few days they land in the tree, as if checking out the ripening crop. Once the walnuts are ripe, look out. Gangs of crows strip walnuts out of the tree and pick fallen walnuts off the ground, prying them apart with their bills or dropping them in the road to open them. Any suitable platform becomes a walnut-pounding zone, be it a telephone pole or neighborhood roof. Clumsy crows drop walnuts off the roofs into the gutters, to our great consternation. We laugh about it now, but one year my neighbor’s gutter totally plugged up and spilled water on their porch during the first big rainstorm of the fall. They dismantled the gutter and found it was totally crammed full with walnuts. Sorry, neighbors!

It turns out that some crow populations migrate, particularly those that nest in areas of Canada and the northern U.S. where winter conditions can be downright nasty. It is likely that nesting crows on the Olympic Peninsula do not migrate, but are instead resident year-round. In this regard, it would be most interesting to know how far our resident crows range during the year. Do they stay close to their nesting areas, or do they move around the peninsula? Might other crows migrate through the north Olympic Peninsula, possibly interacting with resident populations and increasing local numbers in fall? This seems unlikely, considering that crows do not have the propensity to fly over huge stretches of open water.   

Research shows that during the nesting season many breeding pairs are joined by other crows that help by bringing food to incubating females and chicks, and by chasing off predators. These “helpers” are usually offspring from previous years, but not always. Research with marked crows reveals that sometimes helpers are not related to breeding pairs, but they’re still tolerated around the nest. Since crows do not start nesting on their own until they are at least two-years-old and often older, the extra years with experienced breeders might provide critical training to prepare young birds for successful nesting later in life.

Crows usually build a big stick nest placed in either a conifer or a deciduous tree. Look for crow nests after the deciduous trees have lost their leaves in the fall; they can be difficult to find when the trees are still in leaf. Female crows do most of the nest building, weaving sticks in place to their satisfaction. They occasionally reuse nests, but most of the time they build new ones. Other species such as hawks, owls, sleeping raccoons and squirrels often use abandoned crow nests.

Crows’ typical clutch sizes averages four to five eggs, ranging from three to six eggs. The eggs usually have a blue or greenish background color covered with dark smudgy spots. The female does all the incubation, fed by the male and any helpers at the nest. The eggs typically hatch in 16 to 18 days. Crows then go through an extensive chick and fledgling period, not leaving the nest until about 30 to 35 days after hatching, then not leaving their nest tree for several more days after that. They remain dependent on their parents for food for several more weeks, begging raucously and persistently starting at the crack of dawn. I once made the mistake of camping below a crow’s nest with several fledglings, which started their nasal “AAHH, AAHH, AAHH, AAHH…” non-stop begging about 4:30 in the morning. No more sleep for me. But the best thing about fledgling crows is their striking blue-eyes, which quickly turn brown during their first year.

It’s not an easy life being a crow. Research with banded crows showed that more than half the chicks that made it to fledging died within their first year. Less than 10 percent of marked birds made it to five years old, and almost no adults lived beyond eight years. Despite this, the longevity records for banded crows are 15 to 17 years old. Very few crows ever make it to these ripe old ages.          

When I first moved to Sequim in the 1990s, in late summer I noticed flocks of crows flying together at dusk into the foothills of the Olympics, apparently going to a roost site. Over a few evenings I stationed myself at various places, hoping to track where the crows ended up. The best I could do is follow them up the Dungeness River valley to an area near Slab Camp, at about 2500 ft elevation. Unfortunately, I never found the exact roost site. Suffice it to say, they traveled several miles into the Olympic foothills to find a roost with the right conditions. Secretive little devils.

At the time I worked at Sequim High School, where football games occurred some Friday nights. One early Saturday morning, after a football game the night before, I happened to be at school right at dawn and found a big flock of a hundred or so crows already walking around the football field, foraging on food scraps littering the stands and field. My guess is these crows knew exactly when football games occurred and made it a point to arrive early the next morning for spilled food and tasty morsels.

Look deep into the eyes of wild crows. They have the true spark of life, totally observant and aware of their surroundings. Here is your homework assignment: Go watch a flock of crows this month and really observe how they behave and interact with one another and the rest of the world. Then think about the walnuts in my gutters.     

Many of the interesting facts about American Crows in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados get an online subscription to Birds of the World, both for its wonderful information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

Getting to Know BirdCast

May 2023

by Bob Boekelheide 

Attention OPAS members!  Do you know about BirdCast?  Researchers from many different institutions, particularly Cornell University, Colorado State University, and University of Massachusetts Amherst, have developed a phenomenal tool called BirdCast that revolutionizes our awareness and perception of bird migration over the United States.  Bookmark it now!

These researchers have combined the nation-wide network of over 140 NEXRAD weather radars with powerful computers and citizen-science eBird observations to produce striking visions of bird movements across the United States. All birders, including those of you who simply watch backyard birds at your feeders, need to bookmark BirdCast and consult it regularly during spring and fall migrations. I guarantee that BirdCast will expand your knowledge and appreciation of birds and bird migration.

When radar first developed before World War II, it soon became obvious that radar picked up more than just flying aircraft, particularly at night. In Britain, the Royal Air Force scrambled planes at night when the radar showed incoming images, but to their surprise they found no aircraft in the area. These “angels,” as they were called, turned out to be flocks of migratory birds, bats, and insects passing by when conditions were best for migration. Modern doppler radar can filter out these spurious images, or, in the case of BirdCast, specifically highlight these images to study bird migration patterns.

Early radar and bird collisions with human structures confirmed that many migratory birds, particularly small songbirds, migrate at night. Subsequent research showed that these birds use star patterns to orient themselves while flying. Birds consequently need relatively clear skies during their long flights. Using this knowledge, Cornell and a host of computer experts sought to predict when and where large migratory flights will take place, and try to track the migratory flights as they occur using doppler radar. BirdCast is the result of their efforts.          

BirdCast is not a cellphone app. It is an on-line website instantly available to any computer with web access. Do a search on your browser for https://birdcast.info/, or simply Birdcast, and you will see that there are four tabs across the top on the home page: “About,” “Migration Tools,” “Science-to-action,” and “News.” The heart of BirdCast is Migration Tools, which provides a host of information about recent and upcoming bird migration for specific areas across the United States.

 The first tab under Migration Tools is called “Bird Migration Forecast Maps.” These maps provide predictions about the intensity of bird migration over the next three nights for the continental U.S. The predictions combine weather variables such as precipitation and cloud cover along with 23 years of bird movements recorded by NEXRAD radar, to produce heat maps that literally glow with bright colors in areas expected to have high bird migration.

The second tab under Migration Tools is called “Live Bird Migration Maps,” which is truly amazing. These maps use real-time data from weather radars across the U.S. to show where birds are actually migrating during a given night. Once you click the start arrow, the maps glow in areas where birds are flying, as well as show the elapsed time and sunset and sunrise. It is fascinating to watch the movements of birds in areas of higher migration rates, as indicated by arrows from weather radar sites. Once again, this is real-time data, as it’s happening. Can it get any better than this?  (Maybe so – see below).

The third tab under Migration Tools is called Local Bird Migration Alerts. At this tab, you enter the name of a town or city, such as Sequim, WA, and receive predictions about the intensity of expected bird migration at that location over the next three nights. The given prediction is either low, medium, or high, depending on the expected density of migratory birds each night.

Predictions are surprisingly specific, so on any given night the prediction for Sequim might be quite different than the prediction for Port Townsend, Neah Bay, or Seattle. Lately, it has not been unusual for the expected spring migration through Sequim and Port Angeles to be lower compared with Seattle and Port Townsend, making me wonder whether the Olympic Mountains create a “migration shadow” for Sequim and Port Angeles during spring migration, similar to its renowned rain shadow. It makes sense that small birds flying north in spring likely go around the Olympic Mountains rather than fly over them. 

Local Bird Migration Alerts also gives you the option to receive an email “alert” when your chosen location expects high migration rates. There is an important conservation message to this, as well. A high migration alert stresses the importance to turn off bright outdoor lights when many birds are migrating, to prevent disorienting them and reducing the likelihood of collisions with buildings and other objects.

The fourth and last tab under Migration Tools is one of the best, called “Migration Dashboard.” This incredible tab links the migration data from BirdCast with millions of historical data points from eBird for a chosen county or state. It determines the expected species that were likely migrating on a given night, how many birds migrated during the night, what time they were flying, and what direction and altitude they used. It also shows graphs of the cumulative number of birds through the migration season, comparing them to historical data. For the last week in April, for example, it used eBird bar graphs to show that expected species ranged from Sandhill Cranes and Semipalmated Plovers to Warbling Vireos and Wilson’s Warblers. 

BirdCast gets my vote as one of the best uses of powerful computers and huge data sets ever devised.

As far as recent bird sightings, spring 2023 seems to be a repeat of spring 2022, starting out with several weeks of cold temperatures and rain, then spikes in bird migration after conditions improve. Bird migration through March and April this year crawled along until the last week in April, when warmer temperatures and clear nights finally showed up on the north Olympic Peninsula. The flood gates opened! Soon the neotropical migrants will arrive – flycatchers, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Western Tanagers, flashy warblers, swifts, nighthawks, and, one of the greatest singers of all, Swainson’s Thrushes.   

As I frequently say this time of year, you must get out now to hear bird songs. The nesting season for many birds peaks in May and June, but it’s over very quickly. The bird song switch gets turned off in the first half of July. This means that you have just over two months from right now to hear one of the most incredible natural events of your lifetime. Every singing bird is a priceless connection to nature.

Now is the time to prepare yourself for Birdathon. What is the best way to get ready? Go birding! We need an army of birders to hit their backyards and birding hotspots on May 13, to adequately survey the birds of Clallam County.  See the article about Birdathon in the Events Calendar for more details.

The Great Blue Herons of Dungeness Bay

by Bob Boekelheide

March 2023

While birding recently at Three Crabs, it surprised me to see only one Great Blue Heron foraging on the giant mudflats. Where are the herons? There were thousands of Dunlins and hundreds of gulls, but only one heron. Are the herons disappearing? Or is it normal to see fewer herons this time of year? 

Fortunately, the answers to these questions come from OPAS citizen science projects.  Between 2014 and 2018, OPAS volunteers counted birds at Three Crabs as part of the Three Crabs Estuarine Restoration Project, coordinated by the North Olympic Salmon Coalition and WA Dept of Fish and Wildlife. During this study, OPAS volunteers counted birds at Three Crabs three times each month for five years, tallying all the birds we could find within about a hundred-acre area on the mudflat, beach, and bay, including Great Blue Herons.

Great Blue Herons are definitely a common species in Dungeness Bay, easily visible as they hunt in shallow water or roost in uplands above the beach. Despite this visibility, we found that herons are not here all the time. Over five years, we found that they only occurred on 81 percent of our 152 surveys at Three Crabs. 

We found that herons have a very distinct annual cycle in Dungeness Bay, with their lowest numbers here in winter and spring (Figure 1). Their abundance picks up through June and July to a clear peak in August and September, when they disperse from their nesting colonies (Figure 1). Yes, we have herons here year-round, but if you want to see lots of herons you need to look in late summer, not late winter.

During our five-year study, the highest count within our small study area occurred on August 27, 2018, with 26 herons. Coincidentally, the highest count anywhere in Clallam County, as found in eBird, was 66 herons observed in Dungeness Bay on September 4, 2021, right around the same time of year.

Great Blue Herons showed no increase at Three Crabs during the nesting season, simply because they usually do not nest in Dungeness. At their nesting colonies in other parts of the Salish Sea, they occupy territories and start building nests during winter, then lay eggs in March and April. The highest numbers we see in Dungeness Bay in August and September coincide with the time of year when herons disperse from their nesting colonies, including recently-fledged juveniles.  

The largest heron colonies within 50 miles of Clallam County are likely on the shores of Padilla Bay in Skagit County, where there are hundreds of nests clustered in trees at March Point and Samish Island. During the nesting season, herons forage all over the mudflats and shallow waters of Padilla Bay. The closest colony of any size to Clallam might be at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, B.C., about 20 miles as the heron flies. The Beacon Hill Park heronry has had a difficult past, though, sometimes abandoned because of eagle predation.

Great Blue Herons try to nest in Clallam County, but as far as we know nearly all recent nesting attempts have failed. Herons have built nests in trees at Three Crabs, along the Dungeness River, up Palo Alto Road, at Diamond Point, and near Neah Bay and Clallam Bay. Within a few days or weeks the birds usually abandoned their sites. Perhaps these were young, inexperienced birds that couldn’t resist the urge to gather sticks and build nests, but they never seemed to reach the point of fledging chicks. Does anyone know of successful Great Blue Heron nesting attempts in Clallam County? If you do see herons trying to nest, it's important to give them space and not disturb them.

One of the most interesting Clallam nesting records comes from Hank and Raedell Warren of Port Angeles. In 2013, while walking up the Lake Angeles Trail south of Lake Dawn, Hank and Raedell heard strange squawking sounds in the coniferous forest at about 2500 feet elevation, more than five miles flying distance from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Looking closer, they discovered that the sounds came from half-grown Great Blue Heron chicks sitting in three nests high in the Douglas-firs. Why in the world would Great Blue Herons nest so far up in the Olympic Mountains?

The answer likely came the following year, when Hank walked to the same spot during spring 2014. Hank found the nests, but he also discovered eggshells and feathers scattered on the ground below the nests. There were no herons to be seen. What he found instead were three Bald Eagles flying through the forest and landing near the nests. Like Hank said, “The eagles and feathers explain the absence of herons.” A year before we thought these herons might have figured out how to avoid eagle predation by nesting in an obscure, out-of-the-way place, but the eagles eventually found them.

As you might have guessed, Bald Eagles have a huge influence on the nesting success of Great Blue Herons. For example, the colony at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, B.C., has a checkered history of abandonment because of eagles. The interpretive signs below the park’s nesting area even delineate what they call the “Eagle Period,” when Bald Eagles appear at a specific time in the herons’ nesting cycle to eat chicks in the nests. The herons have no defense against marauding eagles.

In Dungeness Bay I also witnessed an eagle kill an adult Great Blue Heron, by quickly swooping down from the sky and landing on the heron’s back. I suspect the heron may have already been injured, though, because it made no attempt to fight back or escape.         

Data from the Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count show a distinct decrease in the number of Great Blue Herons counted over the last 30 years (Figure 2). There is quite a bit of variability between years, however, which is typical of Christmas Bird Counts. After all, it is tough to control things like weather, tides, and counters each year. Regardless, herons dropped from an average of about 100 per year during the 1990s to an average of about 70 per year during the last 10 years. This is consistent with declines in herons elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, as described in Birds of the World. Could some of these declines be due to increased numbers of Bald Eagles? 

The Great Blue Herons we see in Clallam County are likely the Northwest coastal subspecies, Ardea herodias fannini, which nests from southeast Alaska to Washington state. A. h. fannini is the darkest gray and one of the larger Great Blue Heron subspecies, which fits in with our darker, more northerly climes. This subspecies is mostly considered non-migratory, although they disperse widely through coastal areas of the Salish Sea after nesting, including the north Olympic Peninsula. The entire population of A.h. fannini might number 8,000 to 10,000 birds, with about half of those nesting in Washington State.

Herons basically eat whatever animals they can catch, including fish, mammals, birds, amphibians, and crustaceans. In Dungeness Bay I’ve seen them eating flatfish, sculpins, gunnels, crabs, and what looked like smelt or perch. Herons are unwelcome visitors at backyard fish ponds and local hatcheries, where they may gobble down lots of fish very quickly. But seriously, don’t you think it is a noble end for your prized koi to end up in the belly of a Great Blue Heron?

It’s always entertaining to watch a heron try to swallow a big starry flounder (see Dow Lambert’s photo), grossly stretching their throat to accommodate the fish. Sometimes herons bite off more than they can chew, as there are records of herons choking to death trying to swallow large prey items.

The oldest banded Great Blue Heron on record was 23 years old, but very few likely get that old. A demographic study in a British Columbia colony found that the average age of nesting adults was 5.6 years old. Most herons begin nesting in their second year, so an average adult might be lucky to nest for four or five years during its lifetime. Their average clutch size in British Columbia was about four eggs, but so many nests failed that the average number of chicks fledged per nesting attempt was two or less. Additionally, banding studies show that the majority of young herons die within their first year after they leave the nest. It’s not easy being a heron.  

Lastly, I’d like everyone to keep an eye out for “Carte Blanche,” a partially-leucistic Great Blue Heron that’s been seen in Dungeness Bay for the last couple years. It stands out from the crowd, because, unlike a typical gray GBH, this one has a bright white belly and white markings on its head. The white belly is somewhat reminiscent of a Tricolored Heron, but its size and behavior are clearly Great Blue Heron. My wife, Barb, named the bird “Carte Blanche,” or “Blanche” for short.

Spring is here, and so are bird songs. Every spring is precious, when the Earth comes alive with life and sounds. You must go birding! Learn the bird songs! If you see or hear anything of interest, please let us know on the OPAS website: https://olympicpeninsulaaudubon.org/contact-us

Many of the interesting facts about Great Blue Herons in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados get an online subscription to Birds of the World, both for its wonderful information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

The Crowned Sparrows

by Bob Boekelheide

November 2022

The genus of sparrows known as Zonotrichia is well-represented on the north Olympic Peninsula. The “Zonos,” as they are affectionately called, are the “crowned” sparrows, including five species: White-crowned Sparrow, Golden-crowned Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Harris’s Sparrow, and Rufous-collared Sparrow.

According to Words for Birds, a wonderful book about the etymology of bird names, “Zone” in Greek means band or girdle, and “trichias” means a small bird. Consequently, Zonotrichia means “small bird with bands,” referring to the streaked heads found on these birds, which are actually fairly large for sparrows.

Three of the Zonotrichia – White-crowned, Golden-crowned, and White-throated Sparrows -- occur on the Olympic Peninsula every year. White-crowneds nest here in abundance, Golden-crowneds winter here in abundance, and White-throateds occur mostly on migration and sometimes stay for the winter, particularly at feeders. There are a few Clallam records for Harris’s Sparrow, a species found in the center of North America, but not every year.

 Rufous-collared Sparrow is the southern outlier, ranging from Central America to the southern tip of South America. If you’ve birded anywhere in South America other than the Amazon rainforest, particularly in the continent’s southern half, you’ve probably seen Rufous-collared Sparrows, one of the most abundant and widespread sparrows in South America.

Our two locally-abundant crowned sparrows, White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows, are very closely related. One genetic study showed that the two species share 99.89 percent of their genome, as high as the genetic variability within some whole species. Studies suggest that the two species may have split apart as recently as 50,000 years ago, likely during one of the most recent glacial advances and retreats in western North America.

There are four subspecies of White-crowned Sparrow, but only one Golden-crowned Sparrow. Two White-crowned Sparrow subspecies largely nest in shrubby habitats across Alaska, Canada, and western mountains, from tree-line forests to tundra willow patches. Two other White-crowned subspecies nest in shrubby habitats on the West Coast from southern B.C. to California, including the Puget Sound White-crowned Sparrows we hear singing on the north Olympic Peninsula. Golden-crowned Sparrows are somewhat wedged in between, mostly nesting at tree line in mountains of western Canada and the southern half of Alaska. Some Golden-crowneds also nest down to sea level in coastal areas of Alaska and western Canada, even on some Aleutian Islands. The two species occur together in southern Alaska, where they occasionally hybridize.       

Of interest, the White-crowned Sparrow is one of the most intensely-studied wild birds in the world, sometimes called the “white rat” of song birds. Many early studies with White-crowned Sparrows revealed ground-breaking information about regional song dialects, hormonal changes during breeding and migration, and how young birds learn to sing. There have been far fewer studies with Golden-crowned Sparrows.

The annual cycles of Golden-crowned and White-crowned Sparrows in the Olympic lowlands reveal a fascinating juxtaposition between the two species. As shown by monthly data from the Wednesday morning bird walks in Railroad Bridge Park (Figure 1), they make a complete switch twice each year. Golden-crowned Sparrows, which do not nest here, are abundant as a wintering species between September and April. The locally-nesting Puget Sound White-crowned Sparrows are abundant between April and September, then most of them migrate to coastal California for the winter. Some White-crowned Sparrows stay here during winter, but the remaining winter White-crowneds largely flock with Golden-crowned Sparrows at locations closer to the Strait, such as in Dungeness and Jamestown.   

April and September are intriguing months, the peaks of spring and fall migration for both species. On the graph (Figure 1), it looks like White-crowneds and Golden-crowneds occur in similar numbers in April and September, but the two species actually have very different missions. In April, White-crowned Sparrows arrive for nesting and immediately begin singing and setting up nesting territories. Golden-crowned Sparrows are still in flocks, getting ready to migrate north while finishing up their body molt and putting on fat. In September, it’s the reverse. White-crowned Sparrows are intent to migrate south, whereas Golden-crowned Sparrows arrive and settle in for the long winter.

Our Wednesday morning bird walks also reveal changes to these species’ populations over the last couple decades (Fig. 2). On the bird walks, we have counted birds on the same route every week for over twenty years, providing an index to their relative abundance over the years. Looking at the average high monthly counts from 2002 to 2021, the numbers of both species bounce around quite a bit, sometimes more than double from one year to the next, but the long-term trend appears fairly stable over time, even increasing in Golden-crowned Sparrows (Fig. 2).  

How do the data from the larger Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count compare with those from the smaller area at Railroad Bridge Park (Figure 3)? The trend lines from the Christmas Count are quite similar to the Wednesday bird walks over the last 20 years, also showing greater increases for Golden-crowned Sparrows. It appears that the two sparrow populations are doing okay around here.

Looking more closely at the graphs, though, it’s apparent that the peaks and valleys of sparrow numbers do not perfectly line up between RR Bridge Park and the larger CBC. For example, 2013 is one of the lowest years for Golden-crowned Sparrows in the Railroad Bridge Park data, whereas 2013 has the highest count for Golden-crowneds on the Christmas Bird Count. Why the difference? Remember that the Railroad Bridge Park data combines an entire year of bird walks, whereas the Christmas Bird Count is only one count occurring one day in mid-December.  

Both White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows are expert singers, producing distinctive songs easily remembered and repeated.  A favorite translation of our local Puget Sound White-crowned Sparrow song is “See Me, Pretty Pretty Pretty Me,” starting with two separate notes on different pitches, warbling in the middle, then dropping on the final note.

Songs of White-crowned Sparrows fill the air in the Clallam lowlands during spring and early summer. Just about everywhere you go between April and July around Port Angeles and Sequim, from one end of town to the other, there are White-crowned Sparrows singing in nearby bushes. White-crowned Sparrows sometimes sing loudly at night and are a big contributor to the dawn chorus, much to the chagrin of sleep-deprived humans nearby.

Golden-crowned Sparrows also belt out full songs in the Clallam lowlands, even though they do not nest here. Their songs can particularly be heard when they first arrive in September and before they depart in April. Their common song translates to very mournful three notes descending on a minor key, sounding like “Oh Dear Me.”  

Klondike gold miners, digging for gold in the mountains of Alaska and the Yukon, noticed that everywhere they staked a claim there would be Golden-crowned Sparrows singing in nearby willow thickets. The minors called them “Sad Willies,” and translated their three-note descending song as “Don’t Dig Here.”

Based on banding returns, it seems likely that the average crowned sparrow only lives to be one to two years old, provided it fledged successfully. At the other extreme, the oldest banded Golden-crowned Sparrow on record reached 10 years 6 months, whereas the oldest banded White-crowned Sparrow was 13 years 4 months.

Banding studies have shown that both species have fairly high site fidelity not only to nesting areas, but also to where they spend their winters. This means that the adult Golden-crowned Sparrows at your feeder this November may have visited you last November, provided they survived two migrations and a nesting season in between.

Whether you see Golden-crowned Sparrows visiting your feeders in December, or White-crowned Sparrows singing at the post office parking lot in May, please stop and take time to appreciate these amazing birds. Despite the curveballs we humans throw at them, these Zonos seem to be surviving reasonably well in our changing world.  

Many interesting facts about sparrows in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados subscribe to Birds of the World, both for the information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

Killdeer in Our Midst

by Bob Boekelheide 

September 2022

On the official Clallam County bird list, the group of birds with the highest number of species is the shorebirds, also known as “waders” in Britain. Shorebirds include plovers, sandpipers, and their myriad relatives, such as oystercatchers, turnstones, curlews, godwits, dowitchers, and many more. An amazing total of 48 shorebird species have been recorded in Clallam County, about one-eighth of the total 396 species of birds currently on the Clallam list.

Equally interesting to me, out of all these 48 shorebird species only four regularly nest in Clallam County. Can you name the four shorebird species that nest every year in Clallam County?

 The other 44 species of shorebirds recorded in Clallam County are migrants, nesting mostly in the Arctic, taiga forests, or inland prairies, then showing up here during migration. A few of these migrant species stay for the winter, like Black-bellied Plovers and Dunlin, but most do not. Some shorebird species on the Clallam list do not even nest in North America, like Curlew Sandpiper and Little Stint, both of which nest in Asia and rarely show up in North America. Fully a third of all the shorebird species on the Clallam list could be considered “rare,” not seen every year.

Okay, here are the four shorebird species that nest every year in Clallam County: Black Oystercatcher, Killdeer, Wilson’s Snipe, and Spotted Sandpiper. Denny Van Horn once found Greater Yellowlegs with chicks by the Quillayute River, but that is the only breeding record we know for yellowlegs in Clallam County. Consequently, I’m sticking with only four regularly-nesting shorebird species.

Of the four nesting species, probably the best known by most birders is the pugnacious Killdeer. Killdeer are vocal plovers with spunky attitudes that place their cryptic nests in gravelly areas, then defend their territories with shrill calls and broken-wing displays. They are easily recognized by two bold stripes across their white neck and breast. Despite these striking markings, they also blend in very well with the landscape, until they start making noise. They are a common nesting bird throughout the Puget Sound region, as well as over most of North America from central Mexico to central Canada.

Even though Killdeer are present in Clallam County throughout the year, their number vary by season. This is evident from data collected by OPAS volunteers during the Three Crabs Restoration Project, where we counted birds on the shores of Dungeness Bay three times every month for five years from 2014 to 2018 (Figure 1).   

Granted these data are just from Three Crabs, but Figure 1 shows the annual cycle of this local Killdeer population very well. During nesting months of March, April, and May, we recorded consistent numbers of territorial adults. The highest counts occurred between June and September, when chicks leave their nests and Killdeer form loose flocks. The lowest time of year occurred in December and January, when many local Killdeer leave their territories and move somewhere else for the winter. Where do they go? Do they migrate south? It’s not certain for our local Killdeer, but it does appear that local numbers decrease in winter.

Killdeer’s nesting season may last several months, much longer than other shorebird species that nest in more northerly climes. The earliest Killdeer pairs around here usually lay eggs in April, then little chicks start running around in May. They almost always lay four well-camouflaged eggs, all crammed inside their gravel nest. After an average incubation period of about 25 days, the eggs hatch within a day of each other. Like many shorebirds, this synchrony is because Killdeer parents don’t start incubating their eggs continuously until the last egg is laid.   

The precocial chicks leave their nest within hours of hatching, sometimes as soon as they dry off. They grow quickly, able to find food for themselves while their protective parents watch for predators. The chicks start flying when they are only three to four weeks old, which means the period between the start of laying eggs and chicks taking flight may be as short as only seven to eight weeks.

If Killdeer begin their first clutch in April and their first chicks are independent by late May, it may give them time to lay second clutches, or replacement clutches if they lose their first nesting attempt. Sure enough, around here we sometimes see chicks as late as August, from eggs laid in June or July. In other, more-southerly areas of the U.S, researchers think some Killdeer may even lay three clutches in a nesting season.

Killdeer don’t form huge flocks like some other shorebirds, but they often gather in small groups, particularly around migration time. The record Clallam County eBird count is 92 Killdeer counted in a Dungeness cow pasture on November 18, 2018. That pasture turns out to be a favorite place for Killdeer in the fall, where they hide out of the wind in the lee of well-spaced cow patties. Within a week after that sighting, those Killdeer were gone and the cow patties stood silent vigil.

Mid-December is also when we hold our annual Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC). The SDCBC averaged about 67 Killdeer per year over the last 30 years (Figure 2). In reality, Killdeer numbers on the CBC vary from year to year, from a low of only five birds in 1994 and 1995, to a high of 160 in 1998. Despite all the ups and downs, the trend line for SDCBC numbers appears fairly steady. Killdeer are very good at hiding out in fields and pastures during winter, so it is possible that we miss many of them during the CBC.      

You probably recognize Killdeer by their loud vocalizations, particularly when they are threatened near their nests. Like chickadees, Killdeers’ call notes get louder and more intense depending on the intruder or predator, sounding the alarm for other birds. As a predator or human approaches, they start out with single loud “DEEEE.”  They switch to two-note “DEE--EEE” as the predator moves closer, eventually screaming a three-note “DEE-DIT-DIT” when the predator gets really close. Their namesake “Killdeer” calls finally erupt when they take flight, repeating “KILL-DEER, KILL-DEER, KILL-DEER, KILL-DEER” over and over. They have other trills and grunts that don’t sound like your typical Killdeer.

Killdeer are survivors, one of those species that seems to exist fairly well as humans change habitats in North America. Some authors suggest that there may be more Killdeer now than ever before. But their propensity to nest close to humans, such as in farmland, weed fields, and gravel roads, may also put them at risk for exposure to pesticides and disturbance.  

To finish, I’d like to relate a story that seems to illustrate the adaptability of Killdeer. On a cold winter night last January, at about 8:30 pm in the Sequim Costco parking lot, I heard Killdeer flying and calling loudly high up in the dark night sky. There were at least two, maybe more. What the heck were Killdeer doing flying around in the dark during the middle of winter? Killdeer are active day and night, so maybe that’s not surprising. But why over a shopping center, all lit up on a cold winter’s night? It made me appreciate even more the incredible challenges these tough birds face as they survive in our rapidly changing world.      

Remember that September 6th is World Shorebirds Day, when we should all count shorebirds and share our eBird lists with WorldShorebirdsDay.  See https://www.shorebirdconservation.org/global-shorebird-counts for more information. Instead of rushing to Clallam County to see “rare” shorebirds, it’s time to stay home and appreciate the Killdeer in our midst.               

Many interesting facts about Killdeer in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados subscribe to Birds of the World, both for the information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

Herring Spawn in Outer Dungeness Bay, March and April, 2022

by Bob Boekelheide

May 2022

Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) is a classic “forage fish.” What’s a forage fish? Throughout the world, forage fish are super-abundant schooling fish that hold a critical place in the middle of marine food webs. They concentrate lots of energy and biomass from what they eat – mostly zooplankton – into catchable prey coveted by predators like bigger fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.

Besides herring, forage fish include things like sardines, anchovies, juvenile rockfish, and, here in the Salish Sea, sand lance and smelt. These fish are certainly unique and fascinating creatures on their own right, but, like it or not, when there’s a gazillion little fish swimming together, the predators love to eat them. Hence the name “forage fish.”       

I admit that I take a predator-centric view towards herring. Large squabbling masses of birds above the water indicate that something big is happening below the water. When the herring start spawning in winter and spring it is a really big deal for predators, providing prey at a time of year when food might otherwise be scarce. It is also when birds must fatten up for migration and the upcoming nesting season. 

Between January and April is the time when herring typically spawn in the Salish Sea, releasing their sticky gelatinous eggs into the cold waters around headlands and bays. The eggs cling to eelgrass and algae, where birds pick off the eggs like eating corn on the cob. Tens of thousands of birds may gather at big herring spawns. Fish predators like salmon, halibut, and dogfish sharks similarly attack herring schools and roe from below.

Some birds like Glaucous-winged Gulls and Red-breasted Mergansers feast on the fish, but other birds such as scoters, scaup, goldeneyes, Bufflehead, and Short-billed Gulls (formerly Mew Gull) specialize in gobbling up the sticky herring eggs. Even Brant possibly time their northward migration through the Salish Sea in March and April to get an additional protein hit from herring eggs plastered to their favorite eelgrass and algae. Bald Eagles hang out to steal adult herring whenever they can, mostly from gulls. The eagles may also prey on unsuspecting birds in the feeding flocks, if they can catch them.

Unfortunately, herring stocks have declined throughout the Salish Sea over the last 40 years. There used to be a commercial fishery for herring in our local waters, but that stopped when herring stocks dwindled after the 1980s. There has been a regional uptick in herring spawns in just the last couple years, but not in Dungeness Bay, as far as anyone knows.

That’s why on March 24, 2022, while walking on Gibson Spit outside Sequim Bay, I was puzzled to see several large, very active feeding flocks of birds about a half-mile from shore, stretching from the mouth of Sequim Bay all the way north of Graysmarsh. There were also California sea lions and harbor seals swimming about the flocks.

There were several unusual things about these feeding flocks compared to the typical feeding flocks we see in the same area during summer and fall. Other than the time of year, one thing is these flocks sounded different. The gulls seemed to have different voices in these flocks compared with their usual summer flock cacophony. Is that possible? Curiously, I’ve since read that Tlingit Indians in SE Alaska also say that gulls sound different when herring are spawning.

Second, these feeding flocks were scattered all over, not tightly concentrated like the bait-ball flocks we typically see associated with sand lance in summer and fall. Third, there were many more diving ducks in these flocks, but very few of certain piscivorous birds we usually see in fall feeding flocks, like loons, grebes, and cormorants.

The next day, March 25, Gary Bullock and I stopped by Jamestown Beach as part of a monthly raptor survey. The first thing we noticed was a gang of 37 eagles standing along the shore and perched in nearby trees. Next, we tried to count all the mergansers, scoters, Bufflehead, Brant, auklets, and gulls swimming in tight offshore flocks (see https://ebird.org/checklist/S105564183 for our list). Our estimate reached 8,000 to 10,000 birds in the flocks, some feeding, but many others just swimming lazily at the surface, looking fat and sassy. It began to look very much like other herring spawns I have witnessed elsewhere in Washington and British Columbia.

I notified WA Dept of Fish and Wildlife biologists, who, along with the Coastal Watershed Institute, came to check for themselves. WDFW ran a boat survey with expert forage fish observers on 3/30/22, finding herring spawn spread over five miles between the mouth of Sequim Bay and Three Crabs (see map). Herring eggs washed up on Jamestown and Three Crabs Beaches, mostly attached to a type of kelp called Witch’s Hair, Desmarestia aculeata (see photo).

What makes this herring spawn so special?  As far as anyone knows, it has been years since there was a significant herring spawn anywhere near Dungeness Bay. Past WDFW maps of herring spawns show their former spawning area was far inside Dungeness Bay, to the west of Cline Spit. The area where they spawned this year is in outer Dungeness Bay and off Port Williams, previously labeled on WDFW maps as a “pre-spawning herring holding area.” Anne Schafer of the Coastal Watershed Institute called this year’s event a “novel” herring spawn, because it occurred at a brand-new area where spawning has not been recorded before.

The intense spawning activity and bird feeding flocks in outer Dungeness Bay continued through the last week in March and into the first week in April. Herring eggs continued to wash ashore along several miles of beaches from the mouth of Sequim Bay all the way to Three Crabs.  

Does this mean that herring have now returned to their past glory? It’s certainly too soon to say. There needs to be more years of observations to make sure that this was not a one-time event. Regardless, seeing a large spawning event in our local waters is incredibly exciting, not only for herring, but also for birds and birdwatchers. 

Homage to Black-bellied Plovers

by Bob Boekelheide

March 2022

The “Big Three” shorebird species found in Dungeness Bay during winter are Black-bellied Plovers, Sanderlings, and Dunlins. Without fail, these three species comprise the highest shorebird numbers during our Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC). There are smatterings of other shorebird species in winter such as Black Turnstones and Killdeers, but nothing as reliable or as numerous as the Big Three.

Christmas Bird Count data for Black-bellied Plovers show that we usually average over 300 Black-bellied Plovers on a typical SDCBC (Fig. 1). In reality, their numbers range far and wide. For example, the count in 2010 had only 46 plovers, but a year later in 2011 the count was 707 plovers. Why so different? We hold our CBC in mid-December, when daytime tides unfortunately stay high all day long and usually no mudflats are visible. When there are no mudflats, plovers move inland to feed at pastures and harvested fields. We do our best to search the fields and pastures, but sometimes we just don’t find the plovers. Other times their flocks might get counted more than once as they fly back and forth during the day, which could explain the sky-high counts as well. It’s not a perfect world when counting birds.

During these counts, we often hear Black-bellied Plovers before we see them. BB Plovers have a lovely mournful flight call with three slurred notes descending and rising in a minor key, kind of a “Pee-oo-EE.” It is one of the most distinctive sounds of Dungeness Bay.

Between 2014 and 2018, OPAS volunteers also counted birds at Three Crabs as part of the Three Crabs Estuarine Restoration Project, coordinated by the North Olympic Salmon Coalition and WA Dept of Fish and Wildlife. During this study, OPAS volunteers observed birds at Three Crabs three times each month for five years, tallying all the shorebirds we could find on the mudflats and beaches. 

Our data showed that Black-bellied Plover is the most ubiquitous of all shorebird species in Dungeness Bay, occurring year-round on 90 percent of our 151 surveys. Black-bellied Plovers ended up being present more than Dunlin, Sanderlings, and even locally-nesting Killdeer, which mostly migrate south in winter.   

Black-bellied Plovers might be the heart and soul of Dungeness Bay’s winter shorebird flocks, but their highest numbers actually occur during spring and fall migration, also revealed by the Three Crabs Bird Study (Fig. 2). Peak spring migration occurs in April and peak fall migration occurs in August. Our highest count ever during the Three Crabs study occurred on 8/13/18, when we tallied 219 plovers. The average count was 75.2 plovers per survey for the entire five years.

What’s the big attraction for Black-bellied Plovers in Dungeness Bay? Food. One of Black-bellied Plovers’ favorite prey items is polychaete worms, which they hunt on the mudflats. It’s not uncommon to see a plover yank up a big polychaete, then get chased across the mudflats by a gull trying to steal the worm. With those big eyes, plovers also hunt the mudflats at night. Their hunting style is to walk a few steps, pause and look, walk a few more steps, then pause and look again, very different from the rapid pecking of sandpipers or the deep probing of dowitchers. 

In winter, Black-bellied Plovers in Dungeness Bay do not have black bellies, a conundrum that often confuses beginning birders. Shouldn’t Black-bellied Plovers have black bellies? The “basic,” or non-breeding plumage of Black-bellied Plovers, along with the juvenal plumage, is plain brownish-gray, without a black belly (see photo).   

Many if not all of the Black-bellied Plovers that stay in Dungeness Bay in June and July do not have black bellies. These are pre-breeders, only one year old. Black-bellied Plovers do not breed until their second year, staying in their basic plumage through their first summer. Some one-year-olds migrate north, but many do not, staying here in Dungeness Bay.

After Black-bellied Plovers molt into their breeding plumage (aka “alternate plumage”), they are among the most spectacular birds on the mudflats (see photo). They start this molt during March, so now is the time to look for the start of black bellies on the Black-bellied Plovers. By April and May the breeding birds are striking in their blacks and whites, particularly adult males.

Along with Sanderlings and Dunlin, Black-bellied Plovers are a cosmopolitan species known as a “Holarctic breeder.” This means that they nest all the way around the northern hemisphere, as far north as the northern limits of tundra. They nest from the North Slope of Alaska through northern Canada, then all across northern Russia. Their winter distribution is even more extensive – just about any suitable mudflat or bay in middle and tropical latitudes around the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia might have Black-bellied Plovers in winter. The British call them “Grey Plovers,” which might be consistent with their basic plumage, but hardly respectful of their flashy alternate plumage.   

Like many shorebirds, Black-bellied plovers waste no time with their nesting duties. After migrating to the Arctic, the males quickly create nest scrapes, likely to attract females. Females arrive, pair with males within a week or two, then lay four beautifully-camouflaged eggs, colored like the lichens found in their nesting material.

The combined mass of the four eggs equals about 16 percent of the female’s body mass, a big energy investment for a bird that just migrated thousands of miles. Each egg develops over about a week inside the female, then the female lays the four eggs over about 36-hour intervals. Adults don’t start continuously incubating the eggs until the last egg is laid, so the chicks hatch fairly synchronously. Both sexes incubate -- some studies showed that males actually incubated more than females. The eggs start to hatch after an incubation period as short as 23-24 days.

The chicks all hatch within a day or two, then within another day they’re out of the nest walking around the tundra. The chicks find their own food, mostly insect larvae, while they’re guided and protected by their parents. The chicks grow very quickly, becoming independent from their parents within only three to four weeks. Then the adults take off, leaving the juveniles behind to fend for themselves.

Did I mention it all happens very quickly? If all goes as planned, adults might only spend a couple months at their nesting areas, before quickly migrating south once again to spend the winter at places like Dungeness Bay.

The next three months, March through May, are intense spring migration months. Shorebirds move north very quickly, spending just a few days at each rest-over spot to fuel up for the next leg of their journey. The best places to see migrating shorebirds in Dungeness Bay are at Three Crabs beach, Dungeness Landing County Park, or walking out Dungeness Spit. Plan your shorebird viewing around incoming and outgoing tides at 2 to 5 feet, when the tides are neither too high nor too low. The viewing can be spectacular if you hit the right tide, with flocks of feeding shorebirds spread out around you, one of the greatest spectacles of nature.      

Many of the interesting facts about Black-bellied Plovers in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados subscribe to Birds of the World, both for the information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

Tribute to the American Wigeon

by Bob Boekelheide

November 2021

This month we give tribute to the humble American Wigeon, typically the most abundant species on the Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC, coming up on Dec. 20, 2021). For 37 of the 45 SDCBCs since the count started in 1975, American Wigeon has outnumbered all other species. This is no small feat, considering that wigeons compete for high count with species such as Mallard, Dunlin, and Glaucous-winged Gull, all abundant powerhouses in their own right.

 Here is a graph (Figure 1) showing the number of American Wigeons observed on the SDCBC over the last 25 years. 

Several interesting things pop out from the graph:

1. It appears that wigeons may have increased on the SDCBC over the last 25 years, since the slope of the regression line is positive.

2. The number of wigeons varies a lot between years. This was particularly true between 2009 and 2012, when the count ranged between its highest count (16,929 in 2009) and lowest count (4,994 in 2012) within just three years.

3. Because of this variability, the points on the graph don't fit the regression line very well, as indicated by its fairly low coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.34.  Remember your basic statistics -- the coefficient of determination approaches 1.0 when a set of points closely fits its regression line, whereas the coefficient of determination approaches 0.0 if the set of points is random and doesn't fit its regression line very well.

Could wigeons in our area possibly vary that much from year to year? Maybe, maybe not. Anyone who has tried to count wigeons on our CBC knows that they are not easy to count. They often occur in large flocks of hundreds or thousands of birds, which requires close attention and much patience to get accurate estimates. We often partition the flocks into smaller groups, counting them by tens or hundreds, to estimate total flock sizes. Stormy, windy weather on CBC day makes it even less likely that we get accurate numbers.    

Hunting season may also disperse wigeons, so active hunters on CBC days (and hunting Bald Eagles, too) often cause flocks to take flight and move around. This could lead to multiple CBC parties counting the same group of wigeons, particularly in Dungeness Bay. Conversely, hunting also causes the birds to gather into tighter flocks, which might actually make them easier to estimate. It is my job as CBC compiler to sort out the discrepancies and determine where overlapping counts might occur.  

Lastly, weather has a huge influence on wigeon distribution during the SDCBC, particularly freezing weather. If it is below freezing for a few days before our count, freshwater ponds in our area may be frozen solid. All the wigeons consequently gather on saltwater, particularly Dungeness Bay, where we can estimate the large flocks. Conversely, when temperatures stay above freezing and freshwater ponds are open, wigeons scatter all over the Sequim-Dungeness Valley. We do our very best to count the most important ponds, but we certainly do not get to every pond to count every single wigeon.    

Anyone walking in winter at Carrie Blake Park in Sequim might witness this. When daytime temperatures consistently stay above freezing, a couple thousand wigeons sometimes hang out in the park, grazing on the playing field and escaping to nearby ponds when chased by dogs or when eagles fly over. In contrast, when we have really cold weather and the Carrie Blake Ponds ponds are frozen over, relatively few wigeons remain in the park. 

Regardless, American Wigeons averaged about 10,000 birds per SDCBC during the last 25 years.  I suspect this number is a fairly good ballpark figure for the number of wigeons found in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley in mid-December.        

What is the annual cycle of American Wigeons in our area? To answer this question, we go to another OPAS community-science project. Between 2014 and 2018, OPAS volunteers assisted North Olympic Salmon Coalition and WA Dept of Fish and Wildlife by counting birds during the Three Crabs Nearshore Habitat Restoration Project, to see if the project changed bird use in the Three Crabs Area. One of the survey areas was Three Crabs Beach, where we counted birds within a defined area during every ten-day period between 2014 to 2018. 

The next graph (Figure 2) shows the annual cycle of wigeons within our Three Crabs Beach study area, as shown by the average monthly high counts. The highest number of wigeon at Three Crabs occurred during fall migration, peaking at several thousand in October. Their numbers steadily declined through winter and spring, then dwindled to almost zero during the nesting season in June and July, when wigeons go north to breed. 

Mind you, this graph only shows our wigeon counts in a small section of nearshore Dungeness Bay. There are many more wigeons elsewhere in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley not included in this graph. Wigeons may graze in fields and parks somewhere during the day, then roost together in marshes or offshore during the night. After hunting season starts in mid-October, lots of wigeon go somewhere other than Three Crabs. They might stay offshore in other sections of Dungeness Bay, they might go inland to freshwater ponds, or they might even migrate somewhere else for the winter.

Where else do they go in winter? The highest numbers on Washington CBCs often occur at Padilla Bay, sometimes double or triple the numbers we count at Sequim-Dungeness. Even Padilla Bay numbers don't compare, however, with wigeon numbers further south, particularly in the Sacramento Valley in Northern California. The highest winter counts in the Pacific Flyway occur at refuges and wildlife areas around the Sutter Buttes, like Delevan, Colusa, Sutter, Sacramento, Butte Sink, and Graylodge, where they sometimes tally more than a quarter million wigeon. Of interest, peak wigeon counts by the USFWS in the Sacramento Valley typically occur in November, whereas our peak counts occur in October. This suggests that some birds may use Washington as a migration stopover before eventually flying further south to spend the winter.

Fall and winter is the time when wigeons pair up for the next nesting season. Apparently population sex ratios are skewed to more males than females, so competition between males for female mates can be intense. Pairs stay together through the winter, so by the time they migrate north in spring the mates travel together to the nesting area of the female's choosing.

Where do all these wigeons go in the nesting season? According to Birds of the World (the wonderful online resource from Cornell Lab of Ornithology), most American Wigeons nest in western Canada and Alaska. Some nest on the tundra, some nest in taiga forests, and some nest in prairie grasslands. The common denominator is that female wigeons place their nests in brushy and grassy areas near freshwater ponds and wetlands, where they eventually take their chicks after they hatch.

On average, wigeon females lay about 7 to 10 eggs in each clutch. The eggs' incubation takes about 25 to 28 days, all done by the female. The male stays near the female for a few days after she lays eggs, then he takes off to molting areas sometimes hundreds of miles away. Chicks leave the nest within 24 hours of hatching, waddling to water with their mother. If they survive, chicks begin flying about 6 to 7 weeks after hatching. Less than half of clutches typically result in fledged young, as most of the chicks are lost to predation and exposure each year. 

Many female wigeons apparently nest when they are only one year old, but most males do not nest until their second year. According to banding studies, survival rates of adult wigeons are not great, as only about one-half to two-thirds of adults survive to nest again each year. The average adult wigeon probably only lives about two to three years, even though the oldest banded American Wigeon on record lived to 21 years old.

Like most dabbling ducks, wigeons are largely vegetarians, although females may eat higher amounts of insects, molluscs, and crustaceans before nesting. In Dungeness Bay, their diet appears to be mostly eelgrass and green algae, particularly Ulva, which grows in abundance on the mudflats and washes ashore in huge windrows during late summer and fall. In upland habitats, wigeons graze on grasses, forbs, and aquatic plants. There is even an aquatic plant called "widgeon-grass," also known as "ditch-grass," usually found in shallow fresh or brackish water.

A description of wigeons would not be complete without some mention of their distinctive call note, which is often likened to a squeeky bathtub toy. This call, known as the "slow whistle”, is largely made by males. It has three descending notes, sounding like "whee, whee, whee." Females have a quiet quack that they make to their mate when taking flight, also known as the "flying call."

It is easy to say "they're just wigeons" when birding around here during fall and winter, since there are so many wigeons out there. I ask you to slow down and take the time to watch these little ducks, appreciating their wily ways and perky postures. Also look through the big flocks for Eurasian Wigeons, the red-headed cousins of the Americans.

Many of the interesting facts about wigeon contained in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados subscribe to Birds of the World, both for the information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

"Wish they all could be California Gulls"

by Bob Boekelheide

September 2021 

In place of the former Bird Sightings column, Bob is exploring data from OPAS Community-Science Projects. If you are interested in local bird sightings, check out eBird at https://ebird.org/explore, then under "Explore Regions" enter Clallam or Jefferson County.  Please join eBird and add your own sightings, as well.

One of the most overlooked bird migrations in the Pacific Northwest is happening right now, right on our doorstep. Hundreds of thousands of birds participate in this migration, but most people don't even notice. The birds aren't songbirds that migrate surreptitiously under the cover of darkness. The birds aren't shorebirds that hide out on beaches and mudflats, only visible with expensive optics. No, these birds are easy to see, bold and boisterous, flying right in front of our noses during broad daylight.

I'm talking, of course, about California Gulls (CAGU). The incredible post-breeding migration of CAGUs is one of the most unappreciated bird movements in the Pacific NW, perhaps because they are just "seagulls." This time of year CAGUs line coastal river mouths, spits, mudflats, beaches, log yards, breakwaters, and parking lots. They are scrappy little beggars that look askance at your lunch one moment, then become the main component of pelagic feeding flocks at the continental shelfbreak the next.  

Two OPAS community-science projects show the timing of CAGU migration very well. First, from 2014 to 2018, OPAS cooperated with North Olympic Salmon Coalition to count birds as part of the Three Crabs Restoration Project. Remember the old Three Crabs restaurant? Our goal was to see if the project caused any changes to bird populations using habitats near the mouth of Meadowbrook Creek, including birds on the mudflats visible from Three Crabs Beach. OPAS volunteers counted birds three times each month within 10-day periods, adjusting our counts for time of day, tides, and weather.

Figure 1 shows the monthly high counts of CAGUs roosting and feeding at Three Crabs during the four years from 2015 to 2018. Every year looks remarkably similar. CAGU numbers in Dungeness Bay start picking up in June and July, peak at several thousand in August and September, then quickly decline through October. By the time we hold our Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count in mid-December, they are long gone. For the entire 45-year history of the SDCBC, our record count for the whole Sequim-Dungeness area is only 22 CAGUs.  

Another OPAS community-science project that clearly shows the post-breeding migration of CAGUs is our offshore surveys of birds within the Protection Island Aquatic Reserve (PIAR). The PIAR is an area of biological importance established by WDNR in the waters around Protection Island, from the mouths of Discovery and Sequim Bays to about 5 miles north of Protection Island. Since 2016, OPAS volunteers have cooperated with Port Townsend Marine Science Center and WDNR to do monthly boat surveys in the PIAR, covering a 25-mile route each time. We count birds within a 200-m wide transect, which we then use to calculate densities of birds within the Aquatic Reserve.

Just like at Three Crabs, the PIAR data (Figure 2) show that migrant CAGUs start arriving in June, peak in late summer, then quickly disappear through October and November.  By multiplying the highest densities of CAGUs observed on our surveys (up to 80 CAGUs/sq km) by the total area of the PIAR (96.23 sq km), we can estimate that about 8000 CAGUs may occur on one day within the PIAR during peak passage in late summer.     

It's curious that the peak densities in the PIAR show on the graph during August, whereas the peak numbers on the surveys at Three Crabs occur in September. I suspect this might be an artifact of our sampling, because we counted total numbers every 10 days at Three Crabs, but we only surveyed once per month at PIAR, usually near the middle of the month. This shows the danger of lumping data into human time periods we call "months," which does not apply to birds that live day to day.

Suffice it to say, the passage of CAGUs is miraculous. From June through October, the gulls move constantly through our area. We don't know how long individual birds stay in specific areas, but the movements of gulls at Three Crabs and Dungeness Spit suggest that they keep moving from east to west. The age composition of flocks changes as well during their migration. In early July, the CAGUs here are heavily weighted towards immature pre-breeders, mostly subadult birds that probably don't return all the way to nesting colonies. Adult birds predominate during peak passage in August and September, probably fresh from nesting. The very first fledglings from the nesting season appear in late July, then hatching-year birds steadily pick up during fall, sometimes outnumbering adults in September.

Where do the CAGUs come from and where are they going? CAGUs nest in the interior of western North American, nearly all on islands in big lakes. According to Birds of the World, six of the nine largest nesting colonies in the world are found at lakes in Alberta, to the east of the Canadian Rockies. Their nesting range extends from the Northwest Territories of Canada through Alberta, Manitoba, Montana, and the Dakotas, down to Great Salt Lake in Utah and Mono Lake in eastern California. The largest U.S. colony is typically at Great Salt Lake. Low water levels due to drought may seriously threaten CAGUs if their nesting islands stop being islands, making them accessible to terrestrial predators such as coyotes.    

After nesting, CAGUs from inland colonies fly over the Rocky Mountains, then down the Columbia and Fraser Rivers to saltwater. Birds nesting at Mono Lake fly over the Sierra Nevada. California Gulls are renowned for their high-altitude flights, soaring over the high peaks with no problems. I remember sitting on mountaintops in Yosemite National Park and being amazed at flocks of CAGUs circling around in the sky at 13,000 ft, heading west after nesting at Mono Lake. The northern populations, including many from the big colonies in Alberta, apparently fly over the Rockies then down the Fraser River valley to the Salish Sea, heading straight towards the Strait of Juan de Fuca and our front door in Clallam County.

In late summer many years ago, I tried to do a California Gull/Clallam County Big Day, counting all the CAGUs I could find on only one day roosting at river mouths, harbors, and other sites in coastal Clallam County. Starting at Dungeness Bay and ending at Hobuck Beach, my one-day count was over 35,000 CAGU. I likely missed more than I saw, because I couldn't get to many roost sites and I didn't even make it to La Push. Regardless, the number of CAGUs passing Clallam County each summer certainly numbers in the hundreds of thousands. This is a significant portion of the world population, which Birds of the World estimates to be between 500,000 and one million.

Other places where you can see big numbers of CAGUs in western WA is at offshore feeding flocks, both in the Salish Sea and off the west coast of WA. In fact, CAGUs are often the most numerous components of these giant feeding flocks this time of year, not only in the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca, but even at places like at the continental shelfbreak miles off the coastline. On one of our September pelagic boat trips to Swiftsure Bank, 15 mi west of Cape Flattery, we estimated a whopping 20,000 CAGU feeding and loafing in one area around the southern edges of the bank. There were probably many more. What are they eating in the feeding flocks? Small fish is the likely answer, possibly sandlance and herring.      

What else do the CAGUs do while they're here? Other than eating all they can, one very important job in summer and fall is molting feathers. The juveniles don’t need to molt, because they already have brand new feathers.  But all the other age classes go through heavy molt this time of year, replacing all their feathers all over their bodies. Piles of dropped gull feathers stack up on beaches and spits, providing a big hit of carbon and nitrogen into local biogeochemical cycles. 

By November each year, the big numbers of CAGUs are gone. They mostly spend the winter in California, where they become one of the most abundant gull species throughout the state. From the Bay Area to the Central Valley to the Salton Sea, CAGUs line the fields, lawns, and beaches. On most Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Counts we're lucky to tally even ten.

Curiously, there is no equivalent spring migration of CAGUs past Dungeness. It appears CAGUs mostly fly straight inland from California to their nesting areas in the interior of North America, without passing through the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The one exception is CAGUs can be found in good numbers at herring spawns in the Salish Sea in February and March, along with other gull species. Unfortunately, with the decline of herring in Dungeness and Sequim Bays, they don't stop here much anymore.

As all birders know, gull plumages can be confusing, so how do you know you're looking at a CAGU? First, focus on adults. During nesting, CAGU are fairly unique because the "feeding spot" near the tip of their bill is both black and red. They are medium sized - clearly smaller and with a thinner bill compared with our local-nesting Glaucous-winged Gulls, but larger and larger-billed than either Ring-billed or Mew (aka Short-billed) Gulls. A flashy CAGU breeding adult has medium-gray back and wings, yellow legs, and dark eyes.

This is the time -- go enjoy the wonder of the California Gull migration right now in Dungeness Bay.

Anna's vs Rufous Hummingbirds

by Bob Boekelheide

May 2021 

In place of the former Bird Sightings column, Bob is exploring data from OPAS Community-Science Projects. If you are interested in local bird sightings, check out eBird at https://ebird.org/explore, then under "Explore Regions" enter Clallam or Jefferson County.  Please join eBird and add your own sightings, as well.

One of the biggest changes to the avifauna of the Pacific Northwest during the last 50 years is the phenomenal increase of Anna's Hummingbirds. In a tiny eye-blink of time, these pugnacious little birds have skyrocketed from nonexistence to become one of the most abundant backyard birds in our area.

There is no doubt that Anna's Hummingbird numbers have exploded, as shown very well by the Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC), held each year in mid-December (see Figure 1). When the SDCBC started in 1975, Anna's Hummingbirds were considered a rare bird in western WA, and the very first Anna's did not occur on the SDCBC until 1994. From 1994 to 2005, Anna's were still very hard to find, with only one to three recorded each CBC. The Anna's count surpassed 10 for the first time in 2006, then blew through 100 by 2013. The number continues to climb, setting new records every year for the last five years, reaching 340 in 2020. Cities such as Victoria BC now record over 1000 Anna's on their CBCs.

How could this little hummingbird move north so quickly? Some people credit climate change, thinking that warming climate has allowed this species to move north in just a few years. Climate change may influence some of their recent movements, but a close look at the records shows that Anna's Hummingbirds have been moving north for almost a century.

In Birds of America, one of the early classics of popular ornithology published in 1917, William Finley describes Anna's Hummingbird as "quite restricted in its range, living through central and southern California mainly west of the Sierra Nevadas."  But by 1944, in their landmark book "The Distribution of the Birds of California," Joseph Grinnell and Alden Miller describe a different scenario: "Because of human settlement of open valleys and plains and the clearing of woodland, with extensive gardening and the planting of flowering, non-native trees, the numbers of Anna Hummingbirds now no doubt greatly exceed those comprised in original aggregate population. An important factor is the presence now of plants which flower abundantly all through the quiescent period for the most native kinds of shrubs, roughly, October to January. This means that the rigors of a minimum food period in the annual cycle have been abated..." 

My major professor in college, Miklos Udvardy, liked to tell the story about Anna's Hummingbirds spreading into northern California with the planting of eucalyptus and acacia trees. As Udvardy explained, these trees bloom in the winter, providing a nectar source for year-round Anna's Hummers. The trees are also an insect source, attracting swarms of gnats around the flowers. Even in 1917 Birds of America says "One may often find this hummingbird nesting in the eucalyptus." 

There aren't many eucalyptus trees around western WA, so what allows Anna's Hummingbirds to stay here all winter? One contributing factor is backyard hummingbird feeders. The appearance of hummingbirds and hummingbird feeders goes hand-in-hand. Previously we took down our feeders after the last Rufous Hummer migrated away in late summer, but now we keep the feeders up year-round, giving resident Anna's Hummingbirds a ready food source. Many of us even accommodate Anna's by heating our feeders when temperatures drop below freezing.

It is no coincidence that the highest numbers of Anna's Hummingbirds observed on Pacific Northwest CBCs occur in the largest cities like Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria, where hummingbird feeders also concentrate.  In 2017, Vancouver, B.C. even voted Anna's Hummingbird their official "City Bird," beating out quintessential Northwest species like Varied Thrush and Spotted Towhee. Ironically, Anna's Hummingbird was a very rare bird in Vancouver B.C. only 40 years ago, as shown by their CBC data.

One twist to this story is that some male Anna's Hummingbirds sit on their territories all winter, far from the nearest feeders even on the coldest days with ice and snow. This is true at RR Bridge Park, where our Wednesday morning bird walks record Anna's males perched on their territories when there is snow on the ground and temperatures in the teens and 20s. Curiously, Anna's have been recorded flying over a kilometer to reach feeders, so is that how the RR Bridge Park birds survive cold snaps? Anna's Hummingbirds are also well known for entering torpor when temperatures drop at night, by allowing their body temperatures and heart rate to drop precipitously. Clearly they have the physiological means to survive cold temperatures as long as they can find food.

If they're not drinking nectar, what do they eat? Anna's Hummingbirds likely have the highest proportion of insects and spiders in their diet compared with other hummingbirds. Even during winter we see insects in RR Bridge Park, particularly swarms of gnats. There are also spiders, which the hummers pick out of webs. I'm sure the hummingbirds are far better at finding insects and spiders than we are, so if we see them, the hummingbirds undoubtedly do, too.

Another question is how do Anna's and Rufous Hummingbirds relate to one another? Do they compete for food and territories? As Anna's increase in abundance, what has happened to the numbers of Rufous Hummingbirds?

First, the annual cycle of these two hummingbird species could not be more different. Around here, Anna's Hummingbirds appear to be year-round residents, although evidence suggests that they disperse during their non-breeding season. The Anna's Hummingbird we see at RR Bridge Park in the summer may not be the same Anna's Hummingbird we see at RR Bridge Park in the winter. Anna's also nest very early, even laying their first eggs during winter.

Rufous Hummingbirds, in contrast, are the most migratory of all hummingbird species, migrating as far north as Alaska during the nesting season and as far south as southern Mexico and the US Gulf Coast for winter. In Sequim, the first Rufous males appear on territories in early March and are mostly gone by the end of June. Most females arrive later in March and the last females and young migrate away by the end of July. After nesting, Rufous Hummingbirds may even fly inland to the Rocky Mountains to get nectar from mountain wildflowers. This means that Rufous are here for only four months or so each year.  Do Anna's have an advantage simply because they are here all year?

The only local data we have for changes in the relative abundance of the two hummingbird species comes from our community-science Wednesday morning bird walks at RR Bridge Park, which celebrate their 20-year anniversary this coming September. Figure 2 uses bird walk data to show the average numbers of the two hummingbird species counted per walk during the three-month period (April to June) in which Rufous Hummers are present each year, for the years 2007 to 2020. In Figure 2, Anna's are represented by green symbols and Rufous are the red symbols.

Figure 2 reveals amazing changes in the abundance of these two hummingbird species over the last 15 years. First off, Anna's Hummingbirds did not regularly occur in RR Bridge Park until 2008.  From 2008 to 2011, Rufous clearly outnumbered Anna's, averaging 6 to 8 Rufous per walk compared to less than two Anna's. From 2012 to 2017 the two species tracked fairly close, although Rufous still held the edge. From 2018 to 2020, Anna's easily surpassed Rufous, climbing in 2020 to an average of over eight Anna's seen per walk compared to less than three Rufous.

The regression lines for each species in Figure 2 tell an ominous tale. The slope of the green Anna's line shows an increase on our walks of about 0.5 birds per year, whereas the slope of the red Rufous line shows a decrease of about 0.3 birds per year.  Does this mean that Rufous Hummingbirds are being pushed out by the Anna's?

Maybe, maybe not. These data just look at disturbed habitats in RR Bridge Park that may favor Anna's over Rufous. Rufous Hummingbirds are still more abundant in many surrounding habitats, particularly away from human habitation such as in the foothills and the Olympic Mountains. Some people believe that Rufous are the more aggressive species at feeders compared to Anna's, but, despite that, Rufous appear to be declining in the lowlands where feeders are located, perhaps because of the pervasive presence of Anna's. A better question might be: What is happening to the Rufous Hummingbirds?

Finally, let's return to the other question about whether Anna's Hummingbirds are increasing in the Pacific Northwest due to climate change. Anna's Hummingbirds are unquestionably increasing in the northern part of their range, but does that mean they are simultaneously declining at the southern part of their range, like in Southern California, with its drought, fires, and unrelenting heat? It turns out that Anna's are still abundant in Southern California as shown by CBC data, likely attracted to feeders just like here in the Pacific Northwest. Whether they are equally abundant in their native chapparal habitat is uncertain. Regardless, it suggests that their increase on the north Olympic Peninsula is just as likely because of cooperative humans like OPAS members who provide year-round sugar water as it is to climate change. It will be most interesting to see what happens over the next 50 years.

Excuse me while I go fill my hummingbird feeder.

The Story of Brant

by Bob Boekelheide

February 2021 

Late winter is a critical time during the annual cycles of many birds. After surviving difficult conditions through a long winter, at some point birds must transition over to their need to prepare for the next nesting season. As winter turns to spring, they must fatten up for migration and undergo physiological changes that kick-start their bodies for reproduction.

It turns out that March and April are the peak time of year when we see Brant in coastal waters along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We of course have Brant here throughout the winter, such as those we tally on the Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (Figure 1), but their numbers swell in March and April as more arrive from wintering areas further south.

Picture the annual cycle of Brant in western North America. The great majority of the West Coast population nests at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska, along with some on the North Slope of Alaska and even a few that nest way up in the Canadian Archipeligo as far as Prince Patrick Island. Prince Patrick Island is way up there. After their chicks leave the nest and grow stronger, adult Brant undergo a complete molt, in which they become flightless for a few weeks as they drop their old flight feathers and grow new ones. After molting, nearly all the West Coast Brant fly to a place called Izembek Lagoon near the tip of the Alaskan Peninsula, where they eat like mad and prepare for migration to their wintering areas.

The fall migration of Brant is truly incredible. More than half of the Alaskan population flies non-stop from the Alaskan Peninsula to winter in Baja California, at places like San Ignacio Lagoon. Brant have been reported covering this 3000-mi distance in as little as 55-60 hours, which means they fly an average of about 50 to 60 mph straight for almost three days.  But some Brant do not fly all the way to Mexico. Some fly shorter distances to other locations on the West Coast, to places like Humboldt Bay and here in the Salish Sea. Apparently there is trend for some Brant to not leave Alaska at all, instead remaining at Izembek Lagoon all winter.      

After surviving the winter, most Brant make shorter flights during spring migration instead of one long one, stopping several times along the Pacific Coast on their way north. One of those sites is right here at Dungeness Bay, where the sound of their chatty voices increases in late winter. They voraciously feed at these locations, trying to keep their bodies in good shape for the upcoming nesting season. 

Like other geese, Brant are largely vegetarians. What makes Brant stand apart from the other geese, however, is their reliance on particular species of marine plants and algae for much of the year. Their principal food in non-breeding habitats is eelgrass (Zostera marina), along with sea lettuce (Ulva) and other algae. Maybe not coincidentally, their spring migration through the Salish Sea also coincides with the late-winter herring spawn, when herring attach their sticky eggs all over blades of eelgrass, algae, and other substrates.  This means that Brant feeding at herring spawns might ingest a double dose not only of eelgrass but also of high-protein herring eggs.

These herring spawns are a big deal. I've been lucky to witness several herring spawns in California, Washington and British Columbia, where birds and marine mammals gather by the thousands to gobble up scrumptious herring roe and the fish themselves. One of the last great herring spawns in the Salish Sea occurs on the east side of Vancouver Island in the Strait of Georgia, ranging between Comox and Nanaimo. Right there in the thick of the feeding flocks are Brant, scouring the beaches and sandbars picking up eelgrass and attached herring eggs. The Canadians even have a Brant Festival at Parksville around this time, to celebrate their spring arrival. There used to be sizeable herring spawns in Dungeness, Sequim, and Discovery Bays, but according to the WDFW they are now tiny compared to their former selves.          

As part of the Three Crabs Restoration Project, between 2014 and 2018 OPAS volunteers counted Brant and other birds three times each month within a specific area at Three Crabs beach. Figure 2 shows the annual cycle of Brant tallied on these surveys, based on the average high counts of Brant for each calendar month. You can see that our highest counts occurred from February to April, timed to the window when Brant are migrating north to nesting areas. Most of the eelgrass that Brant eat at Three Crabs beach is already broken off from where it grows on the bottom of the bay, then it washes ashore in windrows on the beach. This gives the Brant a concentrated food source in shallow water right by shore.

Here on the north Olympic Peninsula people typically see Brant feeding right on shore at places like Three Crabs, Jamestown, and Ediz Hook, but in reality Brant often feed quite a ways offshore on floating eelgrass and algae. As the tides move back and forth in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, tidal fronts and convergences concentrate floating mats of algae and eelgrass, providing feeding opportunities for Brant sometimes miles offshore. Since 2016, OPAS has cooperated with WA Dept of Natural Resources and Port Townsend Marine Science Center to conduct monthly bird and mammal surveys in the Protection Island Aquatic Reserve, a 96 sq-km body of water surrounding Protection Island. Figure 3 shows the annual cycle of Brant in the PI Aquatic Reserve, based on their densities recorded during these cruises. Once again, the highest densities of Brant in the PI Aquatic Reserve occur in March and April, the exact time that Brant migrate north. On these surveys we sometimes see long lines of Brant feeding up to 10 miles offshore, gobbling up eelgrass floating at the surface.

Figure 3 also shows an interesting pattern of higher densities offshore in November, then a drop in densities during December and January. Is this real? Researchers found a similar pattern at Padilla Bay, near Anacortes, WA, where they suggested that some Brant arriving in November used Padilla Bay to refuel, then continued migrating further south for December through February. This may also occur at Dungeness, although curiously the same pattern did not appear with the data from Three Crabs. Why not? It may be because daytime tides are so high throughout November and December that Brant are less likely to be onshore at Three Crabs beach in those months.

It's not uncommon to see Brant with leg bands in Dungeness Bay. During OPAS's Three Crabs study we found several banded Brant that we reported to the USGS Bird Banding Lab (see attached certificate). The banding reports revealed that researchers banded these Brant at two primary locations, either at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska, or at the mouth of the Colville River on the North Slope. It's mind-boggling to imagine the vast territory covered by these Brant as they migrate back and forth to and from Alaska.

Like swans and other geese, nesting pairs of Brant typically stay together all year, and young Brant remain with their parents through their first winter. Adults are extremely faithful not only to their mates, but also to both nesting and wintering areas, returning year after year to the same locations. In addition, Brant are quite long-lived -- the oldest Brant on record was at least 29 years old, although it is likely that very few reach this old age. Consequently, the Brant you see feeding at Three Crabs beach have probably been there before and will return again next year. If you see a banded Brant, try to read the bands and report the information to the Bird Banding Lab.

How many Brant are there in the world? Researchers believe the entire Pacific Coast population is likely less than 200,000 birds. The population on the Atlantic side of North America may also peak out at about 200,000. The European population is probably about the same size. This means the entire world population of Brant is probably less than the human population of Seattle, WA. When you see big flocks of Brant it might seem like there are a lot of them, but there really aren't that many. This makes it even more important to give these birds lots of space while they're feeding on beaches, keeping your dogs on leash and minimizing disturbance. 

Many of the interesting facts about Brant contained in this story came from Birds of the World, an on-line resource available through Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I highly recommend that all bird aficionados subscribe to Birds of the World, both for the information and to support the Lab of Ornithology.

Bufflehead

by Bob Boekelheide

November 2020

Do you know which species consistently ranks as the most abundant "diving duck" on the Sequim-Dungeness Christmas Bird Count (SDCBC)? Is it Surf Scoter? Common Goldeneye? Red-breasted Merganser? Nope. The most abundant diving duck on our Christmas Count is the humble little Bufflehead. It's time to pay homage to this wonderful little duck, which arrives for the winter right now in October and November.

Our record SDCBC Bufflehead count is 3362, tallied in 2001. Last year, on the 2019 SDCBC we counted 1757 Buffleheads, which turns out to be slightly below our 35-year average of 1895. There are likely many more Bufflehead out there that don't get counted. The SDCBC Bufflehead count almost always scores in the top five counts in Washington State, competing with places like Olympia, Padilla Bay, and the San Juan Islands for highest number. The highest count for North American CBCs often goes to Point Reyes, CA, where they sometimes tally over 10,000 Bufflehead. 

How consistent is our Bufflehead CBC count from year to year? Figure 1 shows a graph of the number of Buffleheads counted per party-hour on the SDCBC over the last 35 years. I used the number of Bufflehead counted per party hour rather than the actual counts, to standardize our count effort between years.

From Figure 1, it looks like our Bufflehead counts may have declined slightly over time, but even so Buffleheads ranked as our most abundant diving duck in 33 out of the 35 years. In the two years when Bufflehead was not the most abundant diving duck, the top scoring diving duck species was none other than Surf Scoter.

When do Buffleheads occur around here? Figure 2 shows the annual cycle of Buffleheads in Dungeness Bay, based on data collected by OPAS volunteers as part of the Three Crabs Bird Study from 2014 to 2018.

To gather these data, we counted birds three times each month between 2014 and 2018, viewing a designated area of outer Dungeness Bay from the beach at Three Crabs. Figure 2 shows the highest monthly counts rather than average counts, to illustrate the peak numbers we saw in the count area within each month. 

FIrst, notice that we didn't record any Buffleheads between June and September, when they nest by ponds and lakes in the taiga forests of Canada and Alaska. Buffleheads are cavity nesters, using tree holes made by Northern Flickers to lay their eggs. It is thought that Buffleheads are almost entirely dependent on flickers to provide their nest holes.     

Buffleheads consistently arrive here for the fall in mid-October. They arrive in mass, so their numbers in Dungeness Bay quickly go from zero birds to a few thousand birds by early November. In the spring they trickle away a little more slowly, likely because different-aged birds return to breeding areas at different times, with younger birds possibly hanging out longer before heading north.

It seems curious that we recorded fewer Buffleheads in January compared to the other winter months. Their annual cycle graph (Fig. 2) looks bimodal, or two-peaked, showing one peak in December and one peak in March, with a noticeable dip in January. Are there really fewer Buffleheads here in January? One explanation is that maybe Buffleheads gather here first in fall, then keep going south to Oregon and California (like Point Reyes?) in early winter, then return to Dungeness Bay on their way north in February and March. Another possibility is that these birds move around Dungeness Bay depending on tides and other factors. During winter, daytime tides are mostly high, so it is possible that these diving ducks move elsewhere inside Dungeness Bay to feed where depths are more shallow at high tide. Of course another possibility is we just missed the birds. Likely the only way to answer the question is to put transmitters on individual birds and see where they go during winter.

Bufflehead feed on the bottom in fairly shallow water, so nearshore areas of the Pacific Northwest are perfect for these little ducks. They feed on a variety of crustaceans, mollusks, and some fish and fish eggs.  Apparently one of their favorite foods is shrimp.  Picture in your mind all those little Buffleheads swimming around the bottom in Dungeness Bay picking juicy little shrimps off the sandy substrate.

One interesting finding is that Buffleheads may be faithful to both their nesting sites and their wintering sites. Banded bird studies show that females return annually to the same nest hole or close nearby. Other banding studies show that some birds migrate to the same exact location every winter. Those little Buffleheads you see this winter by John Wayne Marina could very well be the same ones you saw there last winter.

How long do Buffleheads live? On average, not very long. Calculations with birds banded as adults show that the average male Bufflehead lives only 2.5 years and the average female lives 2.3 years. But some individuals live a surprisingly long time. The oldest female on record was at least 11.5 years old and the oldest male was 18.7 years old.

Finally, one of the most impressive items I discovered while researching this report is that the city of Sidney, British Columbia, has male Buffleheads on its coat of arms. They selected Buffleheads because of their "vivacity and boundless energy." Buffleheads are also known as "Spirit Ducks," possibly because they have an amazing ability to quickly dive out of sight when someone shoots at them.  Poof - they're gone. 

This winter go closely watch a flock of Buffleheads and appreciate this wonderful little diving duck.