Journal 7: Bird follow

Licton Springs Park, 5/22/19, 3:04 pm, 63°, sunny and very warm

As I was walking towards the park, I couldn't help but notice the copious amounts of cottonwood seeds floating around in the air. They were everywhere. It looked beautiful. I approached my site and immediately noticed that there was a lot greener everywhere. The alder tree that was once so prominent is getting covered by growing salmonberry.

This is my repeat photograph of my site at the spatial scale of 1 sq. meter. The salmonberry has clearly grown a lot.

This is my repeat photograph of my site at the spatial scale of 50 sq. meters. You can really see how much greener everything is now.

Additionally, you can finally see the yellow flowers of the yellow iris plants. It was harder to identify them before, but now it is obvious that these are yellow irises.

This is what the yellow irises look like now. It was such a pleasant surprise to see that the yellow flowers had bloomed.

Another thing that really stood out to me was how tall the horsetails had grown. Some were definitely nearing four feet tall, if not more. It was actually kind of intimidating considering how many of them there were.

This is only one section of the horsetails. There was another part of my site where the horsetails were much taller, but I chose this image because of the abundance.

Something that I did not take a picture of but noticed was the growth of actual berries on the salmonberry shrubs. There weren’t any on my site, but just a few feet away I could see little red berries on some of the shrubs. I’m hoping to see some berries that are within reach within the next couple weeks so that I can maybe try them.

In terms of the birds, the first bird I noticed was, of course, an American crow. They’re hard to miss. The crow had flown pretty close to me, just overhead. I could actually hear the flapping of its wings. It landed on an electrical wire up above me and just sat there for a while. When I was actually inside the park, I saw a crow again, perhaps the same one. It flew into the trees and seemed to pester a squirrel because after it had landed, a squirrel up in the canopy ran away. In fact, every time I saw a squirrel move in the trees, I got excited because I thought it might be a bird.

The second bird I saw was what I identified as a white-crowned sparrow. I believe it was a white-crowned sparrow because the first thing I noticed about it was the small black and white stripes on the top of the head. Its body was feathered with brown and white, and it had a yellow beak. In looking at my field guide, the white-crowned sparrow matched what I saw. It was kind of exciting to be able to identify this bird. At first, you don’t really notice birds because they’re so small and it’s difficult to see the intricacies, but through the binoculars, you can really observe all of the cool and unique details. It was perched up on a branch and I actually didn’t get to look at it for too long before it flew away. It wasn’t doing anything very special, just sitting for a bit and then deciding to fly off to somewhere else.

The bird I followed was a dark-eyed junco. I actually saw two of them, just hopping around on the ground in a shaded area, pecking at the dirt. One hopped out of sight, behind a tree. I stopped walking towards them because I didn’t want to disturb the one that was still in sight, and I used my binoculars to observe the one I could still see.

This is my sketch of the dark-eyed junco I saw. It was truly adorable, just pecking at the ground periodically.

This is my sketch of what I mostly saw of the dark-eyed junco. This is how I noticed its tail and pattern at the bottom.

The first thing I noticed was its black head and brown body. Then, I noticed how towards its bottom, it had arrow-like striping facing down. It also had a relatively long tail. The tail was kind of up-turned when it was on the ground. I also noted its very light-colored beak. It kept hopping around, pecking at the ground, perhaps feeding on whatever was crawling around in the dirt. It eventually hopped around until it faced me, and then it abruptly flew away, and I couldn’t manage to find where it had flown to. It didn’t look like it flew very high, but I couldn’t find it. However, as I was walking around to a different part of the park, another dark-eyed junco (or perhaps the same one) flew up to a branch very close to me. It sat there perched for a few seconds and then it flew down to the ground in the shade of a Douglas-fir tree on the grass. Again, it kind of just hopped around and pecked at the floor until it flew away again. They seem to like to be close to the ground. They also seem to like more open areas, as long as there aren’t people around.

Near this dark-eyed junco was a group of three to four birds of the same species that I think were song sparrows. I couldn’t actually get a great look at them because they were flying around very fast and they refused to land in a spot where I could see them. They were extremely active, flying around and not stopping for more than a few seconds. It was kind of endearing because it seemed like they were playing with each other. The reason that I think they were song sparrows was because of their call, and also because I briefly caught a glimpse of the white underside of one of them. It was really nice to take some time out of my day to just enjoy the weather and observe some beautiful birds.