Bird count-y

Map of LA County, from http://www.chooselacounty.com

I set myself the ambitious goal of seeing 200 birds in Los Angeles this year. A couple of days ago I saw a  pair of blue-winged teal, which was, in fact, my 200th species of the year. And it's not even May yet... I feel fortunate to live in America's birdiest county.

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Since 2006, LA county won the "America's Birdiest County" competition every single year till 2011. Presumably because the results were so consistent, the competition has now been discontinued. However, to keep the tradition alive, birders all over Los Angeles have been compiling a list of all birds seen this weekend (friday to sunday). This evening, my wife and my son saw the blue-winged teal near the same spot again, helping to add this bird to the count (I had just stepped away for a minute to get a scope from the car).

It's been exciting to watch the list of observed birds grow on the mailing list. As of now, about 243 birds have been counted (and there's all of tomorrow to go). Will LA beat its previous record of 277 birds set last year?

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Update: the final count this year was 262. So the 2011 record stands.

A bird by any other name

Avibase entry for the Black Phoebe

Avibase is a website that gives the names of birds in multiple languages, and has a host of other useful information including bird lists for various regions.

Baby!

Yesterday, my wife discovered this broken egg shell below the Black Phoebe nest and also heard the cries of a little one coming from the nest.

(photos by Zhen Krishnamachari)

Look how small it is: the diameter of the egg is less than that of a penny!

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Update (April 26): We have a photo of the baby in the nest! Look for the yellow y-shaped beak on the top-right of the image.

The parents, in the meantime, continue to guard the nest fiercely, and are both active in feeding the little one. Here's a picture of one of them in action.

Crime's in the air, too, this spring

At the Ballona Freshwater Marsh in Playa Vista last weekend, we saw something interesting but puzzling, a red-winged blackbird attacking a crow in flight.

This morning, a pair of crows came and sat on the tree outside our house, driving the pair of black phoebes guarding their nest berserk. They protested loudly and tried their best to scare them off, but the crows cawed loudly back and refused to budge.

I suddenly remembered a story told to me also earlier this weekend by fellow birders. Some years back they had been delighted to see a pair of nesting White-tailed Kites raising their young. But one day, they said, a pack of crows showed up and raided their nest, picking up and dropping their young to the ground.

Putting two and two together, I realized the first two events were related. The red-winged blackbird was driving the crow away because of its propensity for nest-raiding, and the black phoebe were likewise right to be worried about the crows. Now I confess I'm no objective scientist when it comes to these beautiful birds that have made their home near mine. So I dashed out and flailed my arms and tossed a stick at the crows to drive them away. But they came right back in a bit. After four more attempts by my son and me (in a couple of which he surprised me by delightfully imitating a red-shouldered hawk!)  to drive them away this morning, it seemed finally to get quieter. But now I'm worried...

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Another news I heard over the weekend has shocked me much more. This note was posted to the LA County Birding email list by a birder on Sunday:

Today I decided to celebrate Easter at the Sepulveda Basin and unfortunately, at 9:30 am, as I was entering the tunnel under Burbank Blvd (going south), a man riding on a bicycle paused briefly to wish me a Happy Easter and a few minutes later this same man pulled a knife on a man at the other end of the tunnel, held the knife to his throat, punched him in the face several times, and took his wallet and backpack. Although there were many people at the basin today...birding, walking/jogging and picnicking, this violence still occurred, and the mugger has not been caught. We all know that the area is not the best, so I am taking this opportunity to again state to be please be careful when in the basin and especially if you are birding alone.

The Sepulveda  Basin Wildlife Reserve is one of the best spots for birdwatching in LA (this is where I saw the belted kingfisher, downy woodpecker, cliff swallow,  Bullock's oriole, western kingbird, and Hutton's vireo all for the first time). Just a week before I took my eight year old with me through that very tunnel, and I recall how much we had enjoyed hearing our echoes in it. It's chilling to hear that something like this could happen there in broad daylight.

morning song

It is around 5.40 in the morning here, before dawn, and the Black Phoebe male is up, singing its heart out. "Pity?-Pitrew", he repeats over and over again, each cycle lasting about 3-6 seconds (first-phrase/pause/second-phrase/pause). The cycle is not perfectly regular. Occasionally he will repeat the first-phrase once or twice, or take a longer pause, and utter a series of weaker "seeuw's", which sound like a weak and truncated version of the second-phrase. Over one one-minute period I counted 10 double-phrases, and 5 repetitions of the first phrase. He is the only bird to be heard at this time. He started around 5.35, and as of now (5:56) is still going.

The Parents-to-be

This is the father-to-be, who sits on the tree just outside our house, all day, watching protectively over the female and the nest. 

And here is a better quality photo of the female in her nest, sitting on the eggs. I want to know how many eggs there are, but haven't dared to try and look inside the nest for fear the parents will abandon it if I get too close...

Phoebe 2.0

I think in my opening entry on this blog, I mentioned that a Black Phoebe resides near my house. Well, in the past few weeks, we have observed a couple patch up an old nest up on a sill on the porch just outside our front door. The nest is admirably located in such a way that it is not visible from the house, or even from the outside except from a fairly narrow viewing angle, because of a cypress tree that obscures the porch from one side, and the covering provided by the sides of the porch roof.

For the past week or so, we have been observing one of them that I believe is the female, sitting in the nest at nearly all times, apparently incubating the eggs. The male has been impressively protective of her and the nest, perched on a branch close to the nest and chasing away warblers and finches that dared to approach nearby, and even raising his wings to threaten a crow.  When humans pass by on the sidewalk, they generally ignore them, unless they get too close or loud. But otherwise, they are quite sensitive to any disturbance, and will both flit away if a human stands or sits even 25 feet away, but in sight of the nest, as I tried to do one day.

To accommodate the nervous parents,  we've taken to using a back door instead as much as possible (though the newspaper and mail deliveries impose two somewhat predictable disturbances each day). And I've installed a web cam to look at the nest. Nervous about scaring them away, I set up the web cam a bit far. For now it suffices to let us know when the female is in the nest. Here are two screen shots:

They were taken at day and night respectively yesterday. Though not very clear, you can just make out the tail of the bird sticking out of the nest in different directions in the two images (to the left and to the right, respectively).

From investigations on the web, it appears that a Black Phoebe typically lays 1-6 eggs and that the incubation period is 15-17 days. Though I don't recall the exact day we noticed that the female had started sitting, I think we should be only a week or so from hatching. I'm quite excited at the prospect.

I also found online a paper containing an account of a family of Black Phoebes written by a Professor at UC Berkeley back in 1937 or so. I hope to find some time to post some excerpts of it one of these days.