May 8

With warm thanks to all of you who have supported our birding adventure and, more importantly, supported the good work of At The Crossroads, this will be the final blog post on this issue. Our ending number will be 115 birds, and adventures and friendship and wonderful California scenery through the winter-to-spring transition time. We’ve had a good time. Here’s our last few birds.

We saw an Orange-crowned warbler, a plane little olive and buff bird with a very faint eye stripe. We took the orange crown on faith, as it was hard to see in real life. They are insect eaters, and this spring provides a bounty, we imagine.

We saw a gaggle of sparrows. We saw Savannah Sparrows, streaky birds that forage on the ground, with a buzzing, insect-like sound as they hop along. We also saw Song Sparrows, a very similar, streaky small sparrow, but a bit more strongly marked, especially on the upper breast, and with a spot in the middle of the breast. Like the Savannah Sparrows, the Song Sparrows prefer moist ground, and so must be especially happy North Coast residents. We saw a Lincoln’s Sparrow, darker, with a gray and brown striped head And Fox Sparrows, darker than the others and good-sized, with a very dark brown back and streaked breast.

We saw a Brown-headed Cowbird. These blackbird-like birds have brown heads and green-black bodies (the male). These critters hang about with cows, but are better known for their habit of placing its eggs in the nests of other birds. In some areas, they are trapped in order to lessen the negative impact on reproduction by other birds. The female cowbird apparently identifies the nest of such birds as warblers or finches and removes one or more eggs from the nest and then adds her own egg to the nest.

And, finally, we saw the ubiquitous House Finch. These birds are so common around human habitation, and travel in flocks. They are ground foragers for seeds and fruit and apparently eat mostly vegetable food. Perhaps that is why they are so ubiquitous?

And there you have it. We’ll keep birding: there is something very satisfying about attentiveness outdoors. Thanks for listening.