Bird counters check birds off list, place feathers in their caps!
Ray Sikorski -Sonoma Valley Sun -

“If we can get that to come in, the pressure’s off,” says Terry Colborn, lead birder for the Glen Ellen area during the Sonoma Valley Spring Bird Count on May 13. Colborn was speaking of the elusive pileated woodpecker. Noted for its large size and red head, the pileated was the inspiration for the most famous of woodpeckers: Woody himself. On a lonely, forested stretch of Nuns Canyon Road, Colborn whistles a crescendo of eighth notes that subsides gently: the call of the pileated.“Come on down, baby,” he says to the trees. “Come on down.”Colborn, a former Kenwood resident who now lives in Davis, was one of over 100 bird enthusiasts who descended on the Sonoma Valley in an attempt to document bird species in the 177-square-mile area. Sun photographer Melania Mahoney and I accompanied him, Burmese visiting scholar Aung Myo Chit, and a woman from Walnut Creek who would give her name only as “Karen” to partake in the experience.

It didn’t take long for Mahoney and I to realize we were in the company of experts.

“You hear that?” asks Colborn. “Chi-ca-go, Chi-ca-go, Chi-ca-go. It’s a California quail.”

He explains that for the bird count, hearing counts just as much as seeing — “birding by ear,” he calls it. Karen, acting as secretary, marks it off on the 196-item checklist of potential Sonoma Valley birds.

The goal, Colborn explains, is not to get an accurate count of every bird in the valley, but to put together a sampling of data on birds that breed in the area. The spring count was scheduled to coincide with International Migratory Bird Day, and takes into account birds from Mexico and Central America that fly north in the spring and summer to breed. This is only the second area bird count — the first was the Christmas Bird Count in late December — but organizers hope that sampling the same area year after year will produce helpful data patterns.

“When you do these counts over a period of time, you can see changes. What’s working, what’s not working,” Colborn says.

Colborn has been an active birder since he was a teenager, when a love for reptiles and amphibians evolved into a love for birds.

“It definitely wasn’t cool,” he says, but that love blossomed into a life-long passion that has taken him around the continent, including leading bird-watching expeditions in Florida and Cape May, New Jersey. He now boasts 700 “life birds,” or birds he had never seen before.

“There are birders who just go out and look at birds,” he says. “(I), on the other hand, would spend hours, or even days, to find a new bird. It can be for all levels of expertise. There are no credentials one must have, just a level of interest. The more you do it, the more exciting it becomes. The thrill of discovering a new bird among a flock of shorebirds? That’s fun.”

Colborn’s list turned out to be tiny in comparison with that of Karen, who has traveled to India, Egypt, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, Spain, Sicily and Madagascar to feed her bird craving. She has over 4,000 birds on her life list, and plans to add to that with a trip to Uganda in November.
“You get hooked into birding, and it’s all over. It just consumes you,” she says. “It’s absolutely a passionate thing that you can do anywhere in the world, at any time, day or night.”

Not the least of the group was Chit, a curator of plants and birds for Myanmar’s (Burma’s) Wildlife Department. While his travels were limited to Myanmar and its border regions, along with his 11 months in the U.S. as a Humphrey Fellow at University of California, Davis, Chit had the sharpest eyes of the group.
The trio proved to be an uncanny bird-finding force. There was no need for guide books. The faintest forest sound was quickly identified not merely as bird or beast or creaking tree, but as towhee, California, or towhee, spotted, Steller’s Jay or scrub jay, or a dark-eyed junco with its little wing bars on its white tail feathers.

We were in the company of human encyclopedias, brimming with information: The brown creeper flies to the bottom of a tree and works its way up, while white nuthatches work from the top down. Acorn woodpeckers store acorns in the holes they make. Red-breasted sapsuckers allow the holes they make to fill with sap, and then suck out the insects that get trapped in it. And the hulking pileated woodpecker makes large oval holes, often ripping large chunks of bark off the tree to get maximum insect exposure.

That’s the one we wanted, but it had eluded us so far. We had heard two of them in the Nuns Canyon woods, but we hadn’t seen them.
In move designed to cover areas missed by absent birders, we relocate to Jack London State Park. Passing the House of Happy Walls, Colborn feels the lure of the pileated.

“That I would get excited about,” he says. “If that bird were to come in, land, sit with the sunlight on it so you can get some pictures, I’d say, ‘Okay, let’s go to lunch.’”

The birders tune in. The creak of cicadas dominate the forest. Colborn gives off his generic “pshes,” his pygmy owl call — designed to lure other birds into offensive mode — his half-note locator monotone, and the crescendo/decrescendo of his pileated woodpecker whistle.

And the bird whistles back. Chit, the master spotter, scans the trees... but it is photographer Mahoney who spots the bird. And not high in the branches, either — the red-headed bird stands near the forest floor, banging its beak against a hollow log. Colborn explains the bird will often drum on a log to let mates know its location.

His excitement is tangible. After already marking some 40-something species off the checklist, this one has clearly made his morning. And, after staring through the branches at the bird 35 to 40 yards away, two more pileateds fly right over not only our heads, but the heads of a Wolf House tour group as well. Colborn maintains his composure.

“It happened just as that group was going by, so I had to control my emotions to some extent.”

Relieved by the sighting, Colborn loosens up. He points out a blue-bellied Western fence lizard sitting on a tree branch.

“Oh, it’s a lizard! And I just made my lizard loop!” he says. He had just fashioned a lasso out of a long strand of grass, and, amazingly, sneaks up on the languid lizard, gingerly slides the noose over its neck, and pulls it off the branch. Colborn dangles his prey with pride.

“You see the things we do when we get bored with birding?” he says, releasing the lizard. “Okay, we got the pileated, let’s go.”

The group had checked 50 species off the list; Colborn points out that for Mahoney and me, it could represent the beginning of our own life list.
Walking along the path, I sense something. Looking down, I see a moving shadow. I look up, search the branches for the bird... and there it is. What is it? I don’t know. It’s blue.

I point it out to Mahoney, who remembers Colborn saying that blue jays are uncommon in California — she narrows it down to a scrub jay or a Steller’s Jay.
Colborn helps us out with the rest: Since it’s bright blue, it can’t be a scrub jay.
“It’s a Steller’s Jay,” he tells us. “Another one for the life list.”

 



 

 

 

 

 

Colborn has been an active birder since he was a teenager, when a love for reptiles and amphibians evolved into a love for birds.

“It definitely wasn’t cool,” he says, but that love blossomed into a life-long passion that has taken him around the continent, including leading bird-watching expeditions in Florida and Cape May, New Jersey. He now boasts 700 “life birds,” or birds he had never seen before.

“There are birders who just go out and look at birds,” he says. “(I), on the other hand, would spend hours, or even days, to find a new bird. It can be for all levels of expertise. There are no credentials one must have, just a level of interest. The more you do it, the more exciting it becomes. The thrill of discovering a new bird among a flock of shorebirds? That’s fun.”

Colborn’s list turned out to be tiny in comparison with that of Karen, who has traveled to India, Egypt, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, Spain, Sicily and Madagascar to feed her bird craving. She has over 4,000 birds on her life list, and plans to add to that with a trip to Uganda in November.
“You get hooked into birding, and it’s all over. It just consumes you,” she says. “It’s absolutely a passionate thing that you can do anywhere in the world, at any time, day or night.”

Not the least of the group was Chit, a curator of plants and birds for Myanmar’s (Burma’s) Wildlife Department. While his travels were limited to Myanmar and its border regions, along with his 11 months in the U.S. as a Humphrey Fellow at University of California, Davis, Chit had the sharpest eyes of the group.
The trio proved to be an uncanny bird-finding force. There was no need for guide books. The faintest forest sound was quickly identified not merely as bird or beast or creaking tree, but as towhee, California, or towhee, spotted, Steller’s Jay or scrub jay, or a dark-eyed junco with its little wing bars on its white tail feathers.

We were in the company of human encyclopedias, brimming with information: The brown creeper flies to the bottom of a tree and works its way up, while white nuthatches work from the top down. Acorn woodpeckers store acorns in the holes they make. Red-breasted sapsuckers allow the holes they make to fill with sap, and then suck out the insects that get trapped in it. And the hulking pileated woodpecker makes large oval holes, often ripping large chunks of bark off the tree to get maximum insect exposure.

That’s the one we wanted, but it had eluded us so far. We had heard two of them in the Nuns Canyon woods, but we hadn’t seen them.
In move designed to cover areas missed by absent birders, we relocate to Jack London State Park. Passing the House of Happy Walls, Colborn feels the lure of the pileated.

“That I would get excited about,” he says. “If that bird were to come in, land, sit with the sunlight on it so you can get some pictures, I’d say, ‘Okay, let’s go to lunch.’”

The birders tune in. The creak of cicadas dominate the forest. Colborn gives off his generic “pshes,” his pygmy owl call — designed to lure other birds into offensive mode — his half-note locator monotone, and the crescendo/decrescendo of his pileated woodpecker whistle.

And the bird whistles back. Chit, the master spotter, scans the trees... but it is photographer Mahoney who spots the bird. And not high in the branches, either — the red-headed bird stands near the forest floor, banging its beak against a hollow log. Colborn explains the bird will often drum on a log to let mates know its location.

His excitement is tangible. After already marking some 40-something species off the checklist, this one has clearly made his morning. And, after staring through the branches at the bird 35 to 40 yards away, two more pileateds fly right over not only our heads, but the heads of a Wolf House tour group as well. Colborn maintains his composure.

“It happened just as that group was going by, so I had to control my emotions to some extent.”

Relieved by the sighting, Colborn loosens up. He points out a blue-bellied Western fence lizard sitting on a tree branch.

“Oh, it’s a lizard! And I just made my lizard loop!” he says. He had just fashioned a lasso out of a long strand of grass, and, amazingly, sneaks up on the languid lizard, gingerly slides the noose over its neck, and pulls it off the branch. Colborn dangles his prey with pride.

“You see the things we do when we get bored with birding?” he says, releasing the lizard. “Okay, we got the pileated, let’s go.”

The group had checked 50 species off the list; Colborn points out that for Mahoney and me, it could represent the beginning of our own life list.
Walking along the path, I sense something. Looking down, I see a moving shadow. I look up, search the branches for the bird... and there it is. What is it? I don’t know. It’s blue.

I point it out to Mahoney, who remembers Colborn saying that blue jays are uncommon in California — she narrows it down to a scrub jay or a Steller’s Jay.
Colborn helps us out with the rest: Since it’s bright blue, it can’t be a scrub jay.
“It’s a Steller’s Jay,” he tells us. “Another one for the life list.”