FOAM LAKE BIRDING
No. 158
More fall
birds have visited our yard with more soon to follow. Fall warblers, like the Magnolia, Yellow
Rumped and Wilsons,
are starting to arrive. In the spring
warblers with their bright plumage are quite easy to identify, but in the fall
with their drab winter plumages identification is quite difficult. All are brownish with varying degrees of
yellow. Here, one has to be familiar
with subtle field marks. Another helpful
tool is distribution. For example,
Yellow Warblers are gone for the year, therefore, any yellowish warbler has to
be something else. Two such warblers are
the Magnolia and the Wilsons. Both are yellow but the Magnolia has a yellow
rump while the Wilsons
has a black cap. This is the time of
year to test one's birding skills.
With the
fall game bird hunting season underway I started to focus on a game bird, in
particular, the Sandhill Crane. While
planning the article I remembered something that happened about forty years
ago. It was the time when the crane
season had just opened for the first time and bird hunters were eager to try
their hand at crane hunting. Because of
their lack of knowledge of birds some hunters shot a similar bird, the Great
Blue Heron, by mistake. Being an illegal
act everybody kept quiet about it.
The goose
sized Great Blue Heron is grey with long legs and neck giving it an overall
length of almost four feet - one of our largest birds. The easiest way to distinguish a heron from a
crane is when the bird is in flight. A
heron flies with its neck coiled back so that the back of its head rests on its
shoulders; a crane flies with its neck stretched straight out. Another characteristic is that cranes often
feed on grain in fields; herons never do.
Sandhill Cranes are social birds usually seen in flocks; herons are
solitary. During breeding season the
reverse is true. Cranes nest in isolated
pairs; herons nest in large colonies called rookeries. Cranes nest on the ground in marshes; herons
nest high in mature trees. The one and
only rookery that I ever saw was one at Marean
Lake near Greenwater Lake. Unfortunately, human development caused the
herons to abandon the site. The good
news is that both cranes and herons are plentiful.
The Great
Blue Heron does not eat plant food but feeds entirely on fish and other water
creatures. It does so by standing
motionless in shallow water waiting for something to swim by at which point it
strikes with amazing speed to grab the luckless creature. Because of its feeding habits it is usually found
in quiet waters of larger sloughs and lakes.
It is
actually quite easy to distinguish the Great Blue Heron from the similar
Sandhill Crane. Both are grey but the
Sandhill has a bright red bald patch on its forehead; the Great Blue Heron has
a white crown with a black eyebrow line that extends backward into a long plume. It reminds me of a bald headed man sporting a
pony tail. Males and females are the
same.
This week's
photo of the Great Blue Heron was taken several years ago in Carlsbad, CA
at the Batiquitos Lagoon. The Wilsons
Warbler was taken in our backyard this past week as it was preening in the
morning sun. The sharpness of the photo of
the warbler is not that good as it was in a continual state of motion during
its preening, but the black crown patch is clearly visible.
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